Flavour Country

So, today was our prep day for the Christmas Buffet. First, we actually had to make a batch of whole wheat rolls and another group had to make a batch of white rolls, so that they would be ready for the restaurant. It was okay, because I had no idea where to start anyway. I had to make a list with all of the things I had to accomplish. It was a very long list. I'm not sure if it helped me figure out where to start, but I just went with it.

I started with the cake base for my buttercream cake so I could get it out of the way and so it could have enough time to cool down before I piped it. I was initially going to do a genoise, but I went with a chocolate sponge instead. I'm not really sure why. But there you go.

While the cake was baking, I made one of the fillings for my tart - salted caramel. I wasn't really sure what I was doing but I found a recipe online that seemed reasonable and I went with that. I caramelized some sugar and glucose and then added in cream, salt, and eventually, butter and mixed til it was all incorporated. I think it'll be really good in the tart.

Before I could move onto the next filling, it was time to shape our rolls and put them in the proofer. We didn't have to do clover rolls this time, so it was a lot quicker. We power-shaped two giant batches of rolls between three to four of us. Then they all had to be egg-washed and put in the proofer. At some point, we also transferred them to the oven. And then they were sent to the restaurant. I basically lost track of them after they were all shaped, aside from making sure that they weren't burnt.

Then I could do my next tart filling, a chocolate ganache. At first I was going to do just a dark chocolate ganache, but I decided that since the caramel was so salted, a slightly sweeter chocolate ganache might be better. So, I used the same recipe as the brownie ganache we did yesterday. The ganache was easy enough to make. Melt chocolate; add warm cream; mix in; add butter; mix in. Once the fillings were done, I decided I might as well make my tart, so I would have something to fill them into. I softened up the sweet dough, rolled it out, and placed it into a greased tart pan. Then it went in the deck oven until it was evenly browned.

One of the other group members couldn't do much stuff until tomorrow, so she kindly offered to help with anything I had to do. It took me a while to figure out what tasks I had to pass on, but eventually she helped me a lot by making a batch of royal icing (that I will hopefully have time to use for snowflake cake decorations) and a batch of nougatine for on top of my tart. So, that was awesome and two more things to check off my list.

Next, I made the peppermint buttercream for my chocolate sponge. I wasn't quite sure how much peppermint extract to add, but I think it turned out well. When I was cutting my cake into three, however, I totally hacked it into a million pieces... not really, but I did possibly the worst cake slicing job I've done so far this year. NO RUSHING is what I have to keep telling myself. I think it'll be okay once the cake sets a little more. The buttercream will act like glue, right? I wanted to do sort of a red and white swirl pattern, by using red food colouring and putting the red and white buttercream on either side of the piping bag, but that didn't work at all. So, I just did one layer red, one white, and then the top layer red. The red wasn't so much red as pink. Or "light red" but that's okay. I haven't decided what I'm going to do for the final layer; I thought about fondant and I thought about just doing icing. But I do think I want to do a red fondant. I might just do a red and white icing on top with snowflakes. We'll see.

Once that cake was done, I was sort of losing steam, but I figured I should probably get the mousse out of the way, so that I would know it was set for tomorrow. Especially since it was something I hadn't made before. I warmed up about a cup of cream and then steeped two tea bags in it and added a bunch of cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg. I wasn't really following a recipe at this point, just going by taste / smell / instinct, I guess. I also added one gelatin leaf into the hot cream and stirred til it dissolved. While this was steeping, I whipped about 500 ml of whipped cream to a soft peak. Then, once the chai mixture had cooled a little, I poured it into a bowl and folded the whipped cream into it. As I was doing this, I realized that I should probably just pour it into my cake now, because assuming that it sets (fingers crossed!!!!), I want it to set in my cake and not in a bowl, obviously. So, even though we had to start cleaning up in basically five minutes, I decided to cut my cake into three layers, trim it down to the size of the cake ring I was using, and fill it with mousse. Man, I really hope it sets. It tasted really good though, so that's something. As I was leaving campus, I wondered whether it should have been in the freezer and not the fridge, but I guess I'll figure that out tomorrow.

Speaking of which, there were a bunch of things that I'd wanted to do today that I didn't get done, such as the royal icing snowflakes. But I think I will do that first thing tomorrow. Actually, first I will pour the caramel into my tart and let it chill to set. Then I will do my snowflakes. Then make the buttercream for my mousse cake and do a crumb coat. After that, I will hopefully be able to pour the chocolate onto my tart and add the nougatine and potentially some sea salt. Then, the buttercream on the mousse cake will have hardened enough to do the final icing decorations, whatever those will be. Which leaves the peppermint cake -- add a final layer of buttercream (or fondant) and the royal icing snowflakes, which ideally will have dried by then. I think I can get it all done... I hope.