Days 17-19: Cake, Cake, Cake, Cake

Wednesday

We continued the cake party on Wednesday. We cut our roulades and covered them in chocolate and cocoa nibs/pearls. Please excuse my super chocolatey half sheet pan. 

My roulades after hand dipping them in chocolate. 

The inside of the roulades

Cake Loaves

Thursday

We made the meringue layers for a Concorde Cake. I forgot to tack down the edges of the parchment paper before I put it in the convection oven. The corners blew up and I and smushed two of my meringues.

Shame and Disappointment...

We made a bunch of other little cakes over the rest of the day. I made almond cakes and they were super cute and delicious. 

The red velvet cupcakes are made with beets!

 Friday

We made popovers on Friday. I love popovers and they were really easy to make. You basically just throw all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them up.

When we first worked on meringues, I tried to make Italian meringue three times and all of them failed. I couldn't get the timing right. I would either over whip the egg whites or over cook the sugar syrup. We tried making it again on Friday and I made it on my first try!

Italian Meringue

We decorated our financiers from earlier in the week. The chocolate layer on top had already hardened, so we had to lightly torch it so that the cocoa nibs, pearls, and malted peanuts would stick to it. We didn't have to torch the ones that we put gold leaf on, because gold leaf sticks to hardened chocolate. The financiers I made had hazelnut and lemon zest.

The end of Friday was used to finish assembling the Blackout Cake (chocolate layers with chocolate pudding covered chocolate cake crumbs) and the Boston Cream Pie.

Blackout Cake

Boston Cream Pie

We also assembled our Concorde cakes over the course of the day on Friday. You have to work quickly because the mousse gets soupy and hard to work with as it warms up. 

Concorde Cake

Days 15 & 16: The beginning of a long journey in cake

Monday
This week we began the culinary saga that is cake. We started the day by talking about chemical leavening agents (i.e.  baking powder and baking soda). We combined them with cold water, warm water, and lime juice. I didn't take pictures of that because I figured we all remember doing this in kindergarden. For those of you that don't know, baking powder is baking soda, plus an acid and combining agent. That means that it will react when it is hydrated, unlike baking soda which needs an acid to get a full reaction. Also, all baking powder that you buy is double acting, which means it reacts once when it is hydrated and again when it is heated.

We made three cakes in the afternoon. The first was a biscuit (pronounced bis-quee) which is basically egg, butter, and sugar. We put these into the freezer to make into roulades on Tuesday. The second cake was a genoise which is made with eggs, flour, sugar, and melted butter. This cake was very dry and bland. It is normally brushed with a syrup before it is assembled into a layered cake. The final cake we made was a high ratio cake which has more sugar than flour and more egg than fat. This cake was very light and springy. (Mine was a little denser than it should have been, because my e.g.g whites were under whipped.) I didn't take pictures of any of these because they just looked like coat layers.

We also did another muffin exercise with different amounts of eggs. The ratio of egg can change the the texture of cake. You can see the results below.

Egg Experiment

Tuesday
The first thing we did on Tuesday was fill our roulades with sweetened whipped cream, rolled them up, and put them in the freezer.

Our filled and rolled roulades and put them back in the freezer 

The second thing we made was a financier which is a dense cake that is characterized by the use of browned butter. 

The rest of the day was filled by making different little cakes/tea cakes. I made madeleines, which are defined by their characteristic shape and the hump on the back. The hump is from baking the batter after chilling it in the fridge. This recipe was a little bland so it would be good to eat/dip in coffee or tea. I coated one of the pans in sugar which made the madeleines dry out less when baking. It also kept them from getting super brown.

Sugarcoated Madeleines

Normal Madeleines
(There was a casualty on the bottom right...sad)

Closeup 

Look at those humps!

I also wanted to share some photos of what the other students made!

Green Tea Financier

Lemon Poppy Seed Olive Oil Cake

Days 10-14: Chocolate

Ok everyone! I hope you're ready for a weeks worth of posts in one. It's about to get really chocolatey!

Monday

My Cornets

The first thing we did was learn how to make cornets and used them to practice our writing. As you can see my writing does need some practice, though to be fair it was almost empty when I got to the numbers. This is also my last sheet; my writing got worse towards the end from fatigue. 

We then tempered chocolate for the first time, but most definitely not the last. There are two methods of tempering chocolate. The first is the tabling method, which is what you see people doing at fancy chocolatier shops. It involves melting all of the chocolate to 115-130°F before cooling 2/3 of it on a marble table to 80°F. Then it is warmed back up to 88°F with the remaining 1/3 of chocolate. Chocolate sets at about 68°F. (All temperatures are for dark chocolate--white and milk chocolate are done at a lower temperature.)

The other method to temper chocolate is the seeding method. This involves melting the chocolate to 115-130°F and then cooling it to 88°F by adding more of the same chocolate that was melted. Chocolate that you buy is already in temper. This is the method we use in class, because we in fact do not have a marble slab laying around at school. 

Chocolate needs to be tempered because cocoa butter can form 6 different crystal structures. Beta crystals are when a chocolate is in temper. Tempered chocolate has more shine, more snap, a longer shelf life, and more contraction of the chocolate (which lets you get it out of the mold). Melting the chocolate gets rid of all crystal forms and tempering it allows you to form the crystals you want. 

We used our tempered chocolate to make mendicants, which are basically chocolate coins with stuff on top. 

Mendiants: PB&J (left)/ pistachio, sea salt, and puffed rice (right)

The last thing we did on Monday was a knife sharpening workshop with Town Cutler. I didn't take any pictures during that process, since it requires both hands. I do have a razor sharp chef's knife to prove it. 

Tuesday

We also did our first of many chocolate emulsion in order to make chocolate ganache. Ganache is any  combination of chocolate and cream. 

Ganache

We also started truffles. I made anise truffles. There will be more about that in the Friday section.

Wednesday

 Wednesday started off with a chocolate emulsion to make hot chocolate. It was so delicious! 

My makeshift pint container "mug" of hot chocolate

We then made rochers, which are basically crunchy stuff covered with chocolate (think Ferrero Rocher). My team made lavender and white chocolate rochers. The lavender was pretty aggressive on the palate, so if I made them again I would decrease the amount. Overall, I liked them... 

Chopping Lavender

Tempering the white chocolate

Lavender White Chocolate Rochers 

Rochers
(and bark made from extra tempered chocolate)

Thursday

We went to Dandelion Chocolates on Thursday. Read my post about that field trip here. 

Friday

Friday was a busy day. We started by making a caramel popcorn in teams. Each team started with the same base and changed the spices. My team added lime zest to ours. After it cooled I drizzled chocolate over everyones caramel popcorn. 

Spicy Lime Caramel Popcorn

The rest of Friday was used to finish the truffles we had been working on all week. 

I made the praline paste for the imitation Ferrero Rochers

Whole anise seeds infusing into the cream

My piped out anise infused ganache

Once the ganache had set, I used a blow torch to heat up a knife to cut it into smaller pieces. (If I were to make them again I would cut it into smaller pieces.) I then hand coated them in tempered chocolate and shook them in sugar.

My anise truffles

Truffles made by my class

The earl grey truffles set on top of transfer sheets (colored cocoa butter)

Finished popcorn (and bark made from extra tempered chocolate)