B&P Final

Phase 4, Week 6, Days 26 & 27

I'm going to throw these two days into one post. For our final for Baking and Pastry we had to produce a cheese cake with a graham cracker crust, creme anglaise, and a chiffon cake with swiss meringue butter cream icing inscribed with "happy birthday" in chocolate.

For the first time during a practical I was completely relaxed and calm. Even Jeremy commented on my demeanor. I didn't freak out, get the deer in headlights look, or even get panicked. I just cooked, or baked as the case may be. Maybe I'm finally getting it and starting to feel comfortable in the kitchen. I guess it has been six months since this whole thing started.

Day one I made the cheesecake and the chiffon cake. I hadn't made the chiffon cake before, so that was a bit of a wing it as you go thing and it turned out ok. It rose appropriately in the oven and didn't fall, which was key! Some other kids had their cakes fall and it was not pretty considering they had to get three layers out of the cake and  in the end their layers were only 1/4-1/2 of an inch thick. Sadness.

Day two, I submitted the cheesecake right off the bat. Made the creme anglais and put it in the cooler to chill. All I had left to do was make icing and put together the cake. Easy. The process was very smooth. Cutting and icing the cake was good. Now it was time to make rosettes and inscribe. The rosettes were ok, not great, but ok. Inscribing on the other hand was a bit more difficult. The temperature of the chocolate was off and my practice trials were horrible. I just had to do it and stop fussing. I got a new parchment cone and more chocolate and held my breath.

CRAP! I messed up bad!!! Now what!?

Well, I paused and remembered that the chocolate would harden and I could remove it. I had plenty of time to dork around with it. I chilled the cake and  then picked off the words. Re smoothed the top and tried again, with ok results.

Grades:
Cheesecake- 10/10!
Inscription- 5/6 (spacing of letters could be better)
Cake- 8.5/10 (rosettes needed to be more consistent, needed more simple syrup on the cake layers)
Anglais- 9/10 (a bit too liquidy to hold a line on the plate)

Totally satisfied with the results. Yeah!

10 out of 10 with wonderful texture!

A pretty good cake.

!

Is this legible?

Phase 4, Week 5, Day 23

No lecture today. We made creme Anglaise as well as honed some our skills for our practical next week. One of the things we have to do is inscribe a cake. Apparently, inscribing "Happy Birthday" on a cake or plate is the most common request you might receive in a kitchen. I have been known historically for having VERY poor handwritting, so this task should be a treat!!!!

The best way to inscribe is using a parchment shaped cone filled with tempered chocolate. You snip the tip of the cone and off you go!!! The more flowing your letters the better. Here are the results from today's practice session.

I hope I get better with parctice

Custards and Creams

Phase 4, Week 5, Day 22

Following the two snow days we are a little off track. We lectured on Custards and Creams today, but produced a glacage (glaze) for our chocolate mousse cake and iced our butter cream chiffon cake.

Concerning custards, there are basically baked custards and stirred custards. Baked custards like, cheese cake or creme brulee, are a mixture of whole egg, milk, sugar, and flavoring and baked until set. A stirred custard, like pastry cream or cream Anglaise, is cooked over a burner or a double broiler. Stirred custards never get as thick as a baked custard.  Custards can be a bit tricky because of the egg proteins and you must be careful to watch for coagulation, which is both important and can be detrimental if heated to too high of a temperature or too quickly.

Fun Fact: Cream Anglaise, or vanilla custard sauce, is made from milk, egg yolks and sugar. It is also basic ice cream base.

For more info. about custards, check out this web site: Baking 911

Chocolate Mousse Cake with Chocolate Glacage

  

Mousse Cake all fancied up

A nice little burn I got from the flat top at work