lesson 9: pâte à choux

According to Chef H, baking pate choux needs patience. He was telling us last Friday on our demo class that previous semester, there was one student baking pate choux for her final exam and she failed because she was too impatient, turned the tray of baking choux too fast. He makes sure that we did not make the same mistake in class.
Once pate choux is placed inside the oven, the oven must not be open for at least 18-20 minutes until the choux rise and color is golden brown. Then, we will have to turned the tray and lower down the heat and bake it for another 2 minutes.

Everybody in my class were so afraid about this practical class, not because of the pate choux but we're going to cook fondant to the right temperature to glaze our eclairs and religieuses. We will be handling more fondant when we're in superior class.

There are 4 steps need to be done to make pate choux.
1. Making the choux itself.
2. The filling which is pastry cream.
3. Chantilly cream for the swan's filling.
4. Buttercream -- we didn't have to do this in class, it's provided by the chef.

We were given 1 hour on baking the choux and 1h 30m to make pastry cream, chantilly, and fondant. We used commercial fondant, and just have to cook it to the right consistency. Need to remind you that since we're in basic we are not allowed to use any electric mixer, so we have to whisk the Chantilly cream by hand. Well it's not so bad considering we have done this on the first day of our practical class, which is to whisk egg whites etc for sponge cake and ladyfingers.

I honestly didn't find it hard to make the batter for pate choux, the piping though is a pain because I'm so bad with piping. Especially for this lesson, the chef wants the eclairs to be the same size and even. Also the religieuses to be an exact size of what he scored on our greased baking tray. As predicted, everybody got different sizes of religieuses including mine but eclairs turned out to be good. Surprisingly, I didn't screw up my pate choux. I cooked the fondant to the right temperature but I messed up the glazing. You'll understand why when you see the eclairs.

Swans

lesson 8: black forest cake

Last week we were introduced to make 3 basic cakes: black forest, moka, and mexican. It was the first time we make cake in class and it happened to be black forest. This is the time to practice the masking and decorating black forest cake as well as learning how to temper with chocolate. 3 hours were definitely not enough for me to be done in time. I took a lot of time on masking the cake with Chantilly cream all over it. I sort of screwed up because I didn't cut the cardboard to a nice round shape that was placed on the bottom of the cake before masking. I was the last to finish masking my cake and I was really in a rush to pipe the rosettes and all of them were piped too close to each other and not on the edge which made my cake looked smaller.

I started off with baking genoise cake, was supposed to add butter on it but because my batter was deflating as I fold it with flour, the chef asked me to forgo the butter. Then as the cake was baking, I went on to make chocolate shavings. It was fun to learn that! And move on to chantilly cream and draining the cherries.

The chef's verdict about my end product was that it's not too bad for a first-timer. Definitely need to practice on masking the cake properly, and slicing the cake to 3 layers in an even way.

This week I have decided to make another black forest and again I forgo the butter, although on exam day if I get to make this cake, I have to add the butter. I realized that having a big rubber spatula helps a lot faster to mix the flour on the whipped eggs, therefore it won't deflates because in practical class, my spatula was smaller and I took a longer time to fold the flour. Anyways, this time around the cake turned out very spongey and dense. And I made a mistake by not letting the cake to cool down in room temperature after I took it out from oven. I immediately placed it on cooling rack with parchment paper above it and store the cake in the fridge to cool down faster. In the end, I got my genoise sticked on the parchment paper and the bottom of the cake became sticky. It can be fixed by slicing the bottom with bread knife to be even. Oh, I did not put enough syrup on each layer hence the dry texture. Also once again, I didn't slice the genoise into 3 layers nicely. It was bad. I didn't know that it would be hard to slice layers on a cake!?

By the way, I didn't put up the recipe for what I've done in school because we basically have to write our own "how-to" in class while watching the chef doing the demo. So my recipes are somewhat messy and unorganized and it's possible I missed some steps because I was daydreaming in class or wasn't really in the zone. I just didn't want to put up my unreliable recipes and screw up somebody else's cake although I can put up the ingredients if anyone's interested.
Just let me know. It doesn't hurt to ask :)


my first attempt of black forest in practical class




my second attempt of black forest at home




demo class and cakes made by the chef

signatures by lcb

All students are invited to attend luncheon at the school bistro free of charge. We were scheduled in a group of 4-5 people. Today is my turn. I didn't get the chance to take pictures of the place though, might be a little awkward since everyone there were eating and.. they're mostly all old people (no offense, really).

For the starter, they offer curried chicken soup with bell peppers or pike “quenelle” in Nantua sauce, I go for the chicken soup cos I'm not a big fan of seafood. Soup was good beyond my expectation. I even lost for words to describe how good it was. It's a clear soup, but tastes so thick and creamy at the same time, has a lot of flavor in it.

Three of my classmates were taking the pike and it looks like dumpling. They all agreed that it was good as well. It's too bad that I didn't take pictures of both starter.

Moving on to the main course there are choices between red snapper filet or
seared hanger steak. Honestly, I have never tried hanger steak and curious of what it will be like. It was served with spinach and squash spaghetti. The steak was medium rare, so tender and the sauce was really good. I'm not sure what sauce it is.

Last but not least was the dessert. It made my day. Really! It was so good that I just want more. I find the 3 course lunch is reasonably priced. I don't want to sound bias or anything because I'm a student here, but I'll tell the truth when it's really good or bad. Definitely am coming back to this restaurant!

seared hanger steak with wilted spinach and spaghetti squash


red snapper filet in a light vegetable broth, thyme-infused potatoes, carrots and onions


yogurt panna cotta served with crumble and red fruit compote

Basic Pastry Week 4

Entering my fourth week in school! I feel so stressed out even though it's not too long ago that I just start my class. I am now on lesson 7, where we learn how to make apple turnover and pithivier. Last week, I did some braided brioche, croissants, pain aux raisins, etc. Turns out to be alright(I didn't take pictures of it), the croissants ended up to be a mini-me size, I'm not sure why I always get a mini size of everything. Just like my apple turnover today. The same comments always came out of the chef's mouth.. "your dough is too thin" or "you don't follow the steps correctly".
I feel slightly disappointed because of today's result. I don't worry about apple turnover, but the pithivier that drives me crazy. I really messed up big time in class!

Anyway, I'm glad that puff pastry won't be in the final exam!