Fruit tarts

I made 35 fruit tarts today, for a graduation luncheon. That's an awful lot of tarts to make at home, especially during the week of my final exams. But they looked great!

Practical exams

I had practical exams last week. In Advanced Baking, we had to make 2 identical pulled-sugar roses, 2 identical marzipan strawberries, 2 identical marzipan lemons, a pastillage swan, a tempered-chocolate cup and 2 parchment piping bags. I did ok, except I burned my thumb pulling the sugar AGAIN! The blister was so bad, I couldn't finish my roses. I just couldn't put my hand under that hot lamp again.

But here are my marzipan fruits. I got a good grade on those.



And the leaves for my rose. Yes, they are pink. I'm very proud of the pearly sheen on these. I just wish I could have finished the rose.

In our Plated Dessert practical, we had to make Cappuccino Mousse in Chocolate Coffee Cups with Sambuco Cream. We made those before (see January 19), but this time each person had to make all the components for her dessert herself. I'm very proud of how mine turned out. It was dee-licious, and very pretty, even though I took the picture before I put the chocolate decoration on top.

Plated dessert project

Today we did our final projects for Plated Dessert Design. After the sugar showpiece fiasco from Advanced Baking, I am relieved that my plated dessert was excellent!

I made a Spring Berry Napoleon. It has layers of puff pastry with a whipped cream cheese filling and berries. I used strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. The plate is garnished with berries and raspberry sauce.

Here's the side view.

And a view of the plate from the top.

Mmm...it tasted as good as it looks! The puff pastry was perfectly buttery and flaky, the filling was light and creamy, and the tart fruit and sauce were a perfect contrast.

Too humid for sugar

We made our sugar showpieces last night. Our kitchen was so humid, some of our components never actually dried. My classmates mostly had thicker pieces for their showpieces, so they could still get them put together, even with pieces melting. My showpiece was all flowers, and my beautiful thin petals melted before I could even assemble the flowers. What a huge disappointment!

I don't have a lot of great pictures, but here is one of my showpiece in the process of melting. The green vine-like support was supposed to be going up, not over. We propped it against the stockpot to try to keep it standing up, but it just kept stretching and sagging. I put the red shards to indicate where the flowers would have gone.


Here is a picture of one of my petals melting. Can you see the little puddle at the tip? That used to be a delicate thin spiral. I worked for hours, and made over a hundred petals for three big showy flowers.


Look at how my classmate's coral is melting. What a mess!



I made a beautiful sheet of bubble sugar, which completely melted onto the parchment.



I'm going to try to make the flowers again later. I wanted those flowers so bad! Maybe in the fall I can find a nice dry day.

Frozen desserts/fruit desserts

We made quite an assortment of desserts today. I made some individual chocolate souffles. I had never made a souffle before, but they were perfect! We served them with a sabayon (sort of a foamy custard sauce flavored with white wine.) Here's a picture before we added the sabayon.


This is a chocolate & peanut butter bombe with a homemade marshmallow and a piece of peanut brittle. I wish I had taken a picture after we cut it open, but we all gobbled it up.


Here is a beautiful frozen dessert. The bottom layer is a tequila-orange granita, topped with a blood orange sorbet and garnished with a grenadine sauce. The sorbet was one of the best things I have ever tasted!


Last, we have a lemon-lime meringue pie, with a brown sugar meringue. Again, I wish I had taken a picture after the pie was cut, but the pie was busy being shoveled into our mouths.

Blown sugar

Have you ever seen pastry chefs on tv blowing sugar? It looks so simple. You just push the tube into a wad of sugar, pump the bulb, and you have a perfect sphere! Except it doesn't happen like that.

Blown sugar is HARD to do. First, I had trouble getting my sugar into the right shape to start without it cooling too fast, then I couldn't get a good seal around the tube. The ball wouldn't stay smooth and round, either. I had thin spots, and flat spots, and the whole thing made me want to pull my hair out.

So, here are some pictures of the things my classmates & I made. First, our balls and waves, and a vase my teacher made. I made the pink ball, and I think the biggest yellow one is mine, too.

This was the beginning of a fish (I didn't make this.) He doesn't have eyes yet; they will go in the depressions at the front. The blue thing in the background is a ball that deflated while I was cooling it.

Sugar burns

Oh, the blisters! We did pulled sugar last night. Even with 2 pairs of gloves, I burned my thumb and first two fingers as soon as I started working my sugar. Of course, you need your thumb to shape the rose petals and leaves we had to make, so I spent about 2 hours pressing my blistered thumb into a mass of hot sugar, while a heat lamp burned the top of my fingers. I feel like such a wimp.

Here are some of the roses we made.

We did lots of pretty ribbons.

I love this ribbon. I wish I had made it.

Gateaux & tortes

Problems, problems. Nothing went right today. I'm not even going to post the picture of the torte we made. The individual gateaux look ok (not great), but they were still very disappointing, for a number of reasons: (1) The joconde sponge cake layer was too thick, (2) the white chocolate bavarian was very eggy-tasting, and (3) the strawberry mirror glaze, instead of being a super-thin, shiny glaze, was too thick and too gelatinous.

But the picture looks pretty good.

Poured sugar

Sugar is fun! Monday night, we worked on poured sugar techniques, such as cast sugar, molded sugar, bubble sugar, flames, sugar eruptions, etc.

Here is my sheet of bubble sugar. I'm especially pleased with the color. The picture doesn't really show how beautifully thin and delicate the sheet is.



My flames need some practice. This was the hardest technique we learned. Everything else was easier than it looked, but this was quite a bit harder than I expected.

My sugar eruption turned out great! They are super-easy, but look impressive.

Next Monday, we will learn pulled sugar. I'm really excited about it!

Blueberry pound cake

Still on spring break. Tonight, I made a blueberry pound cake. It's rich and yummy with an ultra-crunchy crust. I'm very pleased with it.

Spring break

No school this week. I've been doing some baking at home this week, but nothing really picture-worthy. Instead, here's another picture of Honey, the best dog ever.

And here are Max & Gracie, in a rare moment of sweetness and tolerance.

Custards & mousses

Mmm...this has been my favorite set of desserts. I made a lovely Orange Creme Caramel. It's a silky-smooth baked custard with a caramel sauce baked on the bottom of the dish, so it pours over the custard when it's inverted. I made a long caramel spike for the top.

We also made Chocolate Pots de Creme, garnished with a marbled chocolate shard, Rice Pudding with tuile cookie spirals and candied orange peel, and a wonderful chocolate mousse.

Chocolate pot de creme

Chocolate mousse

Rice pudding

Sugar again

This week we did sugar again--kind of a review for most of us. We're working up to making our sugar showpieces.

I'm very pleased with my sugar spirals, and with the color of the red sugar. The other sugar was reheated a little often, and eventually became darker than I would like.

Here's a closeup of one of the spirals. I'm proud of how thin and even it is.

Yeah, my cuticles are pretty bad. But my nails sure are clean! Lotsa dishwashin' going on.

Nougatine

Monday night we made nougatine. It's sort of an almond brittle that is shaped while hot. We each had to make a basket with a handle and a bow. Here is mine in progress.

Unfortunately, my handle broke repeatedly. So, instead of my basket, here's a picture of our teacher's basket.

Large-scale production

Today, we made enormous pans of Opera Cake and Baked Alaska.

Our Opera Cake turned out so pretty, and delicious, too! We only used 6 layers, instead of the traditional 7, because it will be cut into very small portions to be served at graduation. Last year, some of the portions were a little top-heavy, so we made the cakes shorter. I don't imagine our guests will count the layers, will they?

Here's the cross-section of the Opera Cake, before the ganache was poured on.

The Baked Alaska was beautiful. I'm not a huge fan of Italian meringue. It's just a little too gooey and goopy for my taste. But still, this was pretty darn tasty. It had chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream, and we brushed the cake layers with citrus syrup.

Here's a picture of the cake in progress, just to show the layers of ice cream.

Marzipan

Monday we did marzipan. I'm especially pleased with my strawberry.

Pastillage part 2

We finished our pastillage boxes. The sides of mine broke into 5 pieces, which I wasted 45 minutes trying to repair. That meant that I didn't have much time to decorate the damned thing.

You can see that one of my royal icing strings broke when we moved the boxes. That was the least of my troubles by that time.

Once more, pastillage = devil-paste from hell.

Here are the boxes my classmates made.

Pastillage

Tonight, we did pastillage. Exactly what is pastillage? It's devil-paste, straight from hell, that's what it is. No pictures, much frustration. Maybe I will enjoy it more next week when we finish our projects.

Valentine cookies

I made some chocolate shortbread cookies with a chocolate-orange truffle filling. Rich and delicious! The pink ones aren't quite so day-glo pink in person.



The pink sugar sprinkles are so pretty!



I think the ones with the pink drizzles are my favorite.

Fruit desserts

Today we made a beautiful lemon chiboust gratin. I used strawberries and blueberries instead of the raspberries that the recipe called for. I also decorated the plate with a mango sauce.

And then we made absolutely divine pear tarts. They have a puff pastry base, with an almond macaroon/pastry cream mixture piped over it, topped with a poached pear. The caramel sauce is actually my favorite part of the dish. I don't care for the caramelized sugar cage on the plate in the picture (it's to the left, under the meringue.) Definitely not my idea.