Intermediate Slowly Comes to an End

Here’s what’s been going on in the past month (yes!  It’s been THAT long!).

Lesson 10: Douceur Chocolat

Hazelnut dacquoise with a surprise crispy praline filling, whipped chocolate mousse, and milk chocolate discs. One of my favorite cakes we’ve made thus far.  The ground hazelnuts and crispy milk chocolate surprise is definitely reminiscent of nutella but with elegance and refinement.  Even milk chocolate haters were swooning over this one.

Lesson 11: Plaisir

Two layers of mousse: vanilla and chocolate, sandwiched between joconde sponge layers with a caramelized top.  My favorite part was the bruléed top.

Lesson 12: Petits-Fours Salés

Pastry chefs are commonly in charge of savory petit fours, so I was excited to be working with some different flavor profiles.  However, I was sort of disappointed with what we made.  Nothing too exciting about puff pastry and sausage.

Lesson 13: Trésor Vanille Fraises des Bois

A dome cake made with an almond dacquoise, wild strawberry mousse, and a bruleed chiboust vanilla cream.  Wild french strawberries are fantastic.  They’re almost like a cross between a strawberry and a raspberry.

Lesson 14: Dôme aux Marrons

A chestnut cake made with chestnut mousse and chestnut cream and decorated with a chocolate spray gun.  Quite fun using the gun but the cake was definitely not one of my favorites.  I like chestnut flavors, but something about this cake didn’t do it for me.

Lesson 15: Entremets Passionata

The best cake we’ve made so far!  Passion fruit cream and raspberry mousse on top of a coconut dacquoise and wrapped with a joconde sponge.  I usually like having lots of textural contrast in my mouth, but the flavors here just worked really well and didn’t need any extra bite to feel complete.  In class the chef said that if the cake is wrapped well it can last up to 3 years in the freezer!  I’m not going to wait that long to eat it, but my mom is visiting next month so we’ll see how it tastes after 30+ days in sub below degrees.

Lesson 16: Triomphe aux Noix

A walnut cake with caramel mousse and walnut sponge base.  The flavors are very reminiscent of a creme brulee.

Lesson 17 & 18: Croquembouche

The traditional french wedding cake, the base is made with nougatine and supports a tower of caramel crusted choux pastry filled with pastry cream.  The nougatine was hard to work with as we had to cut and shape all the pieces while still hot, but pretty worthwhile.  The choux part was fairly straight forward, except it was hard to keep the symmetry right.

Lesson 19: Introduction to Boulangerie

We made the quintessential french baguette and pain de mie.  It was a nice change to work with bread dough.  Shaping baguette is quite difficult and a skill in itself!  This was our last practical of the semester.  Although we do have one more demo left, it was bittersweet to work with some for the last time.  Some classmates are going back home while others are doing the intensive superior session.