Entremets and Petit Gateaux

Hey everyone, I'm back!

I have now started my final term of labs and my first class is Entremets and Petit Gateaux. An entremet is a cake based product with different layers of flavors and textures. A petit gateaux is basically a small entremet. Both are usually made in ring molds then covered in a glaze and decorated. The different flavors should compliment each other but give variety with sweet, salty, bitter and sour. To do this you can use ganache, short dough which adds texture, chocolate mousse, flavored Bavarian cream, pastry cream and of course have a layer of cake. These are very intricate and delicate but they are very intriguing to customers. After they are filled you let it freeze and then glaze it. In the picture on the right, we used a mirror glaze. It is raspberry and glazes just the very top of the entremet. After the glaze sets, then you can decorate it. This usually includes chocolate piping, fruit and something that can create height.  These are difficult to decorate because if you mess up you can't go back and fix it. Overall I think these are interesting to make and the different layers are really what makes these entremets delicious.

Napoleon

Napoleon is a dessert that most people love once they've had it. It is also known as Mille feuille which translates into "a thousand leaves". Now to make this pastry, you start off by making a simple puff pastry. This is good for using up your extra dough and scraps. You make a sheet of it and then proceed to cut it into 3 equal parts. Once you have this you spoon a layer of diplomat cream, which is equal parts of pastry cream and whipped cream, on top of one layer of the puff pastry. Then you repeat this so you have two layers of puff pastry and two layers of cream. Keep the top layer of puff pastry off so you can put fondant on it. This kind of fondant is a glaze and is made of mostly sugar and water. When working with this fondant you have to move fast because it will set very quickly. So you take your top layer of puff pastry and pour some fondant over it and spread it out with a spatula so that it is smooth. Then to decorate your napoleons you can pipe straight lines of chocolate all the way across the pastry. Then by taking a skewer just run it through the chocolate going across in the opposite direction. This just makes it look
more presentable. Let this set for a few minutes just so it can harden and then place it on top of the other layers. Then you can cut out your different pieces. And there you have your napoleons.

Petit Fours

Petit fours can be classified into many different categories but the most common form of petit four is a small bit sized cake filled with jam which is then covered in fondant. The most common type of cake used to make these petit fours is frangipane but pound cake or sponge cake would work as well. You start by taking a layer of the cake and then putting a tiny bit of jam on top. Now I seriously mean a tiny bit, you don’t want there to be too much that the jam will squeeze out; you only want a taste of the jam. Now on top of the jam you will place another layer of frangipane or cake on top. At this point you will roll out a thin layer of marzipan and place that on the very top. Marzipan has a consistency of

play dough and is often used for decorations on petit fours or bigger cakes.  Once everything is stacked you will then proceed to cut it into 1 inch by 1 inch pieces. It is very small but this is traditionally how they are made. These small cakes are then covered in fondant which is just a glaze. All that is left is to decorate them. You can make small marzipan fruit or pipe chocolate on top. They have a lot of little pieces and but they turn out really nice. They look very fancy and will be impressive to everyone.

  

Decorated Cookies

We have many different kinds of cookies but this was the only cookie that we got to decorate. You start by making a simple dough. We used a 1-2-3 dough and a gingerbread dough. A 1-2-3 dough means that there is 1 part water, 2 parts fat and 3 parts flour. So it doesn't matter how much of an ingredient you use as long as the other ingredients are related through this recipe. Once you make this dough you then need to chill it to make sure that it stays together. Once it is chilled for a few hours you can then roll it out and cut different shapes using cookie cutters. If you have extra dough then you can ball it up and re-roll it. When you have them all cut, put them on a sheet tray and bake. When they are done let them cool so you can ice them. We use royal icing because it dries very quickly and gets really hard. So then for the fun part you can use different techniques to decorate these cookies. You can pipe different designs, you can add egg whites to the icing which will make it thinner so you can dip the cookies in it, or you can outline the cookie with one color and fill it with another. There are many possibilities so you can be as creative as you want. These are just a few examples of what we came up with.

Blond Brownies

The new class that I am in now is Cookies and Petit Fours. We have made lots of cookies but these brownies are delicious. My group put chocolate chips and peanut butter chips in them but you could add whatever ingredients you wanted. Below is the recipe:

Blond Brownie 

15oz Butter

3# Brown Sugar

9 Each Eggs

2# Pastry Flour 

1.5oz Baking Powder

¼oz Salt

½oz Vanilla

2# Chocolate chips, Semi-sweet (Can also put peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, or butterscotch chips)

Method of Preparation (MOP):

1.      Melt butter and add brown sugar.

2.      Sift flour with salt and baking powder.

3.      Put in a bowl and mix in flour, salt and baking powder mixture.

4.      Mix in ½ nuts and chips.

5.      Put in prepared pan buttered and floured sprayed or sprayed with pan spray, lined with foil overlapping for easy removal.

6.      Sprinkle rest of chips and nuts on the top.

7.      Bake at 350 until skewer comes out clean. DO NOT OVERBAKE.

8.      Cool and cut.

Blueberry Buckle

This was one of the "hot" dessert we made in this course and it was really good.

Blueberry Buckle

Ingredients

For the cake:                   

• 9 ounces cake flour,
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
• 5 1/4 ounces sugar,
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 15 ounces fresh whole blueberries, approximately 3 cups (other fruit can be used

For the topping: -YOU CAN SUBSTITUTE YOUR STRUSSEL

• 3 1/2 ounces sugar, approximately 1/2 cup
• 1 1/2 ounces cake flour, approximately 1/3 cup
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 2 ounces unsalted butter, chilled and cubed

Directions

For the cake:

In a medium mixing bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and ground ginger. Set aside.

In the bowl of mixer, with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add the egg and mix. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture and beat on low speed just until incorporated and then add 1/3 of the milk and beat until incorporated. Repeat, alternating flour and milk until everything has combined. Gently stir in the blueberries and pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan

For the topping:

In a small bowl combine the sugar, flour and nutmeg. Add the butter and work into the dry ingredients using a fork to combine. Continue until the mixture has a crumb-like texture. Sprinkle the mixture on top of the cake. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 35 minutes or until golden in color. Cool for at least 10 minutes before serving. 

Baked Alaska

One of the coolest things we have learned to make in this class is Baked Alaska. This is basically layers of ice cream covered in meringue and then torched. You first need to decide what kind of flavors of ice cream you want and then start to churn them. As the first kind of ice cream is done churning, you let it fall into a large bowl about 2/3 of the way full. You then take another smaller bowl and push into the ice cream, then place it into the freezer. As the ice cream freezes it will take the shape of the bowl. When it is firm you can start to churn the next type of ice cream. You can take the first bowl of ice cream out of the freezer and take the smaller bowl out. When the second ice cream is finished churning you can let it fall right into the first ice cream. This will be the center of the Baked Alaska. You can then smooth it and place a layer of cake on the very top. This cake just gives the ice cream something to sit on, then you can put it bake into the freezer. At this time you will make your meringue and get everything ready to pipe the meringue. To take the ice cream out of the bowl you can place it into a hot water bath for a few seconds just to melt it enough to release it from the bowl. If it is too melted then it needs to go back into the freezer immediately, but if not then you can start piping the meringue onto the ice cream. This can be done in any design just as long as the whole thing is covered. This meringue is used to protect the ice cream and to make sure that it doesn't melt. Once all of the meringue is on then you can torch the whole thing but not burning it. Now you are finished and it needs to be served immediately.

Hot and Cold Desserts

The new class that I am in is called Hot and Cold Desserts. We are mainly making ice cream in this class and it is delicious. The other day my group made an ice cream called Full of Cropper. It is an espresso ice cream with brownie pieces and salted pecans. This is the recipe below:

“Full of Cropper”

4 lbs                Cream

4 lbs                Milk

2 lbs 4 oz         Sugar

2 lbs                Yolks

2(ea.)              Vanilla Bean

12 oz               Espresso Beans

Anglaise method: Heat cream and milk and vanilla beans, then take off the burner and poor into the yolks and sugar, whisk. Once everything is incorporated put back on the heat for a few minutes.

After making base and while still hot, place espresso beans in base and let steep for 10 minutes. Strain and then age for a few hours.

After churning add in brownie pieces and salted pecans. Swirl in caramel sauce. 

If you like coffee then you will love this ice cream!!

Fundamentals Final

Today was our last day in Fundamentals. For our final exam we had to make pastry cream, cream anglaise, cookies, diplomat cups, saute apples and julienne carrots. We accomplished all of this last Friday which was day eight, that way all we had left to do was build our tower out of royal icing. Our chef gave us a template of what the tower was supposed to look like. Throughout the week, we piped each piece out of royal icing and let them dry so that they were really hard. After all of the pieces were piped we used more icing to stick them together and to build our tower. These pieces are very fragile and will break very easily if you are too hard or clumsy with them. We eventually got out whole tower built and this is the final product.

Cupcake Wars!

Today was day 6 of my Fundamentals class. The main thing that we did today in class was a version of the Cupcake Wars on Food Network. We had three and a half hours to produce three dozen cupcakes with icing and a chocolate piped butterfly on top. We had groups of three and it went pretty well. My group made a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese icing and a pink butterfly on top. We started with the cake since it needed time to bake and then cool. We used the recipe below:                                            RED VELVET CAKE

INGREDIENT	LB.	OZ.
CAKE FLOUR	6	2
SUGAR	6	9
BAKING SODA	0	1.75
SALT	0	2
COCOA POWDER	0	1
OIL	7	3
BUTTERMILK	5	0
EGGS	2	2
RED FOOD COLORING	0	10
VINEGAR	0	1.75
VANILLA	0	2

 You take these ingredients and start with mixing the oil and sugar then add in the eggs. After that is incorporated, you add in the dry ingredients and then the liquids. Now this recipe above will make a lot of cupcakes so we had to convert it to make sure that it made only three dozen by making sure that each cupcake was 2 oz.

Then we went on to the icing. We made a simple mixture of butter, cream cheese and powdered sugar but you could easily just buy some cream cheese icing. 

To make the chocolate butterflies, we used an image and placed it under a piece of parchment paper and then took a piping bag and traced over the image. When dried they will become hard but they are extremely fragile so you have to be very careful with these. A lot of other groups filled in the wings and this would make the butterflies a little stronger.

When the cupcakes were cool we piped a rosette of icing on the cupcake and placed the butterfly on top. This is what our end result looked like:

Brunoise Cut

Today is my second day of Fundamentals. Today we learned to brunoise apples. This type of cut is a lot like the Julienne but then it is cut into cubes. This cut has a few more steps but it is very easy to learn.

   Step 1: We used apples today in class so the first thing you have to do is cut the ends off and peal your apple. Instead of cutting the whole edge of the apple off you just take a pairing knife and cut in a circular motion around the stem.This should create the figure below.

Step 2: After the apple is pealed and the ends are cut off, you need to cut the apple in half and cut out the core. This is done by using the same circular motion around the core. If using a knife is difficult for you, you can simply use a melon baller to get the core out. 

Step 3: Once it is cut in half, you want to place it face down and cut it into strips that are approximately 1/8 of an inch. Its okay if they are not exact but try to get them the same size. When this half has been cut it should look something like the picture below. 

Step 4: You will now take these strips and cut each one down the length of the apple slice. This will create the Julienne cut. To make this easier and faster, you can stack multiple slices of apple and cut more than one at a time. This is an efficient way of doing this but if you need to take it slower and concentrate you can cut them one by one. Each slice will turn into slivers of apples like shown below.

Step 5: This is the final step and it is really easy. Now you take your slivers of apple and cut them into cubes. They are not all going to be perfectly square due to the fact that an apple is not square but they should at least be the same size. The final Brunoise apples should look something close to the picture below.

This is not a hard cut to learn how to due but it makes sure that all of your apples and other ingredients are chopped evenly. 

Julienne Cut

Hello everyone,
I am finally back in labs! Today was my first day back in the kitchen. My first class that I am in is Fundamentals. This class will focus mainly on knife skills and piping skills. Today we just learned different kinds of knife cuts. We used carrots and potatoes to practice our knife cuts. One of the cuts that we learned today was a Julienne cut.

The first step in making a Julienne cut is cutting the carrot into 2 inch pieces. To make this an exact cut you can place the vegetable beside a ruler and cut 2 inches.

The second step in this process is cutting a small piece off each side so it becomes a square. This is really helpful when cutting because it will make sure that the carrot won't roll away. Since the carrot is round it can be very dangerous to cut so this just makes it a little safer to cut. It will then look like the picture below. You will then proceed to cut 1/8 inch strips down the 2 inch side. This will create thin rectangles.

The last step in creating a Julienne cut is cutting the rectangles into 1/8 inch slivers. The picture below shows the finished product.

This type of cut is used to make vegetables more elegant when used raw. When these vegetables are cooked, cutting them all the same size will make sure that they cook evenly. It definitely takes practice to get them all the same size but it is not difficult to do. 

Bacon Maple Cupcakes

My brother had a birthday over the break too. This was the first year that he had to work on his birthday and since his birthday is early January he never went to school on his birthday either. So he wanted to take in something for all of his co-workers. So I made him bacon maple cupcakes.

Maple Bacon Cupcakes:

 Cake:

Chocolate box cake mix and ingredients to make it (or any chocolate cake recipe)

4 strips of bacon chopped finely

2 Tbsp of maple syrup (optional)

Icing:

1 (8 ox) package of cream cheese

1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)

2 cups powdered sugar

1 Tbsp maple flavoring

½ tsp vanilla extract

Maple syrup (optional)

Directions:

Make the cake mix like it says on the box. Add in the chopped bacon and maple syrup. Bake according to the directions on the box. Let cool.

In a mixing bowl, cream the soften butter and cream cheese together. Add in the maple flavoring and then the powdered sugar. Add powdered sugar or more maple flavoring if needed. Ice the cupcakes and place some more chopped bacon on top.

He loved this cupcakes and the ones he took into work were all gone very quickly. They sound a little weird and some people may be apprehensive but they are delicious!!

Snow Globe Cake

Hi everyone,
Well I am still in the middle of academics but I have made a few cakes over the winter holiday that i wanted to share with you. For my mom's and grandma's birthday I tried to make a special cake just for them. This is my snow globe cake. It is just a two layer gluten free cake cover in cream cheese icing. I put shredded coconut on the sides because it looks like snow and the birthday girls love it. The snowman is made out of fondant. Three white balls are stacked on top of each other with a flat red strand around the neck for a scarf. And also a black top hat and a small orange cone for the nose. I put the buttons and the eyes on by using a toothpick and dipped it in black food coloring and just put the dots on.
The tree was my favorite. You just take an ice cream cone (I had two on top of each other but you could just use one) and then using a star tip, start at the bottom and pipe little stars then pull out making the leaves. I used my thumb and first two fingers to hold the inside of the cone and worked my way up to the top which made it easier to hold. Once the tree was all piped, I used a sifter to dust powdered sugar to look like snow and add sprinkles as ornaments.When I was done with all of the decorations, I placed them on the cake wherever I wanted. I then put a bowl upside down over the tree and snowman for the top of the globe. You have to make sure that the tree will fit into the bowl before you try to put it on top. Now the last thing that I did was put a little bit of icing on the very top of the bowl, well actually the bottom of the bowl but the top of the globe, and put more coconut on top. I only did this because the globe would have been flat on the top and the coconut just gives it a rounder look. My mom and grandma loved this cake and I hope you do too!