Individual Desserts

Green Apple Charlotte with red currant coulis, clear vanilla sauce, red currant sorbet, and apple chips.

Warm apple charlotte with apple compote, apple caramel sauce, green apple sorbet, and caramel decorations

Baked Pineapple tart on puff pastry with lemon frozen yogurt, caramel sauce, and port wine reduction

Bruleed lemon tartlet with basil creme anglaise, berry sauce, raspberry coulis, candied basil, and mixed berry sorbet.

Pineapple tarte tatin with passionfruit pineapple butter sauce, kefir lime clear sauce, a pineapple chip, and lime frozen yogurt

Spinach, mushroom, and goat cheese Jalousie with Bechamel sauce

Kiwi Milk Marmalade tarte in puff pastry with kiwi coulis, kiwi pieces, kiwi cookies, and lemon frozen yogurt.

Classic creme brulee with shortbread

Creme caramel with candied kumquats, hippen cigarettes, and clear caramel sauce

Chocolate crepes with chocolate ganache, caramelized pears, caramel sauce, chocolate sauce, and cranberry swirl ice cream

Orange crepes with orange pastry cream, orange butter sauce, orange supremes, meringue petals, and blueberry sorbet

Chocolate marquise with creme chantilly, cranberry compote, mint, chocolate sauce, and mint creme anglaise
This is the entire section, because I have been a lazy, lazy bum! Happy Holidays all!

Chocolate final

On our very last day of chocolate we just had to make a Queen of Sheba torte, seen below, and make a box of chocolate, just to test whether we could temper two kinds of chocolate.


Mines in the bottom row, in the middle

Chocolate Candy Stands

We had our last day of the chocolate section (part one) today! Unfortunately we spent the whole time learning to temper, which I already knew. So when we got our final chocolate project, I was excited to be able to use a higher level of difficulty. I found some shoe molds which immediately made me think of Jewels, so I made this stand in honor of her. The shoes inside the box say Manolo Blahnik on their tags. I'm also including some other ones that I thought were really cute and/or good

Amy's

Rachel

Krystal

Jess (my current partner)

Kelly (former partner) This was definitely my favorite one of the day, though she had to alter the design due to breakage

Violetta

Mine
My favorite part about it was the "tissue paper" I made by coating a transfer sheet with a super thin layer of tempered white chocolate, letting it set just a little bit, then placing it transfer sheet up in the box, letting it set completely, and peeling off the transfer sheet. The color is cocoa butter.

Midterm cakes!

I'm going to post some other people's cakes first, because some of them were brilliant. Our assignment was to make a special occasion cake with the components we were assigned, and with decorations and some piping of royal icing. Keep in mind that we have worked with all of the components we were assigned only once before today. Some people, myself included, tried things we had never done before.

The Brilliant Josh

Krystal

Amy

Kristyn

Jess (Who will be my partner after this section)

Claudia

Troy

Violetta

Rachel

As for my cake, I am more or less pleased with the way it turned out. It was a little messy, and my design was a little overpowering, but for my first time painting on fondant, I am happy. I went a little crazy with pictures...






Chef Tom cut my cake in half :(

Cakes

My plan for my midterm cake. It will be done on tuesday. I'm painting on fondant to achieve the stained glass effect.

our first rolled fondant cake. We made the fondant ourselves, which was fun. I now have a better recipe than the one I've used before. We did royal icing string work on it, as you can see. This is a chocolate roulade cake with pistachio cream.

This was the teacher, Chef Dianne's cake, which she cut into to show us how cool it looks.
As I said, our midterm is tuesday. We each picked a kind of cake, filling, and covering out of a hat. My cake will be the same sponge that lady fingers are made from and a bavarian filling, with plain buttercream and fondant. I can't believe I'm halfway done with the program!

A BUCHE!! Plus some other cakes

THE BUCHE! It's so ridiculous!

My cute little family of birds. On the inside, is a Biscuit Roulade, with Chestnut Buttercream and Cranberry compote. On the outside are meringue figures and Chocolate Buttercream

A lemon cake- lemon chiffon cake with buttercream and lemon curd

The random decorations were not of my own design. This was our "practice piping" cake

The Fraisier cake has American Milk Sponge with Mousseline (pastry cream whipped with butter) and strawberries, with a disk of marzipan on top, and marzipan strawberries
We also got to see the Pastry III final wedding cake projects today. Some were quite impressive, others were okay. Some were flat out ugly. But we'll see- maybe mine will be the ugly one next time around!

The rest of Petit Fours

I forgot my camera at school over the weekend, so this is many days worth of petit fours in one post. First, the executive Pastry Chef at the Metropolitan Museum of Art came and taught us for a day- here's what he had us make:

Florentine Cookies

Nougat

Chocolate Friands- little brownie-like things with a chocolate glaze

Russian Tea Cakes

Our next plating had lots of fun things on it, including the classic "petit fours" that I always got as a little kid in the bakery in our town



The whole tray

Almond cake with a Buttercream mound, covered with fondant. Behind it is squares of almond cake sandwiched with raspberry buttercream, covered with coconut buttercream, and glazed with fondant. Next to it are swirl cookies- chocolate and normal Pate Sable rolled in a swirl shape.

Almond cake with raspberry, coconut, and chocolate buttercream and Pate a Glace

From the left, caramel mou, or fancy tootsie rolls, lemon cookies sandwiched with raspberry jam, dipped in chocolate glaze, and checkerboard cookies.

Finally, we had our test today! As previously said, we invented our own petit four trays, following a theme decided upon with our partners. Our theme was circus/carnival, and we each came up with four different petit fours. I was worried about time, but everything came out more or less as planned. I took many, many pictures.


The entire tray



My side of the tray- starting at the front, we have puff pastry "vols a vents" filled with white chocolate ganache and lemon curd. These were intended to represent lemonade. Next, we have "ice cream cones" which were Hippen, or tuille-like cookies, molded to look like cones, and filled with piped white and dark chocolate ganache, topped with a marzipan cherry. Then there are wedges of spiced peanut caramels, covered with chocolate glaze, and topped with a mini spiced peanut butter popcorn ball. These represented caramel popcorn and roasted peanuts. Finally, are the swans, in honor of the "tunnel of love" ride. They were filled with raspberry whipped cream, stabilized with cocoa butter.

This was Amy's side. She made profiteroles and filled them with apples flambeed with calvados and folded into creme fraiche, then dipped those in caramel and pistachios to represent caramel apples. She also made swirl cookies, which you probably recognize from earlier. Then she made "hotdogs" with Langues du Chat, milano-like cookies, and filled them with Mexican hot chocolate Gianduja ganache, and used raspberry jam and lemon curd for ketchup and mustard. Lastly, she made maple banana Mille Feuille, using maple white chocolate ganache as the filling, with a bruleed banana on top. Yum!
I don't know how we did yet, but we had a lot of fun coming up with our tray.