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.

Petit Fours Part 1

Petit fours are really quite cute- basically things that fancy restaurants serve before dessert to whet your appetite- they are no more than two bites each! Here are the picture of my first tray. Unfortunately I forgot my camera for our second tray (we do one tray every two days).

The whole tray

Cherry "Palet" cookies, and Sarah Bernhardts- they consist of an almond macaroon topped with chocolate ganache, and glazed with Pate de Glace (gross chocolate that has the cocoa butter removed and vegetable oil added). They were made originally to honor a certain body part of the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt- I'll leave it up to you to decide which body part!

Tuille cookies, Gerbert Macaroons sandwiched with Passionfruit curd, and Plum-Hazelnut Financiers

Cherry Palets, "boats" of pate sucree with Passionfruit curd and blueberries, and chocolate macaroons sandwiched with chocolate ganache.
I'm very excited for our final for this section, which involves us coming up with our own petit fours with our partner, and traying them. We each come up with 4 of our own, but share a theme with our partner. Our theme is circus/carnival/fair, and our petit fours are going to be the best ever. I will probably post a million pictures, because I can't wait to take the test!!!

Chocolate Show

Because of how interesting and wonderful the International Chocolate Show was, I can't resist showing off some fantastic pictures from the opening night gala, at which I was a volunteer. It was so incredible, and I am so glad that I went. I also volunteered tonight, and will again tomorrow from noon unil 8. To repay me for my 17 hours of service, I get free admission to the show on Sunday, which means that I will be bringing a baggie and filling it to the brim with wonderful free samples! I hope you enjoy the pictures- I have many more that I am happy to share for anyone interested, but I am far too lazy to post all of them online, so just contact me. Aaaah, Chocolate

The "studs" on the dress are chocolate, as is the bag. I wish the fake dog were!

I really liked this- the whole thing is covered with chocolate flowers, and the shoes are chocolate

Chocolate Shoes

Wedding Dress with white chocolate mask. It is decorated with beautiful white chocolate flowers that are completely invisible in the picture

The coat is mostly cocoa butter, and the hat is all chocolate. The stockings have chocolate decoratiosn

The hat, coat, parasol, and midsection of the dress are all entirely chocolate!

The bag and the trim on the coat are chocolate

Chocolate Bag

White Chocolate Mosaic Cloak

Grand Marnier, one of the sponsors, paid for this one. It was spectacular. Anything you can see that is brown is all chocolate. They had lace-like stuff all over the dress, and for jewelry, made all of chocolate, plus beautiful leaves.

Baskin Robbins sponsored this one- it had the most chocolate on it, and was really well done

Project Runway designer, Alison, with her design, decorated with white chocolate medallions

Pastry Chef with his fantastic creation- it represents every holiday imaginable with little white chocolate things that you can't realy see in the picture. They almost look like cookies that have been decorated. Hard to explain, but very cool; the entire dress is white chocolate!

Project Runway model in a lovely chocolate flower hat. Doesn't she look like a chocolate angel?

Another Project Runway model, covered with chocolate records

WITH KEEGAN! From Food Network Challenge!


Because of how interesting and wonderful the International Chocolate Show was, I can't resist showing off some fantastic pictures from the opening night gala, at which I was a volunteer. It was so incredible, and I am so glad that I went. I also volunteered tonight, and will again tomorrow from noon unil 8. To repay me for my 17 hours of service, I get free admission to the show on Sunday, which means that I will be bringing a baggie and filling it to the brim with wonderful free samples! I hope you enjoyed the pictures- I have many more that I am happy to share for anyone interested, but I am far too lazy to post all of them online, so just contact me. Aaaah, Chocolate

A little bit of Viennoiserie Part 2!

Sweet Potato Brioche with caramelized shallots

Banana Crumb Muffins

Soft Rolls

Petit Pain

English Muffins (did you know they are fried?)

Danish (on the left, with almond cream and pear compote, on the right with a cheese filling)

Irish Soda Bread

Focaccia
We also made ciabatta, but it just isn't very photogenic. And Baguettes, but I ate mine before I photographed it. You've all seen a baguette before, I assume? Just picture that. Want to hear an interesting fact about Baguettes? In France, a baguette may legally only include flour, water, yeast, and salt, and it must weigh exactly 380 grams before baking. Crazy French!

Last day of Pastry 1!!

Chocolate Hazelnut Mousse with shards of chocolate

Flourless chocolate cake masked in "Creme d'Or" (1:1 chocolate:cream) and covered in meringue twigs

Test cake (you might remember it from earlier; it's the same cake as our first day of cakes)

Cut open to reveal delicious jam and genoise soaked with raspberry brandy!
Stay tuned for Pastry 2 fun, including more breads, cakes, and chocolates!

This is my last week of Pastry I! That means that things get more fun and more complicated! Here are some of the things we've made this week:

White and Dark Chocolate Mousse Cake with Pate a Cornet, which is the chocolate part of the decoration on the sides

Dobos Cake, which is made of layers of Dobos sponge, which is a rich, moist, spongy cake, and chocolate buttercream


Charlotte Russe- it's ladyfingers surrounding pear bavarian, with pieces of caramelized, flambeed pear in it.

Mousse au Cassis- it's very light and fluffy and delicious with a tart, intense berry flavor. The layer around the bottom is Jaconde (almond sponge) and raspberry jam

Charlotte Royal- Jaconde rolled with apricot jam, sliced, lining surrounding chocolate Bavarian. It's kind of weird looking... and tasting...

What do you think this is? We made the carrots out of Marzipan. I confess, this is not my cake. Someone smashed mine with their tray in the fridge. My carrots were not so cartoon like

Sour cream coffee cake with a layer of Cassis jelly, and yummy pecan crumbles on top.