Week 20 - Assessment Day

Last day of school for the year 2012. This is our assessment day. We had to make 7 items for assessment. Some things were pre made and some had to be made fresh. 
There were so many of us in one tiny kitchen and it was quite stressful because you are always worried that you can't get the equipments, oven space or ingredients. 

I was partnering with Susy and I think we work well together. We have a good rhythm and flow to our work. At the beginning of the day, we were a little stressed because we couldn't find our pre made sweet crust dough. We were a little disorganised and made some mistakes here and there. But after a while, we got our rhythm back. 

First thing that we started was the Mango Cheesecake. The base of the cake was a sweetcrust pastry which we couldn't find. I wonder how our dough disappeared! Anyway, luckily we got some from a friend, otherwise it will take too long to remake it. The mango cheesecake was a no bake cheesecake and is set with gelatine in the fridge. It takes a long while to set, that is why it's the first thing we made. 

Mango cheesecake

 Ok, you are probably wondering why there are canned peaches on a mango cheesecake. Well, we wondered as well. The school was cutting cost and didn't get us real mangoes, will be my guess. We got canned peaches! It was so frustrating. 

Apple Strudel and Cherry Clafoutis

 Our apple strudel came out pretty OK, i guess. No big issue with the apple strudel except we nearly forgot to add in the egg when making the dough. Ha Ha... Luckily we realised in time. Cherry Clafoutis are little tarlets with cherries and custard filled and baked. They came out quite nice looking.

Linzer Torte

Linzer Torte, the finishing doesn't look very nice. Why was the icing sugar so uneven on top? well it is because the sift that we were using was broken. It had a big gap between the net and the ring and once Susy dusted the icing sugar on the torte, the icing sugar came out from the big gap. She didn't know it was broken. 

Sacher Torte

 Sacher Torte was probably the one that I was most unhappy about. First of all, the cake was baked and frozen a few weeks back. We thawed the cake but somehow our cake got stacked on while storage and was flat on one side. That means we had to cover it up with thicker apricot jam and ganache to make it even. Then I made a mistake by pouring the chocolate glaze which was not warm enough on the cake. It was so hard to spread the glaze and make it even. To save the cake, we had to freeze it quickly and pour another layer of glaze over it. That makes it 2 layers of chocolate glaze on an already very thick ganache cake. Oh well, at least I am happy with the butterfly that I made to decorate the cake. 

Tart Marguerite

Tart Marguerite was an interesting dessert. The base was made of puff pastry and the top was choux pastry that was piped on top to make little cases to be filled with cream patisserie and fresh fruits. At least for this one we got fresh berries. 

Cafe Deluxe

Cafe Deluxe was a mousse gateau. The side was a jaconde and inside were layers of coffee sponge cake and coffee mousse. The mousse set nicely and was smooth. So it is considered a success. 

So many cakes to take home. Luckily I had friends to help me eat them. I didn't eat any of them. Ha Ha. 
Term has ended and now it is time to enjoy my Christmas break. There will be more baking at home during this break! Happy baking everyone! 

Raspberry & Pear Butter Cake

I think I am addicted to this recipe book - Bourke Street Bakery. I have tried a few recipes from the book now and so far they have been pretty good. The only thing is I always reduce the sugar, but that is just me. It will probably be tasteless if someone else ate it. 

I had a couple of pears in the fridge that were too soft to be eaten fresh so I decided to keep them until a recipe which requires poached pears appears. Once I saw this recipe, I bookmarked it for one fine day when I can give it a go.

 So, one night at around 9pm, I suddenly felt like baking and remembered this recipe. I quickly took the ingredients out from the fridge to bring them to room temperature while I started poaching the pears. I had to soak the eggs in warm water to bring it to room temperature faster. 

Raspberry & Pear Butter Cake.

 The picture in the recipe book had the pears inside the cake but mine just stayed on top of the cake. Ha Ha.. maybe my batter was a little too thick and the fruits just can't sink in. I don't blame the recipe because I tweaked it a little, I didn't want to throw out or keep the extra 20g of sour cream that I had. I wonder if that is why. But it still looks good right? Probably more appealing because you can see the fruits. 

The inside of the cake.

The cake had fine crumbs and quite a buttery flavour. The fruits gave it a nice balance with its slight sourness and sweetness from the cake. Ha Ha... look at me, analysing a cake. Anyway, I am very happy with the cake. My sister and I shared a slice once the cake cooled down. By then it was already midnight. 

A slice of cake.

How nice if I didn't have to return the book to the library. It is a hot pick book, it is always being reserved by someone and I am definitely one of them. However, I am not complaining, I am very happy and grateful to be able to use the library facilities. It is great! They have a wide selection of books.

Week 19 My wedding cake

Today is the day that I have been waiting for, for so long. The day we make our wedding cake. Since my partner is married, this will have to be my wedding cake then. For the past 8 weeks, all we have been doing was baking cakes and pastry and now comes the time where we get to decorate the cake. 

It is a chocolate mud cake with ganache filling and has chocolate glaze over it. It is not exactly how I would like my wedding cake to be but it will have to do for now. 

Ready to glaze with chocolate.

One big bowl of chocolate glaze.

 We had so much fun covering the cake with chocolate ganache, concentrating on getting the ganache as smooth as possible before we chilled it again. Then only we poured the chocolate glaze over the cake to get a nice smooth even shiny chocolate. We then chilled it again to set the chocolate. 

Practise piping.

For our summative exam , we need to make a cake for a 40 year old person. So here we are practising our piping skills. Ha Ha.... as you can see, I need more practice. 

More practise.

 Here comes the fun part, chocolate decorations. We were shown a few ways of playing with chocolate. How to get the marble effect, how to get chocolate shards and others. My partner and I quickly decided on which design we wanted to try and here are some of the chocolate designs that we did. 

Chocolate designs.

Glazed chocolate mud cake.

 We decided not to use all the chocolate designs to decorate the cake because we wanted to try to make roses with fondant and marzipan. The roses were the centre piece for our cake. I practised so many rounds , trying to get it right. I finally got it to look like a rose after 4 attempts. 

Chocolate designs for decorating the sides of cake.

 We used the marbled chocolate decorations for the side of the bottom cake. There was a support that was placed into the cake to hold the top cake. We were suppose to pipe ganache around the bottom of the small cake to cover the gap but in the end we didn't because it was running late and we were planning on separating the cake and we each take one home. Susy gave me the bigger cake to take home. 

Marzipan roses

My first wedding cake. 

So here is the end result of our wedding cake. It looks quite simple and definitely not good enough for a real wedding. I am still happy with the end product, after all this is our first attempt in making one and people enjoyed eating it. 

Salami & Cheese Pizza

My first time making pizza dough. I just picked a recipe from one of the library recipe books that I borrowed. It was rather simple to make. I made extra dough and stored it in the freezer so that it can be easily defrosted for whenever we feel like having pizza again. The pizza base was a little thicker than what we like but it was still delicious with all the salami and cheese. I ate more than I should. Ha Ha.

Spreading tomato paste on the dough.

Layering with salami and cheese.

Into the oven it goes.

Salami and Cheese Pizza. 

Love the slightly burnt bits.

The second time we had the pizza, we were a little bit more creative, we had mixture of egg plants and also anchovies. I loved the egg plants. Yum!

Banana and caramel cupcakes

This is another recipe that I got from the Bourke Street Bakery recipe book. Instead of making a big cake, I made small cupcakes because it saves me some baking time and it is cute. I reduced the sugar in the recipe but it was still rather sweet because of the caramel topping. The texture was very moist and it stayed moist even after a couple of days. This recipe is a keeper! I am really liking this book now, but I do have to say that there are some confusing bits and I tend to change the recipe a little. But still, it is a great book. 

Banana and caramel cupcakes

Added some hazelnuts as garnish.

Just a simple banana and caramel cupcake topped with some toasted hazelnuts. Sometimes it is nice to keep things simple. 

Week 18 - Puff Puff and away!!

A fun day with lots of pastry work. There were puffs, choux and tarts. We made 2 types of tarts with the sweetcrust pastry. One was raspberry frangipane tarts and the other was lemon brûlée tarts.

Frangipane is a paste that is made of almond meal, butter, sugar, flour and eggs. It is usually combined with fruits, we used raspberries. I tried to put in as many as I could. 

Ha Ha. The frangipane was filled into the raw tart case, topped with fruits and then baked.

Raspberry frangipane tart

We made 6 lemon brûlée tarts but these ones were a little different in that we had to blind bake the tart cases before filling in the lemon filling and rebake them until they set. Then we covered the top with sugar and blow torched them. That was the fun part. I think I did 5 and Susy did only 1. She has more experience with that so she gave me the chance to practise. Thanks Susy.

Lemon brûlée tarts & Raspberry frangipane tarts

 We had a big batch of puff pastry that we made the earlier week and this week we did the fun part , which was shaping and baking them. We got to use the laminating machine to flatten the pastry but I forgot to take a photo of it. Then we made palmiers which looks like a heart shape and a big band were we filled with fresh fruits.

Palmiers

Did anyone noticed that my partner's name was "Sugar"?Hahaha..... I think I must have been too excited about shaping the pastry that I wrote Sugar instead of Susy. Sorry Susy! Well at least it is a sweet name.

Chen & Sugar's palmiers

We made 2 bands but only filled one up with creme patisserie and topped with strawberries, kiwi and grapes. Then glazed it with apricot jam.

Unfilled pastry bands.

Palmiers ready to be eaten.

For our summative on Week 20, we will be required to make choux paste so we practised a batch and our trainer showed us a fancy way of serving the choux. It is a beautiful swan. I have never seen a choux shaped like this before. It was filled with chantilly cream and the wings were dusted with icing sugar. It was almost too pretty to be eaten. 

Swan choux

Pastry band filled with fresh fruits

Glazed frangipane tarts and lemon brûlée tart.

I took the rest of the choux home and assembled my swans the next day and had them for afternoon tea. The pretty swans were pretty delicious! Pun intended. 

Love Swans.

Chocolate Mousse Trifle

We made a big batch of chocolate mousse in school that day and I took the extra home. I also had some frozen coffee sponge cake in the freezer so I combined them and made trifles. Each trifle had 2 layers of chocolate ganache, sponge cake soaked with coffee syrup, chocolate mousse, fresh strawberries and fresh whipped cream. 

This first glass of trifle is topped with home grown strawberry! Yes, just the one strawberry is home grown. It was Pei's precious strawberry that she had nurtured.

The rest were topped with my chocolate decorations. One is a butterfly and another is chocolate cigars. Oh! these photos were taken by my Personal Professional Photographer, Pei. (4Ps!)

Nothing much to say about these trifles except that they were delicious and I had to stop myself from going for a second glass. I wonder how much calories I ate....actually I don't really want to know. Ha Ha. 

Life is short, Eat dessert first! 

Week 17 Danishes

We made chocolate mud cake which will be used for a wedding cake later on. We froze the cake once we cooled it. So I don't know the taste and texture yet.

Chocolate mud cake

All wrapped up to freeze.

 We also made mini vegetarian quiches. This was with shortcrust pastry and filled with onions and cheese. Then egg custard was poured into the tart cases and baked. Yum! 

Mini vegetarian quiches. 

More quiches.

 Our trainer did a demo on cheese straws made with puff pastry. We all practised how to twist it and this is what we got. Again yum!

Cheese Straws.

We did danishes with hazelnut filling. It is a laminated pastry like a puff pastry but it has yeast in the dough. It requires 3 single folds with 30minutes resting time in between. The texture is a little bread like. There can be many ways of folding danishes but today we are making Danish Corinthian style, which looks like this. Rolled up from both sides to meet in the middle and the cut like sushi. Then we proved the dough and baked it till golden brown. 

Cutting danishes like sushi.

Danish Corinthian before baking.

Danishes fresh from the oven.

 I was also given a chance to assemble an Apple Strudel which was leftover from the demo. The dough was really stretchy and easy to use as compared to the earlier recipe that we were shown. I also made another batch of hazelnut danishes which I cut a little thicker and left it in the oven to brown a little bit more. 

My Apple Strudel just out from the oven.

My danishes.

Next week there will be more pastry work,  I think it will be fun! and yummy!