Pastry Life

Bugs on a cake!

2009-09-15T21:07:00.002-05:00

This cake was for a party with the theme "Every light attracts its own bugs". So we have a lightbulb with some cute little bugs. Cake was yellow buttermilk with raspberry buttercream. Decorations were done with fondant.

By the way, the raspberry buttercream is made with real raspberries, no artificial flavors. I gently heat raspberries with a little sugar, just to sweeten them up a little. Not too hot or it kills the flavors. Puree the berries, then strain it through a sieve to remove the seeds. Add it to my butttercream in a 4-1 ration (ie, 1000g buttercream to 250g puree) and beat it all together. Let me tell you, this is absolutely to die for!!!

It's hard to be humble when you make raspberry buttercream as good as mine!!!

Ninja

2009-09-15T21:04:00.002-05:00

"J" had a ninja themed party for his 40th birthday, so I made this ninja cake. I think the head and the wrappings turned out very well. Cake was red velvet, caramel filling, cream cheese filling, covered with vanilla buttercream, covered in vanilla fondant.

Thomas

2009-09-15T21:00:00.002-05:00

This cake was for a 3-year-old's birthday. Cake was yellow buttermilk with vanilla buttercream. Thomas's face is made of gumpaste, and the rest of the decorations are fondant, with royal icing piping.

Yellow streak

2009-04-18T13:27:00.003-05:00

Hello Kitty!

2009-04-18T13:12:00.003-05:00

Hello Kitty Cake done for a girl's 3rd birthday. Black velvet cake, filled with caramel filling and vanilla buttercream, covered in fondant.

Go Speed Racer!

2009-04-18T13:08:00.002-05:00

Speed Racer's Mach 5 card for a 6th birthday party.

Pinky Tuscadero

2009-04-18T13:07:00.003-05:00

Pink birthday cake for first birthday!

Let's go to the zoo!

2009-04-18T13:01:00.003-05:00

Zoo cake!

Reese!

2008-11-30T22:03:00.002-06:00

This cake was done for Reese's first birthday. The main cake is devil's food with vanilla buttercream, covered in vanilla fondant. The stem, leaves, and bat were all made of gum paste. I used the airbrush to add all color. The smaller cake is a personal cake just for the birthday girl to dig into all by herself. So that she could get nice and messy, the cake was covered in buttercream rather than fondant. Again, the ghost and other accents were made of gum paste.

Charity Auction

2008-11-30T21:57:00.003-06:00

This cake was done for a charity auction to benefit my wife's alma mater. The cakes were yellow cake with vanilla buttercream, devil's food with hazelnut buttercream filling and chocolate buttercream icing, and red velvet cake with caramel buttercream filling and cream cheese frosting.

Baby Shower

2008-07-11T10:58:00.003-05:00

This is a baby shower cake created for the marketing department of Miller Brewing Co. Both tiers are yellow cake with vanilla buttercream. The baby and blanket were made of fondant, and piped with royal icing. The tassels on the blanket are buttercream.

Fore!

2008-07-11T10:50:00.002-05:00

This cake was created for a 60th birthday party. Both cakes are chocolate with vanilla buttercream. The golf ball is covered with white fondant. The dimples in the fondant were made with a dowel. The tees are made from 50/50 fondant and gumpaste, and piped with colored royal icing.

After further review, I would do the golf ball differently next time. The weight of the fondant compressed the cake, distorting it's shape. In addition, the dimples began to flatten out, making them less apparent, as time went on. Next time I'll cover the ball in buttercream and impress the dimples right into the buttercream.

Lizzie's Graduation

2008-07-01T10:04:00.003-05:00

Lizzie just graduated from the University Of Wisconsin, and her mom requested a cake bearing the university's crest. To compare my creation to the original, go to www.wisc.edu

The cake is Red Velvet with Caramel Cream Cheese Filling, covered in Swiss Buttercream.

Breckan's First Birthday!

2008-07-01T09:15:00.003-05:00

The first tier was just for her. Think she liked it???

Baby Shower and Bachelorette Party

2008-07-01T09:09:00.003-05:00

First Communion

2008-07-01T09:06:00.000-05:00

Walleye!

2008-03-15T16:55:00.006-05:00

My wife's uncle Bob is a big hunter and fisherman who is turning 70 this weekend. His wife asked me to make a cake based around hunting or fishing. Knowing that he is a big walleye fisherman, as am I, I decided to make a walleye.

The fish is made of rolled fondant, as are the rocks. The leaves and cattails are made of gumpaste. The cake is yellow cake, filled and covered with vanilla buttercream.

Pretty in pink

2008-03-08T16:46:00.004-06:00

My mother in law was in charge of getting a cake for a baby shower in her office this week. She didn't want the cake to be covered in fondant, and instead wanted just buttercream. Other than that, she had no requests. So I decided to go a little more elegant, and less cutesy for this cake. Since we know that the baby is a little girl, I went with pink buttercream covering a yellow cake.

I tried a new recipe of buttercream, which turned out to have great flavor and mouthfeel. The problem was that the buttercream was way too soft, and it was difficult to cover the cake. Even more importantly, when filled, the buttercream could not support the weight of the other layers on top, so the cake kept shifting.

After several failed attempts, I started over from scratch the night before the cake was needed. I used my old buttercream recipe, which holds up well and is very firm. When left at room temperature, the buttercream is very smooth and rich, but not overly sweet.

I decieded to dress up the cake with some fresh roses, and the end result looked really good. If I have more time next time, I'd make the roses (or other flowers) out of gumpaste. But this was still an overall gorgeous cake and a big success.

This is a 3-tiered cake, with the bottom tier 8", then 6", topped with a 4" cake. My suggestion was to send the top tier home with the mommy-to-be so she can freeze it and enjoy it after the baby is born!

Go Badgers!

2008-02-28T22:31:00.004-06:00

Recently I showed you a picture of a cake I made for Green Bay Packers football game. There was a party at my in-laws' house, for which I made the cake. My mother-in-law took the leftover cake to the hospital where she works the next day to share with her friends and co-workers.

Just as I'd hoped, word has spread and now some of her friends have asked me to make cakes for them! JS has a daughter who goes to school at the University Of Wisconsin in Madison (the Badgers), who is turning 21 this weekend. JS said she would like a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, but left the decorations entirely up to me. She apologized for the short notice, so I don't think she is expecting much in the appearance category. She told my mother-in-law that she just wanted a good cake.

Anyway, the cake is devil's food, with chocolate frosting. Sorry I can't give you a picture of a slice, but there are 4 layers each of cake then frosting, for a total of 8 layers. The cake is covered in white fondant, and all other decorations are also made of fondant. The rectangular board was covered in fondant to give it a more polished appearance. Since I also went to school at Wisconsin, this gave me the opportunity I was looking for to make a Badgers cake. Next time if I have more time, I plan to also make a Bucky Badger... :-)

Hopefully she'll agree that the cake looks and tastes equally fantastic...

Black Belt!

2008-02-25T20:33:00.002-06:00

My nephew Nathan just earned his Black Belt in Tae Kwan Do. He's just 9 years old, and he's been doing TKD since he was 5, so this is a major accomplishment. Indeed, earning your black belt at any age is a major achievement. His goal was to have his black belt by the time he was 10, so he has a lot to be proud of.

Since this is such a big deal for him, I wanted to do something special for the occasion. What you see here is the result of several hours of work, but it pales in comparrison to how hard he worked.

The cake is devil's food, with layers of chocolate frosting and the entire cake is covered in white fondant. The logo on top matches the logo on his uniform and is made of fondant with the details piped in colored royal icing. The belt is made of fondant that was rolled between a piece of cloth to give it the proper texture. The cake sits on cardboard covered in fondant.

Congrats, Nathan!

Pregnant again!!!

2008-02-08T08:19:00.000-06:00

No, not my wife. My wife's cousin L is due in just over a month, so I made another shower cake for her. This design was very similar to the last baby shower cake, except that the "baby bibs" on the sides are a little different, with larger openings and bows. Since there was only about a sozen people at this event, the cake was a single 8" tier, and was more than enough cake.

Inside is a yellow cake with a chocolate frosting. I've been having some problems with my chocolate buttercream being a little "grainy", which is why I changed to "frosting" for this cake. Personally, I think the American pallate likes frosting better than buttercream anyway, because it is typically much sweeter.

It's a Boy! Or maybe a Girl?!?!

2008-01-27T22:12:00.000-06:00

My friend DC asked me to make a cake for our friend MR's baby shower in Chicago. M&D do not know the sex of their baby-to-be, so I decided to go with pink AND blue, along with some light green and yellow.

The cake is a tender yellow cake, deriving its flavor (and color) solely from the eggs and butter in the recipe. Each tiere had 3 layers of cake, and layered cake-chocolate buttercream-cake-ganache-cake-chocolate buttercream.

The cake was covered in homemade rolled fondant, colored ivory. The "bibs", lettering on the box, and box outline are also made of rolled fondant. The box itself is made of gum paste, which is very similar to fondant except that it dries much faster and harder. The box is "glued" together with royal icing, which was also used for the piping on the bibs and at the base of each layer.

The only inedible part is the baby poking out of the top, which is made of plastic and was purchased.

This cake should easily serve a party of around 30 people.

I'm Back!!!

2008-01-22T23:13:00.000-06:00

Hello, all! Lots going on in my life since my last post, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

So, on Sunday, the Green Bay Packers played in the NFC Championship Game. Sadly, they got seriously outplayed and won't be going to the Super Bowl. But leading up to the game, there was a lot of hype in Wisconsin, so I decided to join the fray and make something to help celebrate. What you see here is the result of many hours, and several days of baking.

The cake is a basic yellow cake, filled with ganache, covered in chocolate buttercream, and covered with rolled fondant. The "G" and footballs are also made from fondant, while the piped border and white laces on the balls are royal icing.

I was also commissioned to make rolls/buns for the same party. Since the sandwiches were going to be beef tenderloin, I decided a nice buttery brioche would be the best choice. Never haveing made "rolls" before, I took a stab at it and the results were fantastic. As you can see, I made half with sesame seeds on top, and the others were plain. Both were awesome, and my wife, mother, and I have been eating the leftovers all week.

The leftover cake, on the other hand, was sent with my mother-in-law to work. Hopefully she can drum up some business!

Bun...

2007-06-14T17:39:00.000-05:00

So, here is a picture of my most recent "bun", and the "oven" where she's been baking for the last 9 months! Breckan was born this morning, and both mom and baby are doing well.

Ain't she beautiful!!!! Ain't they both beautiful!!!!!

Sofitel Chicago Water Tower

2007-06-06T21:53:00.001-05:00

Well, I landed my first real job in the pastry world. I've been hired to work in the pastry kitchen at the Sofitel Chicago Water Tower hotel. Click here to check out the hotel. http://www.sofitel.com/sofitel/fichehotel/gb/sof/2993/fiche_hotel.shtml
The hotel is located in the Rush/Division area of Chicago, just off Michigan Avenue. For those of you who are not familiar with the Sofitel brand, they are a French-owned company with a modern, upscale feel. We went there for Mothers' Day brunch and had a great meal.

Being a French hotel, we do a lot of things that I've learned at the French Pastry School over the last 6 months. I started last Friday, working from right after school until about 6:00. Then I went in for a full day on Saturday, from 8:00 - 4:30. I made creme brulee, several mini pastries including chocolate tarts, fruti tarts, etc.

I also made about 500 or more peanut butter cookies. To put this into perspective, imagine a recipe that calls for 16 lbs of flour!!! And 8 lbs of sugar and 8 lbs of brown sugar! The total yield of the recipe was 54 lbs! Crazy.

Oh, one other thing you might find interesting. One of the ovens at the hotel could be considered a walk-in oven, assuming you had heat-proof shoes. :-) Literally, this oven is about the size of a small bathroom, and you wheel 2 large carts in to bake bread, etc. A little arm comes down from the ceiling, lifts the carts, and slowly spins them for even browning during cooking. It's crazy.

Well, I can tell that I haven't posted for a long time by the fact that this post is rambling all over the place. So, I'm going to put y'all out of your misery and end it here. But I'll leave it up to you, do you want to hear more about the Sofitel and what I've done, including my one f-up? Or do you want to hear about how I nailed the interview to land the job, including a response to "What makes you lose your temper?" that indicated that the only person who can cause me to lose my temper is my wife?

The next post is up to you, loyal readers. Choose your own adventure...

Reader Mail

2007-06-06T20:41:00.000-05:00

Hello, all!

I thought it was time to answer some of the questions posted over the last few weeks. So, here we go...

Q: "Yeah, what was the trick question?

A: The instructors always tell us that the questions are straightforward and not intended to trick you. But the question on the test was a True/False along the lines of "To achieve a textured look on chocolate, spray it with cocoa butter after taking it from the cooler." It's true that you achieve that look by spraying cocoa butter onto the chocolate when it's cold, but technically you should first put the piece in the freezer, not the cooler (refridgerator.) So, to me, that's a trick question. And, I might add, the only question I got wrong on the written exam.

Q: At what temp does water boil? Let me guess, i forgot to ask at what altitude you are at????

A: Depends. If you're in the US, it boils at 212 degrees F. If you're almost anywhere else in the worldl, water boils at 100 degrees C. But, we're Americans and we're always right, and everyone else is wrong. Just like the metric system, why would anyone want to know that there's 1000 meters in a kilometer when it's so much easier to remember that there's 5280 feet in a mile???

Q: What did you do with my cousin Tim? What did you do with the periodically intoxicated, poker playing slacker we all know and love?

A: That guy is still periodically intoxicated, and still throwing cards every once in a while. But I'm not sure I qualify as a slacker anymore, with school full time, work at the bank, work at the pastry shop, and now work at the Sofitel hotel (more on that later.) I get one day off a week now (Sunday), which is when my lovely wife gets me to do all her chores for her. Why, wanna play some poker???

Q: What did you get on your test?

A: Our last test, covering Chocolate Showpieces, Sugar Showpieces, and Wedding Cakes was brutal. I'm not sure anyone felt good about the practical part of the exam. The decorated 2-tier buttercream cake was due on Day 2 (out of 3 days) and over half the class was still decorating their cake when time was up. One guy got about 3 inches of piping done on his cake, and he was the former cake decorator at Whole Foods here in Chicago. I got mine done, but I only had 15 minutes to do all of my piping, so I wasn't happy with it at all. My sugar showpiece was nice, and my chocolate piece was decent. Anyway, the bottom line is that I got a C+ on this exam!!! I've received a "C" only once before in my life, and that was in the notorious "weed-out" class Accouting 201 at Wisconsin. So, I wasn't happy at all with the test itself, nor how I did on it. Thanks for asking.

Q: Or, if you need a dose of free-wheeling chaos as an antidote to your incipient OCD, you can always come to Iowa City. Added bonus: we can keep that ADD wife of yours entertained for hours.

A: OK, so that's not really a question, so this is not really an answer. But if you can keep her entertained for hours, let me in on the secret. Especially now that she's been put on bedrest and told she can only get up to go to the bathroom. How well do you all think she's obeying doctor's orders???

Q: Why haven't you posted a blog in so long?

A: So this wasn't a posted question either, but I thought it should be, and I thought it should get a response as well. Couple reasons. One, I'm too damn tired. There, I said it. And I can almost hear you all laughing and saying "Just wait until your daughter is born!!!" B) My digital camera died during class recently, so I haven't had pics to post. One of the girls in class has been taking pics for me, but hasn't sent them yet. And it's kind of hard to bust someone's balls when they're doing you a favor. Finally, I'm too damn tired.

That's it for the first installment of Reader Mail. Thank you all for taking time to read my blog, and especially for posting your comments. Keep them coming, and I'll try to respond when I can. In the meantime, I'll get back in the swing of things with my postings. And check back here over the next couple weeks to hear about when our proverbial bun comes out of the oven. By then I'll certainly have found a way to take pictures again. See you soon!!!

Brutal

2007-05-14T21:35:00.000-05:00

So, last week was exam week, covering Wedding Cakes, Chocolate Showpieces, and Sugar Showpieces.

Monday and Tuesday were practice days, when students are free to do anything they had done in the sections covered by the exam. While those days are great in theory, my opinion is that they tend to be unproductive due to the lack of structure.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were exam days. It started Wednesday morning with the written exam, which was basically pretty easy. It seems, however, that there was one trick question on the test, which kind of pisses me off (because I missed it, and they always tell us there won't be trick questions.)

Then we were given the practical exam, which was:

Produce a 2-tiered cake, filled and covered with buttercream, and decorated with buttercream. This was due by the end of Thursday.
Produce a chocolate showpiece to mimic one produced by the Chef. This was due by the end of Thursday. This included 2 discs for a base, and a 200 cm ring with a 140 cm ring inside of it. Also, three small shiny sphere, and three shiny plaquettes. (The fact that it said "shiny" means that they need to sit for 24 hours.) Finally, there needed to be a chocolate rose, and the entire piece should be airbrushed with cocoa butter.
Produce 3 gum paste roses. (Due anytime.)
Produce 3 gum paste daisies. (Due anytime.)
Produce 5 gum paste rose leaves. (Due anytime.)
Produce a sugar showpiece to mimic one produced by the Chef. This was due by the end of Friday, but some of the elements, such as the pulled rose and the blown apple, could ONLY be done on Friday. In addition, we needed to cast several discs and include at least one pastillage element. (Pastillage must dry for 24-48 hours.) A pulled curl and/or ribbon could be done for extra credit.

So, that's your teaser for today. I'm tired and going to bed right now, so come back to see how I think I did, and hopefully I'll have my grade in a few days and we'll see how Chef thinks I did.

And then this week we start ice creams and sorbets. Umm.... ice cream...

Sugar Showpiece

2007-05-04T15:06:00.000-05:00

Pictured is my final Sugar Showpiece. I have to admit, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. You might notice that some of the elements that I showed you in the post from yesterday are not on the showpiece. Actually, I made quite a few things that didn't make the showpiece, like all of the fruit (apples, pears), 2 white birds, 2 white roses, and another purple rose. But, that's just the nature of the beast when you're making showpieces; you always make a lot more than you end up using for the final piece.

So, you can see that the main artistic elements are the 2 yellow birds, which were made with blown sugar. Both birds began with a ball of sugar slightly smaller than a golf ball. Since they were blown, the birds are actually hollow inside, and very light (also known as "fragile.")

The purple rose was made from pulling sugar. Each petal was individually pulled and shaped from a mass of melted sugar. The rose itself is relatively heavy, being mostly solid sugar.

The main structural elements are the blackish/purplish discs and crescent. Each were made from casting melted sugar into a ring when it had cooled down from 165 to 125 C. The result yields strong, solid pieces that can be "glued" together with hot sugar, and hold a lot of weight.

The "rocks" upon which the higher bird sits is made from pouring melted sugar at around 140 C into regular granulated sugar. Once it cools, you extract the solid piece, which is lightly coated with the granulated sugar, giving it that textured effect.

The lower of the two birds sits upon a rock made of pastillage, which is confectionery sugar, water, and vinegar. I also made other decorations out of pastillage which I didn't put on my final piece. To me, they just looked a little cheap, and didn't really fit in with the other elements, so I decided to leave them off.

Finally, you'll notice a piece of bubble sugar positioned behind the crescent. This was made by placing large grains of sugar onto a Silpat, covering it with another Silpat, then baking for about 10 minutes in a 350 F oven. The sugar melts, and individual particles attract to each other, leaving you with the design you see here. I think it looks pretty cool, but I decided to only use a little for my piece, as it has the ability to take over if you use too much of it.

Anyway, that's the end of showpieces for us. Next week is exam week, where we get tested on Wedding Cakes, Chocolate Showpieces, and Sugar Showpieces. Wish me luck!

Sugar

2007-05-03T21:44:00.000-05:00

This week we've been working with sugar. We started with the basics, making pastillage. Think "Altoids" without the flavor. This is basically powdered sugar, a little water, and a little vinegar. You can roll it out and make it into shapes, and it dries to a brittle consistency very quickly.

The next day we worked on pulled sugar. Here, you heat sugar to 165 degrees Celcius (roughly 350 F), then let it "cool down" to a workable temperature. I say "cool down" because it's still extremely hot when you're working with it. The majority of the time you're keeping it under a very hot lamp to keep it workable. The lamps we use put out 500 Watts, only about 18" off the table. So if you have a 100 W lamp in your house, picture yourself working less than 12" under a lamp that's giving off 5 times the heat, all while you're working with the hottest ball of silly putty you can imagine. By the time it was all said and done on Tuesday, the kitchen was about 95 degrees, and we were all sweating. But the result was the roses you see at the very right of the picture. The 2 purple roses are not done yet, they each need one last round of petals. But you get a pretty good idea of what they'll look like. Working with that hot ball of sugar, you pull out pieces, petal by petal, and form them onto your rose. Hence, "pulling sugar." All the while, I wore 2 layers of rubber gloves, and my hands still took a beating. I didn't get any blisters, but I think I might have been the only one.

Then we moved onto blown sugar. Using the same basic setup, you take your sugar and insert it onto a copper tube, hooked up to a pump like that used to take blood pressure. By blowing air into the hot sugar and using your hands, you can make all kinds of shapes. Think of it like blowing glass. In the one picture, you'll see a bird that I was able to blow on one of my first attempts. I also made another larger bird, but it broke overnight before I could get a picture. Asi es la vida. We also worked on making spheres, and fruits such as apples and pears. Pictured, you'll see one of the pears I made, although the stem and most of the leaf have broken off. I'll replace them before they go on my showpiece tomorrow. Check back this weekend to see a picture of my finished showpiece.

Sugar, aw, Honey, Honey. You are my Candy girl, and you've got me wanting you.

Yopp, any chance you can get me one of those blood pressure inflater thingy's??? :-)

Chocolate Showpiece

2007-04-29T17:16:00.000-05:00

Today we completed our chocolate showpieces. I'm not sure you can get the scale from the picture, but it's about 18" tall. You'll notice the chocolate rose from my earlier post, which has now been placed on the showpiece. It has been sprayed with brown cocoa butter, then I painted around the edge with a little gold.

Everything you see on the showpiece is made of chocolate (dark chocolate, to be exact.) I made some other accent pieces out of milk chocolate, but I couldn't find a way to fit them into my design. The green twists on the side were made by spreading green, yellow, and white cocoa butter on a sheet of acetate, then spreading dark chocolate on top of that. Once the chocolate began to set, I cut the shape I wanted, then rolled it up into the spiral you see. When the chocolate is completely set, you remove the acetate wind up with the decoration you see in the picture.

It was interesting getting this home today. First, I had to hail a cab while holding onto this 20 lb. fragile showpiece. So the cabby says, "I guess I need to be careful driving, huh?" But he forgot all about that within 2 blocks, and it was all I could do to keep the showpiece together as we flew down Lake Shore Drive. But, I got it home in one piece.

Chef estimated that a showpiece like this would sell in the neighborhood of $250-300. Anybody want to buy a chocolate showpiece???

Chocolate decorations

2007-04-25T17:09:00.000-05:00

This week we started chocolate sculpture and decorations with Chef Bob. The picture you see here is a flower (a rose, I guess) made of dark chocolate.

To make the flower petals, you spread a thin layer of dark tempered chocolate on the table. When it begins to set, you scrape a piece of curved metal over the chocolate to create petals from about 2-4" long. If you hold your scraper at a higher angle, you can get a tighter piece, like the one I used to create the center.

Once you have a bunch of petals, you can start assembling the flower. I started with the tight cone for the center, then gradually worked my way outward using larger petals, "gluing" it all together with more chocolate. Again, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I'll be using the piece at the end of the week when I assemble my final chocolate showpiece.

Rolled Fondant

2007-04-19T16:58:00.000-05:00

The picture you see here is a dummy cake that I decorated in class today. The idea was to practice coloring rolled fondant and applying it to the cake, and decorating with royal icing.

Rolled fondant is basically decorative, and although you can eat it, most people don't really like the taste. Basically, it tastes like sugar. My lovely wife Ali says it tastes like marshmallow.

So, Chef Laura showed us a bunch of different techniques for decorating with royal icing, and wanted us to do as many as we could on our dummy cake for practice. So, on the other side of this cake, it is decorated very differently, with lots of string work using the royal icing. I liked this side better, so that's the side you get to see on my blog. All of the flowers, and the purple border, are made of royal icing. Royal icing is very stiff, and dries very quickly, which makes it ideal for this type of decorating. Once dry, it is very hard, and when piped thinly it is very brittle. The purple flowers and the white daisies were piped yesterday, then applied today when dry.

I was actually pretty happy with this side of my cake, and even received a lot of compliments in class, including a "Dude, that's awesome!" You gotta like that. My wife liked it because the colors will match our baby-to-be's bedroom... awe, ain't that cute???

Croquenbouche

2007-04-17T16:43:00.000-05:00

Croquenbouche: From the French, "croque" for crisp or crispy, and "bouche" for mouth.

The croquenbouche is an old traditional French wedding staple. For a while, it had kind of faded away, but has been making a resurgence lately.

The croquenbouche you see pictured here is made of puff pastry. Essentially, it is a tower of cream puffs. You'll see the spiral effect made by alternating puffs dipped in caramel, versus puffs dipped in caramel and then in "sucre gran". (Your second French lesson for today: Sucre = sugar, gran = large. And that's exactly what it is, large crystals of sugar that actually resemble kosher salt.) The croquenbouche is seated on a base of almond nougatine. The topper is made of melted sugar that I piped onto a silpat in an interlocking pattern. I then took the pieces and "glued" them all together with more melted sugar to get the "fountain" effect you see in the picture.

I think the croquenbouche would be a very cool alternative to a wedding cake. One drawback is that all the cream puffs must be filled, and the croquenbouche assembled, all on the day of the wedding. Cream puffs really don't last more than 1 day once filled.

Click it

2007-04-16T21:37:00.000-05:00

By the way, click on the photos in my posts to see a lot more detail. Except the buttercream cake, you don't want to see the detail on that. But definitely take a closer look at the orchids, lillies, and roses.

Buttercream Cake

2007-04-16T21:16:00.000-05:00

Here is a picture of a completed, 2-tier buttercream cake. Basically it is a white cake with plain buttercream. It was really just to teach us the proper way to cut, fill, cover, and build a cake. It wasn't done for taste, and the general consensus in class is that it "tastes like ass." And that truly is a quote.

I don't know about you, but I'm not a big fan of plain buttercream. If you love buttercream, you'd like this cake. But to me, buttercream just tastes like butter. Now, if you add some hazelnut paste to the buttercream, make the cake chocolate, and add a layer of chocolate royaltine, the cake would probably kick ass, rather than taste like ass.

Anyway, as you can see, my cake is pretty simply decorated. As most of you know, I'm no artist, and so I wanted to keep it pretty simple. And it's actually quite challenging piping onto the side of a cake, as some of you may know. But, I will say that as simple (don't say boring) as my cake is, it looked a lot better than some of the others in class. Unfortunately, many people don't subscribe to the "less is more" theory, and cakes that started out looking great ended up looking cluttered and/or gaudy.

As for the buttercream, you'll notice that the base layer on my cake is basically white (more on that in a minute), while the piping is more yellow. The base layer is unflavored, so the only coloring is the yellow from the butter. My partner and I ran out of buttercream after the base layer, so we used some leftover buttercream from last week that had been flavored with vanilla, making it darker in color (and actually better tasting.)

And now for today's little culinary lesson on buttercream. Any true buttercream will never be truly white, because of the color from the butter. If you see a buttercream that IS white, it's because it does not contain butter, but is made with a shortening such as Crisco. Crisco is cheaper and more stable at room temperature, which makes it great for grocery stores and people who like to cut costs at the expense of taste. But it's Crisco. Period. Have you ever put Crisco on a slice of toast? I didn't think so. Don't eat it in your "buttercream" either.

More Gum Paste

2007-04-13T20:44:00.000-05:00

Hello!

As you can see, we put some more work into the gum paste flowers. The first picture is of 3 finished daisies in front, 3 reddish carnations to the left, and 5 roses in back. You'll notice that calyxes have been added to the flowers, making them look more realistic. I also painted them with a little dust to enhance the colors. If you compare these pictures to the previous post, you should notice a sublte difference in the color of the flowers. The second picture you see is 2 orchids with 2 lillies in the background.

The other pictures are the lillies on the left and orchids on the right, and another picture of the roses, daisies, and carnations.

Sometime later this week you'll see a picture with a cake using these flowers.

Pretty cool, huh???

One more thing...

2007-04-11T22:33:00.000-05:00

I can't help the spacing on some of my posts. For whatever reason this site likes to either put lots of spaces between paragraphs, or run them all together. I know it's a pet peeve of mine when people don't know where to end/begin paragraphs, so I thought I better explain why some my posts, like the gum paste post, look like they do.

Does this make me anal???

Gum paste

2007-04-11T20:35:00.000-05:00

Hello!

Well, this week we started the Wedding Cakes section of class, beginning with gumpaste flowers. The flowers you see in the picture at right are all made of gum paste, but I'll get back to those in a couple minutes.

First, a word about gum paste. Gum paste is one of the methods used for decorating cakes, along with rolled fondant, royal icing, buttercream, etc. While edible, you would not want to eat thing made of gum paste. When working with it, it has the consistency of very stiff play-dough, but it dries very quickly and becomes very hard and relatively strong. I can't imagine biting into a gum paste flower.

Gum paste is surprising easy to make, consisting only of egg whites, powdered sugar, shortening, and Tylose powder. Incidentally, this is the only recipe at the French Pastry School that uses shortening. Tylose powder is a man-made substance that really gives the gum paste it's thick consistency.

The thing about working with gum paste is that it dries very quickly, and once it's dried there is nothing you can do to soften it again. This means that you need to work very quickly, and that you can only work on one thing at a time. So, rather than cutting out petals for a dozen roses all at once so that you can then assemble them, you can only cut out one layer of petals for each rose at a time, then place them on your rose cone, before cutting more petals for the same rose. There is really no way to turn this process into something that you can do quickly on a large scale, which makes it very labor-intensive, and ultimately makes gumpaste flowers very expensive.

The gum paste flowers made at the French Pastry School are based on the practice perfected by Nicholas Lodge. Mr. Lodge owns his own school in Atlanta, and is generally considered to be one of the best at making flowers in the world. He strives to make gum paste flowers as biogically correct as possible. So, in our flowers, you'll see all of the pieces of lillies, roses, orchids, carnations, etc. This includes the pistils, stamens, calyx, etc... I've seen flowers created by Nicholas Lodge, and they look real enough to put in a vase. He's absolutely amazing. He was at the French Pastry School a couple weeks back and did a demo for our class, and he makes all of this seem simple. And speaking of price, if you're lucky enough to have Mr. Lodge create a cake for you, expect to pay about $17 for each lilly...

So, back to the flowers you see in the picture here. First of all, understand that all of these flowers are in the works, and will not be completed for another day or two. So, as good as they are, they will look even better. Also, I took a bunch of pictures but couldn't get a good close-up, so we'll have to make do with this picture which doesn't show all of the details. Hopefully I'll be able to get some good close ups so you can see the detail.

In the picture with all of the flowers, moving clockwise, you can see the yellow roses in the back, the beginning of three white orchid "throats", three white and three peach-colored blossoms, three white daisies, and along the left, three peach-colored carnations. Not pictured are the leaves and other components we're working on.

In the other picture, I attempted to show you the detail on three of the roses. The picture is not very good, but hopefully you can see a little bit. Pictured are two full-blown roses on top, and a tighter rose on the bottom.

I'm not entirely happy with the colors I've created, but I can live with them. Some of the students have some very cool colors, but there are also others that are hideous. So no big deal. If I ever make this my chosen profession, I think I'll be relying on my lovely wife to create the colors while I contstruct the actual flowers.

OK, enough for tonight. Time to go to bed, so I can wake up at 5:00 a.m. to go make more flowers. But I'll post more pics of the completed flowers. Then, next week, you'll get to see them as the decoration for an actual wedding cake...

Big Belly

2007-04-07T20:41:00.000-05:00

This is what happens to your belly when your husband brings home macarons and coconut rochers every day.

Just kidding. If you don't know how this happens...

Ain't she beautiful?!?!?!?!?!

Vanille Patisserie

2007-04-07T20:22:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, I went to stage (industry term for working for free to gain experience, pronounced "stodge") at Vanille Patisserie. Vanille (www.vanillepatisserie.com) is owned and operated by Keli and Dimitri Fayard, two fantastic chefs with great backgrounds. Check out their website to read more about them. And if you haven't been able to find any macarons at your neighborhood pastry shop, you can buy some from Vanille online. I know they look a little expesive, but they are worth it. And as long as you're shopping there, treat yourself to some Pate De Fruit. Don't even think about comparing the Pate De Fruit to jujubees or gumdrops or anything like that; they're in a class all their own. Again, worth every penny.

So, after staging at Vanille, they asked me to do a 3-month internship with them in their wedding cake side of the business. They want me to commit to at least 1 day a week for 3 months, which is a great opportunity. I'm sure I'll learn a lot.

Someday Ali and I hope to own a shop that would be very similar to what Vanille does. I'm excited about the opportunity.

Exams

2007-04-06T19:32:00.000-05:00

Thursday finished up exam week for us. The exam covered Tarts, Breads, and Petit Fours.

We had practice days on Friday and Monday where we could make anything we wished to practice for the exam. On Tuesday, we took the written part of the exam, which was 10 quesitons for each section, for a total of 30 questions. The general consensus on the written portion was that we all bombed it pretty badly. This was a lot different than our first exam, which I think we were all very prepared for. On that exam, we all had a pretty good idea of what the questions would likely be on the test, and we had the answers pounded into our heads over the previous 3-4 weeks. But for this exam, I think most of us didn't have a clue what to expect. Anyway, one of the students asked Chef John how we did as he was grading them up front, and he said he thought about only 1 person got an A, most got C's, and even some D's. I'm holding out hope for the A, but I know I got at least a couple questions wrong.

Anyway, right after the exam, we were given the sheet telling us what would comprise the practical part of the exam. By 11:45 on Thursday, we were required to make and turn in the following items:

6 blueberry muffins, which must be baked on Day 1, Tuesday
9 chocolate eclairs, for which the pate choux must be baked on Day 1
12 Madeleines, which must be baked on Day 2, Wednesday
1 loaf of Farmer's Bread, which must be baked on the day you draw from a hat, which was Day 2 for me
6 plain croissants
1 broiche loaf and 6 streussel brioche
12 blueberry stressel tarts
1 lemon curd tart with italian meringue garnish

This was a pretty daunting task, and everybody jumped in right away. It's really all about being organized and planning your days. For example, if you need to bake Madeleines on day 2, you have to make the batter on Day 1 because it needs to rest at least 12 hours in the fridge. And you need to make the sweet dough for the tart shells right away, because that also must rest overnight. Ditto for broiche and croissants. Then considering that some of the items actually require several components, you've got a lot to get done in 3 days.

Take the lemon curd tart, for example. Day 1, you make the sweet dough and refrigerate it overnight. Day 2, you roll out the dough and bake it in a tart ring, then freeze the shell. On Day 3, you make the lemon curd, fill the shell and bake it for a few minutes to set it, the let it cool on a rack. While it's cooling, you make your italian meringue, then pipe it onto the lemon curd, and go over it with a blowtorch to give it color. I want you all to remember this the next time you're in a pastry shop and wondering why something seems to be a little expensive...

So anyway, I got everything done on Day 1 that I wanted to, except that I had wanted to put one turn into my croissant dough. This was no big deal, since I had all three days to get the croissants done. But everybody was extremely busy, and we worked right down to the wire at 11:45 when Chef told us to stop everything or we'd be penalized for our final grade. But I got my Blueberry Muffins done, baked my pate choux for the eclairs, got my croissant dough and brioche dough started and proofed, and made my Madeleine batter.

Day 2 was still busy, but not quite as hectic. I ended up getting more done than I had hoped for, and turned in my Madeleines, Blueberry Tarts, Brioche, and Farmer's Bread. I also made my chocolate patry cream that I would use to fill the eclairs with on the following day, baked my lemon curd tart shell, made my streussel, and got all 3 turns into my croissant dough.

Day 3 was the final day, when everything was due by 11:45. I went into the day pretty relaxed, knowing that I only had to finish my croissants, fill my eclairs with pastry cream that I had already made, and then make the lemon curd and meringue for my lemon tart. I got going on my croissants first, and they looked awesome. Everyone in class was remarking on how nice they looked before going into the oven, which really boosts your confidence on exam day. It was actually strange how different the croissants looked from person to person. After baking and giving them to Chef, he told me "good job", so I feel pretty good about that.

Filling the eclairs was a pretty fast job, so I actually filled about 2 dozen, rather than just the 9 that were required for the exam. It's funny how fast you can make friends when you have chocolate eclairs to give away....

At that point, I even took time to go have a cup of coffee and freshly baked croissant! Um... breakfast of the gods...

After break, I finished up my lemon tart and turned everything in. I wasn't too thrilled with the meringue decoration on top, but that's life. I'll only get better with piping with more practice.

Couple interesting notes:

On the first day, Nan finished her croissant dough and then noticed she had forgotten to add her sugar. So she decided to re-make her dough on Day 2, and forgot her sugar again!!! She was not very happy. I told her she should tell Chef that she had made a diabetic version.
Tara finished her lemon tart, and as she lifted it to more it to a sheet pan so she could turn it in, it broke in half. I thought she was going to cry. Luckily for her, she had leftover dough in the fridge, and she had just enough time to remake the entire thing. I actually think her second tart turned out better than her first!
Luis and Carlos were teammates, and they finished before everybody else. I finished shortly after them, and it was nice to be done early. General consensus is that Carlos finishes early because he dumps all his dishes in the sink area and leaves them for everybody else to do...

Coconut Rochers, Chocolate Macarons, Chocolate Financiers, Madeleines

2007-03-29T20:48:00.000-05:00

Attached is a picture of more petit fours that we completed today.

Starting in the upper left, going clockwise, are chocolate macarons, Madeleines, chocolate financiers, and coconut rochers.

The Madeleines are a lemon-flavored cake-like petit four with a nice texture. You pipe the batter into a mold that is shaped kind of like a seashell. Due to the shape of the mold, the edges cook faster while the center takes a little longer to cook. This gives the batter in the center time to spring up, giving you the "bellies" you see in the photo.

The coconut rochers are easily one of my favorites. The batter is much like a macaron batter, and the end product has a slightly crisp exterior and a moist chewy center. I took this platter to the bank after class, where the Madeleines and coconut rochers were a huge hit. One executive at the bank bit into a coconut rocher and let out a big "Oh my God is that good" in a scene reminiscent of When Harry Met Sally. It was pretty funny.

My lovely wife Ali also took a liking to the coconut Rochers, and polished off about a dozen of them. (Ali wants me to remind everyone that the cocnut roches are very small.) And my friend Tracy from the bank actually put in an order for her dad's birthday next month. Very cool.

Opera Cake, Financiers, Macarons

2007-03-28T15:13:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't posted in so long. It's been a long few weeks.

Anyway, pictured are some more petit fours. On the lower left are financiers, to their right are macarons, and on top is the opera cake. Typically the opera cake is cut into bite-sized pieces, but I decided to do it a little differently today.

The opera cake is built upside down in a sheet pan. First you line the sheet pan with a sheet of acetate so that you can unmold it later (remember this, because I'll be coming back to this point in a minute.) On top of the acetate, you spread a thin layer of chocolate glaze, which will ultimately be the top of the cake. Then comes a layer of coffee buttercream, followed by a very thin layer of joconde cake (essentially an almond flour and egg white based cake), which is then soaked with espresso syrup. And I do mean soaked. Then comes a layer of coffee flavored ganache, more buttercream, more espresso soaked joconde, and on... You freeze the cake in the sheet pan overnight so it is solid. The next morning, you warm the sides of the sheet pan with a torch to release the cake, then flip it over to unmold.

Even after using the torch, we had problems getting the cake out. So I started trying to pry it out with a knife, which didn't do much. So then we went over the whole bottom of the cake with the torch, and still no luck. That the point when I remembered washing dishes the day before and finding a sheet of acetate at the bottom of the sink... Yes, I used the wrong sheet pan and therefore did not build my cake on top of the acetate! So, we eventually dug the rest of the cake out, which left all of the chocolate glaze and a lot of the buttercream on the bottom of the pan. Needless to say, I was not too happy with myself, but Tara came to the rescue and used some leftover buttercream to patch it up, then we used some leftover chocolate mirror glaze to glaze the top. And it turned out fantastic, as the mirror glaze gave a nice shiny look that the original glaze did not. We actually got several compliments from other classmates.

The financiers are essentially little almond cakes, which are very moist and quite tasty. Very nice.

I was pretty excited to learn how to make macarons, and was very pleased with the results. Macarons are small cookies made with meringue and almond flour, which you pipe onto a sheet ban and bake. Once baked, you pipe a layer of filling onto one base and cap it with another. Today we used raspberry ganache, but you could use any ganache, buttercream, jam, etc. There are a few keys to good macarons, but most important for the look is to get consistently shaped circles when piping. Although I'm not the most talented person with a piping bag, I'm definitely improving, and my macarons turned out great, as you can see. Tara had a little more trouble with hers, which didn't have the nice smooth surface that you see on mine in the picture. Rather, her's were smaller and had little points on top, which when baked looked remarkably like little nipples. She was disappointed, but I told her she could just sell them for an extra $1 as nipple macarons for bachelor parties, etc... She was only slightly amused. :-)

By the way, if you've never had a macaron, get down to your nearest pastry shop right now and get one. They're awesome. Looking at the picture above, the look like hard little cookes, but that's far from the truth. They're actually kind of chewy and moist, and can be flavored with anything from raspberry to chocolate to pistachio to coconut, etc. Seriously, go get yourself a macaron. I'm going to go have one myself...

Long Days

2007-03-21T19:17:00.000-05:00

Hello all!

Starting tomorrow I will be assisting Chef Bob with a continuing education class on Petit Fours from 6:00 - 10:00 p.m., on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Combine that with class from 6:45 - 12:45, and work at the bank from 2:00 - 5:00, and I'm in for a few very long days. So, you probably won't see any posts from me until Saturday or Sunday.

See you soon!!!

Partners

2007-03-20T22:34:00.000-05:00

So, yesterday I mentioned that I would not have a partner during this section of the program. That changed today, and now I'm partners with Tara. Aside from being a Michigan grad, she's pretty cool. She originally enrolled in the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago (CHIC), but dropped out in favor or the French Pastry School. Apparently she's very happy about her decision. Over the last few months I've heard a lot about the other culinary schools in Chicago, and not much of it has been favorable. If you're interested in hearing more, let me know.

As for the whole partner issue, I don't want to write too much for 2 reasons. 1) I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings who might read this, and 2) I'm too tired to write, and I'm going to bed. But there was a little drama in the whole issue, and although I did not cause any, or involve myself in the drama, I'm still kind of in the middle of it. So email me or give me a call if you want to hear more.

But for now, I'm going to bed. 5:00 comes early tomorrow.

Chef Jacquy Pfeiffer, Petit Fours

2007-03-19T20:16:00.000-05:00

Today we begin the Petit Fours section of the course. Petit Fours are small bite-sized pastries that you'll often see at hotels and resorts, etc. Some common examples are small fruit tarts, or macarons. Over the next 2 weeks, I'll be making a variety of different Petit Fours, and sharing them with you on my blog. And if you live near the Chicagoland area, I'd be happy to ACTUALLY share them with you. So stay tuned.

Our instructor for Petit Fours is none other than Jacquy Pfeiffer, co-founder of the French Pastry School. Chef Jacquy is one of the finest chefs in the world, and boasts an amazing resume. Take a look at his credentials at http://www.frenchpastryschool.com/about_us/jacquy_pfeiffer.html.

In addition, Chef Jacquy has recently returned from France where he was competing for prestigious Meilleur Ouvrier de France title. The M.O.F. title in pastry has been awarded to only 113 French pastry chefs around the world (including Sebastien Canonne, the other co-founder of the French Pastry School.) There are only four pastry M.O.F.’s living in the USA today. Chef Jacquy just learned that he has advanced to the finals of the M.O.F. competition this fall, where he should be awarded the M.O.F. title. When Chef Jacquy completes his M.O.F., the French Pastry School will be the only school in the use with 2 M.O.F.'s on staff.

Finally, we drew new partners today in class. Initially I was set to be partners with Lauren, but that changed when that would have meant that Tara, who just started school with us 2 weeks ago, would be without a partner again. So Chef Jacquy asked me if I would work without a partner for the next couple weeks, and I agreed. This means that rather than sharing all the work with a partner, I'll be responsible for completing all of the products on my own, as well as doing all of my dishes, etc. It will be challenging, but I'm looking forward to it.

Ciabatta, pound cake

2007-03-17T15:24:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was our last day in the Breads section of school. While I don't see myself focusing on breads in the future, I'm glad I've learned about them and how to make them. Having said that, I think that the smaller subset of morning pastries is very cool, and knowing how to make croissants, etc will be very useful, and hopefully lucrative, in the future.

For our last day we made ciabatta, finished our beignets (for the second time) and croissants and chocolate croissants for the third time. We also did a marble pound cake (vanilla, chocolate, and pistachio) and and Earl Grey Tea pound cake. When I left school, I had a huge bag of stuff with me, way more than I could use at home. There was a homeless man on the corner by school, and he was in the right place at the right time, and was rewarded with a few loaves of hot-out-of-the-oven ciabatta bread and a few beignets. The rest went to my friends Marc and Doug, and their wives. I only kept 2 loaves of ciabatta and half a loaf of the marble pound cake.

Marc picked me up from school and we went right to the United Center to watch the Badgers in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Doug had gotten some free tickets which he gave to us, so I was more than happy to give him all the pastries he wanted, along with buying him plenty of beer to drown his sorrow over the Illinois loss. Anyway, now I need to try to find tickets to the game on Sunday vs. UNLV for the right to go to the Sweet Sixteen.

Beer Bread, Pain Au Chocolat, Brioche Bostock

2007-03-14T14:19:00.000-05:00

Today we made Beer Bread and Pain Au Chocolat. In the pictures, the Beer Bread is the loaf with the appearance of the cracked top, and the Pain Au Chocolat is the rounded pastry alongside the croissants.

Interestingly, Beer Bread contains no beer inside the loaf. The beer (Guiness, in this case) is mixed with a small portion of yeast, flour and salt, which becomes a paste that is spread on top of the bread dough. The loaf is then baked, and the beer flavor is actually drawn into the bread. Chef John also recommended the possibility of making this with champagne or hard cider. Another notable ingredient inside the beer bread is mashed potatoes. We used instant mashed potatoes, but at home I would use real mashed potatoes.

The Pain Au Chocolat is also called a Chocolate Croissant. The dough is identical to croissant dough, but it is cut into rectangles rather than into triangles before shaping. The dough is rolled around a small "log" of chocolate before proofing and baking. This is a special type of chocolate that is solid, but remains soft after baking. On some of the pieces, we also inserted a few banana slices alongside the chocolate, which was a nice touch.

My friend Marc Chapdelaine grew very fond of Pain Au Chocolat when he lived in France, and he's been asking me about it since pastry school started. I'm thinking he'll be very happy when I show up on his doorstep tonight with a half dozen for him and his wife, Deb. Bon apetit!

Finally, we also made Brioche Bostock today. We sliced up some day-old brioche, dipped it in almond syrup, spread on some almond cream, topped with sliced almonds, and baked for about 15 minutes until toasted. When I brought them home today, Ali said she could eat them every morning with a cup of coffee for the rest of her life. What a great way to use up uneaten brioche. Of course, there's always french toast, too...

Picture of Baguettes

2007-03-13T22:28:00.000-05:00

OK, so I'm not the smartes blogger ever. I can't figure out how to post my pictures where I want them next to the text, and I'm having trouble with spacing. I'm posting the picture of the baguettes mentioned in the previous post because I could not get it to work in that post. Stay tuned to see if I can figure it out.

Does anyone out there have a 12-13 year-old that can help me??? I must be getting old...

A flute without holes is not a flute...

2007-03-13T21:56:00.000-05:00

...and a doughnut with no holes is a Danish. At least according to Ty Webb (Chevy Chase) in Caddyshack."

But my version of a Danish is pictured at right. We finished these today, along with a few other things. The Danishes you see here are finished off with an almond flavored pastry cream, topped with either an apricot or a Mirabelle plum. The danish dough itself is very similar to croissant dough, and the process of "laminating" the dough is essentially the same. A laminated dough is dough that is layered with butter, such as puff pastry, croissants, and danish. In the picture, you can actually see some of the layers on the edges of the danish.

Today I also finished the Kugelhopf, which is a traditional Alsatian bread, baked in a fluted mold. The dough contains golden raisins soaked in kirsch (surprise, booze in french cooking...), with a ring of almonds atop the fluted edge. Immediately after removing the bread from the oven, you submerge it in an almond syrup, which is soaked into the bread, keeping it moist but not soggy. Once cooled, it is sprinkled with sugar. The Kugelhopf turned out to be a class favorite.

Legend has it that the Kugelhopf was named after an Alsatian baker with a wooden leg. The Three Wise Men, on their way to see the Baby Jesus, stopped in at the baker's house to spend the night (because you know that Alsace is right on the way to Bethlehem...) Supposedly, the sound of Mr. Kugel's wooden leg on the floor made a "hopf, hopf, hopf" sound, and the Three Wise Men named the bread that he gave them, Kugelhopf. Seriously, that' the story.

Finally, we baked french baguettes today. The process to start the dough was a little different than the baguettes we made last week, giving a much more tasty bread, and I think the texture was a lot better too. Plus, I learned how to make the cool design in the picture.

Sorry I have not been able to post for so long. I had a nice long post almost completed the other day and lost it, and I just didn't have it in me to go back and re-write it all. But I will, maybe this weekend, sometime between one of the two Badgers' upcoming NCAA victories. I have lots to say that, so I'll let you know when I can post about what you've missed, in case you're interested.

To my brother Dave, the Spartan, condolences on the Spartan loss in the Big Ten Tourney. But you'll be happy to know that I was close enough behind the Spartans' bench to count the pinstripes on Tom Izzo's suit. Good luck in the Big Dance. Go Green.

Strawberry Rhubarb Tart, Sarah's Pastries and Candies

2007-03-02T19:42:00.000-06:00

Today we finished our Strawberry Rhubarb tart. The base is a sablee dough, filled with pistachio almond cream. Atop that is a Pistachio Creme Legre, which is basically a pistachio mousse. The Legre covers a strawberry gelee and rhubarb compote, and is garnished with sliced strawberries.

Our tarts turned out very nice, but I'd love to make this during the peak season for strawberries and rhubarb, when the fruit is at it's best.

After class I went to Sarah's Pastries and
Candies, where I intern on Fridays. They have a great little business where they sell chocolates made on premises, as well as cakes and pastries that are made in their kitchen off-site. Check out Sarah's website at www.sarahscandies.com. They also sell Inteligentsia coffee, and have a steady clientele of rugular customers.

OK, so it's my blog, and I'll do what I want. So I'm taking this opportunity to stray from pastry for a second to talk about the Wisconsin Badgers, who play the Michigan State Spartans tomorrow. My brother, Dave, is an MSU grad, so we have a bottle of scotch riding on the game. I think he could have supplied Daytona Beach at Spring Break with all the booze I've lost to him over the last 15 years or so, but I hope to make a bottle back tomorrow. But, the Spartans always play the Badgers tough. Bucky needs to close out the season on a high note to secure a #1 seed in the NCAA tourney.

St. Honore and Paris Brest

2007-03-01T18:19:00.000-06:00

Today we finished our St. Honore and Paris Brest. The St. Honore (named after the patron saint of bakers, no joke) starts with the inverted puff pastry that I mentioned previously. It is topped with a ring of Pate Choux, which is the same dough used for eclairs and cream puffs. Inside the ring we put some sauteed apples, but you could use almost any fruit, or no filler at all. Then it was filled with a Chiboust Cream, which is a kicked-up pastry cream. We piped several spheres of the Pate Choux, which we then filled with the Chiboust Cream and dipped in caramel, then stuck to the ring of choux with more caramel. Carlos did a great job of piping the cream, which you can see in the photo to the right.

The Paris Brest was also made with a large ring of Pate Choux, which we then cut in half and filled with carmelized roasted hazelnuts and a hazelnut buttercream. Then we covered the hazelnut buttercream with another layer of pate choux, topped off with granulated almonds and powdered sugar. I wish I could send you all a sample of the Paris Brest, because it is absolutely to die for! Just awesome. The hazelnut buttercream starts with traditional buttercream, mixed with an equal part of pastry cream, and flavored with hazelnut paste. When I die, I want them to bury me in hazelnut buttercream.

I did not get a good picture of the Paris Brest, so you don't get to see it here. Anyway, it doesn't photograph as good as it tastes. Interestingly, the Paris Brest was named after an annual bicycle race between the two cities, when a marketing-savvy baker decided to bake his pastry in the shape of a bicycle wheel.

I took the Paris Brest to the bank after class, and got the first 2 orders of my pastry career! One of the girls wants me to make her one for her mother's and father's birthdays. Pretty cool.

For my part, I tried to make the song of the day "Chiboust, Chiboust..." sung to the tune of "Shaboom, shaboom, na na na na na na na na, shaboom, shaboom..." but it didn't stick too well.

Chocolate Tart, Exam 1

2007-02-28T14:24:00.000-06:00

Today we finished our Chocolate Tarts. The shell is a chocolate sweet dough, which is filled with a thin flourless chocolate cake (essentially a chocolate mousse which has been baked), then filled with ganache. The tart is then topped with a chocolate nougatine, which is kind of like a very thin chocolate almond brittle. The end product is very good, but very rich. I brought it home for my lovely preganant wife, Ali, who I'm sure will appreciate it. The tart pictured here is the "stepchild" to our main tart, which Carlos took home. It was made with our leftover scraps, so it is smaller and not as nice looking as our main tart, but it's still pretty tasty.

We also got our results back for the first exam covering Chocolate Candies and Cakes. I got an A- overall, which I'm basically happy with. I thought I performed pretty well on the practial piece of the exam, but there were also a few points that I wish I had done better, so I feel my grade was fair. Some of the others in class were a little more disappointed, while others were not.

We also made Pate Choux today. Pate Choux is best known as the dough used to make cream puffs and eclairs. Tomorrow we'll use the Pate Choux which we baked today to complete our St. Honore, of which I'll try to post a picture. Come back tomorrow for the picture and description of the St. Honore, which also uses the inverted puff pastry I explained previously.

Another note on Inverted Puff Pastry that I omitted yesterday. Another significant difference between Puff Pastry and Inverted Puff Pastry is that since with the inverted form the butter is wrapped around the dough, the end results are different. Rather than a large puff, the butter kind of encases the dough, in essence frying it and creating lots of crispy layers. Mmmmm.... butter....

Finally, I haven't mentioned it yet, but there always seems to be a song floating around our class which ends up in everyone's head. One of the first was "One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do" although the word "One" was substituted with "Juan" to poke fun at someone in class. Go ahead, sing it out loud to yourself. You know you want to. And now try not to sing it for the next hour.

Anyway, the song of the day today was "Kung Fu Fighting" for some reason. As usual, I think it was started by Pete. Danny also spreads different tunes, which he normally picks up with his alarm waking him to the oldies station. Poor Chef Bob even feel victim to the song curse, and threated Danny's grade because of it. This from the chef who sings "I gave my love a cherry, that had no stone...", compliments of Animal House, while making Black Forest Cake.

Lemon Tart

2007-02-27T21:29:00.000-06:00

Today we finished our Lemon Tarts. I think they turned out pretty well. I made the tart with Pate Sablee Dough and Lemon Cream, while Carlos made his with Lemon Curd and Sweet Dough.

We had a little drama today when we went to the cooler to retrieve our Chocolate Tart dough and discovered that it was missing. Later I saw another table's Lemon Tart on our rack, so I have to assume that they innocently were using the wrong rack when they took our dough. No bid deal. Chef John gave us some extra dough for us to use.

We also put in 4 turns on our Inverted Puff Pastry. For those who may not know what inverted Puff Pastry is, it's pretty much what it sounds like. To better explain Inverted Puff Pastry, let me take a quick moment to describe normal Puff Pastry.

In normal puff pastry, you make a dough and wrap it around a slab of butter. This is then rolled out so that it is 3 times as long as it is wide, such as 7" X 21". Fold the top 1/3 of the dough over onto itself, then fold the bottom 1/3 up over that, so that it is folded into thirds, much like a letter. At this point you'll have a dough that is about 7"X7". This is called a "turn". Once the dough is turned, there are several layers of dough (D) and butter (B), so that it is kind of like DBDDBDDBD. Turn the dough 1/4 turn clockwise so that the "opening of the letter" is to your right, and repeat the process of rolling the dough to 7"X21", then fold it onto itself in thirds again. At this point you've completed 2 turns. In doing so, you've not just doubled your layers of DBDDBDDBD, but you've raised the levels exponentially to something like DBDDBDDBDDBDDBDDBDDBDDBDDBDD. Classic Puff Pastry has 6 turns, which in the end gives you about 1600 very thin layers of DBD, which gives you the dramatic puff when baked.

Anyway, Inverted Puff Pastry starts with butter wrapped around the dough, rather than dough wrapped around the butter. Yes, you read that correctly, you wrap the butter around the dough. Sound messy? It is. But after getting 1-2 turns in your dough, it becomes more manageable.

Carlos

2007-02-26T18:34:00.000-06:00

Today was our first day in Kitchen 2, our first day with Chef John, and our first day in the Tarts section. My new Partner for this section is Carlos, who is a very funny guy. I'm not sure he had the most experience coming into school, but he has doing a lot of practice at home and is progressing well. I'm looking forward to working with him over the next few weeks.

Over the last several weeks, I've been trying to figure out who in my class will be the superstars after graduation. Carlos may or may not end up being the most talented, but for some reason I think he has the ambition and drive to be very successful in the pastry field. I can see him being the guy that is wildly successful after taking a few risks and surrounding himself with the right people.

Carlos tends to be very quick witted, and has a good banter going with the Aussie, Pete. It's all good-natured fun, and everybody (almost) gets along really well.

So far, none of us are very happy with the layout of Kitchen 2. The dishes area seems to be a little cramped, and our work areas are not layed out as well as Kitchen 1. Having said that, K2 is much warmer than the 58 degrees we normally experienced in K1.

Today we made Sweet Dough, Sablee Dough, Chocolate Sweet Dough, and Chocolate Flourless Cake, and the beginnings of our inverted puff pastry. Over the next few days, we'll be making Lemon Tart, Strawberry Rhubarb Tart, and others.

Chocolate Candies

2007-02-25T21:03:00.000-06:00

This posting will cover my first few weeks in class, which I haven't been able to update yet, so this posting is incomplete. I will work to update it over the next week and let you know when it's complete. In the meantime, I'll leave you with a few pictures.

Introduction

2007-02-25T20:34:00.000-06:00

The first exam period at the French Pastry School for the Winter, 2007, period was completed last week. Through the first 5 weeks of class, our focus was first on Chocolate Candies, then on Cakes.

In the first few weeks, our focus was on Chocolate Candies, with Chef Sebastien Canonne. Chef Sebastien is arguably one of the finest pastry chefs in the world, and it was truly an honor to have been in his class.

The next few weeks we learned all about cakes with Chef Bob Hartwig. Chef Bob joined the French Pastry School withing th last few years, having spent much of his career in some of the finest hotels in the world. He has a tremendous amount of real world knowledge to share.

Upcoming posts will focus on updating you on everything you've missed over the last few weeks, and follow me through the remaining weeks of the program. For now, however, I will leave you with a reference list of the students you will learn to love over the upcoming weeks and months.

Below is a list of fictional characters in our classroom. The names, descriptions, and any similarities to actual people are purely coincidental, and are not based on real people.

Cast of Characters:
Tim Henkaus, the banker, and your humble blogger
Pete, the Aussie
Danny, the cook from Whole Foods
Trish, the waitress at the pizza place
Carlos, the former military man and prison guard
Luis, the cook from Mexico City
Betty, the daughter of the Executive Chef of a major hotel
Clint, the accountant
Erin, the culinary student
Nat, the sushi chef from Thailand
Sunshine, the graphic designer
Lauren, the birthday cake specialist
Peggy, the cook from Singapore
Kam, the waitress at the buffet restaurant
Max, the theater jack-of-all-trades
Nanette, the investment banker