Into the Kitchen and Making Cakes

After three weeks of lecture class, this week we were finally able to get our grubby hands dirty in the kitchen! Monday was the first day of our 6 week long cakes section. Our first project was a cheesecake, which was an interesting undertaking considering there are 25 of us together in the kitchen, and we had to work out how to dance around one another. I was blown away by some of the equipment--would you believe that there is an oven that can bake 40 cheesecakes at the same time?

We were given the option of several different types of cheesecake, but together with a partner, we decided to make the New York style, vanilla/chocolate swirl! I think it looks good, but we still don't know how they taste, as they are still in the school fridge waiting for their toppings this Monday. Not much to pass on in the way of tips on cheesecakes, but don't over bake! You can tell it is done when you tap it on the side of the pan and it all moves together, but not solid. Also, the more cream cheese you use, the firmer the cheesecake you will have!

Tuesday and Wednesday we made and assembled, a Buche de Noel--which was a Buche de Thanksgiving for us since it was the day before the big day. This is a typical French dessert, a rolled cake, typically made with vanilla genoise cake and chocolate buttercream frosting and decorated with meringue mushrooms and marzipan holly leaves. In looking at other recipes, there are many different variations on this.

Our version was a nut roulade, which is like a genoise but with nuts, with chocolate whipped cream and marzipan decorations. I made colored leaves and pumpkins to evoke the feeling of fall and Thanksgiving. The chocolate whipped cream was outstanding, and whips up in less than 30 seconds, and the combination with the nut roulade was amazing--yum!