Only Practice Makes Perfect

Not every week or every day can be full of success stories, and this was one humbling week! In this profession I have been told numerous times that once you gain confidence you will immediately be put back in your place. There is so much that can go wrong in a recipe including natural factors like humidity and weather. It really amazes me that the difference of a few seconds can make something turn out right or wrong. It started with a rather unappetizing creme caramel, shown above. It came out of the oven too soon so it was under baked, also the caramel was too light. The caramel is an example of how a few seconds can make the difference because sugar begins to caramelize very quickly and once it is removed from the oven it continues to darken. If it is removed a few seconds too early, it is too light, but if it is removed too late, it will be a sticky, smelly burned mess!

Although these Classic Nepolians were edible and quite tasty by several accounts (I didn't try it). The main issue with this one was my strategy in assembly--not a good one... The photo collage shows (clockwise) the puff pastry dough before going into the oven, assembling the layers, layers before glazing the top, finished and ready to eat! To make sure that this really was a humbling week I am going to share all of my mistakes! First, I layered the diplomat creme filling on the middle layer of puff pastry before I laminated it to the bottom. This made it impossible to pick up without breaking it into several pieces. Then, after all three layers were laminated together I realized that I hadn't glazed to top, which was supposed to be done first so it had sufficient time to set.

This week I made cheese filled crepes with blueberry coulis as a plated dessert. This was my first experience making crepes and I learned you have to work fast to get them to be thin. Although these were delicious and a good dessert there were not many options for plating. Two crepes were plenty for one serving, although I had originally planned on using three. Also, I had candied lime zest to use as the green garnish in place of the mint, but it lost its color and looked rather putrid! Although I don't like using mint as a generic garnish for color it does work in this instance so I bite my lip!

This is a cinnamon creme brulee with dried fruit compote. Here again I accept defeat--I should have infused the cream with more cinnamon. The flavor was quite bland since I omitted the vanilla bean and hoped that the cinnamon would take its place. Also, the top was not burned off very well and could have been much darker.

There are an amazing variety of things that can be made with pate a choux dough, typically used for eclairs and sometimes called eclair paste. Pictured above are paris breast (round), pate a choux swans and petite eclairs. I filled these all with the same moussaline filling, which is pastry cream with whipped cream folded into it. The fillings vary, but are typically either whipped cream, pastry cream or moussaline.

The word petit four translates to "little oven." I have to admit that that really doesn't make much sense to me, I would have named them little cakes has they asked, but they didn't! The petit fours above were three layers of a dobos sponge, which has almond paste in the recipe giving it a very fine crumb, important in such a small cake. The cake is layered with strawberry jam, the top is a fine layer of marzipan and then the entire cake is coated in boiled fondant, which I poured on. These little cakes are very sweet, but that's okay when it is only two bites!

Week Three of Pastry

This week I designed two different plated desserts. The first is an Apricot and Chantilly Cream Roulade with Meyer Lemon Ice Cream. It is garnished with candied Meyer lemon peel, vanilla anglaise and apricot sauces. The roulade was much too large of a portion and should have been half the size. I had originally wanted to cut a thicker slice so that it could be plated standing upright, but it was much too large to do so. I think this plating worked nicely as an alternative. The best aspect to this dessert was the flavor--it elements went together magnificently and the Meyer Lemon ice cream was fabulous!

This is the second dessert I plated this week. I got this recipe for Trio of Panna Cottas from a wonderful cookbook called Passion for Desserts by local pastry chef Emily Lucchetti. The trio included Vanilla, Cinnamon-Almond and Caramel Panna Cotta and was accompanied by a dried fruit compote (cherries, prunes and apricots in a brandy sauce). The garnish in the plating above was a vanilla tuile cookie, very thin and crisp.

This was my most successful plating of the trio because each panna cotta was garnished with something that reflected its flavor, yet it maintained its simplicity. Garnishes were vanilla: vanilla tuile, cinnamon-almond: toasted almond slivers, caramel: caramel sauce.

I also plated one larger Vanilla Panna Cotta which I thought turned out successfully because it looks naturally placed and is simple in presentation.

The results of the texture and flavor seemed to be good--I had never made or eaten panna cotta before this. I loved the cinnamon-almond and caramel, which both had wonderful flavor, however I found the vanilla a bit plain. The fruit compote was a wonderful, robust compliment to the light flavor and texture of the panna cottas.

Stay tuned for three more weeks of plated desserts!

Northern California Coast

When they talk about the Pacific Northwest, this is what they are talking about--beautiful bluffs that meet the ocean, foggy valleys and gigantic trees. During my spring break from culinary school Terry and I took a 3 day vacation up the northern California coast. We were completing our trip from the spring of 2005 when we started in Los Angeles and drove up Highway 1 to San Francisco (we were still living in Chicago then). In these three days we completed Highway 1, and saw some amazing scenery--camping along the way through some chilly nights!

This is the shoreline near the "hippie" town of Mendocino. There is very little beach, with jagged rocky shoreline and I thought it was interesting that forest didn't really start until 100-200 yards off of the shore, creating a vast grassy, windswept terrain near the shoreline.

This lighthouse stood on the coast near Mendocino and was restored in the 90's--it was in amazing condition. I loved the image of this standing along against the ocean.

Back in November we went to Muir Woods, which is a second growth Coastal Redwood forest located only a few miles outside of San Francisco. Second growth means that the trees have regrown or been replanted after being logged. The trees in we saw in northwest California were mostly first growth Coastal Redwoods, some several hundreds of years old and more than 10 feet in diameter. You can see a serious tree hugger above--amazing the size of the trees!

This is the road that travels through the "Avenue of Giants"--a scenic road through these incredible trees and a state park that is home to the largest and oldest trees in the area. An amazing part of our beautiful country. I give my vote to Highway 1 as one of the most beautiful parts of the US, and something everyone should see!

Creating a sweeter world

This was the second week of my plated desserts class. We started the week with a day of production, which usually is making stock items for the bakery such as lemon curd, dough crust, ganache and pastry cream. When all of that work is done or when nothing is needed, we make individual sized pastries such as cookies, tartlets and mini eclairs. Taking advantage of a fully stocked bake shop I made lime curd tartlets with a meringue hat!

I also made these chocolate cups by painting the insides of muffin papers. The chocolate cups were then filled with a Passion Fruit Bavarian Cream, the recipe from my new Tartine cookbook. The cream turned out really well, but I wasn't too happy with the chocolate cup, which was very hard to remove from the paper muffin paper without breaking. Also since the Bavarian cream has gelatin in it, it had to be poured directly into the cups in order to set up. This is a problem because when the chocolate is refrigerated, it starts to weep. It wasn't bad after the first day, but wouldn't last longer after that.

My first independent plated dessert was a dark chocolate pot de creme with mocha-almond biscotti. The day prior to plating the desserts, I made both items and held them, ready to serve for the next day. Both items are shown above prior to entering the oven.

This was the result - Dark Chocolate Pot de Creme with Vanilla Whipped Cream and White Chocolate dipped Mocha-Almond Biscotti. I opted for a minimalist approach to plating this dessert.

This plating was an attempt to use an additional garnish, yet still keeping it simple as well as using a different size plate. Here the additions are the chocolate cigarettes placed in the whipped cream. This worked for me because the cigarettes were placed in the whipped cream. I have a serious aesthetic problem with placing garnishes directly into a molded creme like this pot de creme, so the whipped cream worked as a platform where I could place the garnish. I have found that these molded creams, creme brulee included, are the most difficult to garnish and serve in a nice presentation.

These are several chocolate butterfly garnishes that I made as practice. They would look beautiful on top of a chocolate cake or smaller ones on individual desserts.

Back into the Kitchen!

I have entered the third kitchen class of the baking/pastry program, plated desserts. This class will encompass anything other than breads, items that can be served on a plate or on a buffet.

The first three days were spent watching our chef demo lots of new things. Everything made were items that we will be making throughout the course--creme brulee, pot de creme, chocolate and fruit mousses and many different garnishes to complete these desserts and make masterpieces suitable for photography.

The class operates in teams of two. Each day teams work at one of three stations.

1 production - preparing key ingredients needed by the entire class and making pastries that would be served on a buffet, such as cookies or petite fours.

2 mis en place - preparing the items that will be needed to make the dessert that you will plate the next day

3 service - where the dessert comes together on the plate with all of its components and garnishes

For the first go-round we were required to make one of the items that had been demonstrated earlier in the week. However after this rotation we are free to choose anything we like, pulling from a portfolio of recipes we develop, pulling from any sources we choose.

For our first project my partner and I made chocolate mousse. The photos above show the mousse after it is removed from the mold, placed on a hazelnut cookie (so that it can be moved and not squished!) and then covered in chocolate ganache. Below are three platings of the same dessert.

This is my first ever plated dessert! I was very happy with the results, a combination of random and intentional elements. This is the chocolate ganache covered chocolate mousse kissed with pistachio, garnished with a caramel paste basket, fresh raspberries, raspberry sauce and chocolate cigarettes. We made all of the garnish pieces as well as the dessert itself.

This variation used a different garnish, a striped chocolate cut out and the raspberry sauce was smeared rather than dropped onto the plate.

For the third plating the edge of the mousse was kissed with caramel crumbles. I used vanilla anglaise sauce to flood a large bowl and garnished that with chocolate sauce.

This class has been a lot of fun because it involves so much creativity, which is great with my architecture and design background. I am really excited to have the opportunity to make anything we like, as it will allow me to try things I have been timid to try before. There is lots of fun to come and the photos will be much more interesting than those six weeks of bread!

What three weeks in a classroom can do...

The past three weeks were spent in lecture learning the finer points of how bad the fat loaded confections we make are slowly deteriorating all of our lives. Seems like a fitting class to dish up to a bunch of baking and pastry students, no?

Apart from learning that our diets should contain less than 1% of the stuff I plan to spend the rest of my life making (demand doesn't look so good from this angle, trust me!), we developed a business plan, marketing strategy, menu etc. for a bakery. This was an excellent exercise in owning and operating a small business.

I chose to locate my bakery in Old Oakland, which is a small area in downtown Oakland that is seeing a lot of new development and has several new restaurants and shops. The name of my bakery was "a cakes." The 'a' being for Alison--I know it needs some work! Our menu had to be eight items and mine was as follows:

Brownie
Eclair
Chocolate Cupcake
Vanilla Cupcake
Fruit Tartlet
Chocolate Ganache Cake
Cherry-Apple Pie
New York Cheesecake

I won't go on about all of the boring details of the accounting figures, but with 1000 customers a day (that seems high to me) I was making a profit of about $60,000/year--as the owner that's my salary! So, not only did we learn a lot about small business, but also a lot about the livelihood of pastry chefs! Hey, thank goodness I'm not in it for the money or this would have been a rude awakening!

I will try to post the Power Point presentation summary of my bakery that I gave in class, stay tuned.