Day Thirty Two

So tonight started with tempering chocolate, tempering is the process of using temperature to control the crystallization of the coco butter in the chocolate. Without proper crystallization chocolate is crumbly and dull, but with it chocolate is smooth, shiny and has a nice snap when you break it apart. We us a process called Tabling, in this process the chocolate is melted using a double boiler and brought to 50 Celsius, then some of the liquid chocolate is poured onto a marble slab and worked using a spatula and a scrape. This is done to bring the temperature down so when it is added back into the remaining chocolate it in turn brings its temp down. You are looking for something between 28 and 29. Then quickly heat it back up to 32 but not over, 32 is the working temperature and at this point the chocolate will set correctly.

What you need to know is that it is a big fat messy pain in the butt and I hate doing it, but it will be on my finale so I have to learn.

After that we made up some meringue and piped it out into discs, these went into the oven and were backed for something we are doing tomorrow. More news then.

Days Thirty and Thirty One

OK, sorry about the lack of updates but last week was a killer. this is what happened. made some cakes, tempored some chocolate, wrote a paper on chocolate, and maybe did some dancing when no one was looking. Have some pictures.

Super busy

Super busy, super tiered, super fly? i'll update in the morning i swear

Day Twenty Nine

So tonight was the beginning of a new semester, a semester at this school is about ten weeks. Now my class has moved over to the kitchen next to the one we were in and a new level one class started tonight. I am now considered level one advanced so la tee da. I found out I got a solid B on my Mid term, which is better then I thought. Also today we started our research projects. They are on chocolate, it’s history and fabrication. Chef took us to the library, that’s right my school has a library, and we started reading up. I checked out a book called the True History Of Chocolate.

After that we went back to the kitchen and started on some Mocha Genoise. You start by whipping together some egg, sugar, and inverted sugar in a kitchen aid bowl, but you do it by hand not with the kitchen aid. Then move the bowl over a pot of boiling water to create a double boiler where you continue to whisk it as it slowly heats up. When it gets to about 45 or 50 degrees and it is starting to ribbon, move it to the kitchen aid and let it whisk it the rest of the way. After a few minutes it should start to become thick and fluffy, and begin to cling to the whisk instead of sliding off, that is what you are looking for. Transfer it to a regular bowl and fold in the flour, and then some liquid instant coffee. That is the batter for your cake which gets baked in a small pan.

Then we worked on a mocha butter cream, which is basically and Italian meringue with butter, instant coffee syrup added as it cools. That is about what we did tonight.

Day Twenty Eight

Had mid terms, cooked alot of stuff i had made before, don't want to talk about it.

I will post in the morning, go Away!

Day Twenty Seven

Ok so lots of stuff happened today so we will take it one dish at a time. First the St. Honore from yesterday, we made caramel by cooking sugar water and glucose and then dipped the top of our cake in it. Then we dipped the top and bottoms of a bunch of our choux in it and stuck them to the top of the cake. Then we pushed down the center of the cake, that part is puff pastry and just flattens. Then we made chiboust cream, which is like and orange custard. We made it for tarts in the past so the quick version is milk and egg zest to boil, eggs and sugar whipped together in bowl. Temper the two together and whisk over heat until thick. Poured that in the center of our cakes and put them in the fridge to set up. Then fancy up the top with some Chantilly cream and you got a cake.

Next we move onto the thing we needed those fancy two toned biscuit for yesterday. It was a cake, but I do not recall its name, being that my notes are downstairs. But here is what happened, took a ring and used it to for a ring of biscuit on the inside of. Filled that ring with chocolate mousse, which was made by melting chocolate, whipping a small amount of cream just enough to be really creamy, but not to the whipped cream stage. I whipped it by hand which was kind of cool. Then we made a sabayon by mixing egg yoke, egg, sugar and water together. You whip them in a pan over a double boiler for about ten minutes, you are trying to cook it and create a smooth, thick, ribbony sauce. Then that sabayon goes in a bowl, the melted chocolate goes on top, and the whipped cream gets folded in. that is your mousse and that goes in your biscuit ring almost to the top. Then we mage orange mouse, Wait on minute did you say Orange Mouse? Yes I did. First and Italian meringue, remember that is a meringue made by adding boiling hot sugar and water to egg whites as they whip. Then some more whipped cream, and then you bring some orange concentrate up to about 50 degrees in a pan. Just warm enough to be liquid. Then take it off the heat and whisk in a gelatin sheet. Put in a bowl with the meringue and combine, then cool down to 25 degrees before folding in the whipped cream. That is now mousse and can now go in your ring on top of the chocolate mousse. That went in the freezer and is waiting for next class to become amazingly finished.

Day Twenty Six

Ok so I’m going to try and through this as fast as I can because a lot happened today. First we took some pastry cream we made and whipped it up with a little coco powder, making it chocolate pastry cream. We then piped it into the éclairs we made last week. Then those éclairs were topped with chocolate fondant icing by drizzling it from a spatula and catching the icing with the éclairs.

Then we started to put together he pieces of a St. Honore Chiboust. It starts by cutting out a circle of puff pastry and piping a ring of choux paste around the edge. That bakes up super high and cool looking. Then we made cigarette dough, or dough used to make a treat called a cigarette, and we added coco powder to that to turn it chocolate. This was scrapped into cool silicone molds and frozen, or like I had to do scrapped on a silicone mat and patterns worked into it. Chef showed us some forms that let you put patterns in it or you can do it with you fingers. After those freeze we prepared a Joconde biscuit, which is like a cake batter with meringue folded in, this was spread on top of our frozen pattern and baked. When it comes out you have a cool looking sheet of biscuit, like this. I think this is used for the sides, but that is all we did today. So that’s it.

Day Twenty Five

Ok here we go. More choux paste, made more choux and some éclairs. Just gonna get this out of the way, we did not finish the éclairs, next week. The small choux though got cut in half and filled with Chantilly cream. Also made some puff pastry, but it too is for something next week. Made pastry cream for next week, but then we made Praline cream. We took the praline cream and cut open our Paris-Brest and filled them with it. Then we freed the Bombe from its frozen prison and plated it up. We covered them in Chantilly cream and served them up right. That’s all for tonight, got to get up early tomorrow.

Day Twenty Four

Ok so this is what is going on. This week it is all about Choux paste. Choux paste, you don’t know what that is, or how to pronounce it, let me explain then.

Pâté à choux is a light pastry dough used to make profiteroles, croquembouches, éclairs, French crullers, beignets, St. Honoré cake, Indonesian kue sus, and gougères. It contains only butter, water, flour, and eggs. In lieu of a raising agent it employs high moisture content to create steam during cooking to puff the pastry.

Choux pastry is usually baked but for beignets it is fried. In Spain and Latin America churros are made of fried choux pastry, sugared and dipped in a thin chocolate blancmange for breakfast. In Austrian cuisine it is also boiled to make Marillenknödel, a sweet apricot dumpling; in that case it does not puff, but remains relatively dense. They are sometimes filled with cream and used to make cream puffs or eclairs

Thank you Wikipedia, and for it’s pronunciation as far as I can tell it’s pronounced like Shoe.

Today we made some which is kind of a cool process because it is dough that cooks twice. Water, salt sugar, and butter come to a boil in a pan. Wait, hold up, up above it says this dough only has butter, water, flour, and eggs, but I said salt and sugar. Well yea, it would taste like crap with out those. Besides that came from Wikipedia, what do they know anyways. So as soon as it boils you dump in your flour and stir it together so it becomes this thick mashed potatoy glob. With you rubber spatula you continue to move it around the pan for about five minutes. It’s good to employ a type of cutting scrape so that the dough can incorporate all the four and also let out some steam. You this is the first cooking stage for the dough, as it cooks in the pan the steam released represents moister, moister that can be put back in, in the form of eggs.

Now the eggs are what really puff up this dough so the more you can put in the puffier you get. But you only put eggs in till you get a specific consistency, so the more steam you let be released the more eggs you can put in. but the longer you cook it in the pan the higher chance you have of burning it. A real Sophie’s Choice.

So out of the pan and into a Kitchen Aid with a paddle attachment and beat away. Start adding eggs after a minute or so and stop when you reach you consistency. What you are looking for is a shiny sticky dough that looks like a thick cake batter, not runny, but will hold together between you fingers when you pull them apart. After that you can put it in a piping bag and do just about what ever you want with them. We spent about an hour or so practicing a few shapes. We would pipe them onto a piece of parchment paper and then scrape it back into our bowls, and back into out bags. Then we piped out the Choux shape, which is just a small round shape. We gave them some egg wash and cover the top in sugar pieces before tossing them in the oven.

Next we started on a Paris-Brest; a Paris-Brest is a choux paste wheel. You pipe a circle of choux paste using your Big Star Tip, and then another circle on it’s inside. Then a third circle is piped on to where the first two meet. This gets and egg wash and baked and when it comes out of the oven it’s a wheel. Eventually we will slice them laterally and fill them with hazelnut cream. Now the origin of the Paris-Brest goes back to a famous bike race that goes between Paris and Brest. Some baker along the rout made these because they are in the shape of a bike tire. Cool hu?

Day Twenty Three

Ok, let’s get right into it, I started my day by finally rolling out my Danish dough and folding it around my butter. Then took it to the sheeter for four turns and to be rolled out to thin. Then laid it out on a table and used my pastry cutter to get it into 4x4 squares. They go back in the freezer for a bit to cool down and then each square gets folded into a cool way. There were pin wheels, and bow ties and bear claws and triangles that I turned into batman symbols, what, wait, you don’t believe me. Oh course you believe me; I turned pastry into batman, who wouldn’t.

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Batman

The Danishes got a smattering of frangipane and some got some apricots on top too. They proofed and then they baked, and then we ate some of them.

While that was going on we were also churning our vanilla ice cream, and making dough for some baguettes and dinner rolls. So I learned how to roll the baguettes, which involves hitting them, which frankly is a lot of fun; and how to shape the dinner rolls. The rolls were interesting because we braded some and made tiny little loafs out of others, and some were just balls. Those had to proof along time because the yeast had little sugar to work with.

Also while that was going on the made parfait, now I know what you are thinking but this was just a type of cream. It was vanilla cream with just a bit of whipped cream added in. a little like Bavarian cream but much more sauce like.

Then we started on the bombs. Bombs are as follows, a ice cold bowl, layer of ice cream in the shape of the bowl, layer of sorbet in the shape of the ice cream, fill the rest with parfait, and top with a thin cake round. Freeze for a day or two, then turn out and eat. Sounds good right, well I have tried it all and it tastes better then you are thinking it does right now. It’s vanilla ice cream and strawberry sorbet, put them together and you have one of those strawberry shortcake bars from the ice cream man.

Some one sent us up the BOMB

Then it was time for dinner, and dinner was so good you would hate to even hear about it so I will spare you. Then I came home where mom and dad immediately ate two Danishes. If I have the time this weekend I will try and make Danishes, but this time fill them with cream cheese.

Day Twenty Two

Today was just a makeup day spent with Chef Phillip. spent a lot of time practicing piping and played a little bit with fondant.

I made a Platypus

Chef did this not me.