Week 7 (Basic Patisserie)

How did we get to week 7 already!? This week advanced the cakes onto gateaus and charlottes. These would have looked quite complex, and would have been unimaginable 6 weeks ago, but a few key techniques later and it seemed more a case of getting the assembly right, than worrying about the genoise not being made properly. 
This week was really interesting, the practical lessons seem to be getting tougher in terms of what we're expected to produce, but equally easier at the same time. The techniques are taught fairly repetitively as well, so there's always more than one chance to make and practice something. I was practicing the exam dishes last weekend and realised, after my timing disaster in the eclairs practical, that pastry cream can be made very quickly. So hopefully from now on, there will be no more standing around for 20-30 minutes waiting for it to thicken, because I've now got it cracked in 10! It's getting faster and more confident with things like that that I think are really helping make the practicals seem easier, in one respect, because you can have elements ready and give yourself more time to assemble and present. 

On wednesday afternoon we had the usual lecture. This week it was on fruit and fruit identification. The theory side went into all kinds of fruit, from the everyday to the exotic. The fruit identification bit was really interesting, we had pictures of fruit I've never seen before and had to put names against them all. A few names that stick in my mind are; 
- Durian, the worlds smelliest fruit, descriptions of odour ranged from sewage to rotting flesh - delightful! Tastes like custard though...apparently, we didn't have one to try, 
- Kiwano (aka jelly melon), we did have one of these to try and they're yellow and horned on the outside, but inside they have little green jelly sacks with a pip in the middle. It tasted ok, but it took a good bit of chewing to actually get the little jelly sacks to pop in your mouth, even then they still didn't relent properly and it was a case of resorting to just swallowing it and hoping for the best! (no ill effects thus far, at the time of writing, I'm happy to report!) 
- Rambutans, they're like spiky lychees, didn't try one but they looked quite nice. 
- Dragonfruit, they always look really nice - bright pink flesh with little bits of green on the tips of their soft spiky bits, then cut across the middle they're almost white with little black pips, which is the bit you eat. I've tasted it before and not been keen, today wasn't an exception to that, its starts out with the promise of being nice, but then gets a weird after taste which gets more and more unpleasant. I'm sure in their native country they'd taste nice though! 
- Snake fruit (Salak), we didn't have one of these to try but it looked like a pear covered in snake skin. 
- Star fruit, these looked nice but the one in class didn't taste of much. 
There were many others that I can't recall of the top of my head (but need to revise ready for the written exam!). There were a few familiar ones as well, which all tasted nice! Young rhubarb, gooseberry (finally got a sweet one to eat raw!) and blood orange (one of my absolute favourites). 

Thursday was a really long day, in for 8am for a demo on black forest gateau, which we recreated in the practical, and a strawberry gateau. Both looked really nice in the end, I shouldn't really be surprised given how much experience the teaching chefs have, but they really have a great skill in making something look superb. The cakes were genoise sponges (not more whisking, please!), chocolate in the case of the black forest gateau, cut into 4 slices and soaked in kirsch flavoured imbibage, filled with chantilly cream and a cherry compote. It was then masked with more chantilly cream and decorated with chocolate. This was our first real lesson playing with chocolate decoration - it was quite fun, it was difficult to work properly with though, we'll do it more in Intermediate luckily. The strawberry gateau was much the same, but with a plain genoise sponge, grand mariner flavoured imbibage, chantilly cream, fresh strawberries and decorated with a bit more chocolate and a few chopped pistachios. 

The practical was at 6:30pm, so after a visit from my sister and a trip to Borough Market, we managed to fill the 8 hours between classes (and our bellies in the market!) and then made our way into the kitchen. I must have done something truly wicked in a former life, not only was today a day where I'd have been awake 20 hours before being able to get into bed, this practical required no less than 2 vigorous whisking sessions. Firstly to make a genoise sponge, then secondly to make the chantilly cream. My arms were buggered after finishing the cream! The genoise came out well and I think all the whisking helped because it got a really good rise on the cake, I made the imbibage quickly and preped our workstations for the chocolate work while my partner made the cherry compote. We then had to smooth some already tempered chocolate over a transfer sheet, let it set until touch dry and then cut whatever shapes we wanted to decorate the cake with. Then it was set aside to rest in the fridge. 
The sponge, one single sponge cake, had to have the top trimmed off, and then it had to be sliced into no less than 4 slices, of which we were only going to use the best 3. It was at this point I was really glad the cake had a good rise! The slices seemed to come out fairly even. Once the cream was whipped, and more shells and rosettes piped for chef to check, it was time to assemble the cake. It was assembled in the cake ring and everything was layered up, and the cream piped in to keep it even. The top then had to be masked and our serrated knives dragged across the top in a nice pattern, then it was time to de-ring the cake. It looked really nice when it came out, but the sides then had to be masked with more cream and the chocolate decoration applied to the outside. 8 more rosettes were piped on top and then 8 cherries placed on top of them. Aside from a little issue with a couple of bits of chocolate breaking I was really happy with the final result! 

Friday we were back in again for another demo, and more chocolate work! Chef made two different cakes - a Charlotte aux Fruits de la Passion (passionfruit charlotte) and a Charlotte aux Chocolat, of which we were to make the latter. Its a biscuit sponge trimmed to line the sides and bottom of a cake ring - piped to give a nice diagonal finish on the outside, filled with a bavarois and topped with decoration. The bavarois is basically a custard with gelatine, either chocolate or passionfruit juice added and then whipped cream folded in as well. The passion fruit one had fruit on top and the chocolate one had an elaborate chocolate decoration on top. I stuck around to try these ones and was extremely glad I did! They were both really light and really delicious. Having said that, Basic Patisserie D (the best group) got caught out as the pigs of the course, while everyone gathered around the cakes to take pictures, a good half of our group gathered around the plates to make sure we got a good taste of what had been made. It worked! 

Roll on the evening and the practical came round. I was quite nervous about this one, there was a lot that could go wrong and given it was another late lesson and I was ready for bed instead of a lesson in the kitchen, a lot was bound to go wrong! We started out with the sponge, we had to split the egg yolks and whites and whisk the sugar into the eggs yolks first, then make a french meringue - by hand, more vigorous whisking (seriously, there are a line of kitchen aid mixers on the shelves right above our heads begging to be used, they're sat there looking down on us, taunting us, mocking us, laughing at us! Just let us use them already!!). Shouldn't complain too much though, any remnants of bingo wings should disappear in a couple of weeks at this rate, and I'll have arms like a body builder!. The meringue and egg yolks were folded together and the flour added gently. This was then piped onto a tray and baked quickly. Meanwhile, working in pairs when had to prepare the bavarois. Starting with what's best described as a chocolate custard, gelatine was then added and then cooled over an ice bath and folded in to whipped cream - guess who got to whip said cream! We then had to trim the sponges and apply a heavily rum laced imbibage. It was my partners turn to be heavy handed with the rum this week, she got absolutely no argument from me though! The bavarois was added in the middle and then left to set in the chiller. Then it was on to the chocolate decoration. Earlier in the lesson we had to spread melted chocolate onto the back of a tray and put it into the fridge to set, now it was time to arm ourselves with a scraper and quickly and confidently scrape long strands (which hopefully ravelled up nicely) and shape the and place them on a small cake card. The aim was to create a frilly looking round pyramid. Mine seemed to ravel straight up into a tight cigar shape so I had to quickly unravel it again(I have naturally hot hands, useless for chocolate work!), and frill it up a bit, all while avoiding it melting and breaking - not the easiest job in the world, but one I'll look forward to trying again! To make up for a not so great second layer I put more chocolate on top - I thought it looked ok and jazzed it up a bit...chef on the other hand thought there was a tad too much chocolate and joked that he couldn't see the other students at the other end of the kitchen because it was so tall/big. I fear he might have been a bit delirious from a long day, not quite the full ticket, or just devoid of any sense. How can you possibly have too much chocolate? Thats like saying there's too much sand on a beach, or too much money in your monthly wages - sheer bloody nonsense! Still, got good feedback for it apart from that and was really happy with the end result! Chef was really happy with how everyone did and said it was a good lesson. He'd made some toasted hazelnut fudge during the lesson, to prep for a lecture he was doing the next day, and let us all taste a sample - it was very nice and a treat to end the lesson on. Really enjoyed this lesson. 

A great end to a really good week. With each week that passes I love this course more and more, it is certainly, most definitely, exactly, 100% what I wanted and needed to do. The people in class are great to work with as well, I've said it before and I'll say it again, its truly a privilege to work with them. Ready for next week already...well, maybe one little lay in first!

My Black Forest Gateau! Really happy with how this turned out, aside from a little balls up with the chocolate, didn't quite get it spread properly and it left me with a few broken shards, so a couple were more like mosaics than full triangles - it was my first time doing it properly, it'll come eventually! This tasted really nice, and the cherries come soaked in kirsch, and we put more kirsch in the imbibage, I LOVE Black Forest Gateau so this was a real treat to make and eat. 

My chocolate charlotte - you can just about see it under the mountain of chocolate on top! The bavarois in the middle was really really nice. And I was quite happy with the sponge around the outside, I know how to improve that a bit more now though, and make the diagonal lines more defined. This was a chocoholics dream and a dish I fully intend to recreate at some point. Maybe with even more chocolate on the top, ha!

Week 6 (Basic Patisserie)

This week saw the start of cake making, and the last of our three potential exam dishes - a genoise sponge covered in buttercream and filled with a raspberry jam and decorated with chocolate - sounds quite easy when you say it like that! 

We started this week off with a lecture on Wednesday afternoon, on dairy products and eggs. Learnt all about what makes up the egg, percentages of egg white etc. also the percentages of fat in cream and various different types of milk. As far as lectures go this was quite a fun one. Chef started the lesson by handing out jam jars half full of whipping cream, with which we'd be making butter. We were working in pairs and had to shake the jar very vigorously until we ended up separating the fat from the water, the fat lumped together and sat in the middle of the jar was a lump of butter. It took a good 5 minutes of hard shaking to get to that stage but we all got there in the end, one girl was very enthusiastically going for it (lucky husband!). The butter was then drained from the water and we got to try some on a bit of bread. I'm not a great lover of butter but this was really light (thanks to using whipping cream rather than double cream), it needed a bit of salt though. A few slides and the usual filling in the blanks filled the next hour or so and then chef started a debate that would turn friend into foe and divide the nation completely. How to pronounce "scone". It came about because we'd moved onto clotted cream and chef passed around some little scones with jam and clotted cream on, which we had to taste - this course is so hard sometimes! There was a bit of a split in the class, the group I'm in, on one side of the room, and the other group on the other, roughly. Most of the other group are Asian and looked on completely bemused as the English members of my group (me included) passionately took up arms and argued with people we'd previously considered friends! I'm in the scone like 'gone' camp. Scone like 'cone' is just wrong, and fortunately chef cleared up the origins and it seems like it should be pronounced like 'gone'. The 'cone' people didn't seem overly bothered though and will no doubt carry on pronouncing it that way (wrongly). Never let it be said that I don't respect anyones right to have an opinion. Its completely the 'cone' camp's right to pronounce it how they want, even though they're wrong. 

Then he started the next debate, jam on first or cream on first. Im very much in the jam on first camp - and luckily so was chef! You get a nice dollop of cream on it that way. I'm never quite sure whether that makes me more Cornish or Devonish. By the end of the lesson we'd all made friends again though. It's quirks like that that make me love being English, I mean, who really cares how its pronounced or which condiment you put on first, either way they're still mouthfuls of perfection! 

Thursday was a really long day, up at 4am for an 8am start. The demo was for madeleines, lemon cake and a cake made from marzipan and pistachio, of which we had to then recreate the first two in the practical. The lemon cake looked really nice, it was baked in a loaf tin and then a lemon glaze/syrup was applied to all sides, it then had a sprinkling of icing sugar applied and some candied lemon peel (exactly like we had to make for the lemon tart). The madeleines were little shell shaped cakes flavoured with some honey, they're baked in a special tin, giving them their shell shape. On the other side however we had to make sure it had the characteristic little bump. Personally I'd prefer a smoother surface on it, as opposed to an overinflated nipple, but we're here to learn it the proper way! These, straight out of the oven, were a real treat. The marzipan and pistachio cake looked like a throwback from the 70's, but despite looking dense in texture was actually really nice (if you like marzipan, which I do!). The lesson ended and we then had an 8 hour wait until our next lesson at 6:30pm! It was a long day. That said it was broken up by a trip to an eclair shop - they looked amazing, but at £5.20 an eclair (no I didn't mistype that!), I stuck to a free sample of choux pastry, which tasted divine. Lunch out and a walk around Hyde Park in the sun filled in a lot of the time and was a very nice way to spend an afternoon. A few of us had also got a ticket for the Superior students afternoon tea party event. Just to check out what we'd be expected to do in a few months. All I can say is wow! 

(PIC HERE)

The cakes were so nice, and the little scones, and they kept refilling the tray. Needless to say, the three people from my group that I was sat with all had to take a breather at the end to avoid being sick. We majorly overdosed on sugar and cake...it was worth it though, it was really really nice. It really excited me for the coming months and challenges as well. It was also a good opportunity to talk to three really nice girls from an intermediate patisserie class, they've already been through what we're about to go through and gave some really useful hints and tips. 

The evening saw us back in the kitchen. We started out with the lemon cake and then moved onto our madeleine batter while the cakes were in the oven. While the batter was resting in the fridge we moved onto making the candied lemon peel. It needed to be julienned, which I'd go too thick initially then had to promptly halve the strips I'd made! They had to be blanched 4 times and then cooked in a sugar syrup until translucent and candied - I will get them right, start to finish, one day - hopefully on exam day, if we get the lemon tart! They came out of the syrup fine this time though, so in the end they were ok! The madeleine tins had to then be butter, refrigerated, buttered again and floured, so the madeleines didn't stick, all the while being careful not to stick out fingers in the moulds otherwise the madeleines would have stuck. While the madeleines were baking I decorated the lemon cake, I was a bit over-enthusiastic with the milk and made the cake batter slightly too lose to it slightly fell over the sides of the tin and had a little muffin top, but nothing too bad. I was still happy with it in the end. Luckily all of the madeleines turned out of the tin as well. My nubbins weren't quite as pronounced at others were however they still seemed to pass the test and I got some useful feedback from the chef. 

Friday started with an 11:30 demo. Time for our final potential exam dish - Genoise a la Confiture de Framboises (now it sounds more difficult!). 

Week 5 (Basic Patisserie)

Week 5 was choux pastry - a potential exam dish, and basic breads. The end of this week marked the halfway point through Basic Patisserie!

We started on Wednesday with another lecture, this time on dry storeroom goods - nuts and spices mainly. There isn't really much to say about the lectures, the chef talks through the slides and we have to fill in the blank bits of information in our folders. Pretty uneventful to blog about, however it was a useful lesson as I hadn't realised Apricots contained a kernel that was used to flavour Amaretto (a big favourite!). There was one incident in class that is worth retelling though. We had a male French chef for this class and I'm not great with accents at the best of times, on this occasion I think chef said "when I was a young guy", unfortunately I misheard that as "when I was a young girl". A couple of other people had misinterpreted that as well and went to laugh, as I did, and then we very quickly realised the rest of the class hadn't heard it that way and that was most definitely not what the chef had said as he carried on talking without batting an eyelid. Ordinarily it would have been chuckled about and moved on from very quickly, but when you're in an environment where you're supposed to listen and pay attention things that wouldn't normally be that funny suddenly become the most hilarious thing you've ever heard. Most people that know me know me well enough that when I get the giggles I can't stop laughing. Fortunately I was in the middle of class so could hide a bit, but the chef was at the front of the class for this bit and kept looking round at everyone. Every time he looked in my direction I had to bite my lip and put on a straight face quickly, despite laughing hard inside!! After a good 5 minutes I finally managed to pull myself together again and wiped the tears away and my body had stopped shaking from the laughter!! Not the only time this week that I got a fit of the giggles though. 

Thursday was a long day. We had a demo in the morning on coffee eclairs. We had to make the choux pastry by hand, pipe it, make a pasty cream and let it cool, prepare the fondant icing, knock back the pastry cream and flavour it and then fill the eclairs. Once all that was done we also had to apply the fondant evenly and then pipe a chocolate decoration on top. This one's a potential exam dish, so paying full attention to everything was of the utmost importance. It didn't look too bad, I was actually quite looking forward to getting in the kitchen and doing this one...

After the demo we all had a 10 minute mid-term review with an assigned chef, who acts as our mentor. We were given a break down of our grades for each practical lesson so far. In the practical lessons we are marked on 5 areas; teamwork, organisation, hygiene, preparation and presentation, and for each of those areas we are given a score of 1 - 5 (1 being the lowest, 5 the highest). I was pleased to see a lot of 3's and 4's against the various practical sessions and even one 5 on there! It was for presentation in the Jalousie lesson - I'm still really chuffed with that one. I averaged it out and it came to 3.75, which when converted to a percentage is roughly 75-ish%. More than enough for a pass, so I'm very happy with progress so far, just need to keep up this pace. 

After the feedback we had a couple of hours wait before we went into the kitchens to make the eclairs. It started out ok, made the choux pastry fine and I was pretty happy with how I piped it too, it went in the oven - we were all a bit slower than chef wanted but no matter. I'm not sure what happened then but I slowed down majorly and fell behind, I got my pastry cream on but it took ages to thicken. I had to leave it off the heat while I sorted out the eclair shells, which were now cooked. Made the little holes in the bottom of them, but the pastry cream was still liquid - and everyone else had either finished theirs or were just finishing. It eventually came together though, and I got it in the blast chiller to cool down quickly. Got my station tidied and rearranged and then when the pastry cream was ready I knocked it back like a mad man possessed, added the coffee extract and straight into the piping bag. I then proceeded to fill the eclairs as quick as I could. They don't just need a bit of filling here and there, they need a good piping until its bulging out of the other holes in the bottom! Scraped the excess down and then got the fondant sorted. It's really weird stuff, I've never used it before, but you need to heat it to around body temp to keep it shiny, but also loose enough to work with. We also had to flavour that with coffee extract, which helped thin it down enough to drizzle over the eclairs. By this point I seemed to have caught up and actually managed to get the fondant on my eclairs pretty quickly. Then to finish them we had to pipe chocolate on the top. Because I hadn't quite got the fondant wide enough on a couple of the eclairs I went with the slightly simpler design than the one I practiced the night before. Then before we knew it the lesson was over, got some useful feedback, just need to work on precision a bit more - which fortunately was an action I'd set myself (we had to set 3) at the mid term review. The other two were to get the Pate Brisee right and to work on my piping! It was a late finish, so after quite a stressful lesson I was happy to get home, although annoyed with myself that I'd got so far behind, but at least its a good learning curve. Just hope the marks weren't too bad! 

Friday morning we had the basic breads demo (the one I've been waiting for!), and unfortunately this was the second time in the week I got a fit of giggles. Although this time I think the chef knew what he was doing! We were shown how to make soda bread, white dinner rolls and a couple of brown loaves. The loaves looked great and came out looking very nice - no pressure! The rolls were also a work of art, and the chef showed us lots of different styles; mini baguette shape, round rolls, knots, plaits, a turtle and others. The one that caught me out though was the double knot. Chef did three of each and left the dough in various stages of each shape on the worktop. Unfortunately with the double knot, the first stage you shape it too before tucking the ends under looks phallic. I couldn't help it, when he left it there I had to succumb to a laughing fit and hope I didn't get told off for it - in the front row there's nowhere to hide! Fortunately I didn't get told off! Childish I know, but if at the age of 27 I haven't grown out of it now I think its time to abandon hope I ever will. Not that I ever really wanted to anyway, life's a lot more fun when you laugh a lot! I'm not ashamed to say I hung around a long time after this lesson and tried A LOT of the bread, in fact I was one of the last 6 or 7, in a room of about 60ish! The bread was that nice, and I couldn't stop myself. Truth be told I didn't want to stop myself either! That was it for friday, it was nice to have just one lesson so I could get the notes written up and early to bed ready for an early start Saturday morning. 

Saturday morning, 4am alarm, tummy still full of bread - lord have mercy. The coach driver was a miserable old git as well, alas the weather was nice enough to walk to school and sit in the park outside to woof down a quick bit of breakfast, so I could wake myself up a bit before the 8am start! 

The lesson went really well, we started on the dough for the dinner rolls and gave it a good knead and slap around. While it was bulk fermenting we started on the soda bread. Once that was made and shaped it was time to get the other dough out and shape it into the rolls. I went for the double knot! The single knot, round rolls and a wheat shaped roll (not really sure how best to describe it), for the ones I was presenting, and coated some in poppy seed, sesame seed and caraway seed. Then with the leftover dough I made a couple of single stranded plaits (thanks for showing/reminding me how it was done George!), an olive filled wheat shape, a mini loaf and a suspect looking turtle! We got to play with the last few bits so it was up to us what we made. Chef told us all the animals had to go on one tray so he could open a zoo! We had about 3 turtles, a nice looking fish, a fat panda and a monkey, and a very nice looking octopus. I think its fair to say we all really enjoyed this lesson a lot! In fact its been my favourite one so far. I love making (and eating) bread. The feedback I got was also really good. Chef said the bake on the rolls, the shaping and application of extras was good and he also said I'd made a "Very very good soda bread" - dead chuffed with that feedback!

So that's the halfway point now passed for Basic Patisserie. It's going ridiculously fast, but even with the stressful moments, I'm loving it. The final practical exam/assessment is only a month away now, it feels way too close for comfort, but I'm finding time to re-read recipes, practice the dishes and piping techniques, so preparing as best I can. 

My coffee eclairs, need to get them sized better, work on the fondant application and also the chocolate piping (and not fanny around with the pastry cream!) but overall I was happy with them. The family thoroughly enjoyed them anyway! 

The soda bread and bread rolls. I'm really really happy with how these turned out, and will definitely make these again...and again...and again! 

Week 4 (Basic Patisserie)

This week was puff pastry week! 

There was only one lecture on Wednesday morning. An 8am lecture on flour, sugar and honey. Not much to say about it really, it was interesting and I need to go back over my notes as there was a lot to take in. At least I now know how flour is produced though. 

Thursday and again only one lesson. This time it was a demo on how to make puff pastry (to use in a later lesson), and use some already prepared pastry to make a jalousie. A jalousie is a puff pastry tart, in this case filled with poached pears and an almond cream. We got to taste it after chef finished and it was really nice, and looked really impressive too. I was looking forward to making this one. 

Friday morning saw another demo, using the puff pastry that was made the lesson before (which we hadn't made yet, as the practical for that was in the evening), to make a fruit bande tart. A strip of puff pastry filled with pastry cream and topped with lots of fruit. The offcuts of the puff pastry were also used to make palmiers, which went down very well after the mid-lesson break! They are little rolls of puff pastry that have sugar thrown over them at every opportunity, making them crunchy, caramelised and really nice once baked. Chef made two bandes, one with the fruit all in a line, the other with the fruit scattered, both of which looked really nice. I was pretty much sold at that point that I was going to do the lines of fruit rather than the scattered approach. 

The teaching chefs have a way of making everything look effortless and easy in the demos, and it lulls you into a false sense of security on how the practical will go. I'm always a bit nervous before going into the kitchen because we're assessed on everything we make. Roll on the Friday evening and I wasn't overly nervous, if I was making puff pastry and a jalousie at home it wouldn't be an overly difficult task....but I don't have a shouty chef at home, making me speed up and get flustered! During the lesson I was looking at my notes, but my mind had gone blank, I didn't know where I was or what I was supposed to be doing next, all I knew was that I was behind (as a few others were too after a quick scan down the room, so that put me slightly more at ease) at various stages - and that was just in the first hour! Fortunately though the making of the dough for the puff pastry, and the rolling of the butter didn't go too badly. I managed to get the first few turns done ok and it was rolling out nicely after the butter had been incorporated. Meanwhile we also had to roll out more pastry and cut it to the right size for our jalousies, we also had to poach some pears and make an almond cream for the filling. We worked in pairs for the pears and almond cream, and I have to own up to cocking up with the almond cream. There had been a mis-communication between me and my partner as I misheard what she'd said. She was weighing everything out and I was mixing it all together, I'd gathered a few things while the pears were going on but hadn't weighed the flour out, we ended up with too much and luckily I realised as I was pouring it in to the creamed butter, sugar and eggs. unfortunately it was mixed with ground almonds already, I then had to proceed to grab handfuls of flour out of the mixture (after a quick look to check chef wasn't watching!!), in the hope that we'd got roughly the right amount. My fault entirely, however at then end when ours came out of the oven it hadn't had bled through the lattice work so we must have salvaged it ok - phew! We laughed about it at the time and afterwards! A few more turns of our puff pastry and a fight with a lattice cutter, and it was all of a sudden time to clean down and tidy up.

The first hour and a half of the lesson was a blur of rushing things along, the class getting audibly encouraged to hurry up by chef, but at the end of it all I finally managed to get a French chef to say what I had produced was "very good" I was absolutely over the moon! The lesson seemed to have done a complete 180, after feeling stressed, behind and everyone being encouraged to speed up at the beginning, seeing my jalousie on the board at the end and getting praised for it made it all worth it. The block of puff pastry ready for Saturday's practical didn't look too bad either, so I was happy. 

Saturday we had a 3pm lesson and had to use the puff pastry we made the night before to make a Bande Feuilletee aux Fruits de Saison, my french isn't great but I think that roughly translates to puff pastry band of seasonal fruits! This was a fairly relaxed lesson and felt a lot calmer than the night before. The pastry turned out ok and in this lesson we only had to worry about rolling out our pastry, trimming and assembling it properly, making some pastry cream and chopping some fruit. Everything seemed to run to plan, I managed to get it cut fairly well and luckily it rose well in the oven. Just need to improve on the overall shaping and keeping it neat and tidy. The scoring pattern was also cut a little deep. The pastry cream came out well though and held really well in the tart, despite a vigorous knocking back and good lacing with Grand Marnier (why not, it is the weekend after all!). The fruit also sat well on the top. Got some good and really useful feedback from the chef too, so left the lesson and finished week 4 extremely content at what I'd learned and where I still need to improve on. 

Scarily next week is the half way point in Basic Patisserie, its come round really quickly, but we get some one on one feedback on how we're doing overall next Thursday, so I'm looking forward to hearing how its going from their point of view. I think I'm doing ok and pretty happy with progress so far - we'll see next week!

My Jalousie, really really pleased with how this one turned out. And it tasted really nice too. 

My Bande Fuilletee aux Fruits de Saison, it didn't quite rise properly and need to improve on the scoring and crimping at the edges. Having said that the pastry cream came out really well, and the fruit sat well on the top and looked nice one glazed. Can't wait to get this home to taste it! All in all a good weeks work!

Week 3 (Basic Patisserie)

Tart week!

This week went so quickly, only in three days this week, so with the coming Monday being a bank holiday I get a three day weekend!! Given how the schedule looks this is pretty much a mini holiday! Having said that it means I can practice lots and hopefully improve on what I did this week.

The week started pretty abruptly - exam dishes and prep! We have now been told which three possible dishes we will get in the exam in June. It'll either be lemon tart, coffee eclairs or a nice looking genoise cake with jam and butter cream and fancy piping on top (can't remember the name). We need to learn the recipe quantities, method and what it should look like. To look at them it looked fairly ok...until we went into the weeks first demo! Just the one lesson on Wednesday, so that was it for the day after that lecture.

Thursday we had a demo, followed straight away by the practical. In the demo we were shown how to make the lemon tart, and how to pipe the fancy meringue topping on top - its harder than it looks! We were also shown a chocolate tart (which I fully intend to do this weekend as I didn't hang around to try any, the classroom was boiling hot and I really needed some fresh air). There seemed to be lots of techniques to the lemon tart - first off we were shown how to make pate brisee (shortcrust pastry), then lemon curd, then confit lemon strips to use as decoration on top, and finally italian meringue - which is just piped on top and then browned with a blow torch. We were warned that this would be a tough practical....should have taken that warning a little more seriously!

Straight from the demo and into the kitchen, it was a huge learning curve. The lemon tart is a potential exam dish, so the practical was treated as such. It was very intense on the multi-tasking front. You had to start the pastry, get that in the fridge, peel, cut, zest and juice some lemons and get the zest and juice into a bowl on a bain marie (for the curd), then it was blanching the strips of lemon, weighing out more ingredients for the curd, back to the pastry, blind bake the pastry, back to the curd, back to the lemon strips (now put in a syrup), keeping an eye on the pastry so it didn't burn...back to the curd, then italian meringue then piping....as we were warned - tough! Very heavy on the multi-tasking front and something I want to practice more to get a bit more confident on timings. At least it was edible at the end of it! I think everyone left the kitchen exhausted, it took a lot of concentration. But we made it through it! The irritating thing is that Ive made shortcrust pastry and curd before and got better results, its just different in the kitchens when you're being judged and following a procedure you're not completely familiar with. No matter though, I'd much rather 100 things go wrong and only 1 go right, than the other way around, it's much easier to learn from and improve that way. Oh and I enjoyed using the blow torch again, only managed to singe one tiny ridge of meringue (which almost required blowing out when it looked for a split second like it was about to actually catch light), other than that it was nicely browned over the rest of it, so I consider it a good job done!

Friday was another demo, this time pate sucree (sweet pastry), used to make an apple tart, fruit and pastry cream tart and also a almond cream tart (a bit like frangipane). The end results chef made looked impressive, unfortunately we were recreating the least sexy looking one (the apple tart), but my favourite in the flavour department, so I was happy!

This kitchen session, compared to the last one was a lot more relaxed! We had to make our sweet pastry, using the creaming method, then make an apple compote, then finish off with more apple on top. We had to get the dreaded mandolins out for the apple topping. The were mean looking machines but got the job done quickly and I can't recall anybody falling victim to them and slicing off half the skin on their hand, luckily. This lesson finished a bit early which was nice and was a bit slower paced than the one previous (we weren't dawdling by any stretch of the imagination though!), so a nice lesson to finish the week on.

Lemon tart, although it looks nice there were quite a few errors with this one! The pastry was overworked (I did it exactly as we were shown!), the curd was overcooked and apparently tasted a bit eggy - I couldn't get my head around this one, to me it tasted fine...and on the plus side it held very well when cut! The julienne lemon shards on top weren't quite cut to a regular enough size and were overcooked in the syrup. The meringue was good though and chef was happy with the piping for a first attempt, plus it tasted really nice when everything was eaten together! It was really useful feedback though, because I now know what techniques I need to hone and improve. Plus I can practice lots and improve my multi-tasking!

Apple tart, although this doesn't look quite as good as the one above there wasn't as much wrong with it!! The tart ring could have been lined a little better to get a really nice finish on the outside of the pastry case, and the apple decoration could be a bit tighter on top, but the compote filling came out great. Cant wait to get this one home to eat - it's sat warm at my feet, on the bus, and I get the occasional waft of warm apple! 

This week has been quite tough, it dawned on me how difficult the exams ahead are likely to be, but even though it feels like a massive mountain looming in the distance, I feel that with enough practice, patience and more practice, it can be conquered. I'm excited to practice this weekend too,  I don't see doing a shed load more baking as a chore, so that can only be a good thing. What really helps is that I absolutely love it at the school. Its a great place to learn and although you don't always get good feedback, the negative feedback is the most useful because you know exactly what you need to improve on...and that's exactly what I intend to do!