Week 6 (Intermediate Patisserie)

This week was an introduction to entremets!

It was a really busy week this week, with both work and school, so its only a short(ish) post this time.

Monday we started with a demo for a caramelised pear and chocolate mousse cake/torte. It’s built in a ring and has a biscuit sponge, covered in flaked nuts, lined on the base and around the sides. It’s then filled with a rich dark chocolate mousse, which is set with gelatine. Caramelised pears are added to the middle and a thin ganache-like glaze is poured on top of the mousse. The top is then decorated with a quarter of a caramelised pear, some white chocolate piping on the glaze and a tempered chocolate piped pear, with the outline and a “P” piped in dark chocolate and the middle then filled in with white chocolate.

The practical lesson went without a hitch, we worked in pairs, so shared the various jobs we had to do between us. We had to temper the chocolate again, which I seem to finally be getting the hang of, and I was very pleased with how the chocolate piping went too. The only slight issue we had to deal with was the mousse not quite reaching setting point as quickly as we’d have liked – probably down to using a bowl that was slightly too small, however it got there in the end so we didn’t lose too much time on it. Got some really good comments from the chef, so a great end to the day.

Tuesday we had a demo and practical introducing us to our first entremet (there will be a few next term apparently, so this was preparing us for that). An entremet is a base of some description encased in a mousse, with an insert of fruit jelly. In the case of todays lesson it was a pistachio piped sponge as the base. A redcurrant fruit jelly in the centre and this was all encased in a white chocolate mousse. A white chocolate ganache glaze was applied to the top and we had to pipe dark chocolate on to this, which we had to feather through with a toothpick. It was then decorated with fresh berries. Around the sides we had to attached squares of dark chocolate. These were made on a ridged acetate sheet, which had to be brushed over with a luster powder first, the chocolate then had to be tempered before being spread over the sheet. Once the chocolate had started to set it was then cut into squares and left to dry fully. At which point you hoped you hadn’t spread it too thin, so they came off the acetate without cracking (a couple of mine did near the edge…sodding wonky palette knife!!).

The only issue we had in the lesson was the mousse (again!), it needed to be put in ring asap so it could set in the blast chiller, however ours wasn’t quite cold enough to be at setting point and was still fairly liquid. It assembled ok, but did start to leak out the bottom a little bit, luckily not too much though, so disaster was mostly averted! The other issue was my dark chocolate piping/glaze setting before I could run the toothpick through it, so rather than drag the pattern through the glaze, it started snapping the little solidified chocolate sticks! That aside though I got great comments from the chef, and was immensely proud of what I produced.

Wednesday afternoon was the last lesson of the week, a lecture on sugar paste flowers. There are a couple of really good cake decorators among the pastry chefs, and we had one of them for this lesson. Watching him work could be described as painstaking if you weren’t interested in the lesson, however I found it fascinating. The flowers he managed to create looked really realistic; daisies, lilies, little buds that could be used as inserts in large floral displays, a rose and carnation. We’ll be decorating the fruit cakes we made a few weeks back, at the end of the term, and need to start thinking about how we want them to look. This lesson left me with a fair few ideas. I really enjoyed this lesson and will definitely look forward to practicing the flowers for any celebration cakes I make in the future.

It was a really good week this week. I never lose the love for the course, however every now and again I have the odd week or lesson that acts as a reminder just how much I truly, deeply, love it, and how much this is absolutely, completely, 100% what I want to do for the rest of my life – this week was one of those weeks.

The caramelised pear and chocolate mousse 'thing' - can't remember what it was described as in class! The name matters not though, the taste was divine! Plus I'm pretty happy with how the chocolate piping is coming along, actually, I don't blow my own trumpet often, sod it - I'm extremely happy with how the chocolate piping is coming along! 

This entremet is quite possibly the nicest thing we've made so far. Its perfectly balanced, the white chocolate really goes well with the pistachio sponge, redcurrant jelly and fresh fruit on top. Plus I'm quite chuffed that the chocolate spike on top managed to stay in one piece, it was very fragile and got blown over by a gust of wind as I walked up to the chef to get it presented. Fortunately it stayed in one piece and I got it stood back up!