Week 4 (Superior Patisserie)

This week was the restaurant desserts module. I wasn’t overly excited about it, however there was more chocolate work, so it wasn’t a complete loss! It was a really busy week this week, but it was the return of the cheese lecture again – well worth only 4 hours sleep for!!

Monday was a long day, we had (another) 8am start, which was a demo lesson. It was really rushed because the chef had a lot to do in the time. Luckily I was just about awake enough to keep up, it was a challenge though! I still needed to clarify what we actually needed to present in the first two lessons – turns out it was nothing! It was all preparation work ready for lessons 3 and 4. Should have guessed by the lack of anything to taste at the end really!

Straight after the demo we went into the practical. There was a lot to do in the first two workshops, we had a lot of sauces to prepare and two desserts ready for plating the next day, as well as pastry bases to get ready and chilled for baking in the next lesson. I paired up with one of the people I’ve been in a group with since the beginning (purely because we were stood next to each other at the door waiting to go in!), we worked really well together.  I got on with the lemon parfait while my partner started the crème brulee insert for the chocolate mousses. Then a sweet pastry and a chocolate sweet pastry had to be prepared and chilled. After that a mango coulis and a raspberry coulis had to be made, as well as a caramel sauce and a chocolate sauce. We also had to prepare a tuile mix for the next lesson. When the crème brulee insert was nicely set and frozen we had to make the dark chocolate mousse – however the moulds etc had to be ready and the inserts to hand because the mousse set very quickly, we got it in the rings and into the chiller before it set completely on us though – a great success! We were allowed to have a quick 20min break while we put some chocolate on to melt. The chef was really nice at the end and said we did very well in the time and got the room cleared down well, in fact he said it was one of the best performances, in that class, he’d seen in the seven years he’s been at the school – high praise indeed!

After the break we got on with tempering the chocolate and making decorations, I really enjoyed this bit. Then it was on to the tuiles. I practiced a design I wanted to try and put on my final entremets for the exam, however it didn’t quite work out as expected. I think I need to go back to the drawing board or change the type of tuile I do – there’s still time though! It wasn’t a bad three lessons, but felt quite exhausted by the end of the day.

Tuesday was another early start, this time we had the demo plating up everything from the day before and also making two new dishes, one of which being the dreaded soufflé! The chef’s table was full of plates by the end of it! The chocolate mousse, lemon parfait, pistachio soufflé and ricotta pudding all looked really nice plated up and they all tasted great as well.

Straight into back to back lessons again. The first thing we had to do was make the ricotta pudding, so it could set in the chiller. The base of it was a crème anglaise, which I was very nervous about making because I dread cooking it too far and ending up with sweetened scrabbled egg. Fortunately there weren’t any issues and it came together nicely. Next job was cooking the sweet pastries and making sugar decorations, as well as checking our sauces were the right consistency. It all came out well and we had to first plate up the chocolate mousse. Got some good comments from the chef and was very happy with my chocolate piped dragonfly on it! It sat on top of one of the rosemary and amaretto cream rochers (think one handed quenelle!), which also came out well! We had to clear the plate (eat it) and then clear down quickly before presenting the lemon parfait. This came out ok, I got my dragonfly tuile on top of this one, as well as a poor attempt at the frosted sugar, it did complement it quite well though. The thing that let me down on the two plates was the chocolate piping, it looked a bit clunky and out of place.

The first lesson merged into the second and all of a sudden we were on to the soufflés. I got on with the soufflé mix while my partner took a turn doing the crème anglaise. Luckily both came out really well and all of a sudden the soufflés were in the oven. They rose perfectly and looked great on the plate, this was the dessert and plate I was most proud of the whole lesson, I even managed to get the chocolate piping looking good this time! Once that was done it was only the ricotta to go, we had to make fresh tuile biscuits and chocolate work. The only problem here though was that we had to make two identical plates. I tried something ambitious with the tuile, fine spirals, which fortunately came out well, however my chocolate work wasn’t the best I’ve ever done and the chocolate piping was a little inconsistent. I have to admit that I was feeling really drained of energy at the end of the lesson and all my creativity disappeared, I spent at least 2 minutes staring at 2 empty plates not having any idea what to do! We got through it though and ended up eating 4 desserts in the space of 6 hours – not a bad way to spend a Tuesday afternoon! They were two really long days and I’m totally exhausted at the end of them, thankfully all we have to put in our portfolios for this module is our student evaluation journals that are filled in in class.

I was really sad to see the end of the chocolate module, I can’t claim to feel even remotely the same for this weeks restaurant desserts one though. It’s not my most favourite subject, I’m grateful for the experience but won’t be looking to pursue this aspect of patisserie as a long term career.

Thursday evening it was back to school for the cheese lecture! It was a great lecture yet again. There were about 10 cheeses to try, I liked most of them, however the best was a soft cheese with truffles running through the middle. I’m not sure I’ve ever had truffles before so I was a bit apprehensive about trying it, but it tasted amazing and quickly became the firm favourite! It was a late finish however well worth it. If I didn’t have my heart set on patisserie they cheese guy would have inspired me to take up artisan cheese making…that said, we all need a hobby, and in time, who knows!

Friday was another early start, really felt it this morning! It was the final lesson of the week, a lecture on the entremets we have to prepare next week. It’s the first of a couple of opportunities we get to perfect a recipe. It was a really useful lesson and I’ve finally come up with a recipe I’d like to run with (for now at least!). And that was finally it for the week. It was the heaviest week in terms of lessons but I don’t think it’ll be the heaviest week in terms of work!

I started eating this before I took the picture! It was a chocolate mousse with creme brûlée insert, with a chocolate collar, amaretto and rosemary rocher (the cream on top), tempered chocolate decorations and various sauces. 

This was the lemon parfait, it was very light and tasted really nice. Its got a tuile and chocolate dragonfly on top as well as a frosted sugar decoration. 

The pistachio soufflé and creme anglaise, I was extremely happy with this. Not only did it look great, it tasted amazing as well! 

The two 'identical' ricotta desserts, not quite identical and the elements didn't quite work visually together, but I was very happy with the delicate tuple spiral and the ricotta tasted like a light cheesecake. 

Week 3 (Superior Patisserie)

Week 3 was the end of the chocolate module…and it ended in style! We made an entirely edible chocolate box, completely from white and dark chocolate.

Monday was an early start, first up was a demo for the chocolate box. The chef showed us a number of techniques and ways to decorate out boxes. He made a nice tear drop shaped box, with stripy cigarettes, shards of chocolate, a stippled and stripped ribbon and tall spirals. It looked lovely, and an extremely impressive job in just under 3 hours! The only trouble was he suggested we go into our lesson with stencils already cut so we had every minute to spare making the pieces for the box, our lessons were back to back though! We had a break of about 20-30 minutes luckily, which was just enough time to gather the knife kit etc. and make the stencils. Fortunately we weren’t assembling it all today, so there was also time in the evening to design it properly. We had to show a number of techniques and elements to the box though, so had to make some decorations based on the following;

• 1 top and bottom piece, using a textured sheet,
• 1 rigid strip for the middle of the box,
• 1 overlay piece,
• piped shell work,
• wood graining,
• freestanding piped design,
• free-flow piping on the box,
• stippling,
• and finally stripe work!

The practical lesson went mostly without a hitch, I also managed to keep both chocolates in temper the whole lesson, which I was particularly pleased about! The only issues I had were the cigarettes, the dark chocolate set before the white so they didn’t roll properly at all. I ended up with shards, jaggedy lines and a big fat cigar at the end of it – needless to say they weren’t used on the final piece! I also panicked because of the time running out and my free-flow chocolate piping decorations were shockingly bad. Again these didn’t make the cut either! Alas, everything was packed away securely and that was that for the day.

Tuesday was a busy day – 3 lessons back to back! It began with a demo on an extravagant chocolate Easter egg. It wasn’t just an egg, it was an egg studded with nuts and spices, sat on a base of half an egg shell and a bronze luster dusted chocolate bar. Then on top of the egg sat another chocolate bar, a piped bronze dusted butterfly, a chocolate flower and then decorated with more spirals and leaves. It’s very hard to do it full justice by description alone, so here it is in all it’s glory!

I’m seriously inspired by this, and once there’s time to breathe and play in the kitchen again I’ll certainly be giving something like this a practice!

We then got into the practical session and it was time to assemble the boxes. Luckily all the pieces had survived! I quickly tempered some white chocolate, while the person next to me tempered some dark (we shared, to save time!). I got the piping done on the overlay and then the ribbon assembled, it was very delicate work. I also made a new piped butterfly, with the template I made the night before it worked out MUCH better than the rushed abysmal effort the day before! Only one mishap in the assembly, I was lifting the lid up and checking everything fit in place properly, and the corner promptly snapped off – bugger. The chef was stood a mere meter away from me, so I checked he wasn’t looking and chuckled to myself when I realised he wasn’t, turned both pieces over and smothered some white chocolate over the crack and he was none the wiser when it set. In fact it’s still in one piece three days later when I write this! Everything else came out ok, the one chore being the little shell piping we had to pipe EVERY. SINGLE. BLOODY. EDGE. with, given that I’d done a triangle, there were many. Never let it be said I shy away from a challenge! I managed to just about finish it in the allotted 4 hours and I really really enjoyed it, I could have happily spent another 4 hours making it! Got some really good comments from the chef too. There were some aspects I know I need to improve on, but I was so inspired by this class, it really was great.

That wasn’t the end of Tuesday, we still had another demo to attend. It was the beginning of the next module – Restaurant Desserts. It wasn’t the usual demo though, the chef had a presentation ready and we had to fill in some information in our folders, there was then a group task. We were spit off into smaller groups and given themes, ours was the ‘Oscars night party’. We had to design a themed dessert menu around it, along with prices, ensure it was balanced and then present it to the other groups. It was a really fun lesson, our groups had some very creative ideas! The chef was very pleased with everyone’s efforts. The chef also said something at the end of the lesson that really struck a chord with me, he said we, the 40-50 people sat in front of him, would be the stars of the future. It’s difficult to describe the feeling it evoked, however it was one of hope and burning ambition, I’ve learned so much at the school and now I want to keep learning and developing to see how far I can truly progress!

Wednesday afternoon was the last lesson of the week. It was another demo for restaurant desserts, however this one was more centred around chocolate and tuile biscuit decorations. We were shown a number of different ones, sesame seed tuiles, poppy seed ones (which were poppy seeds cooked in sugar – very nice!), brandy snaps and the tuiles we were shown in earlier terms. The tuiles were shaped and cut in a number of different ways, to give us ideas for the upcoming module next week, and for our final exams which will require both elements! It seemed at the start like a very rushed lesson, but I finally realised what was going on when the chef explained it at the end. Got some work to do over the weekend to get some stencils and pictures to design for piping over…as well as work to do on the portfolio! 

My finished chocolate box! I'm very proud of this and very happy with how it turned out. It was really nice chocolate too! 

Week 2 (Superior Patisserie)

The second week was the chocolate module, or the start of it at least!

Monday was a busy day, we started off in the morning with a demo on chocolates and confectionary. The chef made three different types; a chocolate spice log, a nougat and a chocolate ginger slab ganache. As per usual, I stuck around at the end to help eat a few extra leftovers…they’d only be thrown in the bin, I was fulfilling my moral obligation to avoid food waste! Immediately following this we started our first workshops of the term. They are back-to-back lessons (usually two), so 6 hours, to get larger volumes or more complex dishes completed. In this case, we had 4 lessons to make a hoard of chocolates – two back-to-back on Monday and then the remaining two on Tuesday. As we got to the class we unpacked and then were put into groups of 3/4, and given a list of 6/7 chocolates to make. Two items from 3 different categories – confectionary, slab ganaches and moulded chocolates.  My group had to make the following; coffee truffles, framboise (raspberry) truffles, spiced logs, passion fruit ganache, mango & coconut jelly and peanut brittle.

It was really hard to choose a favourite from the ones we made, I really liked the spiced logs, peanut brittle and the coffee truffles and especially the mango and coconut jelly! I was also really proud of how the framboise truffles came out, the time and care taken to polish the moulds well and temper the chocolate properly meant they came out with ease and looked very shiny - an improvement from when we did something similar in Intermediate term!

These first two lessons were about getting things made in advance so we were ready to finish the chocolates in the next two lessons. There was a lot of chocolate tempering, I was polishing moulds and flooding them with chocolate to create the shells ready for the ganache fillings, ganaches had to be made, chocolate needed piping, among other things – it was quite the production line. As a group we didn’t perhaps work at cohesively as we could have done, something that I’m pleased to say we acknowledged and rectified very quickly ready for the next day.

On Tuesday we had the third and forth workshops. My group finished quite early (thanks to far improved communication and planning!), so we cleaned down, got our chocolates presented and marked and then helped the other teams out. We all seemed to work well as a class, and the mass of chocolates we’d produced at the end looked great. At the end of the lesson we shared all of the chocolates out, the problem is, the more we filled our boxes the more the trays seemed to increase with chocolates, it was a never ending supply! And regrettably by the end of the lessons I’d nibbled on offcuts and spare ones that hadn’t quite been dipped perfectly throughout (which I shouldn’t admit to given we aren’t supposed to eat in the kitchens – naughty!), so I felt quite sick and couldn’t eat any more. Evidently you can have too much of a good thing, disappointingly. By the end of the workshops we’d produced god knows how many trays containing a lot of the following;

1. Caramel Mou, 
2. Nougat de Montélimar (nougat),
3. Cassis pate de fruits (blackcurrant jelly), 
4. Spiced log (piped logs of spiced chocolate ganache, covered in milk chocolate and sat on marzipan), 
5. Tea infused slab ganache,
6. Coconut truffles,
7. Lemon truffles,
8. Orange truffles,
9. Coffee truffles, 
10. Banana truffles,
11. Praline truffles,
12. Raspberry truffles,
13. Passion fruit truffles,
14. Spiked rum truffles,
15. Lemon batter logs,
16. Orange batter logs,
17. Gianguya,
18. Blackcurrant slab ganache,
19. Passion fruit ganache,
20. Mango and Coconut Jelly,
21. Chocolate and nut nougat de Montélimar (Chocolate nougat),
22. Passion fruit marshmallow,
23. Peanut brittle,
24. Salt caramels, and last but by no means least;
25. Honeycomb/cinder toffee.

Not quite all of them, but an idea of what they looked like!

The chefs were great in both double lessons and gave us all some really nice feedback. It’s very encouraging to see how far we’ve all come and what we’re producing now. You don’t realise it, going through the process, until the chef points it out and compliments you on it. It was a real confidence boost! I’m very proud of the mass of chocolates we all made as the group. A personal victory this week is that I’ve managed to get my chocolate piping really fine – something that I’m hoping to refine further with the chocolate box next week.

Wednesday was an early start for a lecture on food costings. The groups have been split in two a bit this term, usually we’d all gather together for the lectures, however groups A & B, and C & D have most of the lectures separate from each other this term. We’d been warned by the other groups about it being a bit boring, as they’d had the lecture earlier in the week. However I must admit that I found it eye opening and interesting. It was on food costing and the importance of it in making a profit. Given that I want to start my own business at the end of this, it was one of the more useful lectures we’ve had!

Our research project is on Brillat-Savarin, a French lawyer and gastronome, and the effects he’s had on the world of food. I got the book he wrote over the weekend and have been making a good dent in it during the week. I’m quite a slow reader though and there is a shed load of other studying to do, so it’s a bit ambitious to try and get through the whole thing in the next week or two (I want the essay out of the way asap), however good progress was made this week! I can at least start drafting a bit of the essay this weekend!

This week was a good week, despite all the extra work, I’m really starting to enjoy the Superior term. At the same time the realisation is starting to hit that this is all going to be ending in a few weeks time. I’m trying to put that at the back of my mind and enjoy every second of the remaining weeks though!

It was a tiring few lessons, but we did an amazing job, very proud of what we produced! I think there were even some more out of shot! Never seen so many chocolates!