Week 7 (Superior Patisserie)

This week was a short week, however it included the mock exam! The end of term is coming far too quickly now.

Monday was dedicated to one whole module. We had a demo at 8am and then two back-to-back kitchen sessions making what we’d just seen. This was the modern tart module, not just your traditional (but still amazing) tart like a Bakewell or treacle tart, this had about six or seven different technical components and was a kind of skills test. The chef showed us two different flavours to recap on a number of the techniques, then it was into the kitchen.

We had a variety of different recipes and everybody had to pick a number and that number corresponded to the combination of flavours your have to make. All tarts had to include the following layers:

Sweet pastry base,

Soft layer (such as apple compote or jam),

Crisp layer (this was generally a tempered chocolate layer with additions such as freeze dried fruit or feuilantine wafers),

Sponge layer (daquiose, piped sponge or success),

Fruit mousse, which was glazed with a coloured white chocolate glaze ,

The tart was then decorated with fresh fruit and pulled sugar decorations.

 

I picked number 11 (at random), so my tart was made up of the following flavours:

Sweet pastry base,

Raspberry jam layer (no it wasn’t from a jar!),

Dark chocolate orange crunch,

Cocoa piped sponge,

Guava mousse,

Coloured white chocolate glaze, with fresh fruit and pulled sugar work.

My biggest headaches were the sugar work (that’s next weeks module, so I’m not overly worried about that), and the white chocolate glaze. Everyone had trouble getting it on smoothly though. Too warm and it ran off and showed the mousse underneath, too cool and you had uneven patches and giant drips down the side. I had to glaze it twice because I put it on too warm initially. The fruit managed to hide the odd drip I had! The sweet pastry also dipped a little in the corners – my fault for trying a square tart, everyone that tried the square shape had the same problem though. Overall however, I was very pleased with it and the chef gave me some good comments too. We had to complete everything by 5pm, the group were on a serious mission though, and we all finished by 3:30pm!

Tuesday was another 8am start, however today was the mock exam! We had a second chance to practice our entremets for the final exam. I made a couple of small changes from the entremets module, and that was to use an orange caramel glaze instead of a jelly one. I also ditched the stencil and used a scraper to make orange lines (the horrid bright red didn’t make a reappearance either!). It came out ok, I need to make a few more changes before the exam though. I really really like the flavour of the poppy seed tuile, however I think it’s taking up too much time to get done, I had to sacrifice the dark tempered chocolate decoration for it in the mock. I also need to look at increasing the chocolate mousse recipe, having previously halved it because of wastage, because I didn’t have enough in the exam. I got one dessert perfectly levelled off, the entremets mostly filled and the final dessert was a hollow sponge and meringue cup! I saw the funny side, better it happen in the mock than the actual exam! It was really annoying though, because I was going well up to that point.  I was quite happy with the chocolate piping on the plate – finally! And the crème anglais came out really well. I really wanted everything to go right today, however most of the elements are there, it’s like I’m on the home stretch of the marathon and just need to run the remaining .2 of a mile to get across the line. A few more tweaks here and there and I think I’ll be ready.

And that was it for the week. A short week sadly!

The final tart, they said they wanted bright colour in the glaze, so they got bright colour in the glaze! 

The inside of the tart, I wasn't sure about how all the different flavours would work at first, but it tasted great. 

The entremets, I think I'm going to change the tuile, really not happy with how it looks here. The glaze it MUCH better than the last time though!

I have to admit to winging the design a bit, I wasn't 100% settled on one, but this one I quite like. It's simple but effective, and holds the creme anglais in place.