Week 1 (Superior Patisserie)

After a two week break, which was filled mostly with work, helping out on a couple of short courses at school (I was missing it, so don’t like to be away too long!), a trip to Vienna to visit a treasured elderly relative and making a few Christmas cakes, the final term started!  We got our schedules a few days before term and I found out I’m in group B again, we’ve been moved around a bit though. Two very good friends have been moved to a different group, which I was very disappointed about. A number of people in the group are the same, and we’ve been joined by the intensive students as well, the new group B seem like a really nice bunch though. The new timetable fits in really well with work luckily, the downside however is that a lot of the days we’re in require us to be there at 8am. This means that there are roughly 20 4am alarm calls to contend with, lord have mercy!!

This week we were treated to no less than three 8am starts! Monday we arrived back at school, got the new lockers (someone had already taken the one allocated to me, I’ve made a note to bring the electric cattle prod next week, to teach the simple moron a lesson), then made our way up to one of the demo rooms. Our shiny new folders were out on the seats, so I thumbed through before the lesson started and this term looks ridiculously intense! There’s a lot more extra work to do this term as well, I’ve already made sure most of the weekends are kept free, I think I’m going to need them! Superior term is set up differently to the former terms, we have modules to complete as opposed to varying lessons each day. For example this week was boulangerie, and next week is chocolate (my two favourite subjects, the term could not have started better!!). We have workshops as well, which involve two lesson slots back to back, to allow us to make more complex items.

Seeing this suddenly made it very real that I'm now a Superior student, the last six months and two terms went scarily fast!

Our first demo was on bread, the chef made three different type; fougasse, cheese bread and ciabatta. The fougasse was filled with peppers, spring onion, olives and garlic. The ciabatta dough was mixed with sun dried tomatoes and olives. They all tasted very nice and the bread master took both lessons and both practicals so it was great to have his input and advice. There is a lot I think I could learn from him, and the other chefs, there’s just nowhere near enough time in the 9 months unfortunately!

Monday afternoon we had the practical. We worked in pairs on the fougasse and cheese dough (I did the fougasse) and did a batch of ciabatta dough each. Luckily these were all made without too much trouble. The ciabatta dough was very wet, so quite difficult to handle. It had to be rested in a plastic tub and given turns, trouble is the dough is so soft/squidgy if you weren’t quick enough, or didn’t have the dough held well enough, it’d slide through your fingers and be a crumpled mess in the box. I just about managed to get it shaped reasonably well! The fougasse and cheese breads both came out well, we filled the fougasse with a mix of olives, cheese, sundried tomato, garlic (sorry dad!) and spring onion. It was a really nice combination of flavours so this quickly became my favourite – I ate 3 rolls on the way home. I’m not apologising, I love bread! Got some good feedback from the chef, I could have folded the ciabatta dough a bit tighter and been a bit neater on the cutting – two of the four loaves came out a good shape (the two cut from the middle of the dough), the ends of the slab let me down from a consistency point of view though. Still, I know what to do for next time. I’d been a bit over excited stretching the cheese breads as well. We had to make three diagonal cuts in the middle and stretch them out, my concern was making sure the holes didn’t close up during baking (they didn’t), but I’d ended up stretching them to the maximum size. All handy information to know!

Tuesday we were back in early for the second bread demo of the boulangerie module. This time the chef made grissini (breadsticks), pain de epi, a baguette, a pain de campagne (country loaf with rye flour) and a 5 cereal bread which was shaped as a flower. Again these all tasted really nice and luckily today we went straight from the demo into the practical.

We were mostly early for the practical so got a good start on weighing out the ingredients. The white dough, for the baguettes and epi was on the machine, and I was halfway through weighing out the campagne dough and the fire alarm went off. All of the machines had to be switched off and out we trundled, a mere 10 minutes into a lesson, where timing was crucial because of dough resting times etc! Still, it didn’t last long and we got back in and managed to make everything without any further mishaps! We finally got to see how one of the gigantic machines in the corner of the classroom works too – a big deck oven, if only my bank account would stretch to one of these, unfortunately it’d take up the entire kitchen and more! My grissini were a tad on the large side, and I could have been a bit more courageous slashing the dough before it was put in to bake (on the baguette and the campagne), aside from that I got good feedback and was very happy with the results!

It was a nice gentle way to ease us in to the term. Looking at what’s ahead there are some major challenges. This is a whole new level to try and achieve!

Wednesday we were in early and this was one of the most important lectures of the term – exam procedures and other bits and pieces we have to do. As well as the practical exam and written exam we also have to produce a portfolio which has to contain a lot of elements, including all of the learning journals, lots of recipes and methods written out (including costings for certain dishes), a research project and a final self evaluation. No pressure! Prior to this lesson we’d been given snippets of information on what we need to do and to say I’d got a bit of a sinking feeling would be an understatement. At the beginning of the week I really started to wonder if I’d done the right thing staying on to do Superior term. However after the head pastry chef explained everything to us and broke it all down in terms of what’s expected and what’s going to happen etc. I’m now feeling fired up and ready to go. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to involve sacrificing most of the weekends between now and Christmas to studying (along with a few work lunch breaks probably!), there’s a lot to do, but I’m ready. The chefs are brilliant as well, so I have full confidence that they’ll guide us through this term!

Three 4am alarm calls down, more than I’d care to count left to go!

Fougasse (on the left), Ciabatta (on the right) and cheese bread (at the top!). My favourite were the fougasse! I was a bit surprised when the chef was shaping the fougasse, I thought they'd be more like the cheese bread shape, but you live and learn. 

Baguette and epi (top left), pain de campagne (top right), 5 cereal bread (bottom left) and grissini (bottom right). I really really liked the pain de campagne, it tasted amazing with some marmite on. The angle of the photo doesn't quite do the epi justice enough, they looked more wheat shaped than the picture shows. 

Week 10 & 11 (Intermediate Patisserie)

(Week 10 exam week) Last week was exam week and the following week we had the last lessons of Intermediate term and results! Exam week started on Monday with the practical exam. The weekend before, I'd spent practicing all three dishes to make sure I was ready, unfortunately I'd picked up a cold and was praying it'd be gone by Monday. It wasn't! Our exam was at 3pm and I'd spent the day with the cold getting progressively worse, my head was very stuffy and when we went to stand outside the kitchen ready for the exam I was about ready to collapse into bed! The chef came out and announced we'd be making the Alhambra cake, which I was happy with. I like doing the marzipan roses and tempering chocolate and this was the only dish with both! We got into the kitchen and did the Bon d'economat first. I've been revising the recipes hard so managed to fill in most of the blanks in the recipe and method. These were then collected up by the chef and we got our equipment unpacked, I was trying to stifle a coughing fit and not sniff a lot, didn't want to disturb the others too much. We got started, however I made a mistake very quickly. There are two amounts of sugar in the recipe, one to be creamed with the butter and the second to be beaten with egg white to make a French meringue (which gives the cake it's rise). I'd put the French meringue amount in with the butter, luckily I'd realised before creaming it together, checked the weight and added more sugar to it. This threw me a bit though, it's been drummed into us that we can't remake stuff in the exam if we make a mistake, whether that extends to double checking the weight of something I don't know, but the seed had already been planted and I couldn't shake the worry that I might have failed because of a stupid mistake. That was the only noteworthy cockup though! Everything else went reasonably smoothly, the ganache and the glacage (glaze) came together well. The marzipan rose was a tad small but I'd got it nice and fine and was happy with the result, the chocolate tempered well and quickly too, which meant I could pipe some nice fine decorations. I could have been a bit neater on cutting the sponge in two and applying the ganache on the outside, I should have let the chocolate cool a little before piping "Alhambra" on the top too, but I finished in time and it looked like it was supposed to, so I was happy...mostly, the sugar weighing incident left me in fear of an instant fail all week. I was glad to get home and get straight to bed after the exam! 

Tuesday we didn't have any classes but I was helping with an evening class again. This was the second lesson of the four and it was a pear and almond cream tart, using a sweet pastry for the shell. They all came out looking nice.

Wednesday we had our last demo, it was the cake decorating one, showing us how to marzipan and fondant ice a cake. It was then decorated with royal icing and adorned with the sugar paste flowers the chef made in an earlier lecture. The finished cakes looked nice, something to aspire too! And techniques I'll definitely be practicing. I stayed in London Wednesday night, the cold still hadn't relented and I didn't fancy an early start for the 11:30am theory exam the next day! 

Thursday was the written exam, it was in a different format to the Basic exam. We had some multiple choice answers, some true or false answers and then some written answers too. The multiple choice and true or false questions I was mostly ok with. It all unravelled at the written answers though! We'd been given a study list, which I'd been revising hard from. However, at the bottom of the page it says that we should also know things from all classes over both terms, in a nutshell that's over 40 recipes with varying quantities of ingredients! An impossible task! Unfortunately a few of questions came up that I hadn't revised for - the chocolate fondant recipe, we'd done it in a practical so I could take a stab in the dark, but failed miserably at the quantities of ingredients. We also had questions on the paper that we'd never been given the answer to, either verbally or in any documentation - which French town did the Dacquoise originate from? Much like algebra in the real world - when are we ever going to need to know that!? Ridiculous! I did what most reasonably sound thinking English person would do and answered Paris. The Parisians are big headed enough to try and stake a claim to most things like that, so it seemed a safe bet! A quick Google and hunt around the internet after the exam seemed to indicate it was actually Dax (who's ever heard of the place!?), but nothing concrete could confirm that, so I only have Wikipedia's word for it! Needless to say, I felt horribly unprepared for the exam after the event, despite reminding myself a good 40% of the paper was the multiple choice and true or false questions, 60% of the paper may have gone disastrously wrong! I have to be completely honest, I ended this week feeling quite dejected and worried about the potentially impending doom. The prospect of failing the term felt quite real, which wasn't a good feeling after I felt quite ready for the exams at the beginning of the week. 

(week 11 results week) Results week finally arrived. Monday morning we had our first cake decorating class. I made quite a few sugar paste roses to go on my cake. The theme for which was an English rose garden! The paste was really hard to work with, so it took a while, but I was reasonably happy with the result given it was my first time working with the stuff! It was a nice distraction because it was then time for the practical debrief. I was very nervous climbing the stairs to get to the room, I evidently needn't have been though! After sitting down in front of the chef and a pause while he looked up my results (which felt like an eternity!), he smiled and proclaimed I'd passed! I was completely elated! I did quite well as well, I'd achieved 70.55%, not on a par with last term but I was (and still am!) extremely happy and relieved to have passed! He then went through what was wrong and good with the dish, which was all useful feedback.

Tuesday was an early start, two lessons back to back to decorate the cakes. I managed to get it marzipaned and iced quickly, painting the roses took time and rolling out tiny little peddles for the garden path did too. I ran out of time to finish it properly and made the roses too big, but I was quite happy with the first proper attempt at using wired flowers! There were some amazing cakes in the class, so a really nice lesson to finish the term on. I stuck around at school to help with another evening class, this was the third of four, in this one they made choux buns and also made/rolled puff pastry ready for the next lesson. It was quite a busy lesson, with lots to do, but it went well and there were some nice choux buns made. I got home at midnight, and after a 4am start I was knackered! 

The finished cake, I was quite happy with it, but equally could have happily spent double the time getting it exactly how I imagined it. It's a very tasty fruit cake inside too!

Most of Group B and our finished cakes! There were some really nice cakes produced. Group B has been a really nice group to work in, there are some great people in there that I really I hope I get to stay with next term. 

Thursday was the graduation day, we didn't have many people from the class turn up, which is understandable as some use the break between terms to travel home etc. We had to painstakingly sit through the same time filling speech as last time and then the main event finally arrived - the certificate presenting! Our group was one of the last to pick up the certificates, however I opened the envelope as soon as I got back to my seat and found that I'd passed the whole term with a score of 75.2%! Miraculously I did well in the written test, with a good pass mark of 79%, so that helped pull the overall marks up a bit! The next day, 18th September 2015 (friday), it's exactly a year to the date that I first went to visit the school and have a look around. The first time I walked around the building I fell in love and knew I really wanted to study there. A year later and I've completed two terms of the Patisserie Diploma and the love for the school has grown into so much more than I could ever have imagined! 

The certificate! Successfully navigated my way through Intermediate Patisserie. Extremely happy and proud of what I've achieved this term. 

A few of us with some of the chefs at the graduation ceremony. I really wish I could spend more time with these chefs, there is so much experience and knowledge they all have and I could learn an enormous amount from them!

And there ends Intermediate term! It's been hard, but once I hit my stride I got into the swing of it. The realisation is starting to hit that in only a couple of weeks Superior term will start, we'll be in our final term, the main event, the big kids in the school! It's gone ridiculously fast, and if I'm honest I don't really feel ready, I'm only just used to being an intermediate student!! But the next term will bring some very exciting challenges and opportunities to learn some amazing skills, so, as before, BRING IT ON!

Week 9 (Intermediate Patisserie)

This week marked the beginning of the end of Intermediate Patisserie. Only one practical session this week and the last demo and lecture before the exams next week!

Tuesday morning we started on our final plated dessert of the term. Just one to focus on this week! An exotic fruit mousse with redcurrant jelly insert, encased in a stencilled joconde sponge, with tuille biscuit decoration and chilli mango salsa – easy! More bloody gelatine though – bugger. The combination of chilli and mango worked surprisingly well, especially after the flavours had been given time to blend together. The chilli was cut fine and then heated gently in lime juice, it was then mixed with diced; mango, strawberry, kiwi, plum and redcurrants. And the ‘exotic fruit’ in the mousse was mango and coconut, it was nice, I think some orange might have made it a bit more exciting though, or blood orange when the season’s right. The chef plated up about 6, but we were a bit pushed for time at the end as 8 or 9 people in the class got stuck in the lift during the break!! The chef had to hold up the lesson while we waited for them to be released. I have to confess that I found it too funny to be able to show genuine concern for them!

The practical session went fine, I managed to weigh out the correct amount of gelatine this week and the mousse set in record time. In fact it was practically setting in the piping bag as we were piping it into our lined moulds. The stencilling on the sponge was achieved through using some of the tuille mix, coloured, spread on a mat over a stencil, the stencil was removed and the sponge then spread over the top. I blended a red and orange colour together and it marbled and merged very slightly to give a nice effect, much like the colours you get in the last few minutes of the sun setting. I did some piped tuille biscuits and a spread/shaped one. Somehow I managed to make one of the piped ones look like a rasher of streaky bacon, must have been channelling some of Heston Blumenthal’s magic for that! I used the flower biscuit on the plate though, it looked a little more delicate and fitted the theme more! Got some useful feedback from the chef, my tuille was a tad thick (despite it being the thinnest I’d ever managed to get it – must cut the piping bag smaller next time!), and I could have done with a little more height on the plate. The dessert looked good though and was technically sound, so I was happy to finish plated desserts on a high.

I stayed on again, on Tuesday evening, to help one of the chefs with a new run of short courses. This particular course if the same as the last run, however it’s the first evening of 4 evenings in September. It’ll be nice to see a group start and finish the whole course, as opposed to seeing them at the end of the run last week. The first evening was dedicated to pate brisee (shortcrust pastry), and using it to make a chocolate and raspberry tart. The group did really well and there was enough time left at the end to play with some isomalt (sugar substitute) so they could create a nice drizzled sugar disc to decorate the top of the tart with. I didn’t get home until midnight, but it was worth it! They were a really nice group of people, I’m looking forward to the next 3 weeks with them.

Wednesday we were only in for the afternoon, it was a demo on sugar sculptures, to start preparing us for Superior Term. The chef made an underwater scene and showed us three techniques – pouring sugar (in moulds, to create the pieces for the base of the structure), blowing sugar (to create the body of the fish) and finally pulling sugar (to create the ribbon and fins of the fish). He showed us the process from making the sugar solution/syrup, to colouring it and how to maintain it under a heat lamp. As well as showing us how to pull and fold it to give a nice shiny finish to it, if we didn’t want to keep it see-through. It was an excellent demonstration and I really enjoyed watching it. The piece at the end looked amazing!

We could be trying to produce something like this as soon as next month! On one hand I feel grossly under-skilled, on the other I’m mega excited to try it and see what I can achieve!

Thursday was the final lecture of the term - chocolate tasting! It did not disappoint!

As you can see, we had 11 different chocolates to taste (there were lots of pieces in the bowls being passed around, so I didn’t feel bad about taking a couple of bits of each!), the 12^th was handed around at the end and was pure 100% cocoa chocolate, before its processed and turned into chocolate as we know it. My favourite was the milk chocolate, it was about 40% and tasted really nice. We had others that were caramel flavoured, honey infused, chocolate with fruity notes, and bitter dark chocolate. It was quite an eye opening session, and a nice lecture to end on. And yes, I did eat all the chocolate on the plate – and a couple of extra pieces I was handed, quite unashamedly too!

This is it! The last post before the Intermediate Term exams, feeling a strange mixture of nerves and excitement. Nerves because I want to do well and not make any silly mistakes, and excitement because I love being in the kitchen and all three potential dishes are really nice. As with the basic term exams, I don’t mind which one we get, all three dishes have parts that I’m good at and parts that will hopefully get better with practice this weekend!

The final plated dessert. I was really happy with how the tuille and mousse came out, it worked really nicely with the salsa as well. A nice one to end on! 

Week 8 (Intermediate Patisserie)

This week introduced us to plated desserts!

We started on Monday with the demo for a chocolate fondant and banana mousse with caramel cream insert. The fondants were cooked in little rings and the chef handled them with great care because they were just cooked and the slightest knock caused the delicate crust to break and the molten core to pour out! The mousse was piped into half sphere moulds, the caramel insert placed in the middle and then a chocolate mousse set on the base.  This was all wrapped up and frozen ready for the next lesson though, as it had to set overnight in the fridge. At the end of the demo there was a charge to the front of the class to get a taste of the fondants, which, when tapped lightly with a sponge, gave way and out poured a river of lava-like chocolate. They tasted very nice and didn’t last long at all! Unfortunately during the lesson I had to stifle the giggles somewhat. It was a French chef and he was talking about different things that could be put into the caramel, after he mentioned salt and rosemary I thought I heard “sexy paper”…what he actually said though, I’m still not 100% sure on!

After the demo we went into the kitchens for our practical lesson. We had to start by getting the caramel cream insert ready for the mousses, as they had to chill for quite a while. Until the course I’d never managed to get a completely lump free dry caramel (just melting the sugar, with no other liquid added), however when working in pairs (as we were, in both lessons this week) I always try and volunteer to do it so I can practice it and get it right. Its amazing how easy something becomes when you’re shown how to do it properly! We had a mostly fault free lesson, only one minor cock up on my part. I was making the banana mousse for the second dessert and it wasn’t coming to setting point. My partner ran through the list of ingredients to make sure I’d got them all in – I had, then the quantities, that’s where the error lay! I thought I’d read 3g of gelatine (which was the quantity for the caramel crème), unfortunately it needed 3 sheets for the mousse. Each sheet weighs about 2g, so I’d only put in half the gelatine! We were starting to slip behind, so desperate times called for desperate measures. We heated a little bit of water in a pan, added 2 sheets of gelatine when it was warm (to make up for the extra liquid being added), then mixed it around quickly and poured it in to the mousse! We didn’t have time to let the gelatine bloom in cold water before using it, but it seemed to have worked ok, and everything started to thicken as it was supposed to then! Because we’d gotten behind we didn’t have long to make a sugar decoration, this was another near disaster. The sugar is over 140 degrees centigrade, so quite hot. I dipped a metal ring in quickly (as the chef had done in the demo) to make a nice paper-thin sugar collar to go around the fondant on the plate. That failed miserably, the ring got very hot very quickly and I haven’t developed sufficiently asbestos fingertips to be able to handle it yet! So I resorted to drizzling some sugar haphazardly on the baking paper and hoping for the best, it wasn’t hideous, but there was no finesse about it! It was really hot to try and pull/shape too, not an enjoyable way to spend 5 frantic minutes, plus when it was thin it sets like glass, a piece shattered in my fingers and I’d got a splinter embedded, which drew a spot of blood! All that said and done though, I managed to get a fondant on the plate – the first one I tried to unmould was 1 minute away from being cooked properly, because as I took the baking paper off the sponge split a little and out poured the centre! The second one, after an extra minute in the oven, unmoulded perfectly though. The chef gave me some good feedback, the chocolate piping was a little thick, but the design was good, and I’d overdone the sugar work on the plate – at which point I informed him it was lucky I managed to get any sugar work on the plate! I left the lesson kicking myself and quite downhearted because of my mistake. We weren’t going to know until tomorrow whether the quick gelatine fix worked or not, as it had to set in the freezer overnight. That’s one of the down sides to working in pairs, my partners’ marks for next lesson were partly reliant on my mistake, and I felt a great burden of guilt because in haste I’d read the wrong quantity – 3 grams of something had never seemed so important!

The demo on Tuesday was making a mini caramelised apple tarte tatin and unmoulding the banana mousses from the previous lesson, with a bit more sugar work, a spray gun, a couple of sauces and some fancy plating thrown in as well! The banana mousse tasted nice, with the caramel cream insert, and the tarte tatin was really nice with the caramel sauce and crème anglais!

As the practical came round I was very nervous about turning out the banana mousses. I’d had visions the night before of them not setting and disintegrating as we turned them out. As we were waiting for the spray gun (to spray white chocolate on the outside to give them a velvet like texture), we took the plunge and turned them out. Fortunately they turned out well, and we got the chocolate sprayed on evenly too, so all was well, and an overwhelming sense of relief came over me! I could finally enjoy the practical again, I’d been burdened with guilt for a whole 24 hours! The tarte tatins came out well too, as did the sauces we had to make. The pulled sugar worked better this lesson too, and I managed to play around with it for a bit longer this time. Everything was plated and I was quite pleased with the results. The chef gave me some good feedback too. So all in all, this lesson made up for the one the day before. Only one tiny issue with the mousse, my friend took a bite out of her plated one after it was marked and started chewing on an undissolved piece of gelatine – we laughed!

Wednesday, after a morning at work, I made my way into London for a lecture. The lecture today was on chocolate skills. We watched the chef make an impressive 3D ‘magic’ themed sculpture. A couple of premade shaped blocks of chocolate created a foundation, upon which the chef added a top hat, a wand, some cards and a bunny popping out of the hat – all made out of chocolate, and in a warm room too. It looked great and really fuelled my excitement for chocolate further!

Rather than go home after the lecture, I’d signed myself up to help one of the chefs (my favourite chef!) with one of the short courses the school also run. This particular one was the last of a 4 week (4 Wednesday evenings in a row) session, and they had to make tarte tatin (very handy as we’d only made the tiny ones the day before!) and palmiers, along with a nice caramel sauce to take home to put on the tatin. The session started around 7pm and finished about 9:30pm. I was an assistant with one of my good friends from the group, we had to help the chef set up the room initially and then wander around helping the people out and helping keep the room tidy. It was strange at first having people ask me for advice, especially when I’m usually double checking whether I’ve done something right with the chef, however I got into my stride and was surprised with how many of the questions I was able to answer and help them with. I really enjoyed it, and signed up to help because ultimately that’s exactly what I had in mind to do when I set up my own business after the course. In fact I enjoyed it so much I’ve offered to be an assistant for several more! Sure, I could have been home at a reasonable time that evening and relaxed a bit, but it was so much more rewarding being sat on the bus home at 11pm still buzzing with excitement from the session. It has helped reaffirm that this is exactly where I want to be heading next in life.

Despite the crappy start to the week, it really picked up at the end. Next week marks the penultimate week before the Intermediate exams, only one more practical session, a couple of demos and a lecture to go and then its exam time. Nerves are definitely starting to bubble a little down below, but I’ve practiced all the exam dishes once and managed to commit the recipes to memory. Just one more solid practice weekend and a couple of frantic method writing sessions to go, to make sure I’ve got that straight in my mind too, and we should be ready for them!

The chocolate fondant! The sugar work wasn't great, but the fondant tasted so good it didn't matter. Just need to practice getting the chocolate a little thinner now. 

The banana mousse, with blackcurrant coulis, berries and a pulled sugar circle! And the caramelised apple tarte tat in with creme anglais, berries and a little extra caramel sauce. My favourite was definitely the tarte tatin, I really like the caramelised apple flavour.