This week we had a trial run for our exam gateau, where we have to create an original gateau with a given list of ingredients. I made a pistachio mousse (using pate a bombe base) and praline diplomat mousse gateau, with a layer of cocoa meringue inside and surrounded by a caramelised rum sabayon jaconde..
I actually practised it 3 times at home and adjusting the recipes before doing the trial run at school, because I did not want to waste the school trial run. At home, I put the cocoa meringue right on top 'cos I wanted it to remain crunchy, and I also piped some praline paste on top of the mousse, which is that brown stuff you see coming out of the cake centre below. But 'cos i had to glaze the cake in school, I sandwiched it in between the mousse layers instead, which I don't really like to do because the meringue goes soft quicky as it absorbs moisture from the mousse. Anyways, most students just had one chef in the kitchen to try their cake, but I felt it was a pretty subjective view just hearing from one chef, because everyone has different tastes. So I went to other kitchens as well and asked 3 chefs to try my cake..two of them liked it but one of them didn't like the pistachio and praline combination..so I will try another combination this weekend maybe, and see which one tastes better..
We also did sugar work this week, working with isomalt (a sugar substitute)to do poured and pulled sugar decorations. I made a flower which I'm really happy with as it is my first time. We do this by cooking the isomalt, adding colour, then leaving it under a sugar lamp to keep it pliable so that we can pull it to the shapes that we want. Then we use a spirit lamp to weld the pieces together. Super smart me - first time I used my sugar gloves, I took up my mini scissors to snip off my flower petal, and happily snipped a hole into my gloves as well. Goodbye to my hundred of dollars worth of sugar gloves..but not to fear..we can also buy the cheap laundry gloves from the supermarket for $2.
Armed with the sugar flower and a block of marzipan and ready to roll icing, we made a celebration cake out of a super dense and moist fruitcake which we baked on Thursday. I made a wedding cake with my RTR wedding couple made earlier on. Actually I was going to match it with a royal icing bicycle but alas, my heart broke when it shattered into a million pieces when I was about to put it on my cake.
It's a modern wedding cake where the guy holds on to the girl instead of the other way round! Heh, actually, the groom was a little wobbly so he had to hold on to my sturdy bride for support. Chef was worried that my groom would fall down haha.
This week's work was interesting and I enjoyed it a fair bit. And Chef Gert showed us a super lovely wedding cake that he made..I'm totally bowled over by the 3D royal icing carriage with the horses and the extensions..really really impressed..the royal icing is extremely fragile and it takes considerable skill and patience to assemble a masterpiece like this.
This week's work was interesting and I enjoyed it a fair bit. And Chef Gert showed us a super lovely wedding cake that he made..I'm totally bowled over by the 3D royal icing carriage with the horses and the extensions..really really impressed..the royal icing is extremely fragile and it takes considerable skill and patience to assemble a masterpiece like this.
Thank god we can finally return to our usual well-lit kitchens..working in the dim kitchen 14 for the past two weeks wasn't the best of things.