All things sweet. The traditional croquembouche is made with choux puffs built upwards to achieve a conical shape, and this is, really, the traditional French wedding cake. But as you know it, people are creatures filled with ideas (mostly) and someone invented the chocolate croquembouche so that if one got bored of eating chips in front of the tele, they could get themselves this $150 masterpiece to nibble on instead.
That's chef's piece above, made during the demo. I kinda figured everyone would do the same design (since we have the same types of truffles and coatings, down to the same LCB ribbon to tie around it..) and I really wanted to create something different. I wanted a butterfly to sit on top of my tower and when I googled butterfly the night before, I chanced upon the synopsis of the opera Madama butterfly, which I decided would be the theme of my chocolate piece. The opera (if I may bore you with a little about it) is about an American man who marries a Japanese lady, with their new home atop a hill. The Japanese lady is over the moon but she doesn't know that the man really just wants an American wife, and the story goes on and as you know it, the man finds his American wife and leaves the Japanese wife. The latter self-destructs upon finding out. It's a sad story but I thought it's beautiful too..a little romanticism, a little realism...and a alot of chocolate later..here is what I made..
I read on the Internet that fat-soluble colouring has to be used if we're colouring white chocolate, but we only had water-soluble ones in the kitchen. Anyways, I asked chef and he said I could use a few drops of the water-soluble colouring and it wouldn't cause the chocolate to seize up. So I did and I made two pretty pink truffles and a pink butterfly. It feels good to learn something new and try something new everytime.
We did white chocolate fudge too, but I didn't snap a photo of it as I was rushing for time, having to temper, and coat all the chocolates myself as my bench partner called in sick for the day. The fudge was way too sweet, so I gave mine a milk chocolate coating to reduce the sweetness (wanted to use dark chocolate but that had run out).
Now for the raspberry mousse gateau...the raspberry glaze was so pretty..like a mirror lake, so I did swans and flamingoes as my theme. I also did the tulip stenciling with chocolate flavour to get a brown colour instead of the red/pink colouring that chef used. Pink doesn't suit my palette...it looks a little "false" to me..But colours aside, this cake is really quite nice, a nice balance between the slightly tart mousse/glaze and a slightly sweet joconde sponge, as well as a variety of textures of the glaze, mousse and sponge all blending in together in one bite..YUM!
We did white chocolate fudge too, but I didn't snap a photo of it as I was rushing for time, having to temper, and coat all the chocolates myself as my bench partner called in sick for the day. The fudge was way too sweet, so I gave mine a milk chocolate coating to reduce the sweetness (wanted to use dark chocolate but that had run out).
Now for the raspberry mousse gateau...the raspberry glaze was so pretty..like a mirror lake, so I did swans and flamingoes as my theme. I also did the tulip stenciling with chocolate flavour to get a brown colour instead of the red/pink colouring that chef used. Pink doesn't suit my palette...it looks a little "false" to me..But colours aside, this cake is really quite nice, a nice balance between the slightly tart mousse/glaze and a slightly sweet joconde sponge, as well as a variety of textures of the glaze, mousse and sponge all blending in together in one bite..YUM!
Alrighto. Off to sleep and one more revision for final theory exam on monday.