Bienvenue a Le Cordon Bleu: Demonstration 7

Demonstration 7: the meringue-based cakes

A recently beautiful discovery I came to know of from class is the meringue-based cakes! Soft, light, spongy and best of all not overpoweringly sweet! Actually, come to think about it... most of the baked goods we've made in school so far are hardly sweet! For this class, we learnt to make the dacquoise (pronounced: DUCK-KWA-AA).

Dacquoise is a layered cake created from a mixture of nuts and meringue. It is layered in between with a GENEROUS amount of buttercream (in our case, it was the traditional french buttercream! Very very very rich and buttery) I actually loved the cake layer itself more than the cream, which i oddly enough thought was a tad bit too sweet for my liking.

The cake originates from feminine form of the french word "dacquois", which means "DAX" - a town in the south-west region of France. 

SOMETHING TO SHARE WITH YOU:

you know you're a pro when you don't need a sugar thermometer to check 

the consistency and stage of your boiling sugar syrup

Many little steps are made in order to create this beautiful cake. After watching and noting the recipe and methods required, I thought it was something quite simple to do.... but boy oh boy was I ever wrong in practical.

La Dacquoise

Practical 6: The Dacquoise

We had a new chef for our practical: Chef Patrick - a much older man who it turns out in the end is a very hard critique when it comes to judging our end cakes. Throughout the practical, he was a bit like Chef i-forgot-his-name in where he didn't really say much and simply just walked around class watching every students do their own thing. 


Sometimes he'll help a student or as with my case, give me a reassuring pat on my shoulders as I "patiently" wait for my syrup to reach its right stage. However in general, he didn't really say much... unless a student messes-up then he becomes angry and very nag-y (which I think is a common trait for all the patisserie chefs here).

As for making the dacquoise... well...


The steps may be simple in theory but in practice... that's another story!

Before I go on, allow me to say that in Le Cordon Bleu... there is no such thing as using a machine UNLESS you are catering to a HUGE group. Everything and i mean EVERYTHING in practical is done manually (and by manually, i mean by HAND). It's a tiring but worthy practice. 

There are a few students who complain about this but I personally don't have any problems with it. Actually I can see the logic behind this evil-necessity: it is only by hand will we know the proper texture, consistency, feel and look of each mixture. A machine may help you do things faster, but you won't know if your mixture is at the right consistency unless you feel it.

As for the dacquoise, we were required to whip 8 egg whites into stiff peak... and this was all to be done by... hand... (some students actually believed Chef Cotte's joke about how we would be whipping egg whites with the Kitchen Aids in our practical... very cruel joke to play on innocent students!)

So... yes, I did whip the egg whites into stiff peak...

yes... I did it all by hand...

and yes... my arm felt like it was going to fall off...


I have a theory that by the time I graduate Le Cordon Bleu I think my right biceps are going to be bigger than my left! GAHHHH!!!

By the end of the practical session, my arm was in PAIN from all the whisking: we had to whisk 8 egg whites into stiff peak BY HAND without ANY help from the chef (the only help you get from the chef is him telling you to whip faster and faster!) AND after that we had to whip hot egg-sugar mixture UNTIL it was COLD (because if we left it, the egg would simply cook!) - do you know how LONG that takes???

By the end of the night, i couldn't even wash the dishes without pain jabbing through my arms...
but alas, as they always say: no pain, no gain!

Towards the end of the practical we were also given time to learn to design (by hand naturally) marzipan roses - a daunting task - to decorate our cakes. Delicate process but interesting, none the less! My rose ended up being HUGE which I thought was fine because it covered my wonky top icing decorations! hahaha...

the marzipan rose made by Chef Cotte during demo class

Sadly though chef thought my dacquoise was "just ok..." because unwittingly I had pipped too much buttercream in the centre layer that it started droop out of the layers, it pushed out after being sandwiched between the two meringue-based cake layers. Damn... that was disappointing. 

this was how my dacquoise was supposed to look like with the buttercream piping...

but it didn't!

But it's ok... I'll try to be better next class. Pay attention and work hard.

*Fingers crossed*

Unfortunately I didn't get to take a photo of my beloved cake... because... i had locked both my keys and cameras in my locker! Yeah, that blows.... In the end, I had to have someone cut my lock and waste 8euros for another lock (provided by the school... what a rip-off!!). I could've gotten a much better quality lock for less than 8 euros! But alas, I couldn't complain... i was in need of a lock very badly :(

2 lessons learnt from the day:

1. Do push ups at home to develope strong arm muscles for baking
2. Always check your keys before you lock the locker door

In demo: making meringue mushrooms as well!

All The Le Cordon Bleu Students Eat Well At School

It's very common to see food laden out on the table in the winter garden after class. Very often students leave their baked goodies or demonstration class share their excess taste-test products rather than chucking it all into the bin.

Most of the time it's by the patisserie students (I don't blame them, too much cake for 1 person at home!)  but once in a while you do get the cuisine students dropping off their latest practical foods.

I was lucky enough to get my fingers on these goodies here. Macarons! Sables! Biscuits! My absolute favourite of the bunch is the chocolate diamants topped with the patisserie creme and  fresh raspberries on top. It was absolutely delicious!!

The flavours of the macarons are a bit of an acquired taste I suppose... something I haven't acquired yet, it appears! The texture was a bit different than other macarons I've tried... this was more dense and chewy... and the filling was different... pistachio? green tea? I couldn't really tell. I wanted to try out the pink macarons with fresh rapsberries but they were too large and I was much too in love with the chocolate sable :)

Maybe I should give that a try one day at home?

Bienvenue a Le Cordon Bleu: Demonstration 6

Demonstration 6: the Art of Choux Pastry
Warning: Tons of Photos Ahead!

By now we're delving into the land of choux pastries (a favourite.... among many favourites, that is!) and I was very excited to start this class. Definitely was looking forward to the tutorial!! Here we learnt to make the many french classic desserts: eclairs, choux puffs with creme filling, chouquettes and plenty more! They all turned out so beautiful!!!

 the huge variety of choux pastry desserts

chocolate and coffee eclairs

Choux pastry, for me, is one of the best things you can make! I love playing around with choux pastry! Mainly because I find that this patisserie is very versatile and flexible - you can make soooo many things with it ranging from sweet pâtisserie desserts to savoury ones - the possibilities are endless! But then, I just realised this applies to all the basic french pâtisserie goodies!

chocolate eclairs (top) and choux pastry with creme filling (bottom)

As for a choux pastry dessert, an absolute childhood favourite of mine was a savoury dish my mom used to whip up for us as an after school treat! She would make choux puffs and stuff them with a delightful mélange of flaked creamy tuna... oh... man... drool, much?

I wonder if i can get my mom to do that again for me one day?

Yeah right!!

Knowing my mom, she'll most likely tell me to make it myself as I've now already learnt how to make them! hehehe. I don't mind actually... but I'm quite sure it won't taste the same as hers! 

That always happens, doesn't it? That my friends is what we call the mommy touch.

More choux puffs with creme filling

For the sweet choux pâtisserie desserts, I've come to realised most of the time the fillings incorporate plenty of crémes in their core centre - something that by now (4 weeks into the school semester... 4 WEEKS!!) is something I've grown to dislike - actually more like grown to be sick of.

Why?

 

Because for the past 4 weeks, we've been sampling a sorted lot of crémes and I believe my tolerance for anything creamy has dramatically dipped to an all-time low. In fact, I think I'm not the only one in class experiencing this: during the taste-tests for practicals, I have noticed the remaining desserts left untouched by grubby pâtisserie student fingers are those with créme filling. Hahaha...

Practical 06: Making the Eclairs & Chouquettes.

Chef i-forgot-his-name evaluating and critique-ing our baked goods

In practicals, we got down and dirty on making our eclairs and chouquettes. I ended up with chocolate covered uniform! :(

The eclairs we made for practicals were chocolate-coffee flavoured (choc créme filling with a coffee glaze on top). My eclairs in particular had a very rich and dense creme filling - mostly because I secretly popped in extra servings of chocolates into my pastry cream. Did you know that eclairs have to be piped with filling until they become heavy in your hand? Yeah... that's a LOT of cream!!

For our class, the chef decided to tint our coffee glaze in an odd brown-red colour combo which to me seemed a bit odd. According to the chef, this is the colour of chocolate. What do you guys think?

 My huge ass wonky chocolate-filling coffee-glazed eclairs

I wasn't really fond of the eclairs we made in practical as I found them a bit too rich (my fault, really!) and furthermore I was a bit bothered by the wonky shapes they had formed into during the process of baking. I wonder how the patisserie shops always manage to make then uniformed and perfect in shape?? Do they bake the eclairs in a mould?? 

Personally I've always been a chocolate-kind-of-girl but being in patisserie school, I think I've grown to love non-chocolate based desserts, such as: apple tarts (I really didn't like baked fruits before!) and more recently I've discovered the pleasantries of chouquettes!

 

 the chouquettes in demo

Deceptively simple to make, it's an amazing light dessert that you grow to become addicted to! It's like a popcorn: once you pop one in your  mouth, you'll just keep coming back for more! During the end of my practicals, Chef Faure kept nicking our chouquettes everytime he passed our tables! It was funny :)

 my chouquettes in practical

I think chouquettes would go well for an afternoon tea session! The sugar used for chouquettes is something of a wonder to me (mostly because you will NEVER find it in Brunei AND it's a new ingredient I just learnt about!). The sugar used in these recipes are called sugar pearls and they are made in such a way that when placed in HIGH HEAT, they won't dissolve! Awesome, right?

Apparently, I just recently found out that this is the same sugar used to make those thick bread-cake like waffles in Belgium as well!

What Pâtisserie Students Do On A Day Off...

... we went macaron hunting.

one of the best (and expensive) macaron-makers in Paris: Pierre Herme!

So this is how pâtisserie students spend their day away from class...

We burn off our calories roaming about the streets of Paris in search of calorie replacements that come in little dainty forms of French pâtisserie. Here we try (keyword: TRY) to study the presentation, the texture and finish of each and every dessert that we've crossed paths with... then we compare each and every one of them...

I think it's quite interesting how the French really take their pâtisseries to whole new dimension of art. You won't find something like this in Brunei...

Before that, a quick stop over for lunch to celebrate a birthday :)
Korean food... IS... GOOD!

 Happy Birthday Sonia :)

A nice hot lunch to fill us up against the cold chilly winter days... After which, we walked off our lunch and replaced it with a STUNNING visual pâtisserie imagery from the assorted bakeries that lined the 2nd floor of Gallerie Lafayette Gourmet (note: if you are EVER in town and would like to see what French pâtisserie is all about, this would be a good starting point to visit!!! A MUST!)

 

 

Here we saw little booths of top French pâtisserie showing off their talents, notible names like Pierre Herme and Dallayou (a pâtissier boutique MOST of our chefs have trained at!! It's considered to be one of France's highly regarded pâtisserie boutiques). Among the lot in Gallerie Lafayette was this...

I know what most of you are thinking: A japanese pâtissier? In France? Really?

Yup... but as you can tell, ALL her stuff looks amazing!!
DEFINITELY will not find this in Brunei!!

Assorted Chocolates in various colours and flavours

 

 Sadaharu Aoki Assorted Cakes

Salted Caramel Tart

So who is this Sadaharu Aoki?

Well Sadaharu Aoki is a pâtisserie chef, born and trained in Japan before she brought in her talent across the globe to France. She has trained in many places from France to Switzerland and thus has gained some impressive experience. This talent can be seen through the craftmanship of her pâtisseries. From macarons to millefeulle and chocolates... each one is really a work of art!

 

A varied selection of macarons

Interesting fact about Sadaharu Aoki and her pâtisseries:

•  Sadaharu Aoki pâtisseries are catering the dessert line of all NIPPON AIRWAYS first and business class flights from Paris.
• Chef Sadaharu Aoki was appointed an honorable HEAD of Paris' Federation of Japanese Pastry Chefs.
• Sadaharu Aoki pâtisseries are catered to some of Paris' big fashion houses: Kenzo, Chanel and Christian Dior.

For more info about her: click here (translated from French).

 yes, you read right: WASABI macaron

Bienvenue a Le Cordon Bleu: Demonstration #05 and Practical #05

Again we had Chef Cotte as our demo chef, which I personally don't mind because I find that he is always a pleasure to have because of his happy comedic character. Sometimes I love the fact that he doesn't mind ridiculing himself in front of the whole class... (personally I'd be too shy to do that!). 

Chef Cotte and his knife suitcase kit! 

Somehow he always manages to bring the class to laughter... but I wonder will we eventually get bored of his jokes? Until now, I have yet to have him as a chef in my practical classes because (maybe fortunately for me) the one time we actually did have him, I was absent.

Anyhow, demonstration #05: grasping the delicate art of puff pastries.

By now, our recipes are becoming more and more challenging. I've realised that we're also starting to incorporate decorating techniques into our repertoire as well. Before in the past few classes, it had just been all about grasping basic patisserie knowledge like making certain doughs and mixtures, but now... they're upping the game by throwing in decoration skills like marzipan flower and awesome-ass piping skills. It's our finesse of these things that determine our overall evaluation in practical class...

So...Puff pastries...

Puff pastries are a hell to work with. Firstly because of the sheer amount of BUTTER used in the recipe and secondly, you really really really need to concentrate and focus on what you're doing - puff pastries are one of those recipes where it's a procedure involving little steps which ultimately have a GIGANTIC effect on the end product after baking.  

So, if you have a memory of a goldfish or you just simply weren't paying attention, then... 

good luck!

In this demonstration class, we learnt 3 classic french puff pastry desserts:

Chaussons aux pommes 
(Apple turn overs... or maybe Apple PIE for those of you McDonald-holics!)

Palmiers

Raspberry strawhats

Grasping the techniques and methods of puff pastry can be very daunting because they're required to be made in a certain way. However, if you don't stress about how much you're going to screw up, you may end up enjoying the process of making it.

I'm actually quite keen to give the Raspberry strawhats a try during my individual time - the taste test after demo was quite delicious! I wonder how it goes with other fruity flavours: pears? grapes? strawberries?

The palmiers were great too - i just didn't expect them to be SO HUGE!! Each one was bigger than the size of my palm! Nonetheless, it doesn't mean they weren't good: the big sizes ensure that they retain a soft chewy texture inside while having crispy carmalised edges on the outside. This recipe calls for a ridiculous amount of butter AND sugar. I was so shocked... !

Apple Chaussons were even BETTER!! I've never been one to love hot fruity desserts but I'm glad to have discovered them. Being slightly sick and still recovering, the feeling of nice hot chopped apples slide down my throat during the cold winter days was just simply... divine!

For our practical, we had a rare treat: 

our presiding chef was one of France's highly regarded Chefs - Chef Christian Faure, MOF.

my chaussons aux pommes

 my palmiers

FIRST, allow to me say that it was a HONORABLE PLEASURE to have him as our practical chef! He was very patient, very instructive and VERY helpful. Whenever we had a problem, not only would he NOT criticise us and NOT make us feel bad about it but he PROPERLY SHOWED us the right method of doing it! It was a good class and I was quite happy with it.

the Brazilian girls

SECOND, not once did he say that what we were doing was BAD or WRONG or *BOO!* (some Chefs do say that...) or actually say NOTHING AT ALL (yes we have those too!). Some students ended up with wacky palmiers or smaller chaussons but he was nice about it. He was fine as long as the characteristics of a puff pastry were still there... he also explained that generally they're made to be a different size or shape. 

What I loved about him was that in the end, he said it was up to our preference and style. It felt like he was encouraging us to develope our own style, which was very rewarding.

By now, I'm sure you're wondering what an MOF Chef is?

MOF stands for "Meillure Ouvrier de France" (translated as Best Craftsman of France).

It is a coveted prestigious title awarded only to a very few in France. The MOF competition takes place every 3 years and here you'll only see the best artisans in France doing their very finest. The standards are VERY high and those who succeed in winning are awarded the title MOF for LIFE.

Every chef whose won is awarded (FOREVER) a special chef's jacket with a collar of the French flag. This title is recognised by professionals and the French public.

Training for this competition requires years of preparation because of the demand for PERFECTION! Technical skills, innovation, respect for traditions and other aspects are all practiced repeatedly to a level of refinement. Through this, they develope excellence, effectiveness and speed to succeed. All this will be judged by a jury, which makes its decision according to the distribution of points awarded during the entire process.

 Chef Christian Faure, MOF doing product evaluation

If you'd like to see his impressive achievements in life: Click Here.

Bienvenue a Le Cordon Bleu: Demonstration #04

Apologies for the lack of updates. Experiencing internet delay as I wait for France Telecom to activate my 3g internet key, which is a drag because it's been more than 3 days since I posted the letter! I'm going to give it until tomorrow, after which I will probably start raising hell at the Orange customer service office... in bad french...

As a result, my updates have been inconsistent because the internet I'm currently relying upon has real bad reception which comes and goes.

Really... GAAHHHHH!!

Anyhow, I won't complain any further.

Just wanted to share with you folks how our demonstration #04 went: here we learnt how to make 3 renowned French pastry desserts - the cream-filled choux puffs, the Paris Brest and the St. Honore.

a close view of the cream-filled choux puff garnished with caramelised almond

Basically: choux pastries with endless upon endless use of towering whipped cream!
Yeah... I was whipped out... (whipped out? whipped cream? joke... get it?)

(lame... i know... )

Anyhow, it was this practical that I ended missing because of my falling sick. Luckily, I managed to see a doctor in time to get my medical letter and the school had no problems with that. And I'm happy because that means I won't get a zero for missing class.

*whew*

I was in awe watching the chef make these beautiful creations. Piping skills were good and fast! However in terms of taste, I think more could've been done to give more "zing" to it. But then again, I'm fully aware that this is just a mere basics course - whereby the classes are more focused towards teaching you the techniques rather than anything else.

Personally if I were to recreate these beautiful desserts, I would put some personal twists to it :)
Maybe I should try it one day? I'm looking forward to that!

the famed Paris-Brest in the spot-light

 the renowned St-Honore

We had Chef I-always-forget-his-name again for demonstration and as usual, he was quite instructive with his methods and in addition to our recipes, he also took the opportunity to teach us a few neat tricks to add to the choux puffsm which is always bonus points for me!! Because it was a demo class, he increased the serving sizes than those called on by the recipe, this resulted in him dishing out a TON of food (more than the number of students in demo).

So by the end of class, he kept shoving huge slices of pastries to random students passing by in front of him. It was funny because he gave one to a friend of mine...

my friends concentrating so hard on what the chef was doing!

And look of content on her face was... epic :)

the scene after EVERY SINGLE demo: all the students FIGHT to get food photos

Bienvenue a Le Cordon Bleu: Student Knife Kit.

As promised (though i made this promise weeks ago), here is a post on the student knife kit from Le Cordon Bleu. Receiving this kit was probably one of my biggest highlights of the day! (yeah, I'm weird like that... I get more giddy over knives than I do with jewellery! hehehe).  

A smooth, black soft folding knife case housing 41 set of stainless steel Le Cordon Bleu engraved German Wusthof utensils of all sorts and smack-down in the centre of the cover is the bright white emblem of Le Cordon Bleu, Paris. This is kit is given to all pâtisserie debutant students on the first week of class.

Boy oh boy, are they ever heavy! (Especially if you have to climb 6 flights of stairs, carrying these babies). Unfortunately for us pâtisserie students, we won't be using all the knives given to us... such as the cleaver knife and the boning knife. I don't know why they have included them into the kits, and I'm sure they could've replaced them with utensils that we actually needed more but alas these are the standard Le Cordon Bleu kit.

Cuisine students on the other hand are given a different set of knives and all are placed in a big money-like squared metal suitcase. I find it a little funny seeing them lunging their little money-case around in the chef uniforms... because somehow whenever I see these suitcases, I am reminded of Hollywood movies and how they use these cases to transport money.

Included in the kit were:

1. Knife Case
   
2. Wavy Edge Slicer
3. Flat Icing Spatula
4. Bent Icing Spatula
   
5. Cook's Knife- 9"
6. Meat Fork
   
7. Paring Knife
8. Filleting Knife
   
9. Turning Knife
10. Boning Knife
    
11. Light Cleaver
12. Scissors
13. Sharpening Steel
14. Zester
    
15. Melon Baller
16. Apple Corer
17. Channeling Knife
    
18. Trussing Needle
19. Vegetable Peeler
20. Pastry Brush
    
21. Pastry Crimper
22. Piping Bag- 350mm
    
23. Piping Bag- 430mm
24. Plastic Scraper
25. Sugar Thermometer
    
26. Exoglass Spatula- 30cm
27. Whisk- 30cm
28. Table Fork
29. Soup Spoon
30. Teaspoon
31. 7 Stainless Steel Nozzle- U6, U8, U10, U12, U20, A7, D7, 
32. 4 Plastic Nozzle- StH, E6, E8, PF16

Also included in the kit are:

• an electronic balance (scale) including batteries
• Stewart Large Plastic Container for leftovers
• Cylindrical Small Plastic Container
• Two scale bowls

All in all the total estimate price of the Le Cordon Bleu student knife kit is priced to be over US$1,000. Students are expected to label or engrave all their utensils in class because sadly we were told that theft of knives and utensils are quite precedent in the school.