Patisserie – Week Two
I am in love with pastries. This class is killer.
I had so much fun this week making my favourite dessert – Lemon Tart and learning to make macarons for the first time. Which would have been your favourite – lemon cream, black forest or dark chocolate caramel ganache?
If you don’t have sugar nearby, I don’t recommend viewing this blog right now in your unprepared state!
Macarons:
Making macarons is an art! The more practice the better. Weighing the ingredients out, adding them to one another when they are at the right temperature or within the right timing, folding mixtures together with energy and quickness at some stages but with gentleness in other stages, careful piping and a steady oven temperature all play an important role! I love all their colours, fillings and flavours. The possibilities are quite endless. As a friend of mine says, “they are the Mecca of petit fours!”
A macaron is meringue based and made from a mixture of almond powder, their primary ingredient, egg whites, and both confectionery sugar and granulated sugar. The word macaron is derived from the Italian word ammaccare, meaning crush or beat (a reference to the almond powder). The French usually spell macaron with one “o” to distinguish it from the English spelling – macaroon. In North America, the most typically found macaroon is the coconut macaroon which according to Chef Iman is just simply then “not a macaron”. Japan even has a version (makaron) which substitutes peanut flour!
A well-made macaron will have a lisse coque and a pied. In English, that would be a smooth shell and a foot (ruffly circumference on the base). The shell should be delicate and slightly glossy with the interior being airy and moist. They almost melt in your mouth! Commonly, a sweet filling will be sandwiched between two macarons. In the case of our use of them in the cuisine course rather than in the pastry course, we use them in combination with a savoury filling or topping.
Tarte Au Citron:
The best dessert so far in my opinion! The recipe for the tart crust is a winner. We also used the same pastry for the shell of the Quiche Lorraine. This lemon tart was taken up a notch with the addition of a layer of crème d’amande and tiny pieces of candied ginger inside, as well as the lemon cream. Amazing.
Galette des Rois or King’s Cake:
This is a traditional cake in France made for celebrating the Epiphany. In modern day France, these cakes are most readily available in bakeries during the month of January. There are two versions of this cake. The one we made in class is the puff pastry version with a creamy frangipane center (Galette des Rois). The other version is the Gâteau des Rois, more typical of southern France, and is a brioche-like, wreath shaped cake with candied fruit.
Our frangipane center was made by combining crème d’amande with pastry cream. I hope I paid close enough attention to the pastry cream recipe because making it is my practical test on Monday!
A trinket, la fève, is hidden within the cake. Originally, la fève, was actually a broad bean (féve), but today it is made from plastic and can be anything from a cartoon character to a movie star depending on the bakery. These trinkets are collectibles for many! Tradition has it that whomever finds la fève in their slice gets to be king for the day. I’m not sure what these means exactly, but I can image being king for the day would be favourable! Bakeries usually sell the cake along with a paper crown for crowing the king. Thanks to Wikipedia for the additional history on Galette des Rois!
Cocoa Génoise – Black Forest Cake:
For our Black Forest cakes we used a typical Génoise cake recipe along with Caraïbes Chocolate Mousse, Chantilly Cream and Glaçage Noir Brillant (glaze). There were a lot of recipes involved and many steps in creating this layer cake. I must say though, it is beautiful. Do you remember this used to be one of my favourite cakes and a request on birthdays Mom?
A Génoise is an Italian sponge cake named after the city of Genoa. There is no leavening agent added to this cake and volume is created by suspended air in the batter. It is typically a drier cake and therefore often soaked with liqueurs or syrups or used in combination with creamy fillings. In patisserie, the Génoise is a building block for many other recipes. For example, it is often made into a large thin sheet and rolled while still warm to make jelly rolls or Bûches de Noël, or layers of Génoise are used in tiramisu instead of ladyfingers or poured into moulds to create madeleines. To produce our Chocolate Génoise we simply added cocoa powder. Brilliant, I know!
My final photo of the cake here is being submitted to a french pastry magazine for my Chef. I hope it is accepted!
A La Cuisine – Week Six
This week was a little while ago, but I’ve got lots of good photos to share so I thought I’d better get on it! I was happy to get to work with more meat this week as it is definitely a personal weakness of mine in the kitchen. Dan has always been the meat one in the household and it was time to take the rack of lamb into my own hands!
Lamb:
Did you check out my french fry castles?
Lobster:
Organic Vegetables:
Risotto:
These balls of risotto were breaded in a mixture of seasonings, herbs and almond powder and then deep-fried. Doesn’t that sound delicious! The cylinder is risotto breaded in Parmesan.
Airing My “Clean” Laundry
A note about our laundry situation…
It costs € 6 to wash a tiny 4-6kg load of laundry here and that doesn’t count any drying. Every couple weeks (we push it) we cram as much as we can into these machines on premises, often needing to do three loads for € 18. Ouch.
Needless to say, things don’t always get washed so well and we almost always have this beautiful rack feature in our living room!
The alternative is hand washing or stomping on everything in the bath tub. Or, we could take all of our laundry on the public bus and get a slightly cheaper rate elsewhere.
