Basic Week 6 & 7: Petit Fours, Truffles and Exams!

This is a combined post of week 6 and 7.
Week 6 started with theory cum demo lecture on Ice creams and Sorbets. Chef briefed us about the history of ice creams. Learnt about the composition of ice creams and sorbets. He demonstrated a Champagne sorbet and milk based ice cream, mmm..yummy!

Creme glacee (milk based ice cream)

Champagne Sorbet

After this, we made the third and last, potential exam recipe, Charlotte au Cassis, the most beautiful looking cake we made till date. It is a nothing but blackcurrant mousse encased in light sponge, decorated with blackcurrant glaze, fresh fruits and white chocolate piping. Per chef, I should have used less number of fruits, otherwise it’s a good presentation.

Charlotte au Cassis

Then came biscuit based Petit Fours. A petit four is a small appetiser, a small fancy french biscuit or small cake often served at the end of a meal. We made Almond Meringues and Sables Hollandais. It was a fun practical. I over-colored my sables a bit but meringues were perfect, per chef.

Sables Hollandais and Almond Meringues

Next up was the much, much awaited Macarons!
It was on my todo list for loooooong time but never got a chance to try them before in my 4yrs long baking journey. Finally I made macarons and that too successfully in the first attempt only! Yipee!!! It has got very nice crust and feet. Both the flavours, chocolate and pistachio turned out awesome. This was my best practical till date. I took so many photos of them that it was difficult to decide which one to post here, so I made a collage of best 3. :))

Macarons - Chocolate and Pistachio

Week 6 ended here on Saturday with a box full of macarons. I distributed them with friends and my housemates.

OMG! Exam is just a day away!! Monday, 15th is the theory exam and Tuesday, 16th is practical exam. You will be surprised to know that we all have been studying in-between these demos and practicals all along; and you won’t believe we have a last recipe demo lined up just before the theory exam on Monday! Grrrrr! It’s a bit weird but yes, we have last recipe after the exams (which means it’s not going to be counted for marks) :)

So, as I just told, we attended our last demo of chocolate truffles - dark, milk and white.

Immediately after that we appeared for the theory exam. It was an hour long straight forward knowledge test. The paper looked lengthy but everyone finished it approx 30 mins ahead of time.
Couldn’t believe its over!! I’ve been stuffing my brain with information for the last few days, there are a LOT of things to study and remember like, temp of fridge, freezer, sugar temperatures for all stages, temp of egg coagulation w/o dilution, with dilution, french terms used for techniques, 20+ recipes to remember with all ingredients and exact quantities and lots & lots more!

Next day was the practical exam, we will be given the name of the recipe after entering the kitchen.
So we had got Tarte au Citron/Lemon tart. We got 15 mins to write a short exam of ingredients and quantities of the tart and exact method. Got couple of mins to setup the station and started making it!

Had to finish and present the tart within 2.5 hrs including a small assignment of piping. I finished 30mins before the time and was feeling pretty good about it except the thickness of my tart. Also being it for the first time I was not sure what to expect. There were 2 chefs in the kitchen monitoring us, doing rounds of all the stations and noting down something continuously! Made me so nervous!!! Huh, too much of pressure!!! :(

Hussshhh!! Finally it’s over. Immediately after the exams, we friends went out for much deserved break, had lunch and hanged around for some time.

I had last practical next day. Made 3 types of chocolate truffles. Tempered the chocolate correctly without using thermometer, it’s very crucial to temper it to right temperature before using.
This was complete fun practical and we enjoyed it thoroughly as everyone was relaxed after the exams :)

Dark chocolate truffle, White chocolate truffle and Milk chocolate muscadines

At last, it was the results time! Yayy, I passed with 76%! Got the certificate for basic and for food safety.

Don’t you think that was fast than a bullet train!!! It’s hard to believe the Basic term is over so quickly, 6 weeks literally flew away!

Look forward to Intermediate from Tue, 23rd! :)

Basic Week 5: Cakes, Fruits, Chocolate and Wine!

A new month, Feb has started and the schedule looks easy going sessions wise, with couple of day-offs before the final exams, which is on 15th and 16th Feb. We have 4 days of holidays before the next term, Intermediate starts, and again a couple of days off after it starts.

The week started with theory lecture on Fruits. We saw and tasted a wide variety of fruits from apples to durians, and from berries to mangosteen, from mangoes to ugli fruits. I’d never heard of or seen many of these fruits. It was very interesting for me to know all of these amazing fruits from different parts of the world :)

Soursops

Rhubarb

Durian

Snake fruit

Rambutan

Ugli fruit

Then, next recipe lesson was about bavarian creams and mousses. We learnt to make Charlotte au chocolat i.e Chocolate Bavarian Mousse cake encased with light chocolate sponge with pistachios, decorated with chocolate garnish.
This is the first time I was using a ring to make cake. It was quite interesting to see how all the components involved in the recipe are assembled to construct a nicely finished, well decorated, restaurant style dessert cake.

Charlotte au Chocolat

Chef praised my presentation and garnish. :) It tastes as sinful as it looks! :P

Next up, was the Wine lecture. A different faculty member(the only Indian faculty in LCB), not a chef, conducted this lecture. He talked about not just wine, but about all types of alcoholic beverages in general including fermented drinks, spirits, liqueurs. He then explained about different types of wine production methods and tasting techniques. We tasted two types of wines, red and white. Overall, it was an interactive session.

Wine class setup

Wine tasting

I knew nothing about alcohol and was almost blank before this lecture, but after it was over, I gained some useful knowledge about this important ingredient (liqueurs/alcohol) used in patisserie. Yes, alcohol is everywhere in french pastry, it’s an integral part of it, so a pastry chef has to know all about it. :)

Then we had another interesting lecture on Chocolates! Chef showed us a short film on how the chocolate is made right from scratch. We walked thorough the entire process from how cocoa pods are harvested from theobroma cacao trees to the final product dark, milk and white chocolate made to be sold in stores. You will be shocked to know that white chocolate is not a chocolate actually…It is 50% of cocoa butter+milk and 50% of sugar!!! ;)

Cacao Pod and Beans

After this, for the last practical of the week, I made a very unusual, funky kind of looking cake, which is called Gateau St Honore!

Gateau St Honore

It is a classic french cake. The base is combination of choux pastry and shortcrust pastry. Inside is filled with pastry cream and top is decorated with caramel dipped profiteroles on edge, and herringbone piping design in the centre. It looks different but tastes good :)

Gateau St Honore

It is named after the French patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs, Saint Honore or Honoratus, bishop of Amiens.

The week ended with demo of Charlotte au Cassis, which is a potential exam dish. The other two potential exam dishes are Lemon tart and Genoise with raspberry jam. Any of these three can come for the practical exam.

Everyone is talking about the exams and studies now as it’s really close, just one week away!