For this practical (which was halfway through this block), we had to decorate two pre-baked genoise cakes (a Black Forest Cake and a Buttercream Cake) and make creme anglaise and pastry cream. The trickiest thing about the practical seemed to be keeping track of all the little components — like flavored whipped cream, two flavored simple syrups, cherry filling, flavored buttercream, shaving chocolate, and putting frosting into piping bags at the end. I felt cluttered often, so I want to figure out ways to better order my work station. But there was no need to use the ovens for this one, so that was an interesting break.

The Buttercream Cake introduced a weird start to my day when I cut into it to find it still raw in the middle. I’d grabbed the cake from a communal pile of genoise cakes because it looked high and easy to cut into thirds, and it appeared solid on top. Anyway, I was able to throw it out, pull another one out from the freezer, and microwave it for a few seconds to thaw it. I then had to micowave the chilled buttercream for about 40 seconds, and whip it in a mixer with a liqueur for flavoring. We used buttercream leftover from another group, so I was unsure about its properties because I’d never made it (and I don’t really eat it). I didn’t want it to melt or be too diluted with liquid, so I had to eyeball it. I think it turned out ok. I barely had enough to cover the cake, but I just made it. We fill in the middle layers of these cakes on the table, and then put them on a revolving cake stand to make the top and sides are even.  And we don’t put fruit on top of it b/c buttercream doesn’t need to be chilled, but fruit does, so suddenly it would become a cake that needs refrigeration.
The Black Forest Cake had a thankfully fully baked chocolate sponge that needed to be cut into thirds before being layered with flavored whipped cream, cherry filling, and syrup. For all our cakes, we tend to cut them into slices first, and then decorate the top, so that each slice can be made to look as even as possible. I made a template to cut the cake with a round of cardboard that had pre-drawn lines for the number of slices needed (I used a protractor to make it as exact as possible), but in practice (when you put the template under the cardboard round of the cake to be cut), there was still room for error in lining up the lines with the sides of cake and keeping the cake from shifting around. The template helped a little, but not as much as I would have liked. Thankfully, my rosettes on top were decent enough, and they were partially covered with brandied cherries anyhow.

In the end, both turned out okay, but the chef thought that the top layers were a bit dry and could have used more syrup.

My pastry cream was deemed undercooked b/c the chef could still taste the starch in it (um, I didn’t, but whatever). There are a million variations on pastry cream, but this one turned out pasty, almost like mashed potatoes. Maybe too much moisture evaporated from the liquid while it was heating up; I’d never had that happen so severely before. The chef demoed this recipe a few days later and it turned out more smooth. It’s tricky to tell when it’s done, because we’re told to let it boil for a certain amount of time (in this case, the chef said 1 minute, although confusingly, the recipe we were given said 3 mins), but in time, the chef said we might be able to recognize what it should look like when it’s done.

The creme anglaise was supposed to be cooked to nappe, which is when you can draw a line down the middle of a coated spoon and have it not close up which we were told would be at 180 degrees. I’d never made this before, but hoped I could recognize it at nappe; I should have practiced it. I had to use a slightly large pot, b/c all the small ones were being used somewhere, and it was hard to get a correct reading from the thin layer of mixture in the pan. The chef demoed this a few days later with an emphasis on finding a smaller pan. Anyway, what happened was a case of conflicting messages; it seemed like nappe, but it was only at about 160. I let it go a bit more, but by the time it got to 170, it had curdled. So, I quickly took it off, and strained it, but the curdled bits were so small that most of them passed through the strainer. I should have just trusted my eye, but I didn’t exactly know how thick it should be.

I would have liked to make both the pastry cream and creme anglaise again, but I didn’t have time; the creme anglaise alone took about 12 minutes to thicken, and I certainly didn’t have that much time. I’ll make a point to make the creme anglaise on my own sometime soon, because it’s a basic element that I should be able to make easily.

I took this practical almost two weeks ago, but we haven’t been given our grades for it yet, so I don’t know my grade exactly. In a way, that’s fine, because I’m trying to think beyond the grade, but it’s also a factor in determining progress, so it would have been nice, especially since we’d always gotten it immediately in the past.

Anyway, as can probably be sensed from my tone, this was a slightly frustrating, if rather uneventful, practical. On to better things…

This entry was posted on Monday, May 1st, 2006 at 10:17 pm and is filed under Culinary School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.