For Day Two, we had to make 12 French Tartlettes, 12 Napoleon Slices, 8 oz of Ganache made with a 1:1.5 ratio of cream to chocolate and 10% butter, and 4-4 oz molds of Bavarian Cream. It was a pretty stress-free day, even if I did have to go at breakneck speed to just finish everything.

The Chef wanted even streusel coverage on these Tartlettes, and to have complete coverage of the dried fruit compote underneath. I prefer streusel a little uneven and with patches to see what kind of fruit is underneath, so I practiced a little resistance by doing so just for the fleeting satisfaction of seeing something close to what I like; I really try to think of the Chef Instructors as my bosses who tell me what I must make for customers, but sometimes, that doesn’t convince me. Another problem was that my dough had cracked a little under a couple tartlettes while I was pressing it into the molds, and I hadn’t patched them well. Usually, I’m pretty good at lining molds (and I really like the shape of these molds), but I was having problems with the temp of the dough — it was either too warm or too cold. Chef recommended just lightly rubbing it btw your hands out of the fridge to get it to the right temp. That’s a good tip.

I just finished cutting these Napoleons 1 minute before the end of the practical, so the fondant wasn’t completely set yet. The puff was baked just to edge of acceptability, so it tasted almost like caramel — woohoo! I liked that added depth. The Chef tests each Napoleon by hacking through the center with the side of a fork to see how it breaks — mine broke easily like a flaky champ. The Chef liked that my pastry cream was very smooth and rather soft — he said he’d rather have that pastry cream and the resulting uneven tops/oozing sides than a perfectly stiff and dry Napoleon; I agree. I’d made it the day before and whipped it in a mixer that day until it was very smooth; I don’t think I would have been able to whip it that smooth by hand.

The base ingredients of a ganache are cream, chocolate, and butter, and there are certain ratios that are used for what type of ganache you want — like pipe-able or cut-able. We had to make a 1:1.5 ratio with 10% butter that resulted in about 8 oz, so I boiled 3 oz cream and poured it over 4.5 oz dark chocolate in a food processor, let it sit 30 seconds, and the processed it. When that was smooth, I added .75 oz butter, and processed that. Then into a bowl, and covered with plastic wrap until the Chef had a look. He deemed it just right, without any troublesome chunks of unmelted chocolate.

We also had to make Bavarian Creams out of creme anglaise, gelatin, and whipped cream, which was odd, b/c we didn’t really make that this block. So, I adapted a recipe out of the book on faith, and it turned out fine. The Chef dipped it in hot water to unmold it, and it sliced fine and had a nice consistency and didn’t have any swirls of unfolded creams. They were promptly thrown out, so I didn’t get a pic of them, but it was simply a white cream in aluminum molds.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 22nd, 2006 at 9:39 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.