This week in early August focused on cakes generally composed of layers of sponges, dacquoises, mousses, creams, and glazes. We’d already made some during our Basic and Classical Cakes class, but I guess these cakes had more elements in them. We made two cakes in two day each, and the fifth day was a practical.

I’m going to name “proportionality” as the most important concept of the week. Since these cakes were composed of so many different things, each component had to be made with the correction proportion of ingredients so that they had the correct flavor and texture to begin with, and all of the components have to fit together proportionally for a composed texture and an interplay of flavors — and the amount of each component used in proportion to each other is very important. I almost wish that cake rings had grooved marks on the inside so that you could tell more accurately how thick a layer is b/c once you pour it in, it’s hard to tell.
Since many of these cakes have components that are poured in or placed in, you can make a lot of cakes in just a little longer than it would take to make one of them. But you often have to wait for something to set before adding the next layer. We put these cakes in the freezer a lot between layers.

It doesn’t feel right not to mention that the students had a rough time in this block because the recipes that we were given needed tweaking — quantities were off, instructions were off and incomplete… and I don’t think we had a firm idea of the art of these cakes. Since it was only a 4 day class with the 5th day for the practical, the course didn’t have a chance to smooth out, and many of the problems couldn’t be anticipated — like if there was too much gelatin in a mousse (esp since, in this case, we learned more about bavarian creams than mousses). We handed in notes about what was off so that corrections could be incorporated into the recipes, so I can only hope that future sections have a better time with this… and that our instructions don’t reflect errors that we made. I think it would have been cool if we were given the recipe guide as a reference at the beginning of the week, and then used the week to perfect a unique cake to make for our practical. Since these cakes are often featured in competitions, treating the block in a similar way makes sense, especially since we knew the basics of the components already.

Coffee Hazelnut Cake. From the bottom, this had a crunchy paillette feuilletine (melted choc, praline paste, and wafers mixed together and spread out to set), two layers each of alternating hazelnut coffee mousse and coffee dacquoise, a white coffee bavarian, and then chocolate ganache sprayed with chocolate from a paint gun. This was made as a larger sheet cake, and then cut into smaller cakes, one of which is pictured.

This one was mostly okay (only the quantity for the dacquoise and feuilletine should have been reduced by 1/3), except that the ganache became problematic. It was too soft so it was put into the freezer and became too hard. We tried to hand form it into shell shapes as we were supposed to, but that looked icky because it was all pointy and bumpy, even after spraying it. So, the next day, we took off the bumps, and rolled them into the round you see here. There’s a vaguely tiramisu-like style to it that I’m okay with. And actually, the ganache should have been whipped so that it could be piped on, but the instructions were incomplete.

This was The Shining Cake, er, no, I mean the Kir Royale Cake. For the jaconde that runs around the outside, we used a special rectangular silicone mold with grooves in it so that we could spread in purple colored tulip paste, and then spread almond jaconde batter on top and baked it. That was cut into a strip and used to line a 2″ cake ring. An almond dacquoise was used as the bottom, topped with a cassis mousse made with cassis puree and gelatin sheets. That was left to set overnight, as was a cassis jelly in a 6″ silicone mold. The next day, we placed another layer of dacquoise over the cassis mousse, and then the cassis jelly disk. Then we made the Champagne mousse, which was the real reason that I wanted to make this cake, since I find that working with bubbly alcohol is one of the trickier things that you can do. It was made by mixing sparkling wine with egg yolks and sugar over a double boiler until it foamed up a lot and then reduced down into a thick reduction that could hold a ribbon. That was then used to make a mousse adding a little more sparkling wine, gelatin, and cream. It was all topped with a cassis mirror glaze.

I loved the flavors of the champagne mousse and cassis mousse, and thought that they were a great combination, rivaling the charms of the drink.

But then there was that cassis jelly. It’s quantity was at least double what it should have been in the cake, and it didn’t set up, so it ran everywhere.

And I didn’t like the almond flavor mixing with the kir royale flavors. Granted, I don’t know what flavors would go well with kir royale flavors in a cake… I’d probably just leave them alone together.

We also made really good Apricot and Pistachio Ice Cream Bombes in dome molds as a class project, as well as Baked Alaskas.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 at 10:59 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.