Today was the last day of production for our Baking 110 class, which means TEST DAY! We drew pieces of paper from a bowl last night and I drew Menu #5: Eclairs, Raspberry Ganache Tartlettes, and Hazelnut Meringue Drops with Coffee Buttercream. That's a total of 6 recipes to execute plus assembly! 1. Creme Patesserie (pastry cream) 2. Pate a Choux ("cabbage paste") 3. Ganache 4. Pate Sucree (sugar dough) 5. Japonaise/Meringue Noisette (hazelnut) 6. Coffee buttercream. Four hours seemed like plenty of time, buuuuuuut it wasn't.
Piping the pastry cream into the eclairs were frustrating enough the other day, but the oven I put my pate a choux in was accidentally turned off while baking. So my eclairs collapsed a little bit and took longer to bake. The reason it's so frustrating, is because we had to use parchment paper to make a little piping bag to squeeze into little holes on the bottom of the eclairs. The tip of the bag gets soft after a few squeezes so it's hard to stick into another hole. I'm sure in the real world, they have better tools for doing that. So I presented only 4 eclairs instead of 6.
My 2 tartlettes came out really nice. They're the same ones from my previous post. My meringue drops turned out good, but I couldn't get the buttercream to set. I was in such a time crunch at the end I had a hard time fixing it. Oh well... it's the experience, not the grades that matter to me in culinary school.
Next week we start our Garde Manger class, in which we're making cold dishes. Yum! Bring on the pasta salads and sushi!
Piping the pastry cream into the eclairs were frustrating enough the other day, but the oven I put my pate a choux in was accidentally turned off while baking. So my eclairs collapsed a little bit and took longer to bake. The reason it's so frustrating, is because we had to use parchment paper to make a little piping bag to squeeze into little holes on the bottom of the eclairs. The tip of the bag gets soft after a few squeezes so it's hard to stick into another hole. I'm sure in the real world, they have better tools for doing that. So I presented only 4 eclairs instead of 6.
My 2 tartlettes came out really nice. They're the same ones from my previous post. My meringue drops turned out good, but I couldn't get the buttercream to set. I was in such a time crunch at the end I had a hard time fixing it. Oh well... it's the experience, not the grades that matter to me in culinary school.
Next week we start our Garde Manger class, in which we're making cold dishes. Yum! Bring on the pasta salads and sushi!
So long to baking lab... at least until Advanced Baking.
(A basic quiche I made yesterday)
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