Mango and Coconut Mousse Chiffon Cake with Swiss Buttercream

This was our final practical! :) Thank goodness!  It took two days to create and we did amazing! An "A" for sure!  The Chiffon cake was perfect, the two mousse's came out excellent, the crumb of the cake was great and the Swiss Buttercream was smooth and delicious. I added the toasted coconuts on the top, and there you have it. A cake that is worthy of biting into.

I am SO glad this class is over! Tomorrow we have our final and a clean up and that is that!  I look forward to the time off!

As for you guys! Thank you SO MUCH for being with me these past 6 weeks! Its so great to see all your comments and to write these out.  I really appreciate it.

I'm ready for some time off and I am sure you are ready for some time off too! ;) No more sweets for a little bit right?

I will see you back here in a week! Here is what the cake looked like when it was cut into by the Chef:

We had great layering and consistency in the size of those layers.. Woo Hoo!! A great way to end the week.

So it is goodbye for now. See you for Cake Decorating on July 5th!!

XOXO



LAst 3 days and they are all tests, tests, tests!

Hi guys!

Sorry I did not get a chance to write yesterday. But rest assured, there was nothing much to report. ;) You know I wouldn't leave you out if I created something delicious. Now, I DID create something delicious, but it was our test. :) We had to make chocolate mousse and creme anglaise.  I did good!  Maybe I could have done a LITTLE better but my head wasn't really in it.

Today was a different practical. I turned in that Mousse Torte Report that I had to create from scratch and present to the chef. After turning in the report, we had to start creating this Mousse Cake. So I prepped and am pretty much ahead of the game. I created my Chiffon cake, the Swiss Butter Cream, my Mango Mousse and I prepared the ingredients to create my Coconut Mousse for tomorrow.  :) 

Tomorrow I will cut the cake and assemble it and turn it in for a grade. And then we are done!! I am hoping we can keep our straight "A" Status! But I have slacked a little and with all the chaos and changes the Chef made, I never knew when we had testing or not and so, well, there were days where I just showed up!

But its all good! We will wait for the next run which is CAKE DECORATING, and then off we go to see what we can make of this journey!

So, wish me luck and we will catch up on Wednesday when I can show you my finished product!! :)   We start the Cake Decorating class on the 5th of July! Its going to be a fun time.

I'm wishing you all a very beautiful rest of the week.

Ta Ta for now....

Lin

Mango, Coconut and Strawberry Mousse Ribbon Cake :)

Its FRIDAY, and yes, I do have a lot of love for you, but today I am going to give you the step by step on how to assemble the cake and then I am off to get my nails done!!! :) :) Sorry, I must... and its not that you are not important, because you so are, BUT,  a girl needs some pampering and relaxation and I am going to get it. ;)

Ok, so the first thing you do for this precious commodity is create your Ribbon Sponge Cake :)  We will again use the Jaconde Sponge cake but instead of stacking them, you will decorate the parchment paper that you place the batter on BEFORE you place it on your sheet.  As you can see on mine, I picked a polka dot pattern and used an array of colors. Fun!! You can do anything you want, if you are creative then make it happen and make your momma proud!! :) Umm that would be me, the momma ;)

First, bake your sponge cake. It should not be more than a 1/4" thick to allow you to wrap this around a ring.  Cool your cake and begin to create your mousse's.  We were supposed to use 2 mousse's for this particular cake but since we ran out of 6" ring molds, my group had to use 10" ring molds.   The cake was mega big and there was a ton of room left to fill, so we created a third mousse!! It looks OFF THE CHAIN awesome in the pics too! :) :)  We created mango mousse, strawberry mouse and coconut mousse.. each beyond delicious on their own, but divine together.  Yes, I ate the piece that you see in the picture. What do you expect?!?!? I have to taste it for you to make sure its not poisonous.. ;)

Then, take your ring mold and line it with acetate plastic. Carefully press your cardboard cake holder down to the bottom.  You now have created the base and perimeters that will hold your sponge cake together.  Cut your Jaconde sponge cake inot a Strip and a Sphere. These will serve as ther perimeter and the bottom of the cake.

See! This was our ribbon for the side of the cake. Soo cute!! laughing... yes, I know. I am a dork. Then you will place the ribbon around the edge of your Ring and press the sphere down to the bottom.

Create your first mousse. You have to create the mousse's one by one because they set very quickly and you want to pour them into your cake ring as soon as you are done.  Cool the mousse and cake in the refrigerator, then create your 2nd mousse.  Pour it on top of the first mousse and so on and so forth. Theh pic below is the Mango mousse we created. :)

Immediately pour this into the Ring and place it in the cooler while you create the next mousse. Below is the Mango mousse poured on top of the cake sphere.

We cooled all our mousse's off, created our top decorative glacage and voila! We had our cake completed.

We had a fun day today because it was a free day. Andrea and I made Coconut Mousse.Thanks to Andrea! She went to the ever so lovely Wal-Mart across the street and got us the Coconut ingredients SINCE OUR SCHOOL DIDN'T HAVE THEM.... shock! I know....

We also made Quiche with ham and bacon and red peppers and onions and cheese and spinach...  It was pretty darn good. I dare say,  if there isn't a lot of egg in those babies, I will actually eat it! :) :)

And to top it off, she and I made a passion fruit mousse to put into our pie tins we created a few days ago and sprinkled those babies with coconut. They are DELICIOUS!! So needless to say, its a SWEET weekend., in all sense's of the word.

I hope you have a beautiful one, it is gorgeous out!

Take care and see you here on Monday! Practical day! Tuesday our report is due and it is the start of our 2 day final practical, thru Wednesday.  Thursday is deep cleaning day so you know there is nothing but fun going on, right?  Riiiiiight!  Then we are out of there!! Summer break! Me lovey Summer Break.. ;) Im heading to Miami for some fun loving! Can not wait.

Ta Ta lovies...

Jaconde Sponge Chocolate Mousse Torte Assembly

Thursday came and went, but not before I cut into this sweet baby! Mmmm Mmmm Delicious! I went to visit my dear friend Ginny today and was honoured by a lovely lunch! Thank you Ginny!! This was our dessert and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. Who doesn't have Chocolate Mousse in common? ;) LOVEY!!

This is a stacked Jaconde Chocolate Mousse Torte my friends!!  I will give you a step by step so you can see all the work that went into this little 6" beauty.  :)

We first created our Jaconde Sponge Cake. This is a 1/4 inch thick cake that we stacked together with the Ganache being its "glue". :)  It's made with almonds and to create the "stack" you bake it on a full sheet and then cut out your rectangle and sphere for your Cake Ring Mold.  The sphere will be the bottom of your cake and the rectangular pieces get cut inot small 1/4" stacked pieces that will go around the enitre inner shpere that is being held inside with some acetate plastic wrapping:

Here is how you stack them up into your ring:

Once you create your Chocolate Gelatin Mousse, you will then fill it to NEAR the top of your ring cake.

Cool this in the refrigerator and then fill the top up with Chocolate Ganache.  Place it back into the refrigerator and let the Ganache cool.  Once it is completely cooled down, you can unmold the cake by pushing it up from the bottom:

There you have it!  Here are some more crazy pics of us all doing this! We all thought it was just SO PRETTY! laughing... so I took some shots of the peeps for ya!

That is Andrea and Rhett :)

And here are Lulu and Daphne messing with all our rings ;) We try to have some fun in all of this ;).

Have a great night everyone!! Tomorrow is our Free Day so my group is going to wrap up a Ribbon Sponge Mousse cake we created today! Mango, Strawberries... Mmm yummy! Can not wait to taste it!

Looking forward to a drama free weekend!!!  See you here tomorrow!!

XO



Lemon Souffle, you say?

Good afternoon everyone,

Wednesday already.  But the time isn't flying right on by, so I am eternally GRATEFUL! 

These pictured beauties WERE Souffle's.  By the time I got them  home, they had deflated. :(  So I threw a little something-something on there for ya ;) so you could get a gist of what they were supposed to look like.. imagine them 1/2" taller on top :) A Nice puffy looking yellowish cloud of lemony deliciousness.

We created our lemon curd yesterday in order to make the souffle today.  To make the souffle,  we took a cup of the curd we created and added 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to it. I LOVE lemon!! You know I couldn't refrain from having tasting spoons all around me today. ;)   We then took 6 egg whites and whipped them on high in the mixer (using the whisk attachment).  We lowered the speed on the mixer and gradually added the magic ingredient, SUGAR!! :) :)   You will need 2 oz of sugar, and then whip that sassy princess to a soft - medium peak.   Fold the whipped egg mixture into your curd mixture and you will be ready to bake these.

We used aluminum tin cups, but you can use your ramekins.  We lightly sprayed the tins with a vegetable oil and then threw enough sugar into each tin so that the entire inside tin was covered with a thin layer of sugar. You can use any kind of crumb you desire :) The chef did a few with Oreo crumbs and others with sugar. 

Fill each tin to the top and put into the oven right away at 425 degrees F.  As soon as you see them "Puff up", your beauties are done! 

Quick Tip: Did you know that Souffle means "To puff" or to "blow up"?  .. in a good way, of course ;). 

I think I am going to go "blow up" and eat one of these right now!

We created our Chocolate mousse today as well! I WAS IN HEAVEN!! Lemon Souffle and Chocolate Mousse?!?!? Why did we have to go home? Ahhh tomorrow I will go back in and finish off that Chocolate Mousse Torte and then create a different Ribbon Sponge Torte which will have a fruit mousse inside.  Those are the tools we need to create our report.  OH! and my two flavors were Mango and Coconut. :) I picked it for my pops!  I loved your guys' ideas though! We can get together and make these any old day. Oh Ginny! When I see you TOMORROW I will have this chocolate mousse torte with me.. get that kitchen ready baby!!

Good night everyone,

ME :)

Preppy Day ;)

Hi all!

Happy Tuesday!! No pictures today :( Boooo... What is a blog without pictures??

....But it was just a prep day today.  We are in the process of making stacked 6" cakes so we made the Ribbon sponge which will go around the outside of  our mousse cake tomorrow.  That was fun!!  We created and colored our batter and then were able to get all artistic-n-stuff ;)  We were to design the ribbon sponge any way we wanted. I worked with Andrea and we chose a polka dot look and created a pink, purple and blue color theme.  I will show you those pictures tomorrow when we unmold it!  It was super cute and VERY girly.  Love it! Tomorrow we will create the mousse and finish assembling the cake. Can't wait to show it to ya!

We also made the Jaconde Sponge today. If you remember, we used this to make our Opera cake as well. :)   We are going to be making a 6" stacked cake out of that as well, I think.  Laughing! I really am just assuming because I am TOTALLY lost in this class; and so are my fellow classmates. Everything changes daily :) BUT, we're going to be mega positive about it and totally go with the flow. :)  Life is just way too short to have other people mess it all up for ya. Plus, its not like we are not learning right?  Make lemonade with those lemons baby! ;)

We have a big project due next week. We each have to create a double mousse torte report. What is that, you ask? Well, heck, I asked the same question. I don't know how to create it yet, but I will tell you what it is! We have a choice of making a torte (a cake) using either the ribbon sponge or stacked Jaconde method.  We need to come up with any two gelatin flavoured mousses of our liking. Then we need to figure out which garnish and glacage we want to use on our cake.  The report has to indicate all the necessary ingredients and the procedure to make the cake. There you have it. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions on flavors?!?! What is your favorite flavor and what would you pair it up with ? I have something in mind, but am not going to post it. :)  A girl can still have a secret right?

So yea, you can imagine how lost we all are since we have to turn in an ingredients list tomorrow so they can have all of them available for us when we go to make the cake.  BUT, none of us knows how to make a 6" stacked cake, or the mousse's for it, for that matter. I mean, we made A Bavarian mousse one day, but not a flavored one?!?!?  HELP!! I have to laugh! This is AWESOME!! :) :) :) It's like the blind leading the blind!

So yea, I am off to do a little Internet researching. It can't be that hard. At this point, we SHOULD all be able to do this and I am confident that we all will do something really tasty. 

I am off to go do some homework and research :) Wish me luck!  Get a good nights sleep and have a beautiful day tomorrow!

See you back here very soon.

XO

Quiche and Mango Sorbet... what a combo! ;)

Monday Madness!

Did you have a good weekend?  I had an unforgettable one! Grateful to have the family that I do. :) :)  In class we had a full day.  We took our cheesecake out, that was made on Friday, and we prepped it to take home.  I had forgotten that I still had this little guy! And yes, LITTLE is the key word here because the size of this cake is shameful! laughing... but it is a little piece of heaven so we wont put him down too too much.   ;)  We then created our Mango sorbet in the ice-cream machine:

Yes, we all wanted to be that spatula as it poured into our container. ;) It smelled so good and I pleasantly vouch that it tasted equally as good! Triple Yummy.

We then moved on to make a quiche.  We created our pie dough on Friday and took it out this morning and placed it in our mini pie tins.  We baked those in the oven for about 8 minutes or so, or until lightly browned, and then created our little masterpiece.  :)

Quiche Ingredients:

1 Cup of Cream

1 yolk

2 whole eggs

4 oz of bacon

4 oz of cheese of your choice

Onions to taste

Salt to taste

Pepper to taste

Nutmeg to taste

Mix your cream and eggs together.  In a separate bowl, combine your cheese, bacon, onions and seasonings.  Place your cheese mixture into your cooked pie tins and pour the milk and egg mixture on top.

Bake these at 325 degrees F for about 25 minutes or so, or until you see that your creation has risen. :) I am NOT a quiche fan at all. Me no likey eggs.. but I did taste this and I have to admit, it was pretty good. I could never take an entire piece down completely, but a taste of it, I could. ;)

Enjoy! Enjoy! I am off to get a little down time. I sure need it! I will see you guys here tomorrow.

Have an amazing evening.

XO

Another Cheesecake for ya...

Hiiii Happy Friday!

I am going to apologize ahead of time for the quick blog. Its a big family day for me and I want to jump start the weekend as soon as possible!  :)  It is an absolutely beautiful day out and I can not wait to enjoy it with my loved ones..   Tre importante!! Yea, that was French mixed with Spanish..  Listen, I try ok??  I know I don't always get it right ;)

Ok, so we made cheesecake today and I will give you the recipe.  It will make you about 2, 8" sized cakes.

Cheesecake

Ingredients:

20 oz CREAM CHEESE

7 oz SUGAR

.40 oz CORNSTARCH

.13 oz VANILLA

.10 oz SALT (optional)

4 oz EGG

2 oz HEAVY CREAM
1 oz MILK

.25 oz LEMON JUICE

Create your own Graham Cracker Crust :)

So you are going to mix your cream cheese in the mixer at a medium speed and then bring the speed down to low and gradually add in the sugar and cornstarch.  Cream those together.  As soon as that is creamed, add in your eggs little by little. Stop the mixer and scrape that bowl down. Continue to mix on low speed and add in the heavy cream and milk. The last ingredients to go in are your flavoring agents.  So add in your vanilla and lemon juice. :)

Once everything is incorporated you can separate some of the batter and add in an additional flavoring agent, like chocolate or oreo's, raspberry, peanut butter..whatever you want. :)  Then mix that back into your original batter, pour into your pan which should already have your graham cracker crust in it, and bake in the oven at 375 degrees F!

We made some mini cheesecakes as you can see above and we also made four 6" ones as well. I took a picture of another group's cheesecakes because they got REALLY creative and I thought you would like to check it out. :)

Cool huh? Now I am wishing I would have done something like that but since my family isn't too crazy about flavoring, I just left mine plain so that they can put any topping they want. :) Awww so considerate.  It's the story of my life!! It's also been my biggest nightmare at times! It's who I am though, so take it or leave it, right?

 

Ok, soooo enjoy! Please make this. It tastes delicious! I shared some in the car with my brother and sister in law. :) :) They said they really liked it. 

 

Enjoy your weekend! I will catch you back here on Monday.

 

Ta Ta for now,

Linda :)

Vanilla ICe Cream, Chocolate Bread Pudding and Rice Pudding... your choice!

Happy Thursday! Wow, it has been a full week thus far!  We are working double time in the kitchen during class, doing 3 custards at a time.  Today we finished up the Ice Cream. :) We took the Vanilla Creme Anglaise that we made yesterday and we put it through the ice cream machine. Fuuun.. :) Who doesn't love ice-cream?? FRESH ice-cream at that! It tasted heavenly. We added chocolate chips, walnuts and marshmallows to ours. But honestly, the Vanilla Cream was just as good on its own.

We then moved on to creating our Rice pudding. I didnt know that many people liked this little guy... eeehhhh ;)

This one takes a little time since you need to cook the rice for about 30 minutes. You grab your pan and put the rice into it as well as your vanilla, salt and milk and bring it to a simmer and cover. Bring the heat down and let the steam cook the rice until it is tender.

Once your rice is ready, you will temper the mixture into your mixed sugar and yolk creation.. adding only half of the sugar into the yolks, and the other half into the rice creation.  Temper everything back into  the pan and place on the stove again so that it thickens. You will add in your cinnamon at this time as well as the heavy cream and let this thicken as you stir gently.  Once you have the consistency that you want, you are ready to serve! A lot of people enjoy this hot but you can cool this in the fridge and serve cold as well. Its all about what YOU want! :) That's what I say.

Lets move on to the chocolate bread pudding.

All these ingredients created quite a delicious treat. :)  I am not a big Rice Pudding fan, and am also not a bread pudding fan, but hello!! They added CHOCOLATE!! What doesn't taste good with chocolate?!?!? Nada, that's what! ;)

You have a similar production for this.  You take all the bread you have cut up into cubes and place them in your container.  You will Heat up your milk, heavy cream, 1/2  your sugar and vanilla and bring it to a simmer. Once the milk hits that simmering stage, mix your egg yolks with the other 1/2 of the sugar. :) Sugar, Sugar, Sugar... and everything nice!  No spice, please and thank you ;)

You are ready to temper the milk into the yolk mixture. :)

You can see in the picture that we have the bread in the tins. We have the chef tempering the yolks as we, lovely students, look on and diligently take notes. ;)

Combine the yolk mixture back into the milk.  Add your chocolate into the hot mixture and whisk it in. Transfer your creation into a pourable container and let that baby fall onto your lovely bread pieces. 

Once all your tins are filled you can take a spatula and gently press the bread down so that all the bread soaks up this mixture.  You can put this into the stove at 350 degrees F right away or you can put them in the fridge for about 10 minutes, let the bread absorb the chocolate mixture and then place them in the oven!

Had enough yet?? Well I wont give you any more steps. :) I can, on the other hand, give you the recipe's for these if you want them, so just give me a shout.

Tomorrow is Friday!!  I am excited because my entire family will be getting together. A little family reunion. My brother is flying in from California with his pregnant wife :), my other brother is coming in from Miami with his beautiful girlfriend and we are all going to have a little fun together. SO, on that note..

I am off to do a little reading and I will see you back here tomorrow. And if by chance you see I don't make it tomorrow, then I PROMISE PROMISE PROMISE to post Friday's activity by Monday :) :) Tee Hee...

Good night to you!

Vanilla Bavarian Cream and Creme Anglaise...

What does not kill you makes you stronger!!  Noted!!

Off we go. We made Vanilla Bavarian Cream today as well as a Mango Sorbet and a Creme Anglaise that we will use as the base of our Vanilla ice cream for tomorrow. 

The process is not difficult. Let me give you a recipe first  and then walk you through the process. :)

Vanilla Bavarian Cream

Ingredients:

.75 oz GELATIN

5 oz COLD WATER

Creme Anglaise:

4 oz EGG YOLK

4 oz SUGAR

1 PT MILK

.25 oz VANILLA

1 PT HEAVY CREAM

Whip up your heavy cream to a soft peak and set it aside.

While you do that ,you will have milk and the vanilla extract in a pan on the stove with 1/2 the amount of sugar noted above, heating up until it simmers. When you see its getting to a simmering point, grab your egg yolk and the other 1/2 of the sugar, place into a bowl and whip together until blended. 

At this point you want to bloom your gelatin. So add the cold water into the gelatin and slightly stir and set it aside.

Temper the milk into the yolk mix while whisking the eggs. You want to continue to whisk so that the heavy milk does not cook your eggs! Yucky, that would sooo not taste good. ;)  Add another third of the milk into the yolk mix and continue to whisk.  You want to then take your egg mix and pour it all back into the pan that still holds the other third of the milk that you did not temper into the eggs.  Place the pan back on the stove at a medium-low heat and stir the mixture until you don't see any more bubbles on the cream from the whisking.

Once it is at a thicker consistency, but not too thick, take the pan off the stove and add the gelatin right away.  Let it completely melt into the cream and constantly stir slowly.  Place your pan into a bowl full of ice to cool the cream down, as shown:

Once it is cool, you want to fold in your whipped cream in thirds. Do not fold this too much, you dont want to create any more air bubbles into the cream.

As soon as the cream is incorporated, you will have a very nice smooth, great tasting cream.  :)

Place the cream into your pretty bowls and garnish with your favorite topping.. Oreo pieces, marshmallows, fruit, nuts.. anything you would like.  I put EVERYTHING into mine. :) :)  If you put this in the cooler, you will change the consistency of the cream as it contains gelatin.. If it is in the cooler, you can bake a cake and use this as its filling! Mmmmm

Give it a shot!

I'm out of here! Will see you back here tomorrow! Have a beautiful evening!

XO

Get that wrist ready to whip up some Sabayon and enjoy a Creme Brulee too!

Terrific Tuesday?  Why yes it was!....kinda!  ;) 

Aww, thank you guys for all the love and support yesterday with my tough day! Please don't worry, everyone has a bad day here and there. I am glad mine was on a Monday and I'm not letting it take over by any ol' means. Thank you guys for hanging in there with me. A blog is a blog which means you get the good, the bad, the ugly and the funny.. oh, and lets not forget the corniness too. :) Welcome to my world.

I was tired today, and late to class again. I really must stop that.  ;) I cant say that I am excited to go to this class because it just lacks a little "je ne sais quoi " .. did I spell that right?!?! :)  We seem to re-make things, and its just very unorganized.  BUT, we are going to make the best out of it and I am going to try to get us some great recipe's so we can in turn have yummy creations of our own! The best part is adding your very own touch and that is what I hope we can all get out of this.

We made Creme Brulee today. Yes, we have already seen this back in the first 6 weeks of our basics class. This is super duper easy and all you really need to have is that wonderful torch that I ended up falling in love with :) Remember? It went from fear to full on frenzy! I wanted to make Creme Brulee all the time just so I could use it! ;)

Creme Brulee Recipe

6 EGG YOLKS

3 oz GRANULATED SUGAR

24 oz HEAVY CREAM

.15 oz VANILLA EXTRACT

tiny pinch of salt (optional)

Super easy for you.  Warm up your Heavy cream.  In a separate bowl, stir together your yolks and sugar. Once the Cream is simmering, you whip it into the egg yolk mix and continue to whip so that the heavy cream does not cook your eggs.  Add in your vanilla and salt, continue to whip, and place the Creme into your ramekins.  Put these in the oven in a water bath at around 310 degrees F and wait for them to be jiggly to touch.  Once they are cooled, you can sprinkle sugar on the top of each ramekin, and torch your happy self away until you get that nice brownish caramel color on top! You are ready to serve!

It doesn't get any easier than that!  This is a LOVELY desert that you will get a round of applause for. No need to let them know it didn't take you hours over the stove to prepare ;).  I will keep your secret. What are friends for, right? 

We then moved on to the more time consuming custard, the Sabayon! Oh boy, oh boy.  We had to make this one BY HAND.  That means a lot of whipping and whipping and whipping. So get your wrist ready.  This is the French version of the Italian original, Zabaglione.  Zabaglione uses a red wine for its creation and the French use a white wine.  Today we used a dry Riesling.

This has a very distinct taste and you either like it or you don't.  I was in the middle.. so I guess I just threw that sentence out of the water! Laughing... Hey, I'm on the fence sometimes, what-da-ya want me to tell ya? I mean, when I added the fruit, I thought it was yummy. Without the fruit, I thought it needed something else. :) And so it did! The fruit... you see how we go around in circles here?

This baby only uses Yolks, sugar and white wine.  You take your yolk and you beat it until its foamy. You then add in your sugar and  your wine and you beat it some more with your whip.  While you are doing that, you are boiling some water so that you can place your bowl over it and let the steam cook your custard. All the while, you are whipping it and whipping it. And no, its not as cute as that little Wil Smith girl whipping her hair back and forth.  AT ALL.. :)

You want to whip this for a very long time, as long as it takes until it thickens, and you get that ribbon-like stage we are looking for.

At this point you are ready to place this in your cute serving-ware :) :) You serve it warm with your favorite fruit and enjoy!! We used peaches,  mandarins and blueberries... use your favorite fruit! You will lovey!!

I'm off to work out!! I hope you enjoy making these!! Please let me know if you do.  Let's hope tomorrow is an amazing day. I know it will be if we set our minds to it.

Night Night...

Angel Food Cake and Pain de Genes

Happy Monday???  Uuugghhh, not so much on this end. :( Todays class was on par with how the rest of my life has been lately; a big hot mess! :)  Let's start with waking up, shall we?  Yea, it didn't happen.  If it wasn't for my little baby niece knocking on my door, I wouldn't have made it to class. And yes, I was late. Booo! First time for everything right? :)  To top it off I have this sinus, head cold kind of thing going on where my head weighs more than a bowling ball! Anyone else need a vacation??? :) :)

It gets better :).  In class, a little more chaos. We had no solid direction, no demo's, not enough pans, too much batter, forgot to put ingredients into one of our cakes, got stuck at the dish pit washing 100 pans and finally, FINALLY I made it "home". 

On that note, today we have Angel Food Cake!  In the picture above, the Angel food cake is the small one at the left hand corner and the one on the right hand corner with the whipped cream and fruit added onto it.

Here is the recipe if you so choose to make it ;)

Ingredients:

16 oz EGG WHITES

.15 oz CREAM OF TARTAR

.06 oz SALT

8 oz SUGAR

.15 oz VANILLA EXTRACT

.08 oz ALMOND EXTRACT

8 oz SUGAR

6 oz CAKE FLOUR

Lets get the positivity rolling and get you started!  The break in the recipe means those two ingredients will go in separately.  Sift those two (Sugar and Cake Flour) together twice over and place them aside. Those will get folded into the batter later.

Whip your egg whites on high speed in your mixture, using your whip attachment. Combine the Cream of tartar, salt and sugar in a container, making sure to break up the lumps in the cream of tartar. :)  You don't want those chunks in your batter that later tastes horrific when you bite into your finished product. ;) Yucky.

Take your mixture down to low speed and gradually add in the Cream of Tartar mixture. Add this in little by little and not all at once.  Whip the mixture to a medium peak, add in your extracts and then whip on high for a few more seconds to incorporate in your flavors. 

Remove your bowl from the mixer and start to fold in your flour and sugar mixture.  You want to add it to the whipped eggs in thirds, always folding after each addition. As soon as it is all in there, you want to immediately put these into your Angel Food Cake pans and straight into the oven at 350 degrees F.  Once the cake is ready, take out and place on your cooling rack upside down, so that the cake does not deflate.

You are all done! You can decorate this any way you wish. You can make a glaze and place it on top, as I did in the small Angel Food cake in my picture.  You can add some whipped cream to the top and decorate it with all kinds of yummy fruits. It's all up to you!

We also made the Almond Pound Cake today, the Pain de Genes, but in all the chaos, we forgot to put the melted butter in at the end. :( It lacks a little moisture but it still tastes pretty good.  In the picture, its the cake that has the almonds on top with the strawberries surrounding it. :)  If you are interested in this cake, please let me know and I will put the recipe up for you!

I hope everyone has a beautiful evening. I am off to get ready for my nephew's graduation. I can not believe he is graduating from High School today. He also made the Orlando Gold Volleyball team last week, which is a major accomplishment!  I am a truly proud auntie. He is an amazing kid, or as I say, E-mazing!! :) He laughs at it, but its caught on and everyone keeps saying it now. :) :)

See you here tomorrow. Oh yea, no quiz today either, no time. You gotta love it! Maybe tomorrow?!?! Who knows.....

Its a wrap...Chocolate Genoise Cake with Vanilla Swiss Buttercream

Are we all super happy that it is Friday??  Of course we are!  Me lovey Friday's... but actually, me lovey ever day. I know, I know.. roll your eyes. I can't help it. It's how I feel! :) 

Today was the second day of our practical and we had to assemble and decorate our cakes and  then wait for them to be graded. Yes, she literally took 5-8 minutes with each of us, cutting into and tasting every cake. There are 40 of us. :) :) Need I say more?  She was very detailed, which I actually really appreciate. It's the little things that count, right?  It's those small details that make the BIGGEST of differences.  

She was happy with my cake and said that I needed to work on making sure my layers are equally sized when cutting.  Apparently, as you can see in the picture, my second layer was too thin.  The Genoise is generally a dry cake, but after the Chef cut into this cake and tasted it, she was very pleased that it didn't taste like a dry Genoise.  YEAY!  That is a great compliment and I will eat it up all day long.. and skip eating the cake. ;)  Smart decision when you know you have to work all those calories off later. :)

We had to practice writing on the cake too. We were told to keep it rated "G".  I know someone who would say that is NOT A PROBLEM. Booo.... So I kept it happy and Rated G. Really innovative too huh? I love you! hahaha... It beats writing Happy Birthday! My buddy Rhett wrote, "Make Love Not War". Sa-weeeet!! Loved that! Now he is the innovative one. Totally standing next to him in the  next class. ;)

I am outtie!  Our test got pushed to Monday, that made me so happy!  I was exhausted yesterday and could not focus on anything.  :( I will make sure to go over the notes and chapters tomorrow. :) We must get an "A". It's our only goal for the weekend... Ok, that is so not true. Sunday I have a goal, and I am gonna make sure I get to our destination and back! Very exciting!!

Enjoy your weekend everyone. :)   I will see you back here on Monday. We will be making two cakes and one of them is an Angel Food Cake. Mmm... light and fluffy.

See you then,

XO

Practically a Practical...

Thursday June 2nd!! Seriously, I STILL can not believe its June already! Call it a  year of SHOCK... ok, and AWE! laughing.. oh man, that is totally an inside joke not too many people will get. The significance of it continues to grow in a completely different direction.

Anyhow, yes, here we are on this beautiful Thursday.  We started our Practical today. It is a two day process. Today we made our assigned cake and butter cream.  Although there were not enough  mixers, bowls, containers or ovens, we still made it through the day. :) :)  Seeeee, I'm trying to be positive. My cake came out looking beautiful and I have nothing but good things to say about my Swiss Butter cream. 

Tomorrow we assemble the cakes and take a quiz so I will make sure to let ya know how it goes. In the meantime, I'm off to study the ever so lovely cake methods :)

Ta Ta for now..

XO

an eye opening Opera Cake...

Welcome to the first day of Hurricane Season! Florida, Florida :).  I also am floored that it's June already! What a way to welcome it in with this coffee infused petit four style cake. I must admit, I had no idea what it was, where it came from or why.  :) But hello! Opera?!? That's class in of itself and this cake stands side to side with that class.  You need some time to make this cake but its going to be worth it.  Just to throw in some highlights before we get started,  its a light sponge cake that no longer becomes "light" when dabbed with coffee simple syrup, coffee infused French Butter cream and the ever so coveted, chocolate ganache. This is a hit. And not for "nutt'n", but a hit is all you need from this tantalizing beauty.

Yesterday we created the Jaconde sponge.  It is a thin sponge cake, only filled half way when poured into your sheet pan for baking.  It cooked for a very short period of time, to a slight color and it sprung to touch.  She is a dainty little one :)  We took it out of the cooler today, with its parchment paper still on it. We cut it into three equal parts so that we can use them to start building our Opera Cake.

You will need the following to build:

Jaconde Sponge Cake

French Coffee flavored Butter cream

Chocolate Ganache

Coating Chocolate

Coffee Simple Syrup

Opera Glaze

Again, if you are interested in this recipe, I will happily hand it over!  It really does make for a classy, delightful treat.. and not light at all! :) But hey, they don't need to know that ;)

First, roll out your parchment paper so you can build on it.  You will place one of your 3 cut up rectangle Jaconde sponge pieces on the paper and spread a layer of coating chocolate over it. It will cool pretty quickly.

Flip this over onto the parchment paper, even if it is not cooled completely.  Peel off the parchment that it was baked on, and then dab the sponge cake with coffee simple syrup.

Now take your French Butter cream and put it into a piping bag and pipe onto the sponge completely.

You will then spread that with your flat spatula so that it is uniform.  Did I mention that this Butter cream is off the chain GOOD??  Geeze, its soo not good for you.. butter, butter, butter, egg, sugar, sugar.. :) :) :) Smooth deliciousness. Mmmm mmm mmmm. Ok, so yea, boring!... Spread, spread...

You can see it is nice and flat. At this point you want to add your second piece of sponge cake, take off the parchment and slightly press.  Brush on the simple syrup again.

On this layer you want to add the ganache, not the butter cream.  If your ganache is watery, build a little dam with the butter cream by squeezing out a line of cream all along the border.

Cool this in the fridge until the ganache has hardened. Once hard, put on the third and last sponge piece, simple syrup the cake and then top with  French Butter Cream, flattening it out again so its nice and smooth and uniform.

Place this in the cooler so that the butter cream hardens.  At this point you want to create your Opera Glaze, which is melted chocolate that gets peanut oil mixed into it immediately after melted. Take your cake out of the refrigerator and place it on a rack if you have it. Pour the glaze, starting at the middle, on to the cake and let it overflow all over the cake.  Place the cake back in the refrigerator so the glaze hardens.

You are now ready to cut off a little less than an inch off of each side and put this pretty princess on a platter! :(  Yeay! Isn't she just lovely? :)

Fun huh?  :)  Pretty, pretty girl...Tomorrow and Friday are test and practical day.  We had a bit of change in our schedule this week with a bit of a shift.  I was given Chocolate Genoise cake with Swiss Vanilla Butter Cream as my practical so I am off to prepare for that. If you remember, the Genoise cake is a dry cake, so I cant say I am doing back flips over this one. ;)

Wish me luck though! It should be great as I get to work ALONE!! Finally..  :) :) This is the last week for cakes and we then move on to custards. We shall see how this journey continues!!

Until tomorrow lovies!

XO