Flavor rut

Occasionally I will look at the desserts I've been making a realize that I'm in a flavor rut. Not that the flavors aren't delicious but I find myself getting bored of constantly doing lemon, coconut, coffee, raspberry, and yes even chocolate. I feel guilty saying that chocolate is that long term relationship that you know you love and you'll always go back to but after so much time you want something a little more exciting. That feels so wrong since chocolate is amazing. Everyone knows chocolate is fantastic, frankly I think even chocolate knows its fantastic. It compliments almost any flavor; but alas, here I am in a flavor rut.

Usually when I get like this I just try to get some new flavor. Something I haven't done in a while or maye a texture I've never tried. This time I asked my boss to get some acai berry purée for me. 

You've heard of acai but if you've never tried it you're missing out. The flavor is pretty subtle the purée tastes a bit like tea, somewhat sweet but nothing overpowering. Since I wasn't sure of the taste at first I decided to make it into a jelly. I won't lie I love making jellies, if I ever have a fruit and I'm unsure what to do with it, I'll make a jelly. After trying out the Acai berry jelly and realizing what a subtle taste it was I decided to pair them with something tart and not overly sweet. Raspberry!

Sophia suggested that I make a mousse out of the organic raspberries we had in the cooler. So we made a Raspberry Mousse Bombe with Acai berry Jelly. It's a bit tart, it's a bit sweet and it's all around yummy. You try something it might not always work and perhaps next week I'll be able to try something a bit more daring with the acai puree that I have but when it comes to experimenting with flavors I suppose there is nothing wrong with the research.

Mint chocolate

Recently my chef has allowed us to have a bit more freedom when it comes to the desserts for the restaurant. Well he always allowed us a great deal of creative freedom but recently he said "we need different shapes!"  Naturally Sophia & I jumped at the chance to try something different. Our first differently shaped dessert is called the minty rosa. 

We named it after our coworker rosa because she loves chocolate mint. It's actually based on a petit four that I made in pastry school I just made it bigger and better for a dessert. So this dessert is a white chocolate mint mousse with a dark chocolate ganache and a fresh raspberry jelly center. Sophia helped me take it to the next level though. When making the raspberry jelly I usually just use the raspberry purée that we have in the reach-in cooler, but this week we had some beautiful organic raspberries so she puréed and strained them for me. 

Honestly I think the fresh organic raspberries made all the difference. Even our executive chef tasted and loved it. Who knows what we'll come up with next but I cannot wait to eat it. 

Tiramisu: Coffee perfection

Oh tiramisu. Where I work we can hardly keep tiramisu inspired desserts in stock. As soon as that first cocoa powder covered dessert is in the display case people are asking, "is that tiramisu?" "Can I have another slice?" "What do you mean you're out of tiramisu?" "When will you have more?"

Tiramisu is an Italian dessert that consists of lady fingers, mascarpone cheese and Marsala wine(or maybe a delicious dark rum instead). When reading up on the dessert (everyone does that right?) I learned that tiramisu roughly translates to  pick me up. Tiramisu is a dessert that is telling you to pick it up and shove it in your face. Okay maybe it's more polite than that.  

 When I adapt the flavor for the restaurant I don't use lady fingers but I do soak the yellow sponge cake with coffee and alcohol. The frosting has a light coffee flavor and it then sprinkled with cocoa powder. Truthfully the mascarpone, to me anyways, doesn't add much flavor. My coworker tells me that I really don't have to add it as no one would notice with the coffee and wine overpowering the light flavor of the cheese, but I suppose I'm slightly traditional when it comes to flavors like this. 

So tiramisu has everything anyone could want. It's a combination of cheese, chocolate, coffee and wine. Perhaps I could adapt it into bombe form, a tiramisu mousse with lady fingers in the center. I might have to try that tomorrow. 

Today is Memorial Day so I'm sure the restaurant will run out of the nine tiramisu cakes I made last night. 

Cakes, cakes, cakes

Pina Colada Cake

Before I went to pastry school I made cakes at home. I made cakes the way I imagine most do, boxed cake mix, can of frosting or two (one for me and one for the cake). I have really fond memories of helping my mother make cakes for her office parties when I was younger. It was always my job to make sure there was no extra batter left in the bowl before washing it.

By the time I got to pastry school I had this silly notion that I was pretty good at building and decorating cakes. I thought to myself ," This part will be easy." How wrong I was. When you're at home you might not think anything of spending a half hour on a cake. When I was in school my chef informed our class that this would not do. In his way he told us that if we spent more than 30 minutes on a basic cake that any employer would more than likely thank us for our time. He did that frequently. If you can't write in chocolate no one will hire you, if you can't clean as you go no one will hire you, if you can't build a cake in less than 30 minutes no one will hire you. I'm not entirely sure that's really true but I know that it pushed me to work faster, cleaner and all around more inefficiently. 

When I was in school I admit it I couldn't build a cake in less than 30 minutes. In case you're unsure about what I mean by build a cake that includes: trimming, cutting, syruping, filling, frosting, and decorating. In fact it wasn't even until I started at my first job that I really started getting better at it. That might have something to do with amount of cakes that I had to decorate; once you have to make more than 20 cakes in a day you start to develop a rhythm. The older ladies at work (who have been doing this for longer than I've been breathing) showed me their tips and tricks, a fact that I'm extremely grateful for.

My average time is down to roughly 7 minutes per cake, perhaps a little longer if the decoration is more

Chocolate Peanut butter cake

complicated. It's really a thing of beauty to step back and realize how far you've come. Even in the two years that I've been working I realize that I have so much more to learn. Sometimes I think about going to visit my chef to tell him "Hey remember how I couldn't build one cake in less than 30 minutes? Well now I can do 10 in one hour!" I think he'd laugh.

The upside of making desserts for a buffet is that they always require a variety so my boss is pretty open to any flavor my coworkers or I want to make. Black forest? Great. Chocolate peanut butter? Delicious. Pina Colada? Watch it because someone might get drunk off dessert.

I also have the added benefit of working with people that inspire me. There will be nights where my coworker Sophie and I start talking about some other dessert completely and by the end of the night we're trying to figure out how to make it into a cake.

Life is sweet. Busy but sweet.

Wedding Cakes

My last post got me thinking about wedding cakes. Originally wedding cakes made to bring good luck to the happy couple. I suppose not everyone spends hours dreaming up the perfect wedding cake and to some people the cake is an afterthought, but to me there is something about that multi-tiered cake that is a thing of beauty.

Black & white cake

The last week or so before my culinary school finals was dedicated to wedding cakes. Our chef asked us to choose designs that would make us practice our piping. He taught us to properly construct a wedding cake, how to price it out considering the amount of work that goes into one and even gave us some handy advise about not being drunk while making wedding cakes.

My first (well first one in class) wedding cake attempt was a black and white wedding cake. The random filigrees are in vogue right now and gave me plenty of practice when it came to my piping. The roses were made from gum paste or marzipan I honestly couldn't tell you. I remember that as soon as I put the roses on I thought to myself, "Oh yes these are perfect." I look at them now, only a year later, and wonder how in the world I could ever think they were so perfect. They look sort of cute, perhaps if I squint my eyes I can see what I loved about them so long ago. I suppose I could always try to convince myself that they were meant to the look that cartoon-y. After all there is no way I could have possibly thought they looked real. Either way they added a beautiful splash of color to my cake.

The embroidery cake that took over 8 hours to pipe.

My next wedding cake took me hours to complete in regards to the piping. My wrist slightly tightens just thinking about how I spent over eight hours sitting and piping with a size 1 Wilton tip. I think part of me was crazy enough to think that I would whip right through this cake when I saw the design like I whipped through the black & white cake. The latter took me less than a class period to pipe but this embroidery cake I had to work on over the course of two days. Also, let me just say that when you are on your fourth hour of piping you begin to feel every shake of the table that you are working on. Suddenly someone placing their stand mixer on the opposite side of the table feels like a damned earth quake and you fear you will ruin hours of work. I am truly glad that this design was on a Styrofoam cake because I have been able to save it. The same could not be said for my favorite wedding cake.

Seriously my pride and joy

The Pac Man cake was my absolute favorite. I know that it is not as technically complex as the other two but it was something I wanted to do the moment I learned we would be decorating wedding cakes. I wanted a "nerd" wedding cake. Something sweet, appropriate for the occasion, but something that could still give a nod to the fact that popular culture is influencing our special days now. Nerds get married too. Creating black fondant is an all around pain in the neck. Do not think that you can just put some black food coloring into fondant. You will get grey and it will more than likely be an ugly shade of grey. I was lucky enough that a classmate of mine had done most of the work and had quite a bit of black fondant left over. I did have to add some brown and red to get the purplish tinge out and by the end of the day my hand were covered in colour but it was all worth it.  My chef hated the idea, or rather he thought I was just being silly about the task at hand . Our final day of class it was the first cake he threw into the dumpster. I knew it was nothing personal we needed to clean and get to the graduation ceremony, he probably knew I wouldn't be able to do it myself. Oh but how I loved that cake.

All this talk of weddings makes me think of my own wedding cake. I once heard that it is bad luck to make your own wedding cake, I'm not sure there is much truth to that (especially if you are not superstitious) but part of it might come from just how stressful it is. I could not imagine planning a wedding on top of making the perfect cake.

I really do not even know what my wedding cake will one day look like. It will be chocolate, but not red velvet, that is for sure.

Let's Talk About Flan

Smooth, creamy, and covered in its own caramel sauce; what's not to love about flan? Flan is a dessert that for a long period of my life I knew I loved it even if I had never tried it. There is something about custard based desserts that sends my senses to the moon and back. The taste of vanilla, the smell of the caramel (which for someone like me, who does not like caramel very much, is saying something). 

No, not that flan. Silly Final Fantasy you do not fight the flan you eat it.

So what is flan? It is essentially a sweet custard that has been baked in a mold, lined with caramel, until it is set. Since pastry school I have come across three types of recipes for flan. All fairly similar but different enough that if you have difficulty with one you are sure to find another recipe that you prefer.

The first is similar to a creme anglaise, it consists of milk, eggs, yolks, sugar and vanilla. This recipe is a bit more difficult than the following two but that is only because it requires you to boil the milk and then temper it in with the eggs. If you do not constantly whisk while adding the hot milk you are going to get scrambled eggs, and while scrambled eggs may be good for breakfast they have no business being in dessert. When I say constantly whisking, I mean constantly whisking. The first time I made a pastry cream on my own I thought I might be able to pour the liquid in, place the pot down then begin whisking. Nope, in those few seconds I had already prepared scrambled eggs. 

The second is a recipe I learned at work. It is similar to the first in that you need to temper the ingredients. However the difference is that instead of milk you used condensed milk and cream. You boil the cream and add it to the condensed milk and egg yolks.A little bit easier but not as easy as the following recipe.

The recipe I used most recently required absolutely no tempering at all. Before we get into the custard we must first make a caramel. This is also fairly easy once you learn what to look for. 

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar

Method:

1. In a small pot, over medium high heat, place about a 1/3 of the sugar. once the sides begin to liquify move the pot back and forth to distribute the liquid and add a bit more sugar.
2. Keep doing this until the sugar has melted. Do not leave it settled for too long or it will burn. Another important note about caramel to remember is that it is always darker in the pan than it actually is so it's okay if it looks a bit darker. 
3. Pour into ramekin or pan of your choosing.

See? How easy was that? You are on your way to making caramel. Now onto the worlds easiest custard recipe.

Ingredients:

• 6 Eggs
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 2 tsp of vanilla extract 
• 14 oz condensed milk
• 24 oz evaporated milk

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Whisk the eggs, sugar, and vanilla together until smooth. Whisk immediately after adding sugar or you will burn the yolks.
3. Add each of the milks and whisk until smooth. 
4. Pour into caramel lined ramekin or pan.
5. Drop oven to 325 F and bake in a water bath for 35-45 minutes. When it is finished the flan will still jiggle slightly but it should not look watery. 
6. Once the flan is ready remove from the oven and allow to cool before placing it in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. 
7. When you are ready to serve run a knife around the edge of the pan and flip onto an appropriate plate. 

This was made using the first method.

Then that's it! You have delicious flan! The great thing about flan is that it is so easy and delicious, it's a light flavor that is not too heavy on the stomach.  I tried this recipe last night and it was delectable but unfornately I only took a blurry picture of it, and now it is half devoured so taking a new picture is out. So if you are wondering what flan should look like (I guess you could always google it) here is a picture of the flan from my final exam at pastry school.

I recently had a birthday and my wonderful mother-in-law gave me a Le Creuset tart pan. You've seen this cookware before, chances are you know them because they are heavy and they come in a variety of colors. Le Creuset has been in business for nearly 90 years, so they know what they are doing when it comes to cookware. I am so excited to have my first piece and cannot wait to continue adding to my collection. 

From the moment I unwrapped my present and saw the beautiful purple tart pan there my mind was buzzing of what to bake in it first. Naturally I could make a tart as that was the intended use but instead I decided that this marvelous gift would need to make something extra special. It turned out to be the perfect thing for making a large flan and it came out wonderfully. 

Fondant Cakes

Oh Goodness where has the time gone? It has been over a month since I updated and so much has happened since then.

First and foremost, I have been accepted to Culinary School, and I graduated from Business School so I can finally focus on the sweeter and more important things in life.

Secondly, a few very important birthdays went by. My dear brother Snorlax had a birthday and cutie Sami had a birthday. So if nothing else this is a picture post of the cakes I made for their birthdays.

First up, Snorlax cake for my dear brother Snorlax. This was my first time baking in a bowl and I had to keep putting it back in the oven because the middle just would not bake through! I did end up with a nice round tummy for the snorlax though and was pretty happy with the results.

Then for cutie Sami I came up with the idea of trying my hand at a purse cake. More notably, a TokiDoki purse cake. Unfortunately, when I put the cake to let it chill out in the fridge some how the fridge door was left ajar and cake caved in a bit on itself resulting in lumps. So it is a bit of a lumpy purse, she loved it so I decided to chalk this up to experience and not get too upset about it. Especially, considering I made it faster than any other cake and it was also bigger than any other cake I had done before!

There's nothing like cutting out 200 little fondant stars at 1 am :)

Back of the purse:

Front: