Buche d'Automne

For the elderchild's birthday, I wanted to make something very different. We'd been talking a lot about all the interesting mushrooms that had been cropping up as the weather cooled and I was reminded of making meringue mushrooms in culinary school and how fun that was. So I set about thinking of a project that would highlight mushrooms and yet still be an appropriate autumn themed birthday cake.

I hit upon a Buche d'Automne.

First, I made the mushroom parts first with a simple Italian meringue and let them sit in a cooling oven overnight. The stems and shelf mushrooms were white and then I added some brown food coloring to make the tops. 

The next day I made the pumpkin pastry cream, by adding pumpkin purée to a pastry cream recipe and then mixing in cinnamon, clove, allspice, ginger and nutmeg. That was kept chilled until it was time to assemble the cake.

A day later I made a joconde - a sponge cake with almond flour, cooked in a very thin layer in a sheet pan. This was then soaked with a ginger simple syrup. To make a pumpkin mousseline, I whisked the pumpkin pastry cream and then folded in whipped cream. This was spread over the joconde and then it was rolled and chilled. I also hand painted sugar paper with food coloring and cut out oak and maple leaves.

Finally, on the big day, I made a maple Italian meringue by substituting maple sugar for white sugar. I frosted the rolled cake with the meringue, used a torch to make it look more like a birch log, and then decorated the cake with the mushrooms, leaves and some fresh daisies. 

The elderchild was pleased!

I Didn't Forget

Pi day was last Monday. I did not forget! 

Having generally been frustrated with my usual pie crusts, I decided to make a lemon meringue pie with a pate sucrée crust. This is more common in tarts, but the sweetness of the crust offsets the tartness of the lemon filling and it worked well.

Per usual, I made two pies, as the elderchild in college also needed a pie. (Note to self: 1/4 of the master pate sucrée recipe and 1-1/3 of the lemon filling recipe in the Pilsbury cookbook made one 9" pie and one 8" pie. 1 full meringue recipe.)

Plus, it gave me an opportunity to use the blowtorch. My favorite part!

Where've You Been?

Yeah, I recognize I haven't posted since Thanksgiving. I don't know where the time goes anymore. But I have been baking, a lot, and getting my holiday gifts together.

As November drew to a close I discovered I hadn't really been canning all year and had approximately three jars in my gift stash. Normally I need about 50! Clearly something needed to be done. I decided to try to make a variety of cookies this year and hand them out to my neighbors instead. I started with gingerbread (Day 1). Actually, I started with a gingerbread house, and then moved on to gingerbread cookies. We had a marathon decorating session (Day 2) and I set the cookies aside. Nine dozen.

Then I made shortbread cookies (Day 3). They were supposed to be spritz cookies, using my cookie press, but the dough was too thick (I vaguely remember that this was why I put the press back in its box for over a decade) so I rolled it out and made shortbread hearts which were filled with ganache and dipped in chocolate. Two dozen.

Next I made Biarritz cookies (Day 4), with almond and hazelnut flours and orange zest. These also were sandwiched with ganache and striped with dipping chocolate. Four dozen, I think. Maybe five. I lost count.

The next task was meringues with hazelnuts (Day 5), Rochers. The technical difficulty here was that the hazelnuts clogged the star tip while piping, so I had to change to a plain tip and they weren't as pretty. They baked overnight in a low oven. Six dozen or so.

Then I made chocolate crackle cookies (Day 6) which was really fun and easy. But the recipe was a little off for me so instead of five dozen cookies I got four and a half dozen.

Lastly, a double batch of Nanaimo bars (Day 7). This recipe I posted is similar but I use pecans and my Mom's recipe has slightly different proportions. These are traditional for our family at Christmastime. Roughly four dozen bars.

Today I assembled little gift boxes of all the cookies along with some kisses and other chocolates and have started delivering them to our friends and neighbors. I have more to do, but this takes care of the bulk of people on my list!

Chocolate and Pears

For my birthday I put together a variation on a few cakes from school. I had a chocolate almond genoise layer in the freezer so brought that out and soaked it in pear syrup from a jar of canned pears I'd made last summer. Then I made chocolate mousse.

First, I placed the soaked cake in a ring and topped it with the caramel pear jam from last week. As an aside, the canned pears and the pears in the jam were from the same tree, just different seasons! Anyway, I topped the jam layer with some chopped pears, like so:

Then I put some mousse in, added more chopped pears, and then finished with more mousse. Voila:

After chilling this for a while and then removing the ring, I'd hoped to top it with actual chocolate curls. Unfortunately, the chocolate I bought wasn't cooperating, so I had chocolate shavings instead. To compensate, I coated the cake with the shavings and served it:

Since I had a fair amount of chocolate mousse and meringue left over, I made little pots of mousse which, when toasted and with the addition of graham crackers, made nice little s'mores themed desserts for the next night. Yum!

Easter Treats

In the few days leading up to today, I was busy with work but also with baking. First, as a lunch box treat, I made Easter-themed Linzer cookies. In order to do this, I needed to get tiny little cookie cutters. Even with them being so small, the cookies needed to be a fairly large size to accommodate the challenges of asymmetric cut outs. Many of the rabbits broke, but here are some of the ones that made it:

The fillings were blueberry jam and strawberry lavender jam.

Today, in between Easter baskets, video games, an egg hunt and a walk to the grocery store, I made Puits D'amour (wells of love) out of quick puff pastry (butter, flour, salt and water, folded and rolled many times), lemon curd and meringue. Since they ended up being more oval than round, I took that as serendipity. They are egg shaped, after all.

Happy Easter!

Days 31 and 32: Final Practicum

Yesterday and today were spent in a stressed out haze. At least until I completed my dessert and turned it in.

This morning was our practicum exam. Each of us were to draw a card and then make what it said. As this was technically the mid term we were given the ingredient list and had to write out the method. Once Chef corrected it, we were to go into the kitchen and make it for presentation to the two tasters. There were eight cards and we knew what they were but we selected our actual card at random. Ahead of time, in addition to studying the methods, I thought about how I would plate each one.

On a whim, I bought stainless steel martini glasses. Just in case I drew the macaron card.

I drew the macaron card.

Yay! The card stated that in addition to making three different flavors of macarons - coffee, lemon, and raspberry - we were to make an ice cream of our choice. Planning ahead again, I decided that a pear cardamom ice cream would go well with each flavor. That had to be made first. I made an ice cream base with pear purée, cardamom, and some pear brandy. While that chilled, I worked on the macarons and sautéed pears in butter, sugar, and more brandy. When it was time to put the ice cream in the maker, at the very end I churned in the cooked pears. It was lovely.

The macarons came out better than they had any right to as we had some oven issues (the opposite problem compared to home, the ovens were too hot. Even though we set them 25˚ lower than usual). The tasters noted they were a little dry. I guess they crumble too quickly. Each one had a matching ganache.

For plating, I chilled the martini glasses and put a scoop of ice cream in each. I had made mini macarons and stuck them on the ice cream. I made sure each macaron was between mini macarons of different colors - pink between yellow and brown, yellow between brown and pink, and so on.

Ultimately, I did well on the kitchen part and I don't have the tasting grade yet but the comments were mostly positive. Now we only have the final written exam left!

Day 30: More Classics

Yesterday we finished the other three classic cakes we'd started the day before. First, however, we trashed all the meringue flowers and mushrooms because the oven was too hot and they didn't look right. I was encouraged to make amanita mushrooms (fly agaric) instead. I made those, but I also had yellow and white meringue and cocoa powder so I made some yellow and brown mushrooms too. I also made white mushrooms, a la Destroying Angels (another amanita).

After that cuteness was in the oven, we started the assembly of the black forest cake. First the vanilla and chocolate mousses were finished and the cake was built upside down. The top layer had the red pâte decor on it so it was soaked from underneath with cherry kirsch syrup and then the vanilla mousse was spread in a thin layer. Then there was a layer of cherries and a layer of chocolate mousse. Lastly, the other layer of cake was put in place and soaked with syrup. This went in the freezer to set up.

By this time, the meringues were ready and we could get the rest of our Buche de Printemps decorated. A thick meringue was applied to the logs and torched. Coffee macarons were made to simulate polypore mushrooms. "Plastic chocolate," aka chocolate for molding, was made in green and leaves were prepared for everyone. After a bit, we had all our decorations in place and we each assembled a log. At this point we were all overwhelmed by whimsy.

Throughout the day we also made things like caramelized hazelnuts and clear glaze and chocolate decorations and fondant into which cherries were dipped and subsequently those cherries were dipped in chocolate. Time flew.

Black Forest Cake

The Alhambra cake was cut into 12 pieces and then each was decorated with piped ganache, caramelized hazelnuts, and chocolate curls. The black forest cake was, by that time, ready to flip. Then came the really hard part, removing the silpat and leaving the red pâte decor in place. I realized after a while that it was a lot like dissecting so I ended up taking over and very slowly doing what I could to keep it neat. It was not easy and didn't come out as pretty as maybe it could have. We were able to cover a lot of it with the clear glaze and decorations.

This is the last of the formal classes. Next week we have a review day and then the practicum. The final written exam is in 10 days. I'm amazed at how quickly the time went by and how natural it feels to be there in the kitchen. I feel very close to my classmates and I'm sad to think I won't be seeing them every week. I have laughed quite a lot in the last four months. Mostly at myself, which is healthy, but also with my new friends, and for the sheer fun and joy of it all.

Day 29: European Classic Cakes

Today and tomorrow are devoted to the European classic cakes. We've already tackled Tiramisu but this week it's the Opera cake, the Sacher Torte, the Alhambra cake, Black Forest Cake and a "Yule Log" of sorts: a spring log.

For most of these cakes we made the cake a long time ago. We only had to make the cake for the Black Forest cake. While my classmates made the red pâte decor and the chocolate almond genoise cake, I made ganache with 10 pounds (yes, TEN) of chocolate. In that crazy huge bowl we almost never use. Other things got made today. Lime mousse and raspberry syrup for the Spring log (Buche de Printemps). Chocolate glaze. Coffee syrup and coffee buttercream for the Opera cake.

We were down a few students today so we had to stop a lot more often to clean up since there was the same level of mess and fewer hands to clean it. But ultimately we assembled the Opera cake and the Sacher Torte. The Alhambra is mostly assembled as well and the Buche de Printemps is rolled and waiting to be cut. Oh, and I made meringue mushrooms.

Meringue was made so we could have flowers for our Buche de Printemps but I also wanted to learn how to make mushrooms. After Chef taught me the basics I went a little crazy and decided to make morels. They're spring mushrooms, so why not? I grabbed a star tip and more meringue and piped taller, twisty peaks. After they dried a bit, I dusted them with cocoa powder and painted the edges with concentrated coffee. Unfortunately the oven was a little too warm so they split a little but they are adorable. At least, I think so!

The Opera cake is seven layers: Joconde cake, coffee buttercream, cake, ganache, cake, buttercream and a chocolate glaze. It's the size of a sheet pan and then we each got a rectangle (nine cakes in total). Decorating is always a challenge for me and today was no exception.

The Sacher Torte has ganache on the sides of the rings and then two layers of Sacher chocolate cake separated by apricot jam and ganache. It is topped with ganache and then with the chocolate glaze and finished with chocolate slivers.

The rest of the ganache went to assemble the Alhambra cake which we will finish tomorrow.

Day 12: Custards

Clafoutis

Today's topic was custards and Bavarians. While I'm still a little shaky on the definition of a Bavarian vs. a Bavarian Cream, I enjoyed making the custards. We made a huge batch of flan, so everyone got to work on it. These are baked in a water bath. We were taught that they're better served a day later as the caramel on the bottom becomes more of a sauce. Therefore, I have my three flans and we'll eat them in the next day or so. We also made a clafoutis (cherries baked in a custard sauce) which we ate; that was lunch.

The crowning achievement of the day was making a Ruche, or beehive cake.

The layers consisted of lemon hazelnut meringues (that gift from the past we made ourselves last week), lemon mousse, honey mousse, and Italian meringue for the top. One team made lemon curd which was made into the lemon mousse. That formed the sides and one of the layers in the cake. Our team made the honey mousse which consisted of a honey custard to which honey Italian meringue and then whipped cream was added to make the mousse. Then, while the cakes froze for a while, I made the bees with two of my classmates. First I kneaded marzipan with yellow food coloring and we shaped the bodies. Then I drizzled them with chocolate to make the stripes and we stuck almonds in for wings. My classmate who is terrific at piping finished up by making the eyes. I lined them all up for their photo op. Here is our Bee-2 Bomber Squadron...

Some others in class made the honeycomb chocolate for the sides and froze it. Then another person made the caramel which we all got a chance to drizzle into shapes. When I got to the caramel it was a little too cold so it glopped a bit. In my attempts to clean it up it serendipitously bent into a 3D structure which I liked very much.

Once everything was ready, we used Italian meringue to coat the top and pipe a beehive on the cake. Then we torched it to brown it and get the ring off. After that, we coated it with the chocolate honeycombs, added the caramel and then the bees.  We were overwhelmed with the cuteness of it all!

The evening lecture was the first of three covering fruits, herbs and spices. This was an opportunity to work with unfamiliar fruits. A panna cotta was made and we were each asked to come up with a compote, particularly using something we'd not used before. I picked pomegranate, red currant, key lime juice and apple. I added the apple for the pectin and, of course, ended up with more of a jam than a compote. However, the lime juice worked really well with the pomegranate. Chef also had us make some really terrific savory dishes; I made fried avocado with a cilantro dipping sauce and others made a risotto with strawberries. (So unexpectedly tart and tasty! And pink!)

My Brain is Mush

Really.

It's been a non-stop sort of week and, rather than write it all down, the best my brain could do was put the little Monopoly sweepstakes stickers from the grocery store on the playing board. Let's see if I can recap as much as possible!

Monday: snow day. I made scones, which came out rather well.

Tuesday: (Day 9) We had our class on meringues. Mostly we made French meringues, which are prepared by whipping the egg whites and then adding sugar, no heat involved (unlike Italian and Swiss meringues). We then added nut flours and more sugar of varying proportions and made many large disks of meringue to be used in cakes. In particular, a dacquoise is a cake that uses meringue layers instead of sponge cake. We made one cake and froze the rest of the meringues (6 different recipes' worth) for future cakes. I consider this a gift to our future selves. The cake we did make was a [Coffee and] Cognac Mousseline Dacquoise. We even made a special kind of Italian meringue with coffee extract to make the little decorations.

Observation: I'm getting a little better at piping.

Later that night we finished our ServeSafe course and took the exam. The test should be graded in a week or so.

Wednesday: I assisted the Regional French Cooking class again. This time it was the southwest area: Basque, Bordeaux, Limousin, and so forth. Cassoulet, chicken piperade (pepper/tomato/onion, very similar to a cacciatore), mushroom crepe gratin, salt cod turned into a brandade with potato (this one surprised me; I did not expect to like it and LOVED it instead!), clafoutis and a soufflé. I feel personally responsible for the Grand Marnier soufflé not rising as chef told me I could advise the student without her help and I had never made a soufflé before. So, clearly, I did not give her good advice. Anyhow, I am perpetually amazed at how much gets done in a few hours.

Lime Soufflés

Thursday: (Day 10) We had a make-up class since we'd had the snow day on Monday. This was dessert sauces and...soufflés. We made an excellent lime soufflé which was served with a honey lime sauce. When the soufflés came out of the oven we each took a spoon, carved a hole in the middle, and filled with the sauce. Wow. And the soufflés rose perfectly. I feel redeemed. We also made tons of crepes (dessert, chocolate, and pumpkin) and chef made a batch of ice cream from creme anglaise (which makes an excellent ice cream base). Our team made jasmine tea sauce, passion fruit coulis, and a Suzette sauce but instead of orange juice and Grand Marnier we used lime juice and tequila. The crepes, flambéed with tequila, were excellent. I got to make a Sabayon (egg yolks, simple syrup, and champagne, whipped into a foamy sauce over a double boiler) which I then spooned over fresh berries (too many! says Chef) and bruléed under the broiler.

Sabayon

There were other sauces, and some molten chocolate cakes that I never saw getting made let alone baked (probably because I was working on the Sabayon). Sadly they were overcooked so I opted to skip those calories. I might try them at home another time. Clean up took FOREVER. There was another class in that kitchen at 6 pm. We finished cleaning at 5:55 pm! I managed to get the train and then the bus home just in time to load the 10 year old in the car and go pick the 14 year old up at the Y. Dinner wasn't until about 8 pm.

Friday: Work. Yes, I'm still doing that! Fortunately, it was a good day and I was out at a reasonable time. I could go to the grocery store and grab some lunch for myself at my friend's restaurant before I had to get home.

Oh, and we have another quiz on Monday.

And I'm only one game piece away from winning a Big Joe Grill.