Day 4 wasn't particularly exciting in terms of newness. We finished up our baked cheesecakes and dished out some more eclairs, paris brest, and cream puffs. Lots of piping practice for our test the next day!
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| Heart raspberry cheesecake with crispy feullitine sides |
We found an ancient scoop in the classroom. It has a wooden handle and is very heavy. The metal used for this scoop is definitely different than the ones use now.
For the test today, we had to present six eclairs, cream puffs, and paris brest.
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| A lovely bunch of egg shells |
This is our workbench all ready to fill the choux paste. From closest to farthest there is a simple syrup for thinning out fondant, no-melt icing sugar, coating chocolate, and a bucket of white fondant. In the far right corner the cookie station was using some of our space to pipe their langue du chat.
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| Organization and preparation is key! |
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| Melting chocolate to top our paris brest on the left and filling our eclairs with fluffy chocolate mousse on the right |
Here's a photo of my finished tray. I was not happy, not at all! Why? Ugh, dipping those eclair tops into chocolate fondant! I had a harder time getting the fondant to dip nicely without either being all wrinkly or simply tearing my eclair tops into pieces than I did piping those pesky langue du chat (see Cookies Day 3). Also, the chocolate fondant dried a dull color. Fondant is a sugary coating often used to ice doughnuts, napoleon slices, and petit fours. Ideally, it should be shiny once dried, but when heated above body temperature, it loses its shine. You can get some of the shine back by adding extra simple syrup but it is never quite the same.
Sigh. I at least learned a trick to smooth out the fondant by dipping your finger into sugar syrup and doing it manually. Next time they'll be perfect! Perfect, I say! (Am I a bit of a perfectionist? Perhaps... :P )
On a good note, however, these were my best piped cream puffs yet. My last batch had a lot of "hats". A hat is a bit of the cream puff that sticks way up. I forgot to photograph it and will update this post with a photo of one tomorrow. A hat can occur when as you pipe, you form a lot of ridges. A cream puff should be piped into a smooth round-ish shape for the best final appearance.
Update:
At the very front is a cream puff with a "hat". Notice how it suddenly sticks upwards.
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| Cream puff hats are no good |
It's frustrating to make mistakes but this is just the beginning. I know I'm only going to get better. Besides, I got to eat the broken eclairs along the way. Mistakes in this class are never that bad and are almost always veeeeery tasty. :)
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