The cake unit was one of my favorite units so far. Even though I have experience baking and decorating cakes, these cakes were very different. They were the French style of cakes- many were made with genoise, mousse, meringue, Bavarian cream, biscuit, and jaconde layers - mediums I am not used to or that familiar with. This made it interesting. It was also the first time we were combining a couple of complicated moving parts to create a composed whole dessert.
Pound cake. Pretty straight forward, creamed-butter method. I don't like pound cake without a soaking solution, or whipped cream and berries to accompany it. And the form we baked it in didn't really allow for that. Unfortunately.
Genoise cake. Here we made a simple plain genoise cake. Genoise is difficult to make correctly because it is very technique-driven. It is incredibly simple - just cake flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. It does not rely on the use of chemical leaveners, but rather a whole-egg foam that expands and sets in the oven. It is therefore extremely important to fold the flour in perfectly - overfolding causes the egg foam to collapse too much, and results in a sunken cake. Here, we assembled it with raspberry jam and a plain pate-a-bombe based buttercream. I am a fan this buttercream over Italian meringue based. It's less finicky, and I think provides a richer taste due to the addition of egg yolks. Put together, it was a nice cake.
Angel food cake. I don't eat a lot of Angel food. It's not something I order ever, and I have never been overwhelmed by a desire to make it. It is made by preparing a nice and fluffy French meringue, and then folding cake flour and powdered sugar into it. The texture of this was fluffy and spongy, but not too chewy. I think it would make for a nice summer dessert with fruit and sabayon!
Dacquoise au Cafe. Layers of Dacqoise (almond meringue) and coffee buttercream. I loved the coffee buttercream, but there was way too much of it - it took up half the cake.
Chocolate Ganache Cake. We used a cake mold for this, make a chocolate genoise and a whipped light ganache. Covered in chocolate glaze (my least favorite thing to use, btw) and candied rose petals.
Charlotte Russe. Lady fingers lining outside and bottom, filled with a white peach fruit Bavarian (fruit puree + sugar + gelatin + creme fouettee) and topped with whipped cream decoration. I thought I wouldn't like this because it's filled with what is basically an enhanced and stabilized whipped cream, but the fruitiness and texture were really nice.
Charlotte Royale. What a wierdo! Not only does it look like a brain boob, but it's not particularly tasty either! It's composed of a biscuit jaconde rolled up with apricot jam, sliced, and placed in a bowl. Filled with Creme Anglaise Bavarian cream , covered with plain genoise and chilled. Decorated with whipped cream. The only thing that had any flavor was the apricot jam, which comprised very little of the cake. The Creme Anglaise Bavarian cream didn't add much flavor, just a creamy mousse-like thing. If you can't tell, I was pretty meh about the whole ordeal.
Carrot cake! This was a pretty delicious variation of a carrot cake. I liked it better than the one we make at Mags. This one just had carrots and walnuts in the cake. The icing was the shit though - it had lemon zest and sour cream in it, which added a tangyness to it that cut the creaminess a bit. And it didn't have too much sugar either, which I really appreciated. Marzipan carrots! Adorable!
These chocolate cupcakes were the BOMB.com. I have made a study out of chocolate cake. At Mags, we changed our chocolate cupcake recipe from a chocolate buttermilk version made with butter, to one made with oil. While I appreciate the moistness of the 2nd version, it lacks the flavor of the first - butter trumps oil when it comes to flavor. And when there is buttermilk in the mix, all the better. So long have I been looking for a nice balance, and finally... here is one. For fat, it uses half butter half oil, which is heated together with the cocoa powder. There is also buttermilk in the recipe! This yielded a chocolate cupcake that was moist and full of chocolate flavor. I dorked out when I tried it. It's topped with a fudge icing here, which I really liked too.
Miroir aux Fruits. I thought this was delicious. Biscuit Jaconde with layers of raspberry jam in between, plain genoise on the bottom, and then a cassis fruit mousse filled in. Glazed with a nappage/cassis puree and decorated with cassis berries. I loved the fruit mousse flavored with cassis - it was a tart and creamy mousse with a beautiful color. Like most of the mousse and Bavarian cream desserts we have made, though, I do think it lacks a balance and there is too much "filling". I don't like eating mostly mousse. Flavor-wise though, this was my favorite of mousse/Bavarian cream varieties.
White and Dark Chocolate Mousse cake with Pate a Cornet. This was a pretty good mousse cake. We did this cool trick where we made this thick chocolate paste, pate a cornet, which we stenciled onto a silpat and froze. We then prepared a Biscuit d'amandes batter, spread it on top, and baked. When we unmolded the thin cake layer from the silpat, it revealed the stenciled pattern. This can be done in almost any color, with almost any design- freehand or stenciled. The mousse cake itself was chocolate genoise on the bottom, filled with alternate layers of dark and white chocolate mousse, with the biscuit d'amandes wrapped around and topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. Pretty tasty, but nothing mind blowing.
Marjolaine. This was mind blowing. As my recipe states, "The cake was considered one of Fernand Point's masterpieces. Years of trial-and-error experimentation went into its creation, not to mention pounds of ingredients, before he was satisfied that he had achieved the right combination of tastes and textures and could serve it proudly to his guests.". The combination he came up with is as follows: a layer of chocolate genoise, chocolate ganache, dacquoise, creme d'or, dacquoise, praline buttercream, dacquoise, stabilized creme chantilly, praline buttercream coating the cake, a final chocolate glaze, topped with candied hazelnuts. Let me just say this is my favorite thing we've made so far. A lot of my favorite things all together, in a well-balanced tasty masterpiece! BINGO!
Sachertorte. Mmmmmmm.... not interesting. This was made by famous by the Sacher Hotel in Vienna, which is one of the only places officially allowed to make it. It rose to prominence in the Austrain-Hungarian empire, when the King wanted a pastry he could easily ship to his embassies. Let me tell you that given that its ability to be transported is the only thing this Sachertorte is good at, it should have stayed in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. OH SNAP! Pretty bland chocolate cake with an apricot filling and glaze, and a chocolate glaze on top of that. But wait for the grand finale: "Sacher" written on it! WOW! The Sacher Hotel can keep their lame cake.
Dobos Torte. Dobos sponge with layers of chocolate buttercream, chocolate rosettes, and caramelized Dobos sponge on top. Nice presentation and pretty tasty, but I think there was too much chocolate buttercream. Seems as though the French always put too much of what I think of as filling in their cakes.
Flourless chocolate cake with chocolate meringues. This was a standard flourless chocolate cake. But to decorate it we made some simple chocolate meringue (french meringue + cocoa powder, powdered sugar), piped them in long strips, baked, and stuck them to the cake using a whipped ganache. It looked pretty cool!
Chocolate Hazelnut cake. Layers of Chocolate-hazelnut Biscuit and Chocolate-hazelnut mousse. Combed on top, wrapped with a decorated piece of chocolate. I LOVE chocolate and hazelnut together so I was a fan.
Final Exam! For our final exam, we had to prepare the first cake we made, which was a plain genoise with raspberry jam and plain buttercream, and add to the top 2 marzipan roses, and a marzipan plaque inscribed with "Happy Birthday" written in chocolate. I was really proud of my cake. My cake was baked perfectly, I filled it with a good amount of jam, my buttercream was super smooth and the edges of my cake were clean. I was really happy with the color and outcome of my roses, and given the circumstances, my inscription didn't look half bad. My chef said that the only thing I should change is the placement of my items on the top- I could have arranged them to display each of the components a bit better. Overall though, I was happy with my final cake!
