Entremet Day 3

Today we finished the chocolate entremet and did some prep.

We heated the outside of ring mold and slid it off of our cake. Then we warmed our chocolate glaze and put our cakes on racks.

Here is the glazing process, it is pretty easy but there is one rule. Go big or go home! If you hesitate at all while pouring then ythe glaze starts to cool and you can see the seams.

Then the cake gets some modeling chocolate flowers and leaves and swirls. I don't love the decor, but I think that my plaques on the sides looked good.

Here is the inside of the cake. It was still a little frozen when I cut it, thus the icy look to the middle of the layers.

Entremet and Petite Gateaux, Day 1 & 2!

This is one of the classes that I have really been looking forward to. It is about European style layer cakes and small cakes. Most of the cakes will be made in molds and glazed in some way. The challenge with this class is timing! It incorporates all of the things that we have learned up until now: cookies, cakes, chocolate, ice creams, etc. You will see what I mean with the first few cakes.

Day one was almost purely prep. We made shortbread cookie dough, chocolate glaze, chocolate and vanilla sponge cakes, and a few other small items.

Day two was all about the chocolate entrement (and a little more prep.) It had to be chocolate, plus any addditional flavors of our choosing.

Here is the step by step:

Prep, a ring mold on a turntable and all the smallwares.

A shortbread disk, and a swirl of raspberry jelly.

All smoothed out...

A layer of chocolate cake, soaked with Chambord (raspberry liquor) syrup.

More raspberry jelly.

Chocolate Chambord mousse all around the edges and over the top.

And a layer of frozen raspberries.

Another soaked layer of cake.

More mousse.

And all smoothed out, and off to the freezer.

Done with day two!

Cakes, Day 9

Last day of cakes! This class was super fun, it was lots of detail work with very little downtime. The cakes themselves were not always pretty; some look a lot like grocery store cakes. But, they are fun to decorate and are very challenging to get perfectly smooth and uniform.

The first part of my practical was the "ten minute torte." This was having to ice a cake start to finish in ten minutes. This is WAY harder than it sounds!!! No one was able to get it done in that time. I finished 2nd at 13 min. and 45 sec. It was really stressful as you get to the last few minutes, and still have a ton of work to do. This was certainly the worst of my cakes, but it wasn't awful.


Here is the set up for the "ten minute torte"

Here is the speed rack with everyones tortes awaiting grading.

And my torte....

Next we moved on to the birthday cake.

Here is the set up.

In the process.

And the finished cake!

Here is my table-mates cake.

All done with Cakes class!