Entremet Day 6

Mini entremets with chocolate spray. Yes, it is done with a regular old paint sprayer!

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!

Cakes Day 8

We started by making angel food cakes. They almost all fell to some degree, but other than that they were unremarkable.

The finished cake prepped for decoration.

The decorated cakes. They are just coated with whipped cream, chocolate shavings, and on some we added oranges.

Next we prepped all of our cake components for the practical.

All of our cake ingredients layed out for mixing.

Then we made our Italian buttercream.

Egg whites ready to be whipped.

Sugar being boiled to 250 degrees. It will be drizzled into the whipped whites.

The massive whipped egg white monster trying to escape its bowl...

The meringue after the syrup was drizzled and whipped in. It is whipped until it cools to room temp.

Adding butter, bit-by-bit.

After all of the butter is added the buttercream looks curdled and gross for a while.

Keep whipping and it comes together into a smooth, yummy, buttercream.

Finally, chef demoed what we will need to do for decoration on our practical cake tomorrow. The roses can be any color, and the writting can be in either print or cursive.

Chef was making a very cute face in this photo!!

Cakes Day 7

Today we made a "Honey Bee Torte"

It is made with vanilla Genoise cake, honey buttercream (which is AMAZING), honey simple syrup, and is coated in ganache.

I'm not a big fan of the finished cake, but I could eat the buttercream by the bowl full.

Cakes Day 6

Black Forest Cake today.....


We had to practice chocolate piping for homework. Here is my piping an some piping from my group.

Chef demoing the cake for the day. It is made with chococlate sponge cake, kirchwasser (cherry brandy) simple syrup, cherry filling, and whipped cream for icing. The entire outside of the cake is actually just whipped cream,, no icing!

I have a step-by-step for this cake too, but don't think that it need explanation. Here it goes....