~Jennifer said she will name her cookies Joy in her bakery~
The first recipe we made in class today was cookies. They were meant for the first coffee break for chefs, students and staff at 10am. “This recipe is easy huh, prep all the ingredients and mix them in the mixer, except the last ingredient”, Chef Sebastien said. The last ingredient is chocolate chips. “We want them to be all different, rows of different colours, communicate …”, Chef Sebastien got us to be creative with our cookies. He knew we love to come up with our own creations. Indeed, we got all excited each time Chef allowed us to play with the recipes, it is not often because we need to learn classic recipes. If it is round, it cannot be square or oval. He went into shock once when I added green to a joconde biscuit mix all because Jillian and I wanted dark and light green on the final look. Nice ones, he would usually remind us when he sensed that a few of our creations were going to be over the roof. He looked satisfied as each team repeated to him the type of cookies we were going to work on.
Jennifer preferred cookies with nuts, so we decided on orange zest+semi-sweet chocs+pecan nuts. Jennifer and I partnered each other for a couple of days now. She is 21 and an American of Mexican-Spanish origin. We didn’t hear chef’s instruction on the size, we made 15 large, yummy and chewy cookies. The cookies looked really delicious, and they were. The other teams made double the amount and half the size. Never mind that, they were gone before the break was over. We had Raspberry fruit+puree+white choc+lemon zest from Jill and Amanda, coconut+white choc+dark brown sugar from Elizabeth, strong lemon zest from Roberto, cocoa powder+white choc from Sarah and April. During the break, Jennifer and I split a cookie each, and we decided we liked our own best - chewy with a light crunch, a tinge of citrus which always goes well with dark choc, as well as Elizabeth’s – hers was crispy with a nice coconut taste, and the dark brown sugar gave the cookies a nice tempting brown.
~We promised to hang this picture up at our bakeries when the other becomes famous~
Today went smoothly, soon we completed French Meringue and Choc Glaze without any hiccups. Chef Sebastien attributed it to combinations or partnership between 2 persons. Next we finished Chocolate Glaze as well as Chocolate and Orange mousse. This was a far cry from last Friday, my recipe for a simple Chocolate Mousse just didn’t work, not once but twice and when I did the chocolate mousse for the 3rd time, I felt really guilty – instead of 370g of milk chocolate, I had used 1.11kg of it to make a simple recipe of chocolate mousse successfully. Robert tried to make me feel better, he turned the disastrous lumpy chocolate mixture into a truffle mix, mixing in the leftover joconde biscuit and he said we would have truffles this week. That helps, I guess. Chef Sebastien had jokingly told me to include this boo-boo on my blog for tripping over a simple recipe which I had done twice before. He had asked me then if it is due to the combination, I partnered Quin then. The only reasonable explanation I could give chef was our mise en place wasn’t done well, a big lesson on mise en place indeed.
We completed 2 chocolate cake recipes today. I decided that I only love Dark Chocolate, period. The milk chocolate & orange mousse tasted like condensed milk to me – for someone without a sweet tooth. Poured over a brownie base? The brownies we made a day earlier were good, but with “condensed milk” densely surrounding it, I am not sure if I would like it. We made theses cakes for a wedding reception, requested by a friend of Mr LeNotre. We needed to deliver 25 cakes, 5 of each type.
The other chocolate cake - Chocolate Marquise Cake – was yummilicious. A potent combination of chocolate genoise, chocolate pastry cream and a chocolate glaze with a strawberry sauce. We had this for lunch and it is going to go into My Favourite Desserts – my 3rd! The strawberry sauce was made by blending strawberry with lemon juice and sugar to taste, then strained. A dribble over the Chocolate Marquise Cake complemented the dark choc combo. Slurp!
My day in school ended on a sweet note with the lingering taste of Chocolate Marquise Cake.
Jennie gave me a ride back to the apartment. I asked to bring back her sugar work she practised in class today for Level 3 Pastry. It is a cute little puffer fish! I told her I would like to have a *mouse instead, she said mouse doesn’t live in the ocean and Chef Philippe has given a underwater theme. I was introduced to Jennie when I came for the school tour, Jean-Luc introduced me to 2 Asian faces in the school then – Jennie was from Medan, Sacicha was from Bangkok. They advise and watch over me like big sisters.
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*mouse – I was hoping to add a sugared mouse into my collection of over 170 of them. Jennie warned that it will melt, it certainly showed some sign of it on our way back. Now the Puffy Fish is still lying pretty as a decor piece on my table, less one spike.
