Gum Paste Flowers

Happy Thanksgiving! Finding myself surprisingly conscious after going to bed two hours later than usual and waking up an hour earlier than usual, I thought I'd use the airport downtime before my flight to Kansas City to post some pictures from this week's gum paste extravaganza.

Day One: buds for daisies, carnations, roses, orchids, and lilies



Day Two: roses, daisies, carnations, orchid and lily buds



Day Three: orchid throats, blossoms, daisies, carnations, roses; rose leaves, orchid and lily petals



Day Four: lilies and orchids

We also coated the base and first layer of our "dummy" cake (Styrofoam) with fondant. By the end of next week we will have added another two layers to the cake and constructed a centerpiece using some of our gum paste flowers.



Enjoy the holiday, everyone! I'm sincerely looking forward to some quality time with friends and family.

Entremets (Cakes)

My temporary burnout has ended, thanks to Chef Dimitri Fayard of Chicago's Vanille Patisserie. In France, a layered mousse cake is called an entremet, and over the past couple of weeks I have learned the differences between several mousses with regard to texture, flavor, and ingredients, as well as how to successfully construct various layered cakes. Each cake we made contained a minimum of three components - sometimes more - and they were each built over the course of a couple of days. Besides the cakes from our books, we were fortunate enough to have enough time to make two cakes that Chef Dimitri sells in his bakery. We also made puff pastry from scratch to construct a Pithivier - an intricately-decorated French cake that gets its shape and pattern designs from the use of a blade. We filled the Pithivier with frangipane, and made apple turnovers with our leftover puff pastry scraps. Nearly everything from this course was absolutely delicious. See below for pictures and details...

Nougat Mousse Cake:

pistachio dacquoise

passion fruit and apricot gelee

nougat mousse
clear glaze

Hazelnut Chocolate Cake:

hazelnut dacquoise sprinkled with caramelized hazelnuts

chocolate biscuit

chocolate mousse

hazelnut mousse

chocolate mirror glaze

Coconut Passion Cake:
coconut dacquoise

candied pineapple

coconut mousse

passion fruit mousse

clear and colored glaze

Raspberry Silk Cake:

almond dacquoise

raspberry gelee

hazelnut crunch

white chocolate diplomat mousse

Pithivier:

puff pastry

frangipane

Apple Turnovers:

puff pastry

apple compote

Chef Dimitri's Sophia Cake:

flourless chocolate biscuit

craquant praline

vanilla cremeux

chocolate mousse
chocolate glaze

Chef Dimitri's Chocolate Caramel Cake:

streusel / streusel crisp

caramel cremeux

chocolate caramel mousse

dark chocolate glaze

Exam III Recap

For our third exam we were required to produce and present the following:

• Beer Bread
• Toast Bread
• Croissants
• Lemon Pound Cake
• Chocolate Espresso Tarts
• Coconut Rochers
• Raspberry Financiers
• Pate a Choux (Chouquettes, Eclairs, Salambos)
  

While I personally feel I could've done better on this one, my grade was decent enough to slightly raise my overall grade. Can't complain about that! Here are some photos:

All that remains: cakes and wedding cakes...