Category: Sweets

Cheesecake Entremet

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Let’s rewind a little. A few weeks ago we had an entremet week, a week when we made entremets. I love those lessons, we learned different types of products that we can assemble as an entremet. The photo above is a chilled cheesecake entremet, layered with scottish shortbread and raspberry gelee insert, glazed with raspberry mirror glaze. It’s a really simple entremet and yet really delicious. It’s almost like a normal chilled cheesecake with but with a little surprise in the middle which is the raspberry gelee insert.

I also made a small version of the entremet (photo on the left) sooo cute and also can be used as plated dessert. I garnished the top of the cake with tempered chocolate which some have been coloured using a coloured cocoa butter. It’s quite a challange for me to work with the cocoa butter, I hope I could do it perfectly by the end of the course.

Amazing Chocolate Work

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Okay, so far, this is the most amazing lesson in Superior class. I mean those chocolate works look awesome, yes ? I love this lesson so much, even though I was sick during the practical ugh but I did a pretty good job and I was really happy with the products that I made. I made egg sculpture, chocolate box and bonbonniere. It’s really amazing because all that you see in these photos are made of chocolate. Yup, 100% chocolate, including every small parts in the egg sculpture. Pretty amazing, huh?

I’m really glad because this is my first chocolate sculpture that I’ve ever made and it turned out pretty good, and I have to temper the chocolate by myself which is quite a challenge for me as I have to keep an eye on the temperature of the chocolate. However, the results are amazing. The bonbonniere that you see (the chocolate with ganaches fillings) has different ganaches flavours. They are raspberry ganache, pistachio ganache, milk chocolate infused star anise ganache and they are amazing. Absolutely delicious. And a big thanks to my awesome chef for teaching me , Chef Sebastien !

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Behind the scene, I told him that he was too tall, so he laughed, squatted and took another picture with me 😛

Bûche de Noël

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Bûche de Noël is a christmas log. It’s made of almond dacquoise biscuit, layered with cointreau mousse and chocolate mousse. Glazed with shiny chocolate glaze and garnished with meringue mushrooms and some tempered chocolates. You couldn’t really see the layers but the cointreau mousse is on the bottom of the cake.

This was the 2nd lesson as Superior student in Le Cordon Bleu New Zealand. I was happy with my product that day because it turned out pretty good. This cake was really nice as it had two different flavours of mousse so that the cake wasn’t really heavy and it balanced the flavour of the cake as well.

Fraisier Torte / Frasier Torte

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Fraisier torte is a french strawberry torte. A torte is a multilayered cake that is filled with various types of cream or fruits.

The fraisier torte that I made was layered with genoise sponge (imbibed with punch syrup) ,sliced strawberries and mousseline cream. Mousseline cream is a pastry cream that is combined with butter until it is light and fluffy (increase in volume). We could also add flavour to the mousseline by adding a little bit of kirsch or cointreau.

I garnished the top of the cake using a marzipan and chocolate writing. Marzipan is made of sugar, honey and almond meal. It is really fun to work with marzipan as you can turn it into any shape that you want. In this lesson, I shaped the marzipan into flowers and leaves. I also use a marzipan for the base of the flowers and I coloured it pink. Unfortunately, my chocolate writing on the cake wasn’t good enough and it kind of ruined the cake. I was really sad because otherwise everything else was perfect. However, I finished making the cake and the taste was absolutely delicious.

Le Saint-James

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We made this cake for the assessment before the exam. It’s really delicious and personally, I think this cake is more difficult to make than a classic opera cake. This cake is made of Almond Joconde (imbibed with rum syrup) with nuts ,layered with Rum Praliné Mousseline A l’anglaise and Apricot Compote. Garnished with caramelized dry apricot, pistachios and hazelnuts.

The way we assemble this cake is similar to the way we assemble an opera cake. It’s the same technique, different products.

Almond joconde in this recipe is made of brown sugar, icing sugar, plain flour, ground almond combined with a plain meringue.

Rum Praliné Mousseline A l’anglaise is made of creme anglaise mixed with butter, praliné and rum, combined with a plain meringue.

Entremet

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Entremet – Praliné bavarois layered with succes biscuit and lemon curd. Honestly, this is the most delicious cake I’ve ever eaten. Praline bavarois has a sweet creamy nutty taste and the lemon curd in the cake balances the flavour. It is best served cold and this cake is very refreshing.

I decorate the cake with Praliné Glaze on the top, some nuts and tempered white chocolate. YUM !

Camelia Tart

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Camelia tart is basically a simple peach flan tart, topped with Orange Chiboust cream.

Orange Chiboust Cream is made of egg whites, egg yolks, cornflour, gelatine, sugar and reduced orange juice. Chiboust cream is the combination of Pastry Cream and Meringue. In this case, instead of milk, I use reduced orange juice for the flavour. I decorate the flan with some sugar work, caramelized peaches and I caramelized the top using the blow torch.

High Tea

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High tea at Le Cordon Bleu, Wellington from 24th february to 1st march. High tea service has been such a wonderful experience for patisserie students. We learned how to work in a ‘real’ kitchen, how to do the service for the high tea and the most important – how to work as a team.

The production of the pastries was from 9am to 2pm and customers started coming from 2.30pm to 4pm. We made many kinds of pastries:

-Coffee and chocolate eclairs
-Two types of mini sandwiches (ham, gruyere cheese and grape chutney) and (smoked salmon and horseradish cream)
-Zucchini and apple quiches
-Florentines
-Madeleines
-Fruit scones
-Lemon tart in a glass with apple crumble and topped with meringue
-Gateau opera

Gâteau Opéra

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Gâteau Opéra is made of joconde sponge imbibed in coffee syrup, layered with chocolate ganache and coffee buttercream, topped with chocolate ganache glaze. This is one of my favourites.

I used french buttercream for the cake. French buttercream is made by whisking the egg yolks with a hot sugar syrup that has reached the soft-ball stage until the mixture turns light. When the mixture is at rtp. butter and other ingredients (e.g coffee extract or vanilla extract) is added to the mixture and combined well with the rest of the ingredients.