cooking – Mon Voyage Culinaire

A Time Machine

I know most people wanted to turn back the time and changed everything that they thought they’ve done wrong, but is that really what they want?

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I haven’t really updated this site since late 2015 and my readers have probably already gone but that’s okay, I’m not writing to gain readers really although it makes me happy if I could help them by sharing my life story. The truth is I did stop cooking for a while and work at my dad’s company.As you probably have known I have run my cake business for more than a year. I stopped in January because it drove me crazy, I was not satisfied with any achievement that I could get, no matter how big it is. Most of you guys would probably know this feeling. People would look at you and say that you’ve done a great job and what an effort ! However you were just like, “meh..”, because you were expecting so much more, because you set your goal way too high in such a little time and end up disappointing yourself.

I’ve learned a lot in 2015.

That running your start up business alone is not a piece of cake

That the power of passion is one of the keys to success

Appreciate every little step you take because you have a courage to take that step

Learn from your mistakes because that’s when you grow

What everybody said to you is not always right

But listen to them because listening is learning

Many people will tell you what kind of person you are but you know deep down that you know yourself better than anybody.

I have lost so many opportunities doing stupid things and yet people often said to me, “Oh What the hell, you’re still young..” It’s as if they think it’s okay to do stupid things, to fail or to slow down at this age. When I look at myself in the mirror, at this age I saw it more as an opportunity to try better things, age doesn’t even make any changes in this case. I’ve had classmates twice my age, it’s never too old to learn and it’s never too young to try to get bigger and better things in life. Why would you waste your time if you’ve had the chance to get it now ?

I have resigned from my father’s company and I have a new project coming up. I started taking cake orders on my free time. Looking for that passion back deep in your heart because if it really is a passion, you can’t really throw that away and you wouldn’t want to, sometimes it’s just buried deep inside your heart.

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Sometimes I just look back to 7 years ago when I was still dreaming to go to culinary school. How scary it used to sound, and I look back to 2 years ago when I finished my Diploma with 3 Certificates on my hand during the graduation, for the first time in my life, the chefs were putting a tall white chef’s hat on my head, like the one you’ve seen on TV and 2 silver medals and 1 gold medal from Le Cordon Bleu. What a great memories right ? and then 2015, is definitely not a good year for me. I broke down and you know the rest of the story. So, if I could turn back the time, would I do things differently ?

I would say no, because when people say “I would do things differently” that means they have learned their lessons, they have realized what mistakes they have made. You shouldn’t turn back the time to change that, you should change your future with what you’ve learned from that mistake. So, no, I will not change anything because if I did, I will not learn HOW to appreciate or WHY I should fight for my passion. Make mistakes while you’re young, I agree with that one but don’t do it intentionally. I will keep fighting for something that I love because as I said before in the past, love is always worth fighting for. There’s always ups and down in life ,hopefully this is my turning point. One thing for sure I wouldn’t want to use, is a time machine.

Nana Cake Boutique

My New Journey

Wedding Cake

First of all, MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015! Sorry for being away for quite some time, I’ve had a few problems but now I’m back with more stories. This wedding cake was made by my mom. Isn’t she talented ? The tall cake wasn’t real inside, there were styrofoam underneath the gum paste. The wedding decoration was 100% made of gum paste. Everything was made from scratch. The small cake on the right, however, was real. It was a very delicious Surabaya Lapis Cake or in Indonesia we call them Lapis Surabaya or Spiku.

(Source: natacake.com)

The cake has two layers of sponge cake and one layer of chocolate sponge cake in the middle. Traditionally, there was a layer of strawberry jam between each layers. A lot of eggs (especially egg yolks) and butter are needed to make this cake, so imagine how soft the texture and how rich the flavor is going to be. This is one of my favorite cakes ! Find the recipe here:

Lapis Surabaya Indonesian Sponge Cake Recipe

http://eatapieceofcake.blogspot.com/2014/01/kue-lapis-surabaya.html?m=1

Macarons

I’m back in Indonesia now. In my spare time back in July I baked these macarons for my boyfriend, we finally reunited! I surprised him these pink mini macarons. They were not perfect but they were good enough. The flavour was plain with vanilla for the fillings. The fillings were more like whipped cream texture instead of ganaches. I also packaged the macarons myself, using any stuff that I could used, it was not so bad really.

It was surprisingly different when I baked in indonesia and when I baked in New Zealand last time. The different environment, different kitchen, different oven and also different equipment and ingredients. I wish I could perfected these macarons next time, and of course other pastry products too. Sorry for the late update. Going to post more amazing stuff from indonesia !

Cuisine Cup and Graduation Day

The day before the graduation, Chef Paul (chef de cuisine) asked superior students to compete for one last time. We were given the opportunity to go to the fridge and freezer and take any items that we wanted. We were divided into 2 groups to make 6 plates of mains and 6 plates of desserts. There were supposed to be 6 people in the competition but 2 couldn’t make it so only 4 people left ,2 in each group. 1st group: Kaylin & I ; 2nd group: Jonathan & Hood

The photo below shows Kaylin’s and my dishes. We made sirloin steak with carrot & squash puree and lentils cooked with duck confit.

The desserts are mini baked Alaska, with chocolate cremeux, caramel sauce, raspberry coulis and freeze dried raspberries.

The winner was announced on my graduation day and I will post some pictures of the night of my graduation.

And yes Kaylin and I did win the cuisine cup. I was so grateful because not only that I finished the course, I finished the course proudly, I was one of the top 2 students in Patisserie class as well as Cuisine class. That really was a dream come true. After everything that I’ve been through, this was and still is the greatest moment in my life.

Lamb

This lesson was the second last lesson I had for my cuisine course. My partner, Kaylin, and I were given one whole lamb and we were asked to break it down by ourselves.

This photo was taken by one of my friends in the class. We all had the same kind of lamb, almost the same size and we had to break it down the same way.

On the very last lesson of cuisine, we can cook anything we want, using the lamb cuts that had been broken down the day before. This was the most interesting lesson because my class has so many people from so many different countries, and we cooked the lamb differently, based on our culture.

I cooked 3 lamb dishes,
1. Lamb burger with caramelized onions served with chips and baby spinach salad with honey balsamic vinaigrette. (No photo)

2. Yellow rice, lamb satay with peanut sauce and malbi.
This is a combination of indonesian dishes. It was absolutely delicious. I got the recipe from my mom. The yellow rice was infused with lemongrass and cooked in coconut milk. The lamb satay and malbi were marinated with galangal, garlic, shallots, nutmeg and ginger one day before cooking. The malbi was stewed in coconut milk with sweet soy sauce, red palm sugar and bay leaves. The lamb satay was pan fried with the peanut sauce and sweet soy sauce.

3. Rosemary lamb noisette stuffed with spinach and mushroom duxelle, served with cauliflower puree and rosemary jus.
This was a very simple dish. I marinated the lamb with rosemary, cider vinegar and olive oil few hours before cooking. I seared and roasted the lamb in the oven for about 15 minutes with some rosemary leaves. The smell was absolutely amazing. I love rosemary.

Original Gateau and Patisserie Exam

By the beginning of June, I had to prepare my original gateau for the exam. Original Gateau is an entremet (cake) which is being created by the students themselves, the flavour, colour, texture, glaze ,decoration etc. This is my original gateau.

This is a Matcha Green Tea entremet. It is pistachio dacquoise layered with lemon curd, white chocolate ganache, matcha mousse and glazed with white glaze. The photo was taken during the trial ,one last lesson before the actual exam. The good news was that this cake was really good, the flavour went really well together, the decoration was neat, clean and really simple. However, the bad news was that it didn’t look like that during the exam.

I didn’t have the photo of the full cake as I was really upset with it. This photo was taken after the chefs tasted the cake. As you can see, the layer is different, instead of having 2 biscuits in one cake, I only have one and that caused all the trouble during the exam. Since I removed one of the biscuits from the cake, I should’ve increase the quantity of the mousse but I didn’t and I didn’t have enough mousse to build up the cake. I made a second batch of mousse and put it on top of the first layer that’s why you could see the difference on the top layer. However, I managed to finish the entremet, and be able to fix the problem under the pressure. I finally finished the patisserie exam.

Sugar Works

First of all, sorry for not posting for about a month. I’ve been really busy, so I’m going to post my last lesson in my patisserie course today.

It was an interesting sugar week, last week of may. This piece was made of pastillage, 100% sugar which has been coloured. Pastillage is made of powdered gelatine, water, glucose, icing sugar and corn flour. The flexibility is similar with marzipan or fondant icing, but if it’s left uncovered for too long, it’s going to become hard and keep its shape.

The 2nd sugar product is a fruit basket. This is the most frustrating sugar work that I’ve done. I used the classic sugar recipe and casting sugar recipe. Blowing the sugar to shape it into the desired shapes might be the most difficult part but it got easier as you did it and I honestly felt like it was the easiest job to do by the end of the lesson. HOWEVER, when I did the assembling, it was easy at first but when I started to assemble all the pieces together, the side of the sugar basket started to crack and fell into big pieces. Everything went really well until the assembling part. I was really really upset, but still it was a wonderful experience.

The 3rd product of sugar work is my first ever sugar sculpture which is the most amazing lesson ever. The sugar used for casting was isomalt. The flower and ribbon were made using the similar method – pulling. The most difficult part for me is to keep the petals of the flower thin. The sugar was so hot that it was a really painful job to work with them, but I did it anyway and finished it. Really amazing experience indeed. Thank you Chef Sebastien.

Traditional Celebration Cake

I love this lesson so much. This celebration cake / wedding cake looks really beautiful. It’s a dark fruit cake inside which has been coated with marzipan and white fondant icing. I piped the flame around the cake using royal icing. Garnished with flowers and leaves that were made of fondant icing as well. I used marzipan to cover the whole cake before I covered the cake with the fondant icing. The reason was to get the cake to be as smooth as possible. As you probably have known that dark fruit cakes look like this:

(Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk)

As you can see the surface of the cake is not as smooth as a sponge cake. That’s why I covered the whole cake with a thin layer of marzipan (2mm) before I put another layer of fondant icing (3-5mm) on top of it. This cake could last up to 5 years as it was made of fruit cake which has a really long shelf-life.

	Stephanie on A Time Machine
	Marcelina on The Big Step
	Edward on The Big Step
	Cindy Caroline on Life Journey
	Marcelina on Love is Worth Fighting Fo…