Tag: entremet

Moon and Stars

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It has been a few months since I started selling cakes online. There were ups and downs, of course. Sometimes when I saw other professional chefs I got scared, I lost my confidence. The business itself wasn’t in my plan at first. I’m young, I still want to learn a lot more but not everything you want could be bought with money. People keep telling me that I’m young, that I still have a lot of time, that it’s easier for me to learn stuff. However, I think they’re wrong, even if you’re young, does not mean you can just relax, does not mean you learn better, I think someone learns better when there’s willingness, when there’s passion. 

I’ve been selling typical indonesian cakes and they are totally different from french patisserie. Sometimes I felt that the skills that I’ve learned before are just useless because I no longer used them. I was really upset but I know not everything goes as plan and you just have to make the best out of it. I started looking for ingredients and equipments for french patisserie (really difficult to find). I made an entremet, my favourite dish when I was in school. It felt amazing and I fell in love with it all over again. 

   

   

One day one of my loyal customers ordered a Valrhona Opera Cake. It has so many memories, it was indescribable. When I made it, it reminded me of the reasons why I did all of these, I love to cook, it’s my forever love. I realize I have to fight my fear of other people’s capability of creating things that are so much better me. Do what you can do best and keep learning. A dream is like the moon and the stars. Many people know it exists but not many people believe that they could actually get there, not many people are willing to work that hard to get there. In the past people would think that it’s not possible to reach the moon, but eventually people found a way to get there and actually landed on the moon, now the impossible becomes possible. I’m here believing that I would get there someday, I would try my very best and if I didn’t reach it, that’s okay too,I know something better would come along to those who work hard enough for their dreams. Now I really understand what “nothing is impossible” means.

   

  

  

 

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.

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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.

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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.

Coconut – Passionfruit Entremet

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One of my favourite entremets so far , coconut and passionfruit entremet. “Russe”, coconut biscuit meringue ,layered with coconut mousse and passionfruit curd, glazed with white mirror glaze and garnished with tempered white chocolate and macaron shells. I really love this entremet because the flavour is really refreshing, the acidity from the passionfruit curd balanced the sweetness from the mousse, biscuit and the glaze as well. I love the smell of the coconut, and the texture it gives to the biscuit. We fully glazed the cake with the white mirror glaze and garnished with plain macaron shells as well as different shapes of tempered chocolate. It was a really delicious entremet, absolutely fantastic.

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Chocolate – Vanilla Entremet

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Last week’s entremet week ! One of the entremets that I made is chocolate-vanilla entremet. This entremet was made of chocolate mousse, flourless chocolate biscuit and vanilla crème brulée insert. Yup, crème brulée as an insert. The amazing thing about the entremet is I used Varlhona chocolate for the chocolate mousse. For those who have tried Varlhona dark chocolate, you know that Varlhona chocolate has a unique flavour, I think it is more fruity than normal dark chocolate that we eat. The other interesting thing is that I used tonka bean instead of vanilla beans for the creme brulee, which looks like this:

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It doesn’t have that strong vanilla fragrance, it has a unique flavour and you can smell the different spices all combined in one bean. It’s really interesting for me because back home I didn’t really use tonka beans.

If you’re wondering about the glaze, we used a spray gun (chocolate milk flavoured) to glaze the cake so it has that unique texture. This is a picture of my chef, Chef Sebastien demonstrated how to use the spray gun. It was pretty cool. Follow my Instagram: nananadyas, to see the video of the demonstration.

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This entremet was also garnished with cocoa nib nougatine and shiny chocolate glaze.

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.

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 !