mousse – Mon Voyage Culinaire

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.

Plated Desserts

This week I prepared some plated desserts using the same components in every plate but different designs. The dessert is a lychee mousse on top of the hazelnut dacquoise garnished with tuile, meringue, tempered chocolate work, raspberry coulis and mango & passionfruit coulis. They tasted amazing but on this lesson I focused on the plating. This lesson was really amazing because you can see everyone’s creativity in their plates and they all looked different. I plated these 4 desserts, I wasn’t too happy with all of them as I was running out of time but they were not bad, yes ? So which one is your favourite ? 🙂

Coconut – Passionfruit Entremet

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.

Chocolate – Vanilla Entremet

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:

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.

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

Bûche de Noël

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.

Chocolate Mousse

Chocolate mousse

Chocolate mousse in a chocolate teardrop topped with chocolate ganache, served with Crème Anglaise and raspberry coulis.

A mousse is a prepared food that incorporates air bubbles to give it a light and airy texture. It can range from light and fluffy to creamy and thick, depending on preparation techniques. Dessert mousses are typically made with whipped egg whites or whipped cream, and generally flavored with chocolate or puréed fruit. (source: Wikipedia)

Chocolate ganache is made by heating up the cream and pour it over the chocolate so that the chocolate melts. It is stirred gently until smooth.

Crème Anglaise (French for “English cream”) is a custard and usually used as a sauce for a plated dessert. It contains egg yolks, sugar, milk and usually flavoured with vanilla.

A coulis is a thick sauce that is made of fruit or vegetables puree.

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