Tag: sweets

Moon and Stars

@nanacakeboutique on Instagram

  

 

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.

   

  

  

 

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Traditional Celebration Cake

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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:

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(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.