mousse cake

In Advanced Baking we've been preoccupied with making mousse cakes. Since the class only meets once a week, what would usually be a multi-day affair became a multi-week affair for us.



Since we were making fancy mousse cakes, we started off first with the decorative sponge (the ring of cake with designs on the side).

The pattern design was made with something called pâte à cigarette batter. Powdered sugar, butter, egg whites, all purpose flour (4 oz each), and some pink food coloring (to reflect the guava layer in the middle of the cake).



Marianne and I decided to be cute and use the polka dot template. We basically spread the batter over the template and scraped the surface clean, then lifted the template up so the pattern remained. Then we spread a layer of joconde sponge cake batter over the pattern and baked until just golden.



Then we moved onto the cake middle, which was to be guava gelée. You can make gelée out of any fruit - it's basically fruit puree with gelatin, or fruit jelly.



Once the decorative sponge had cooled, we cut it into strips and lined a spring form pan (cake pan whose bottom can be released from the sides) with acetate tape (hard, clear plastic).



Next to the acetate went the decorative sponge strip. On the bottom went half of a white cake layer. The cake was soaked with passionfruit simple syrup, in keeping with our theme of tropical fruits.



Once this was done and we had all the rest of the cake materials in place, we made the mousse. The mousse is made last because you want the assembly to go fast so the mousse can set. We did mango mousse, which was 16 oz mango puree cooked with 5 oz sugar, plus 6 bloomed gelatin sheets (or 7.5 tsp gelatin powder), then cooled and incorporated with 2 cups of whipped heavy cream.



Poured the mousse over the bottom cake layer, then added the guava gelée layer (which broke a little as we transferred it).



Over that went another cake layer...



And more mousse to finish.



The mousse cakes went into the freezer to set (would be refrigerated if you were to use it the next day). Then came the decorating part.

We added passionfruit simple syrup to mirror glaze, which comes from a bucket and bridges the gap between solid and liquid. As such, we could spread it over the cake, and it would stay in place with shiny glory.



Originally we were going to use real passionfruit seeds to garnish, but unfortunately no passionfruit came in with the produce order. I decided to scoop out little balls of mango instead.



Marianne arranged the mango balls in a flower shape, and then I cut "leaves" out of the green mango peel. To prevent the cake from looking too sparse we colored some pearl sugar with pink food coloring and I placed the sugar crystals in curved lines around the cake using acetate tape as a guide.



Besides our pretty mousse cake, check out our classmates' cakes (click on "<-- Newer" to view cakes individually). All of our mousse cakes were displayed nicely, then cut and served up to taste. I think by the end, we were all mousse-caked out.

This was our cake after a slice was cut out of it. Perfect layers, but doesn't it look strangely enough like a ham sandwich?!

mozzarella pulling

Another lighthearted activity we did was pulling mozzarella.

We started with a giant block of mozzarella curd that Chef had purchased.



This was cut into cubes and submerged in hot (140-150F) water until the curds melted and started seeping through the collander.



The heated curd was transferred to a cutting board, where we got our gloved hands on it.



First we pulled mozzarella into balls by squeezing with one hand and pinching with the other. It was ideal not to pull/work the cheese too much or it would become too tough (just like dough).



As soon as the balls were formed we dropped them into a salty ice bath (made with special flaked salt, especially good for flavoring cheese because of its fine texture) for the cheese to set.



I swear, my first bite of the mozzarella I fished out took me all the way back to elementary school and how I discovered string cheese for the first time. It was that good. (And way better than how string cheese tastes to me now.)

Chef also demonstrated how to roll up the cheese into a log, then tying them off with string to form balls that way (much like sausage).



Additionally we could roll mozzarella into logs with fillings inside. We tried prosciutto and spicy coppa and asparagus pesto.



When these logs were cut into slices they formed cheese roulades. Mmm mm delicious.

melon carving sculpture

Having finished all of the garde manger stations, we moved on to more lighthearted activities.

During one session we observed Chef carving different melons and assembling all the resulting pieces into a sculpture. This was a step up from the carvings he showed us in meat lab last semester.

First he started with etching fish shapes all around the circumference of a watermelon.



The top and bottom ends of the watermelon conveniently opened up into flower pieces.



The fish shapes he took and carved details into them - fins and tails and scales.



At the end he stuck a peppercorn in for an eye.



Then he carved a clam shape out of a cantaloupe.



This was stacked on top other pieces of melon. And then he mounted the watermelon fishies onto kebab skewers (several skewers for each fish to support the weight) and disguised the skewers by sliding scallion stems onto them.



And voila, an "under the sea" theme sculpture made entirely out of melons. He even added some fennel fronds as pretend seaweed.

marshmallow bunnies!

In honor of Easter, and in preparation for a dinner tomorrow night, I decided to attempt marshmallows at home. And not just any marshmallows. Bunny-shaped ones. In other words, I was trying to recreate peeps.

After work I stopped by Daiso, the premiere $1.50 cute Japanese goods store. They had a bunny cookie cutter in just the right size.

At home, I cooked 8 oz of sugar (a little more than a cup) with 2.5 oz of water (roughly 1/3 cup) to softball stage - didn't have my thermometer handy so I couldn't tell if it actually got to 240F, so I just guessed.

Then I streamed the sugar syrup into the kitchenaid, which had been beating 2 egg whites to medium peaks. To this I added 4.5 sheets of gelatin (equivalent to 5.5 teaspoons of gelatin powder), which I had bloomed in water. (To see pictures of this process, check out the time I made marshmallows at school).

Then I added just a bit of vanilla extract for flavor, and poured the mixture into a casserole dish lined with oiled parchment paper. I spread the mixture around evenly, then laid another piece of oiled parchment paper on top.

While waiting for the marshmallow to set, I measured out four dishes of sugar, 1 oz (~2 tablespoons) each. To each dish I added only one drop of food coloring, and stirred the sugar with the back of a spoon until the color dispersed.



Once the marshmallow set I cut out bunny shapes, keeping the mold cutter in a dish of hot water between cuts.



Each piece was rolled in colored sugar and arranged on the plate.



Once I had enough of each color I combined all of the sugars into one plate. I just happened to have some bunnies left over so I rolled those around in the multicolored pixie-stick-like mixture and got some multicolored bunnies.



If I had more time (and some flavored extracts) I would definitely make each color a different flavor. The vanilla isn't bad, the colors just make you expect different.

Although I was afraid the sugar wasn't hot enough and that the marshmallow mixture seemed too soft before it set, the marshmallows did set up well and tasted very soft and perhaps extra fluffy. Guess eyeballing can work in some cases.

Happy Easter everyone!

iron chef

On competition day, everything appeared to go smoothly. I wrote down a list of all the ingredients and equipment needed for each element of the dessert, so everybody had somewhere to look and could help gather/prep ahead as needed. I also brought the tuile templates I had made the night before (basically thin cardboard cut into circles, just like how I did for fortune cookies before).

While savory (appetizer and main course) only had 1.5 hours to work before presentation, pastry got an extra half hour. So with 4:10pm as our presentation time, we were off and running at 2:10pm.

I tackled poaching the pears first since it would take the longest. Was slightly worried because the pears we had ordered were not the ones I had tested at home - they were Chinese pears (labeled Korean pears at the market I went to) instead of the Chinese white pears I got. Went ahead with the process anyway.

As soon as that was on the stove simmering, I got to work with the honey tuile cookies. I felt very professional doing this, what with the silicon mat and the template and the spatula-spreading of the batter, and the perfectly round tuile shapes. There was even a photographer or two photographing the process.



These went quickly in the oven, just 10 minutes. At home I had formed the tuile cup shape with two metal measuring cups (one smaller than the other). Those weren't available at school so I had the idea of using muffin trays - putting multiple tuile cookies down and bringing a second tray down into the tops. Sadly this broke our tuile cookies so I had to do a second batch, and this time we used tart molds. Here they are stacked into a tuile tower.



After that I sliced up the poached pears, took some of the poaching liquid and reduced it down with some pinot noir. At this time the ice cream machine was going with the cardamom ice cream base we were allowed to make ahead of competition. I didn't worry too much about it - until we were almost finished with everything else and discovered that the ice cream was rather liquidy (kitchenaid ice cream attachment not cold enough?!). In a panic we switched ice cream makers, then threw the mixture into the freezer... but to little avail. By plating time the ice cream was not solid enough to be scooped, and thus in my presentation to the judges I referred to it only as cream.

You can see our black triangular plate and the sad puddle that is there.



Backstage we salvaged what was left... by eating it. Jordan came around with a whipped cream maker and injected some tuile cups with it - and we lamented that we didn't think to turn the tuile cups right side up to contain the cream so it wouldn't be a sad puddle.



Oh well, we gave it our best shot. Team Nori 2012 lesson learned: don't rely on technology.