French Gateaux

Pepe surprised me at Christmas with a voucher to attend a Patisse cooking Class. I was spoilt for choice with the options including a macaron masterclass, croquembouche class, art of pastry, all about the tart, French classics and French gateaux. I was still up in the air about which class to attend so I posted a facebook entry and everyone was voting on all of the above which didn't help me at all.

I decided to learn how to make a classic cake with a French style and attend the 'French Gateaux' class.

Whilst I was on my way to class, Pepe had his hands full with attending a fairy birthday party with the boys. I was definitely looking forward to having a few hours to myself and hopefully learning a few things at class.

A short walk from Central Station to the Patisse cooking school, I got a little lost with another girl but we weren't the last to the class so that was a relief. My reputation of being late wasn't the case here. There was a table full of people with name tags and aprons and Bill, the manager made me feel at home with a coffee and a pastry filled chocolate custard to meet the rest of the class.

We met the team helping out for the day and Aren who was going to be our demonstrator for the day. We started off with making the almond sponge for the opera cake. I was given the job to whisk the almond meal paste together and was wondering why my arm was about to fall off, only to figure out a short while later that we were making double quantities.

Flying through the ready made ingredients of coffee syrup for the buttercream and sponge, Aren made chocolate ganache and chocolate glaze. It brought me back to the many times that Pepe had helped to make chocolate ganache to only have it split every time and then we would be running around like a headless chooks to throw the mixture into the kitchenaid and blitz it to have it come good again.


Learnt how to make a foolproof buttercream by making a swiss meringue whisking til it tripled in volume and then added the butter and white chocolate. Then we were ready to put our opera cake together. Layering the buttercream, sponge, brushing on coffee syrup with 2 more layers it was into the freezer to set.

Next we made choux pastry for the Paris best and piped into a bicycle rings.

These were then baked in the oven as we were treated to an amazing lunch of asparagus, peas risotto drizzled with truffle oil and a simple green leaf salad. Divine!

With no time to spare we were back into making our chocolate sponge layer for the Chocolate Framboise Pave and chocolate mousse. Assembling the cake with layers of chocolate sponge, brushing this with raspberry liquid then a layer of mousse and repeating this two more time with a sponge layer on top. This was then put into the freezer to set.

Whilst waiting for our pave to set, it was back to our choux pastry sprinkled with flaked almonds. Piped the choux full of hazelnut buttercream and it was made extra delicious with hazelnut praline sprinkled on top. Indulgence central.

Once the chocolate framboise pave had set, it was time to ladle the chocolate coating with the melted dark chocolate. Finished off with slivered pistachios and freeze dried raspberries. Perfect for a Valentine's treat.

With a box of goodies in hand, Pepe came to pick to me up with the boys. They couldn't wait to try the treats I had in store for them and I could tell it was fingerlicking good!

 

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and couldn't have asked for a great bunch of people and patient presenter in Aren who managed to answer any curly question thrown his way. It was great to feel and taste our way through the class and of course have a few laughs along the way.

 

Patisse Cooking School

Ground Floor 67 -69 Regent Street
Chippendale NSW 2008

(02)9690 0665

W: www.patisse.com.au

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Patisse_Cafe

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PatisseSydney

 

Pirate cake

I had no idea what theme do have for Jaemie's 3rd birthday.

The start of the year it was all about Octonauts, Spiderman, Hulk, Batman, Ironman, Dinosaurs and Dragons. With such a plethora of ideas and Jaemie constantly changing his mind, I was slowly resolved to choose the theme which would be easiest for me.

A month out from September I decided that it was going to be pirate themed. It was very timely that ABC Tv also had a pirate marathon a week out from the party.

I ran around to Reject shops, Hot dollar shops and Spotlight sourcing a pirate boat piñata, chocolate coins, pirate party bags, table covers, pirate ouffit and gold coins. Ordered 18 red and black helium filled balloons to be picked up on the day of the party. Ordered rice paper rolls from our local Vietnamese takeaway and my gal pal's mum was making her amazing curry puffs.

I also wanted do a something homemade so I made up spy glasses with toilet rolls wrapped in blue and black stripes wrapping paper. Pepe was going to help out and make balloon cutlasses for the lads and lasses which I thought would mean less danger for the kids running around.

Printed off a pirate labels to cover the kid's drinks and made pirate boat jelly. Such great ideas and quite effective looking on the table. Stumbled across a great site for printing off the pirate flags. http://www.makeandtakes.com/summer-camp-for-kids-pirate-day-arrrrr

The other dilemma was how I was going to make a pirate ship birthday cake. I love getting ideas from the internet and there were rather elaborate with fondant to birthday cakes decorated with buttercream which were equally effective.

I didn't want to cut up the cake without having a paper mock up of what shapes I needed to cut. Thank goodness I did, as it would have been a disaster. Geometry definitely came in handy to makes sure that all the cut shapes fitted together to make the cake.

I made 2 rectangular cakes, one was flavoured chocolate and other was caramel flavoured. Then this was glued altogether with chocolate ganache. Once the ganache set, I used a fork to scrape the ganache to give it a wooden look.

I decided that I was going to use fondant for the detailing such as the pirate figurine, treasure chest, steering wheel, cannon and 3 cannon balls, railings around the boat.

Thank goodness for Miss N's skull and crossbone cookie cutters that I was able to borrow for this event. It was great fun to make gingerbread biscuits with Jaemie and see his expression change to joy when the cookies turned out perfectly. What a relief to not decorate as they looked perfect.

The gold sparklers looked great as they looked like canons blasting.

 

 

Happy Birthday my darling boy!

 

I wonder what next year's theme will be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Babyshower for sis

My surprise for my sister's babyshower was to make a cake Not just a cake but a cake that was decorated and in the shape of a baby. Now I had no idea how to decorate a cake with fondant and I thought by watching a few youtube posts and reading up on how to decorate that I would be sweet. Literally. I had baked the cakes the night before and made a chocolate mud cake and 2 caramel cakes. I made 3 cakes in total in case one of them stuffed up and luckily they all turned out okay.  I decided on a smaller head for the baby cake and so the spare cake got eaten by Pepe's folks and was also a hit at my mother's group meeting.

After cutting the chocolate mud cake in half and filling it with dark chocolate ganache, I covered both cakes with mock cream which is basically the glue for the rolled fondant. 

I got the white fondant and had to put in the colours and knead til the colour was spread evenly. Actually I didn't do this bit as Pepe did this for me. His hands turned an interesting shade of red after this. It was quite funny to attempt this as we were watching the Royal Wedding at the same time and would stop and go watch the tv and then come back to finish another aspect of the decoration for the cake. 

 We then added the eyes, ears, cheeks, feet, belly button, arms, hair, bib and lettering for the bib. I particularly liked the round contour of the body, as the fondant just slided straight on and it looked amazing. After four hours the cake was done and we were exhausted.

 My sis was very impressed with our cake. I was pretty happy with the result too.  

 My sis made these lovely cupcakes with baby bodysuits on top. How cute do these look?

Think this picture says a thousands words. This is before the baby shower event and we were all buggered before it was to begin, except for Jaeminkins.

Poor massacred cake, the day was fun, filled with lots of cake, laughter and catchup chats. Happy baby shower sis,