Nearing the End of Cakes.

It's been so interesting to see the sorts of "cakes" that fit into the Cakes unit. This unit, perhaps more than some of the others, really distinguishes the school as a French school, rather than an American one - but we did have "American Day!"...pictures are later in the post. 

This cake is a base of Genoise, and has alternating layers of Almond Sponge Cake and Raspberry Jam all stacked together for the edge. Then, we made a Cassis (blackberry) Mousse, and filled the rings, chilled over night, then topped them with a Fruit Puree and Gelatin finish. And it was so, so yummy. Light, and refreshing, but still wonderfully full of fat, and not to sweet, this is the perfect late spring/early summer time dessert. And I'm thinking this would absolutely wonderful with half of the mousse being raspberry, and half lemon. And it's just gorgeous. This cake was especially fun for our class to make, because on the outside of our big, hardback textbook (really just a cookbook...teehee) is a photo of this cake being unmolded from the ring.

The blackberry color on top is just stunning I think. 

 While on Mousse Day, we made this Dark Chocolate and White Chocolate Mousse Cake. Now, White Chocolate is not really my thing. It's often too sweet, too often paired with Raspberries, and just tends to leave me dissatisfied. To top that off, if given the option, Chocolate is rarely my first pick from a dessert menu. I always tend much more towards fruits, or anything with a flaky pastry dough. I hardly even go for cake! So all things considered, this to me is certainly not the most delicious thing we've made. (Although some people would DIE for it.) However, technique-wise, it was a lot of fun to make.

This was my first encounter with the tool that makes the wood grain look. It was certainly trickier than I expected to get a nice grain, that looked neat, but not too perfect. The more random the lengths of various knots, the better it looked. And, unfortunately, when I unmolded it from the acetate strip, a bit of the chocolate cake stuck, tearing at the wood grain look. But it was still very exciting to use it for the first time. This wood grain will most likely be showing up quite a bit more throughout the chocolate units, which I am quite excited about.

So this cake is a layer of chocolate and vanilla sponge cake, with a similar base, and just filled to the top with alternating stripes of Dark Chocolate Mousse and White Chocolate Mousse. Then finished with Whipped Cream, in alternating rings of piped shells, and finished with Chocolate Curls and Praline Hazelnuts we made a few days earlier. Interesting, but not thrilling.

American Day! Coffee Cake with a Crumb Topping. Love it. Love love love it. (See - I would never choose Chocolate Mousse Cake if this was an option!)

Oooh Carrot Cake with a Cabbage on Top. There's a funny story about this. 

Our exam for the Cakes unit is coming up on Tuesday, and creating a Marzipan Rose is part of the exam. So, after completing my Carrot Cake, I set out to practice this rose business. But, I had a little left over Green Marzipan Carrot Tops, so I just figured I would use that instead of getting new Marzipan. Then! My classmate Mari said, "You made a cabbage!" We cracked up laughing, and I went ahead and threw it on the cake. Cabbage Carrot Cake. 

Totally looks like a Cabbage, doesn't it?

My very "Farmers Market" Carrots. Long, skinny, unruly, and topped with long, messy greens. These are not the short, perfect, fat carrots of supermarkets my friends. It was quite a lot of fun to make, and led to my friend's making jokes about me wearing Birkenstocks all the time, and loving long, skinny things, like my cat, Baxter. And my Dad. such a fun, silly American Day. (Which! Was way more laid back than every other day...American baking...much more mindless than French baking.)

 Back to the Europeans. There's such a heavy Austrian influence in French pastry, (all thanks to Marie - Antoinette, who said, "Let them eat Brioche!") so we spend quite a good amount of time with very Austrian pastries, including, but not limited to the Sacher Torte.
The Austrian - French assimilation of pastry making makes me want to head to Barnes and Noble, and read up of the history of each, and how the pastry crossover happened exactly.
But this Sacher Torte, from Vienna, is still a prized possession of the Austrians. Although it is made in several bakeries throughout Austria and Germany now, there are very, very strict laws as to the ingredients used in order to call this a Sacher Torte. The recipe is guarded in an insanely tight way. No baker within the Hotel Sacher has the recipe. Only the upper management does, and each baker only receives the part relevant to his/her contribution to the daily production of Sacher Tortes. Rumor has it, one of the Deans of our school, who is Austrian, and a former employee of the Hotel Sacher, received a cease and desist order from the Hotel Sacher, when someone at the Hotel caught wind of how similar the school's recipe was to the original. Perhaps this is just a rumor, but perhaps it is true. So, we now use a different recipe than the school used to use - which no one can find the school's old recipe. Fascinating, the politics of pastries.

The class was instructed to write "Sacher" across the top, but I asked chef if instead I could decorate my Torte the way we did when I was working in Germany, just so I can send a picture to the staff at the Pernsteiner Konditorei.

See the lone slice of Sacher Torte in the center, to the right of the cake that looks like brains? It turns out much prettier on that size - a 10" cake - than my little six inch, and the glaze in Germany was much prettier than the school's Sacher Torte glaze, but it was just really fun to make one just like we used to, and to send a picture to the staff. 

The Dobos Cake! Like Austrian cuisine, there is a very strong Hungarian influence in French pastry as well. That's where this lovely cake originates. This cake is five layers of Dobos Sponge (pretty standard Sponge Cake) with a barely Chocolate - Chocolate Buttercream, which was quite lovely. Chocolatey, without being heavy, or too rich. Then you make a quick dry caramel, which involves just burning straight sugar (no water) in a pan, pouring it over the sixth layer of Dobos Sponge, slicing into pieces, and stacking around the cake. I think it's quite beautiful, these eight pieces of Caramel - hardened cake sitting stop eight little Buttercream rosettes. Quite, quite nice. 

Gorgeous, and delicious. 

 Here's to the former Austro-Hungarian Empire (once the second largest Empire, just behind the Russian Empire) for such delicious things.

Cheers.