Yes, more cakes. Where to start?…

Below is some kinda dobos layer cake, with layers of dobos, chocolate butter cream, and a caramel top.

Below is the Sweedish Chocolate Cake. I was absent for this cake so there isn’t much I can tell you about this cake. But it’s damn good. I will be making this for one of my final projects.

This one is a Lemon Honey Cake with raspberries and Italian meringue. Lots of people like this one because it’s hard to mess up so it’s really moist and stays moist.

This is the Swiss Kirsch Cake, which has kirschwasserin it. It’s like a cherry liqueur, brandy to be specific. Take a Japonaise meringue, add a chiffon sponge, add a crap load of red colored kirshwasser flavored buttercream and you get the Swiss Kirsch Cake. This is topped with a short dough cookie with marzipan cherries and piped chocolate stems.

A funny little story about the Boston cream pie. It’s not a pie, but a cake.

So, I don’t even know why it exists (well I do, but it’s kinda dumb), but May fourth is Star Wars Day. Because someone coined, ”May the Fourth be with you.” it was close to ”May the Force be with you.” But, WHY? I mean it’d be cool if it was the release date for ANY of the Star Wars series. But everyone knows the Original Star Wars was released May 25th. Whatever, happy Star Wars Day.

So, standing in the shade for about a half an hour, Giada gave a quick Q&A. Quickly after my brother and I rushed over to the end of the LOOOOOOONG line for her book signing. We stood in the hot sun for about 3 hours. But, it was great to finally see her face to face. I was really bummed that they didn’t allow pictures to be taken this time. =( I’ll go see her next time… Wait, I’m tempted to do to San Francisco and see her again! jk… Darn I was really hoping to get a picture with her. Oh well, there’s always next time. YAY!

So, I find out I’m not too great with piping buttercream, so perhaps traditional wedding cakes will not be one of my main focuses, fondant topped wedding cakes maybe… We’ll see how I do in the wedding cake section. Now is the regular cake section. Let’s see how I did… So, I’m not so good with buttercream, but piping chocolate figurines is another matter. Ok, so maybe I’m good tracing with piping chocolate, I will probably suck at freehand, heh.

Not bad if I may say so myself. Which is a good thing since I had to use my l337 piping skills for my next project.

This is a Sacher Torte made with a Sacher buscuit chocolate and apricot glazes and, yes, the S on the top stands for Sacher. A cute story, brought this cake to Caffe Adria where I frequent (and where my brother works) and gave it to one of the girls there (don’t you wish you lived closer to me? then YOU’d be getting all my goods) and she says, ”’S’ for Sarah?!” I wasn’t sure what to say but I politely said ”yes er no”. HA. As you can see S is for Sacher, but I put my own name on one of my pieces. Another funny thing I did was put my first initial on one of the pieces. Shortly after, I realized I spelled ASS on my cake and had to do our line up of all of our pieces for Chef. As he looked at our cakes he reached my table and I just looked at Dylan and just laughed with her as he looked at my cake pieces. Luckily for me, I don’t think he noticed.

Above is the Diplomat Cake, a nice cake with pastry cream, fruit jam, and topped with macaroon paste flower petal looking designs. These petals are filled with thinly sliced fruit. Yum!

Next is, simply, a caramel cake. A great tasting chocolate almond sponge mixed with a yellow cake, filled with a caramel mousse, and it has a short dough cookie bottom. The real trick to this cake is getting enough color from the caramel but without burning it or getting it too bitter.

Above is a Poppy Seed Layer Cake, in between the layers is a layer of whipped cream and thinly sliced strawberries. Unfortunately, the cake is only good the same day as it had died and became too dry by Sunday.

So, I’m a little said because my last section is over. It’s one of the sections I had a great time with. Although, I believe there’s an Advanced Plating section where I can shine HA. So, now I give you the past few days:

Above is a Chocolate Mint Torte with a Golden Touch. It’s a nice chocolate mint sponge with a chocolate glaze with a thin, thin film of gold. Yes, gold, or it wouldn’t be called ”Golden Touch” LOL. Something happened and somehow it was kinda dry. But damn doesn’t it look great HA.

So, above is a Princess Cake, which marks my first cake with a layer of marzipan on top. This cake is a yellow sponge cut in three layers, bottom layer coated with cake syrup and strawberry jam, middle layer coated with cake syrup and bavarian cream, and the top layer is coated with cake syrup and whipped cream then the whole thing is layered with green tinted marzipan. The funny thing is, NO ONE can explain why the Princess Cake is traditionally topped with tinted green marzipan… NO, those are NOT my hands LOL…

This exercise of rolling out the marzipan spawned my want to play with marzipan in class. My partner, Roxi, started by showing me how to start a rose, but then she rolled it into a ball, and I looked at her with my mouth open and she was like, ”what?” She didn’t know I wanted it, I was so sad LOL. So before I left class, she left before me and she left a little green rose on my area, Hehe. (we had leftover green marzipan) So, I went home and played with marzipan. I actually made some… decent roses.

Ok I’m gonna start today with a little fun pic I thought I’d like to share with everyone. We’re a really tight bunch, and despite getting everything done and looking really great, we to let loose a little… OK maybe we let loose A LOT. Here’s me with a big mouthful of buttercream, well not really…

Above are my plated Tropical Mousse Cakes. Yummy!!! On top is a kiwi gelatin, then under is a layer of kiwi/orange ”tropical” juice, then a layer of chocolate almond sponge, repeat. Surprisingly light on the tongue, and has a blast of tart flavor.

I cut off the isomalt sugar decorations because you’ve probably seen them before, but these are my cr

Today was a long day, not difficult, just took forever to end. I’m not saying its a bad things, since I love what I do, but today I just felt like sleeping in. But it’s a good thing I didn’t, because then I wouldn’t been able to put these in my portfolio…

Look, it’s a Tiramisu. Usually made with lady fingers, a sponge has been soaked in strong coffee, then topped with a white mascarpone filling, cocoa powder is dusted on, repeat and you have a delicious Tiramisu.

The full title of this is: Date-Stuffed Poached Pears in Phyllo Crowns with Brandied Mousseline Sauce. LOL, Chef is funny. It’s amazing how easy this is. It’s so easy I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you how to do it… HA.

I’m not sure how, but a dessert snuck by me. I did this a while ago but for some reason didn’t make it here. These were made 4/5 and nine days later it makes it to my porfolio, oops. These are Panna Cottas. Enjoy it before it melts away!

Today was a free day. Basically, we’re allowed to do anything we want. It’s mostly a day to make up anything we’ve messed up, missed because of absence, or just to redo because you didn’t like it. Luckily, I didn’t mess up anything this section so my free day really was a free day. So much, in fact, I probably could have not come in today, but then I wouldn’t get points for the day even though I didn’t miss a lecture or demo. Instead of sleeping in, I decided to redo a recipe from a previous section; my personal favorite, the Florentina Surprise. I’ve mentioned it before, but I didn’t get a good picture, so finally here’s my chance.

Here I give you the Florentina Surprise. Shortdough cookie topped with a hazelnut flavored buttercream (I finally succeeded!!!), with a secret filling of rum spiked ganache, coated with coating chocolate, then topped with a florentina cookie. MMMmmm mmmmmm goodness.

Above is my fun rendition of the dessert (cookie). Ok so I had one more bottom and no more top florentina cookie so I too a bunch of scrap florentina cookies and put it on top and called it ”rustic.” LOL It still looks great tho.

Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT MY CREATION. This beauty belongs to a fellow student, Stacy. No matter how much people love my art I call pastries, I can still learn a lot from Stacy. I’m not even sure what to call it, but wow is it nice. I still forget to break out the camera and take pictures of everyones’ pieces. Maybe next time I’ll be faster with the camera and get pics of everything.

Well, here I am halfway through my program and I haven’t decided where to try to do my externship. I’m still looking for a worthwhile part time job, but being picky as I usually am, I’ve still come up short. Well, no more ”short” than usual. I came home from school today, surprisingly enough, not tired. On the other hand I had this huge headache and I’m not sure what it’s from. In any case I bring you my latest creations. I was a little disappointed with my presentations for both of these dishes. I felt it was missing something, also the fact that it both included frozen type desserts. Having fresh frozen type desserts don’t last very long with out all the preservatives. =( Actually, I’m mostly just disappointed with my crappy photography skills. HA

Here is my Red Currant Sorbet in Magnolia Shells, made with strawberry/raspberry puree instead. Heh, we were a little slow in grabbing the fresh fruit, so we had to sacrifice. The magnolia shells are made with the same tuile paste as some of the other decorative items in my ”portfolio.” I could have used an extra set of petals that the recipe calls for but it’s ok. Like I said before, the frozen sorbet melts too fast to take any good pictures. I would have like to pipe it, but because of the forementioned problem, I decided against it. Also, I could have used more kiwi sauce, but it too was gone before I got to it.

Next is what Chef calls his Tropical Surprise Package. Surprise! It’s made from tamarind. To tell you the truth, I snuck a taste of the parfait after it was ready, before one was put into the tuile package, and I’ll have to say I will try to NEVER EAT IT AGAIN. So, one might say that I should definitely avoid durian. I like the look of this dessert, but if I ever make this anywhere I work, or for personal use, I will be using some other flavor like lemon. Honestly, I’ve done better ”sauce hearts” before I started class. Another thing to add is that I should have spread out the kiwis more. =P Oh well, this is how I learn…

Today was a slow, slow day. With four people out today (plus Chef), the kitchen was bare. That left us with six people, and it hurts when just one of us are gone. I’m pretty sure we fuel each other, so today was mildly quiet. Well, we survived, so that’s a good thing. Plus we plated some more pretty things. Below is a Chocolate Banana Tart. Two layers of layered phyllo dough, a chocolate ganache round in between, topped with caramelized bananas and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Oh, and the sauce around the whole thing is a sweet kiwi sauce.