An Update

I just wanted to write a quick post for anyone that may stumble across my blog. I am about five weeks away from graduating Tante Marie's professional Pastry Course and busy as ever with so many things to look forward to including; creating a croquembouche, an American wedding cake, working with chocolate with The Alice Medrich and my final project (still to be determined by me.)

I look forward to start writing and participating in the blogging sphere sometime in March 2012. Here's a peak at what I've been up to...

Vol Au Vants

Napoleon

Cake with fondant & sugar flowers

Buche De Noel

Skip to recipes for Buche de Noel components
Skip to Buche de Noel assembly instructions

Happy holidays everyone! I've been so busy with Pastry School for the past 15 weeks that I have not had time to complete a blog (though I have a few half-attempted blogs waiting to be finished and read by all). Tante Marie's midterm party was last weekend, which means I'm on a two-week break from school, but definitely not from baking. Yesterday I spent the whole day baking, as well as running around my neighborhood getting last minute Christmas gifts and taking two trips to the market to get more sugar and eggs. I made components of the Buche De Noel, which I'm serving tonight for Christmas Eve dinner and challah to have with brunch and as french toast on Christmas morning.

For weeks I have been talking about Chef/Instructor Cindy Muschet's Buche De Noel that she demo'ed for us in class the other week to get us excited about the holidays.

Moss only grows on one side of the tree

This is literally one of the best cakes I've ever had. The other being the Chocolate Mocha from The Prolific Oven in Palo Alto.

A Buche de Noel is something that any home-baker can tackle. It is manageable if you make it in pieces, spread out over many days. The meringue mushrooms can be made several days ahead of time, stored in an air-tight container or Ziploc freezer bag. The cake can be made 1-2 days ahead of time and left in the pan, wrapped air-tight with plastic wrap. The buttercream frosting can be stored in the fridge for up to 5 days or 2 months in the freezer. The ganache frosting can be made the night before so that it cools and sets to the consistency of frosting.

Cindy's recipe is made with a vanilla chiffon cake (spread out in a half-sheet cookie pan with oiled parchment paper on the bottom), a plain french butter cream frosting with Nutella added, a ganache outer frosting. And lastly, the meringue mushrooms and sugared rosemary sprigs and sugared cranberries (made my brushing with whisked egg white then sprinkling with sugar.)

Have you checked out all of my pictures from Tante Marie's on Flickr?

Recipes for Buche de Noel Components

(I haven't tried them, but looking at the ingredients they seem pretty good)

• Meringue Mushrooms: You can use any type of melted chocolate to act as glue
• Vanilla chiffon cake: Omit the lemon extract
• Nutella Frosting: Double this recipe. This is not a real buttercream, which means the recipe is easier :)
• Ganache Frosting:
• 12 ounces semi or bitter-sweet chocolate (64% cacao maximum), finely chopped
• 1 1/4 Cup (10 ounces) heavy whipping cream
• Melt in a double boiler, then let cool to frosting consistency

Buche de Noel Assembly

1. Dust the top of the cooled chiffon cake with powdered sugar. Cover with a sheet of parchment and flip over. Remove the bottom sheet of parchment.

2. With the cake positioned so that the long side is parallel to you, spread the buttercream over it, leaving 1" unfrosted along the opposite long edge.

3. Roll the cake, ending on the unfrosted band. Place the roll on a serving platter with the seam side down.  Protect the platter by slipping pieces of wax paper around the log to catch the drips and smudges. Chill in fridge for at least 30 minutes.

4. Trim the edges as they are usually dry.  Cut a 2" piece diagonally from each end to place on the log as cut branches. Use some frosting to glue it in place.  Cover the log with the Chocolate Frosting, including the optional cut branch piece.  Making tree bark striations in the soft mixture with a fork

Optional decorating:

• Dust snow with a powdered sugar through a sieve
• Copped pistachios on one side of log= moss
• Mushrooms in groups of three
• "Iced" rosemary sprigs, cranberries or pine branches

Banana Maple Bread

I wasn't sure what to do when I woke up extremely early this Saturday morning when I didn't have pastry school at 8am, so what did I do? I got in the kitchen and baked. First I prepared custard cups for creme caramel with a layer of caramel on the bottom.

Then, feeling once again inspired by Love Veggies and Yoga's simple, healthy/vegan/gluten free/DELICIOUS recipes I made Banana Maple muffins. They were insanely delicious with strong flavor and a nice, chewy texture. I love these recipes because all you need is a fork and a large bowl to mix the ingredients in- barely any mess!

Banana Maple Muffins

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp ground flax seeds
• 1/4 C packed brown sugar
• 1/3 Almond flour
• 1 tbsp Maple Syrup
• 1 over-ripe banana, mashed
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• Mix together and pour in to lined muffin tins

* Makes about 4 regular-size muffins

A few days later I multiplied this recipe by SIX (I had to get rid of six bananas, ok!?) and it was still delicious. I used crunchy peanut butter for the almond butter and next time I will stick with almond butter, the flavor profile matched the other ingredients better.

The best is when you get a little pocket of maple syrup in the muffin, yummm.

Pastry School in Pictures

Now I understand why there aren't very many blogs out there chronicling pastry school, there's no time! Here is the past few weeks in pictures (some are my creations, others are not):

Coffee Pots de Creme

Creme Caramel

That's how the center is supposed to look. Chef hacked it open to show us :)

Maple Flan

All these delicious pastries are made with Pate au Choux dough

Gateuau Paris-Brests

Gougere (with egg white salad) for Blue Grass Festival

Profiterols with vanilla ice cream

Lemon Souffle

 

Strawberry Mousse

Chocolate Mouse with whipped cream and chocolate curls

Raspberry Meringue

Apricot Almond Meringue

Coffee Drinks

Everyone knows that I'm a huge sweets fan, but I'm also a huge coffee fan! So, I was so excited to able to participate in the FoodBuzz Tastemaker program with Godiva Coffee and it's seasonal flavored coffees. This created a wonderful excuse to have a few close friends over to share my two favorite fall drink.

The first drink comes from my dear friends, The Leonard Family, which they share with people up at our summer weekend get-away spot; a permanent campsite community in Northern California where we all waterski, wakeboard and enjoy each others' company during cocktail hour. Careful, these will knock you on your behind.

'Coffee Drinks'

Makes 2 servings

 Combine:

• 1.5 oz Brandy
• 1.5 oz Kahlua
• 1.5 oz Bailey's Irish Cream
• 8 oz Godiva Caramel Pecan Bark brewed coffee

The second drink gets me through the colder fall months just as well because pumpkin flavored anything is the best, but it is truly a seasonal ingredient.

Pumpkin Spice Milkshake

Makes 2 servings

Blend together in a mixer:

• 3/4 C canned pumpkin pie mix
• 1/4 milk
• 1/2 strong brewed Godiva Pumpkin Spice coffee
• 2 C french vanilla ice cream

coffee drink & pumpkin spice milkshake ingredients

 

booze + caffeine + sugar

Caramel and Custard

Friends and co-workers are already asking me where the goods are. But it turns out I won't be taking any home because they go to a much better cause. Mary (Tante Marie herself) started Food Runners in 1987, a nonprofit that delivers food from restaurants to those in need in San Francisco. All of our leftovers (that are edible) go to those in greater need- hooray!

On my second night I successfully made a dark caramel sauce and almost successfully made a creme anglaise, which is still cooling in the fridge for Saturday's class. After a lot of egg whisking and boiling sugar Chef Cindy Muschet demo'ed pate a choux (cream puff dough), which we'll dive right into at 8am on Saturday along with creating pastry cream for eclairs.

Here's our second class in pictures

Coffee Pot de Creme

Maple Custard

Creme Caramel

First night at Tante Marie's

I just finished my first night of Pastry school at Tante Marie's Cooking School in San Francisco! I'm exhausted and full of cookies, but I can definitely say all of the cookie theories I've talked about have been confirmed and apparently I have to stop under-baking my cookies (even though they are most delicious that way, apparently they're not "sale-able").

I'm off to read more about butter as it relates to cookies as I drift into a sugary dream...