Today I had my demo and practical for lesson 15. In the demo Chef Nicolas showed us how to make:
*Gâteau Basque
Cake au citron
Almond paste items (A rose, a rose bud, 3 rose leaves, a carrot, a pumpkin, and a duck, haha)
After everything was done we got to taste them, as usual. I didn’t like Chef’s gâteau basque very much. All I could taste was rum. It was kinda gross. The lemon cake however was really really good! It was a really subtle lemon flavour, not like the the lemon cake that I’m used to eating that is super lemony (and delicious). I liked it. Here is what Chef made:
ateau basque.
After the demo there was about an hour left until practical so I went home to eat lunch. Then it was time for class so I went to school. As soon as I got there I started feeling weird. Like I just wanted to sit down and do nothing because I had no energy. I don’t know if it was something I had for lunch or if I was just really nervous for some weird reason. I tend to get nervous before practicals. So nervous that I start to feel sick, and it’s really annoying. So I ignored it as best I could and went ahead with things. When I was measuring all of my ingredients I felt like I was extremely disorganized and whatnot because I was all ‘feeling-dizzy-because-I-was-nervous’. I kept thinking I forgot ingredients or that I was doing something wrong. I’ve definitely gotten better at not caring what everyone else is doing, but I am still really bad in the department of having confidence in what I am doing. I’m working on it though. After I did my almond pastry cream everything went better from there. I didn’t have any problems with the cake today, but after I had put my cherries in the cake Chef came over and commented how I was being stingy with the cherries. For some reason I thought they were the same ones that we used for the black forest cake (which tasted like rubbing alcohol) so I didn’t want to put a lot in. Then he told me that they aren’t the same cherries. So I put more in. I loaded them in. I put tons of cherries in it (even though I don’t care for cherries that much). After that I finished the top of the cake and put it in the oven.
Then it was time for the almond paste things! I started with the rose. Thought I was doing pretty well. It ended up looking like a cabbage. Safe to say I was not doing well, haha. I’ve never been very artistic or good at making dainty pretty things with my hands but I tried! Chef came over and gave me a private lesson. I must have been doing worse than I thought…haha, but I am grateful that he came over and showed me how to do it. He was very patient with me and showed me step by step how to do it properly so that it wouldn’t end up looking like a cabbage again. I’m really glad that we have such good and nice instructors here who actually like doing what they’re doing. I am so happy here! My second rose turned out better than my first but I still thought it was ugly. I managed to finish everything on time. When I brought my cake up to present, Chef didn’t say much about it. There were two spots on the sides where there had been a bit too much egg wash so it prevented those small areas on the side of the cake from rising all the way. Then he cut it open and saw all the cherries. It was kind of funny. He said it was good. Other than that he didn’t say anything else about it so I am assuming that everything else was fine. I must say, I much prefer the taste of mine over the taste of the Chef’s, but that’s just because of my hatred for rum. Maybe one day me and rum will become friends like me and hazelnuts are becoming friends. Who knows. Here is my cake:
So that’s that. There is no picture of my almond paste things because they are in the proofer at school and we will be airbrushing them next class. I am really nervous for that…my things aren’t that pretty to begin with.
Butter used: 114gms
Total: 2849gms
BAKE ME TASTY 