Hello again! Still baking mini things over here. (Well…I was…. when I started this post a week ago) Petit fours, week 2 and exam week are DONE-ZO, and that means only 6 weeks left until graduation. Oh jeez.
But let me back up a few steps to tell you about last week. We started by making one of my all-time favorites: madeleines. They’re a soft, lemony, spongey cake that I. DIE. FOR. They’re so simple, yet so classic, and so delicious.
To go with the pistachio macarons from week 1, we also made cassis macarons and chocolate macarons. Cassis is a really tart black currant very popular in France. I’d give them 6.5/10 just because, well, nothing competes with chocolate macarons ☺️
We made several other little tarts throughout the week including a pear & apricot tart, chocolate espresso tart, and little apple pie tart.
Another one of my favorites was the opera cake: layers of sponge cake soaked in coffee syrup, layered with coffee buttercream, chocolate ganache, and chocolate glaze. Kind of tasted like tiramisu, but better! The trickiest part to the opera cake was slicing it while it’s warm enough to cut, but cold enough so the buttercream doesn’t ooze out everywhere and make a mess.
And like the end of every unit, we had a buffet display with everything we made throughout the 2 weeks:
And then this week was exams! For some reason, prepping for this set of exams and going through this week felt particularly grueling. I’m very happy to be currently typing from the comfort of my bed 🙂
This set covered breads & breakfast pastries, and petit fours. We had to present 1 lemon pound cake, 12 coconut rochers, 12 chocolate espresso tarts, 12 financiers, 6 croissants, 2 loaves of toast bread, 2 loaves of beer bread, 9 filled and dipped salambos, 12 choquettes, and 12 eclairs.
Normally for the week of exams, we get 2 practice days on Monday and Tuesday. We start Wednesday with the written exam, followed by the practical exam the rest of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday when we must produce the required items and present them to the chef. He’ll grade it on appearance, texture, taste, etc. and then return it to us. We’ll find out our grades some time next week.
On Monday we start entremets/cakes! If you know me, you know I’m super pumped for this unit. Yay cake!
With a Side of Butter 