Creme Diplomat, Caramel, Gateau St Honore, Tarte Au Chocolate Noir

Chef's Gateau St Honore & Tarte Au Chocolate Noir

In Asia we honor the Fortune God, oh Great One who bestows upon us blessings of wealth and lottery winnings. For the French, more specifically French bakers and pastry chefs, their revered patron saint is the 7th bishop of Amiens, Saint Honore, and no better tribute befits a patron saint than a gateau in his name and honor. What did I tell you about the French, eh?

French bakers and pastry chefs, is there a sexier calling? Stuff the cop uniform and handcuffs, on my hen night my stripper will be in a chef jacket, tall hat and a whisk, but I digress.

Pouring Filling Into Blind Baked Tart Shell

French chocolate tart is a double whammy of a chocolate sensation. A dark chocolate tart shell is blind baked, then filled with a heavy duty solution of full cream and good quality dark chocolate. Into the oven it goes to bake at a low temperature until the filling is set.

 

Instant Gratification

The tart is simple to knock out, the filling dense and the chocolate flavor very full-on, hence it's usually served in very thin slices. Quality over quantity, folks.

Cooking Caramel, Piping Choux Puffs

While most of the mise en place for the St Honore was done, the sum is always greater than its parts, which meant more work in store as we brought the components together.

Water, sugar and glucose is heated until the sugar caramelized into a rich golden hue. The puffs are dipped, very cautiously, in the lava-hot caramel and left for a glossy top to form.

Sugar work, not my favourite thing in patisserie. Reaching a temperature of up to 190'C, when it burns, it burns man. So be very careful not to come into direct contact when you're working with it, or be prepared to have your skin completely burnt off.

Piping Creme Diplomat, Rounding Up The Gateau

Creme patisserie is mixed with whipped cream and gelatin to create a stiffer yet lighter Creme Diplomat which, when piped onto the gateau in the trademark "leaves", helps it hold its shape.

The puffs are also filled with the cream before being placed around the edge of the cake with some caramel to help them stick. Topped with berries and spun sugar, and you're good to go.

Making Spun Sugar

You've gone through the trouble and 3rd degree burns to create that beautiful caramel, so might as well make full use of it and do some spun sugar work. Boil the caramel down till light amber in color, then dip a brush in and swish it about till web-like strands gather. Round them up gently into a ball and you have yourself a beautiful centerpiece for any occasion.

Mini St Honores

Mille Feuille

With the leftover puff pastry, Chef Gert made Mille Feuille by filling each slice with diplomat, whipped cream and raspberry jam. Finally, fondant and chocolate is poured on top to decorate.

Dripping Delicious

My Shiny Top

I didn't expect my St Honore to turn out so well, as I was having a hard time with the caramel, which at times was either too hot to handle or too cold to glaze the puffs with. I am lucky to have Petra as a partner, that girl knows her sugar and cooked the caramel beautifully. 

I covered 1 gateau only partially with the spun sugar, so the piping can be more clearly seen. At the end of the day, you do want your hard work noticed.

Function Over Form

I might have done myself in with this one. While the other tarts were baking gently in the oven, mine was feriously bubbling away, which probably had sometime to do with the half litre of brandy I put in my filling. Sure it's ugly, but it'll go down well. Alcohol never lets you down.

Tranche Aux Fruits, Gateau St Honore, Pate A Choux, Gateau Concorde

Chef's Gateau Concord & Tranche Aux Fruits

Just when you think nothing could possibly top last week's Sacher Torte and Feuille D'Automne, we made 2 spectacular desserts today that will Knock Your Knickers Off!

Gateau Concorde is said to be created by a Parisian chef in the 1970's to commemorate the launch of the infamous supersonic jet. Trust the French to come up with a new cake for every occasion. Yet despite their best intentions, its namesake lived fast and died young, leaving behind a sweet tribute whose popularity soars to this present day.

Tranche Aux Fruits is a variation of the fruit flan, with a puff pastry base cut in a rectangular slice, or tranche in Old French, hence the name. Oo-la-la, she bakes and speaks French!

Whisking Chocolate Mousse

Layering & Masking

Arranging Logs Around The Concorde

Lightly whipped cream is folded into melted chocolate for a rich and unsweetened mousse to complement the exceedingly sweet meringue with. Just as we did for the Feuille D'Automne, 3 discs of meringue are layered and masked i.e. completely covered with mousse, and the logs broken to the required height to line the sides with.

Chocolate Meltdown

Trust me, it tastes better than it looks, though a few hours of chill time to firm up the mousse would have made for a neater slice, but when you've got 30 armed and hungry chefs to feed (we carry our knife kit everywhere), finesse is no desired virtue.

Unfortunately, just like every other Concorde I've tried, the meringue too sweet for my liking, but  it's the truckload of sugar that gives meringue its crisp shell and chewy center. The cake is otherwise perfect for one with an uber-sweet tooth and an natural resistance to diabetes.

Puff Pastry: Egg Washed & Blind Baked

Filling Up With Pastry Cream & Willfully Arranged Fruits

The assembly of the tart was straight forward, as was most of today's lesson, but it still had us rushing about like headless chickens trying to get so much done.

Rainbow Finale

The tart was a beaut and tasted great, though I found the pastry too greasy and prefer the sweet crust used in the fruit flan. But the freshly cooked pastry cream insanely good: warm, rich and thick, every creamy spoonful yields into an orgasmic explosion in your mouth.

Bases & Rounds for Saint Honore

For the St Honore base both puff and choux pastry is used, so I'm keen to see how it will turn out. We also piped some macaroon-sized choux puffs (have I puffed you confused now?) which will be dipped in golden caramel and be the crowning glory of the gateau.

Baked Bases & Puffs

Reminds me of the toad-in-a-hole I had at a hole-in-a-wall pub in London once. Toss in some eggs and sausages and I'll have me a fine supper.

Full Puff, Full Glory

The lamination had me properly chaffed, but that's not all. Get a load of my towering Concorde, for which I claim full honor.

My Super Awesome-o Concorde

Fruity Tart Twins

Just like the Olsen twins, without the billions.

Pate Feuilletee, Creme Patissiere, Meringue Au Chocolate, Spinach Feta & Pinenut Triangle

Chef Karen Piping Chocolate Meringue

Today was all about mise en place for a busy week ahead. We'll be making fruit tarts and a French chocolate cake (Concord) tomorrow, dark chocolate tarts and a strawberry-and-cream cake (Saint Honore) on Saturday. Hence the prep work to lessen the load in the days to come.

Telly ho! No time to spare!

 Baked Meringue, Interior

For the Concord, we whipped up French meringue and folded in heaps of dutch cocoa powder (as far as chocolate goes, my heap is always bigger than most!). The meringue is then piped into discs and logs and baked at a low-low temperature (100'C - 120'C) for almost an hour. 

The result is a crisp shell with a chewy marshmallow center, good enough to eat on its own. We had to be held back from polishing them off and leaving none for tomorrow's cake.

Folding Full Puff

Just as we did in Basic Patisserie, we made puff pastry from scratch, this time a full puff, English style, which simply means more butter, more yum. 

This along with the creme patissiere will be used to make the fruit tarts and Saint Honore.

Chef's Little Helpers

The good people of LCB probably didn't want us starving by the end of class (mise en place also means: for your eyes only, not your tummy), hence a savory spinach and feta triangle was included in today's demo for us to try our hand at making. 

Known as Greek Spanakopita, the spinach filling is wrapped in filo pastry, a delicate paper-thin sheet  of  raw, unleavened flour dough, commonly used in Middle Eastern and Greek cuisine. Think baklava and borek, the cheese parcels you get at your local kebab stand.

We used store bought filo today, as making it from scratch requires an extensive amount of skill and time (oh, about 20 years' worth), and the result probably won't be as good anyway.

Golden Triangles

Sweated onions, blanched spinach, toasted pine nuts, crumbled feta, all tossed together with some oregano and seasoning, wrapped in 4 layers of filo (generously lubed with olive oil and butter in-between) and baked for 10 minutes till golden brown and delicious. Easy as pie.

Bumble Bees

Erica made the darnest thing today: she piped towers of meringue to resembled what I initially thought was poop (I was bemused and confused all at once), then she stuck some tiny chocolate bees on and it all became clear. Poop at its prettiest.