A recap is in order! I must start with mentioning my experiences with meringues that began last Thursday. I think I must have gone through something like 200 eggs in the last three days alone! It is amazing how many eggs we go through in this class. So there were a few different species of meringue that we fixed up. The French version, which is the most common style of meringue in circulation, is a very simple recipe. Egg whites are whipped with sugar and a small amount of acid. Swiss meringue is essentially the same thing but cooked over hot water. The Italian style calls for whipping the egg whites in the mixer and adding sugar syrup that’s been cooked. The syrup actually cooks the eggs, adding a very particular sensibility to the texture. All the meringues were a lot of fun to make, except for this one Australian meringue dessert called pavlova. I had to make it three times before getting it right. Initially it was quite a challenge to get the egg whites to successfully froth up. The last stage of the meringue odyssey found us making some little meringue ‘kisses’ rooted in the Italian style…
This was a lot of fun to make and was the first time I got to use the piping bag to squeeze out the little ‘kiss’ shapes. The challenge was to keep the kisses the same size and shape while churning out a large quantity. I think I made close to 150 of them! They cook at a very low temperature for about 2.5 hours. You could hardly call it baking, as it really is just a process of drying. I suppose you could just leave them out for a while and they would dry on their own. Anyhow, the results were nothing short of delicious. And the leftover egg yokes went into an absolutely amazing bittersweet chocolate mousse, one of my favorite things on planet Earth. The next couple days were spent preparing for some other sweet delights…
We started mixing the ingredients together for a New York style cheesecake. As you can imagine, the recipe calls for an abundant amount of cream cheese. We also made chocolate and a caramel sauces to serve with it. Forging ahead on our cake-making path, we composed a simple butter cake. This is essentially a mix of flour, butter, sugar and eggs. It is a real common cake that you’d often see as the foundation for wedding cakes. Then we made an almond financier, which is a cake that is made from almond meal and doesn’t rise very much. It is very dense and sweet, and often served as a tea-time snack in England…
Today we unraveled the stored cheesecake portions from last week. Most students made larger cheesecakes that were in 8 or 12-inch pans, but I decided to make mine as individual dishes, in small 4 inch containers. This proved to be quite nice. Today was an especially great day also because we got make an amazing flourless chocolate cake! The cake has a lot of chocolate, butter, sugar, and no wheat whatsoever. It was really interesting to see what makes the cake fluff. The eggs get whipped up and folded into the chocolate to create that softness. In addition to all this baking we were given an extra recipe, poached pears in red wine and spices…
The sweetness level of this dessert was uncharted and I could hardly even partake in a taste! It is basically a pear that gets poached in a mixture of simple syrup, red wine, cinnamon and other spices. It’s a pretty common dessert that is often considered a main component dessert, plated as it’s own dish or used as a garnish and served with cheese. The very last thing we made were strawberry shortcakes, which were really fun to make. It is a very pretty looking dessert. And that’s about it for this epic baking sequence! Thanks for joining along!
yami says yummy!!!!!
Posted by: yamini | May 10, 2007 at 01:36 AM