The Pastry Diaries: Week 7: Entremets

What a great week! Have I mentioned I love cakes? LOVE them. Seriously, best thing ever. I was really happy to be grouped with my friend Lindsay this week. We have a very similar work style/ethic and everything was just effortless and low stress. This didn't mean we were done faster than everyone else by any means, in fact sometimes we were behind due to our combined desire for making things perfect, but it was still just a really good flow.

I definitely learned a lot this week, and not just when to say good enough is good enough (which is HUGE for me and I'm still working on it). Entremets involve pretty simple elements (mousses, sponges), but building them is the complex part. There are so many different ways to do this and to decorate them, which I loved learning about.


DAY #30
The day started with eager anticipation of the entremet we left sitting in the fridge over the weekend.

Anticipation of decorating and finally trying some of it!

First step was to add a mango glaze to the top. We then added some mango slices, chocolate curls, and dots of raspberry glaze.

We actually should have de-molded it right after the glaze, but we missed the memo. Here it is in all its glory!

And the inside...

There should have been an equal amount of raspberry and mango mousse, but as you can see it's a bit mango-heavy. First entremet and all, live and learn. It IS delicious, but I wish you could taste more of the raspberry.

You can also (finally) see the decorative Jaconde outer layer I was talking about last week and didn't get a picture of. It's the part on the outside of the cake with the vertical stripes.

The rest of the morning we spent working on our next entremet -- Strawberry Vanilla. I was much better at taking pictures today, although I did miss capturing one of the steps (sigh). Here's the play-by-play:

Step 1 is adding a layer of sponge to the bottom. It needs to be smaller than the ring itself.

We didn't use an outer layer of sponge this time. Instead, we lined the outside with strawberries.

Next step was making the strawberry mousse, and piping a bit between the berries to make sure there wouldn't be any gaps.

After that, we added in a layer of strawberry mousse to cover the sponge (that's the one I didn't get a pic of).

And then we added a layer of Japonaise sponge on top. It's a crunchy layer, like a meringue.

We then topped it with Vanilla mousse...

... and a final layer of sponge.

This one will get finished tomorrow with some piped Italian meringue on top, which we'll get to torch. Exciting!!

We did all that before lunch! I really love how quickly these come together. The entremets look really complicated and elaborate, but they aren't actually that hard to make.

The afternoon was spent learning about different types of gelling agents, and then we made some more sponges for entremets later in the week

Oh, and we made a cocoa almond success sponge that I forgot to take a pic of, which will also be used in a later entremet.

Started and finished:
Strawberry Bavaroise
Vanilla Bavaroise
Cocoa Almond Success Sponge
Pate Sucree

Started:
Strawberry Vanilla Entremet

Finished:
Mango Raspberry Entremet


DAY #31
Mostly pictures from this point as 1) I have a lot of them and 2) it's now Sunday and I still have a crap ton of school work to do! I'm also just going to show each entremet from start to finish in one day, even though they were all split between two. I can't remember exactly what was done when, and I feel the pics will flow better from start to finish.

Today we finished off the Strawberry Vanilla entremet with some toasted Italian Meringue.

Pretty even layers!

Then we started the Raspberry Fromage entremet, which has a raspberry sponge layer and a cream cheese layer. This one had a crisp tart crust on the bottom.

Covered with raspberry jam,

a raspberry soaked sponge layer,

topped with raspberries,

and a layer of cream cheese mousse,

then depanned the following day (after chilling),

covered in a layer of whipped cream (blurry pic, sorry!),

lined with soft sponge lady fingers (pate a bisquit - I think),

and finally decorated.

It tasted as good as you imagine!

The highlight of the day was the Triple Chocolate Mousse cake, which starts with a crispy chocolate & hazelnut layer on the bottom that tastes just like a Fererro Rocher.

Then we start layering the mousses.... dark chocolate first,

then the cocoa almond success sponge from yesterday,

milk chocolate mousse,

and finally white chocolate mousse.

I should note that we allow these to set in the fridge for a bit before adding each new layer. Once all the mousses were in, we popped this guy into the freezer overnight and de-panned it the next morning so that we could spray paint it with more chocolate. Ridiculous, right???

Frozen block of mousse depanned.

Lindsay spray painting her cake! You can literally use a paint sprayer from the hardware store for this (which is what we did), provided you haven't already used it to actually paint your walls. :)

Perfection.

And of course, you need to top it off with some fancy decorations! Chocolate mousse quenelles, chocolate curls, and chocolate cigarettes. Don't mind the bit of frost on the cake still, I was too eager to take pics and didn't wait for it to go away (it did).

Not the prettiest slice, but I wanted to show the inside.

This cake was amazing! I really wish I could have taken the entire thing home!

Started and finished:
Italian Meringue
Pate a Bisquit
Cream Cheese Mousse
Feuilletine Crisp Layer
Dark Chocolate Mousse
Milk Chocolate Mousse
White Chocolate Mousse

Started:
Raspberry Fromage Entremet
Triple Chocolate Entremet

Finished:
Strawberry Vanilla Entremet


DAY #32
We had our second quiz this morning, and of course traffic was a nightmare getting in. Every other day it's fine, but the one day I actually need to be on time, it's a nightmare. I still got there with plenty of time to spare, but still, it added a layer of stress that I didn't need.

Quiz went well, though I made some stupid mistakes and changed some answers that were initially correct. I should always stick with my initial answer. I'm WAY too hard on myself with this, and I need to chill out. I got 95% on the quiz and was disappointed that it was a lower mark than last time. Seriously. I have issues.

We made some hazelnut sponge today for a cake tomorrow, and made a Rouladen and Charlotte.

The rouladen is a soft, flexible sponge that you can roll up.

We spread a thin layer of raspberry jam on the rouladen and then rolled it tightly.

Next step was to build the Charlotte from it so we cut it into slices,

and lined a bowl with them.

Next step was filling it with raspberry mousse (which I didn't get a picture of), then a layer of sponge, and a layer of triple chocolate mousse. We basically used the leftover mousses we had from our other cakes for this.

We let it set overnight, de-bowled it, and topped it with some hot apricot glaze.

I actually haven't tried this one yet! It's in the freezer with a few (okay, a lot of) other cake slices...

We had some leftover rouladen, so we decorated that as well with whipping cream, sliced almonds and some toasted coconut.

Many of you have asked what happens with all the cakes we make. Most of it gets donated to the food bank. We get to take up to 1/4 home and the rest gets put into bins for pickup from Food Runners.

Not gonna lie...not a lot of the chocolate mousse cake got donated!

Started and finished:
Hazelnut Sponge

Started:
Rouladen
Charlotte

Finished:
Raspberry Fromage Entremet
Triple Chocolate Entremet

DAY #33
We made marshmallow fondant today. I had heard of it before, but never made it myself. For the cakes I'd made in the past I would always just buy fondant from the store. It seemed like an easier option!

To make the fondant is actually pretty straightforward. First you melt some marshmallows with a bit of water...

...let them cool for a bit, and then knead in a ton of icing sugar.

This was actually an incredibly painful process. The marshmallow was ridiculously stiff, and we actually couldn't get it to come together at all! Chef Warren had to go around and help some of the groups and literally use all his body weight to knead it. It's possible we let the marshmallow cool too much, or that some of the marshmallows were dried out when we melted them. So far I'm not convinced to make my own.

The highlight of today was the Florentine Torte. As you know, I love icing and decorating cakes, so I was totally in my element.

We started with cutting the hazelnut sponge from yesterday into 3 sections.

Filling it with praline buttercream and giving it a crumb coat.

After setting in the fridge for a bit, we gave it a final coat of icing.

Ran a comb through the sides.

Added some crumbled up nougatine to the sides using leftovers from the decorations we made for the top of the cake (scroll on to see).

Finally, piped some rosettes and added the nougatine slices.

I love the way this looks! The cake was amazing too, love the praline buttercream.

Finally, we made some meringue sticks to decorate an entremet next week. I forgot to get an "after" picture.

Started and finished:
Florentine Torte

Italian Buttercream
French Meringue

Started:
Rolled Fondant


DAY #34
The focus for today was to work in our teams and each try out one of the mousses we want to make for our big solo entremet project next week. I'm grateful for this practice day, as the coffee mousse I made was a flop, so I'm going with a back-up. I did't take any pics of the process today, as it was a bit of a mish mash of leftover sponges, mousses, etc. We left these to set in the fridge over the weekend, so we haven't had a chance to taste them yet.

The afternoon was spent decorating a cake with fondant and practicing piping. First, we had to get that block of fondant to a workable consistency. That involved kneading in a LOT of shortening and some water. It took some time, but it turned out perfectly soft and workable! I am kicking myself because I forgot to actually TASTE some of the fondant!!!

First step was to ice some leftover sponge with some leftover praline buttercream.

I could do this forever.

Then we rolled out the fondant and covered the cake. I've done this a lot in the past, but it's been about 4 years or so since I covered a cake in fondant. I'm happy to report that it went well!

I could have done a better job with smoothing the top, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

Next, we made some royal icing to practice piping.

Piping is hard! It really takes a lot of practice. This is the best section of the cake I did, and you can see that some of the string work on the right isn't straight. I love this kind of detailed work though, and will need to practice it a lot to get it perfect!

By the way, have you seen this girl's piping skills? Ridiculous.

Started and finished:
Fondant Cake

Started:
Build Your Own Entremet - Teams of 2

Finished:
Rouladen
Charlotte

~~~~~

That's a wrap for week 7! This week the pressure will be on. We have to build our own entremet and prepare a report with all of the recipes, ingredients, equipment, detailed steps, etc., as well as costing for each component and for the whole cake. I've spent the past week/weekend planning/doing this and even though I am excited about what I have so far, it's still stressful. We have all of Monday to practice and basically build our whole cake from start to finish, which I am grateful for, but also nervous about. It's just a test cake, but good to have a run through to work out any kinks.

We have to hand in the report on Wednesday morning and then spend the rest of the day building the actual final version of our entremet. We finish up decorating it on Thursday morning, and then it will be graded and taste-tested. The following week is two days of midterms -- theory and practical. I feel like I'm not going to be getting a lot of sleep for the next week and a half!