Cake Finishing (How to Eat a Whole Lotta Cake)

What I thought would be a rote, mechanical day turned out to be a lot of fun -- the right balance of arts & crafts and practicing technique. Chef G reviewed a few basic terms in a short lecture (a thin layer of filling is a 'stripe', frosting is officially 'icing') and then we chose which cakes we were to spend the day making.

I chose Milk Chocolate. This cake involves milk chocolate ganache for icing, milk chocolate whipped cream for filling, and chocolate shavings for the sides. First step was to make the milk chocolate ganache, which is a rich ganache (ordinary ganache is 1 to 1 ratio of chocolate to cream, which is a bit loose. Rich ganache is 1.5 to 1 ratio of chocolate to cream, which when set is a bit firmer) made by simmering one pint of cream with lemon zest, then steeping for a while. Trash the zest, add 2oz butter, bring to a boil, pour oer 20 oz of milk chocolate and 4 oz of bittersweet. Let the hot, lemony cream soften the chocolate, then whisk to smooth. Let cool to room temp, to spreadable consistency.

While that was going on, the whipped cream was prepared. Yesterday, a pint of heavy cream had been boiled with 2oz sugar, then poured over 8oz of chopped milk chocolate, whisked to smooth, then a pint of cold cream was added. It was refrigerated overnight; today, I just plopped it in the stand mixer with a whisk attachment to get it to, well, whipped-cream consistency.

The cake itself had to be evened out -- with a long serrated bread knife, the blade is lightly sawed across the top to make the slightly rounded top completely flat, and to make the two layers the same thickness. (This resulted in lots of perfectly edible cake scrap, which eaten throughout class, ended up being rather filling.) With a small, off-set spatula, a layer of milk chocolate whipped cream was spread on top of one round, then the second round was placed on top. Again with the bread knife, the sides were trimmed to make them match perfectly.

By now the ganache has set pretty thick, helped along with whisking it on top of an ice bath. First ganache is spread on top to the edge, the the cake is lifted with the left hand and large plops of ganache is spackled on the sides, using a bit extra so that when it is smoothed, there is a bit of a lip on top going higher than the top. Once smoothed, it's put down and with an offset spatula the lip is pushed to the center to create a smooth, seamless edge. Writing this, it sounds easy, but it was surprisingly tricky to make it look good.

Chocolate shavings were lightly pushed into the sides with my palm, done over a piece of parchment paper to collect the and reuse all the chocolate that did not adhere. Once covered, a piping bag was filled with chocolate whipped cream and a line of 'shells' were drawn in a circle around the edge of the cake. With another bag filled with extra ganache, another circle of starts were piped on. It was tempting to go further and make a busier cake, but sometimes you just gotta know when to say when.

After just so much sugar and chocolate, I got so giddy at my creation I just had to take a video. Once I realized that the cake wasn't actually going to do anything interesting other than sit there and look chocolatey, I quickly stopped it:

Tomorrow, we continue on our sweet kick with custards -- crème brulée, bread pudding and the first step to making ice cream.

ADDENDA:

As I was in yoga, I started feeling a bit weak and shaky and unfocused -- it occured to me that not only had I mostly eaten cake and chocolate all day, but drank no water either. I quickly went to the rest room, slurped from the faucet, then felt a whole lot better. Even got into shoulder stand again, albeit briefly.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM TASTINGS: 9am-11:30am, chocolate pistoles, chocolate whipped cream, chocolate ganache, lemony white cake, bites of 5 or so different flavored cakes, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

Squarehead made caramel chocolate cake, involving butter ganache and caramel whipped cream on the rich chocolate cake we made yesterday, easily the most decadent, tasty, over-the-top cake of the day.

LUNCH: 3:45pm, Japanese pork fried rice, pork gyoza, a little soup, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 8pm, large green salad with oil & vinegar, 3 small school-made croissants, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

Introduction to Cake (Let them Eat Cake...Tomorrow)

Class began with collecting the mise for lemon white cake, then a bit of lecture about the theory of cake. There are 9 mixing methods, three of which we explored. One creams the butter into the sugar, one creates a meringue by foaming whites and yolks separately with sugar, and the third is the Betty Crocker 'dump method' of combining the dry and the wet. Each method will result in a different kind of cake in crumb and texture.

Norbert and I mixed and baked the white cake (white, because it uses only egg whites -- if we used the whole egg, it would of been yellow cake) using the creaming method. Leavened by baking powdered, flavored with grated zest of lemon and a little lemon extract (cheap lemon vodka, really), and certain ratios of the usual suspects: cake flour, butter, salt, egg whites, whole milk. Into some round cake pans and into the oven. Slightly golden and cooked through, onto a speed rack.

The second cake we mised and made was a Pan di Spagna, a European style cake that has no leavener; it is made cakey strictly by the air whipped into the merange. Egg yolks, vanilla and sugar are whipped to soft peaks in one bowl, egg whites and sugar are heated over a hot water bath then whipped to peaks, then cold butter is put in and whipped to smooth. The two foams are folded to mix, but without beating out the air. Flour and cornstarch (both double sifted) are folded in until it's gone, then into pans to bake. No fat is used on the sides of the pan because this style of cake needs some grip when it rises and falls.

Different people were assigned different bits to help with tomorrow's class, cake decorating. I made a milk chocolate cream. A quart of heavy cream and 4 oz of sugar are brought to a boil, then poured over a pound of chopped up milk chocolate. After a couple of minutes, blended to smooth with a balloon whip in the mixer. Another quart of cold heavy cream is added and blended, then into the fridge -- tomorrow, it will be whipped.

ADDENDA:
The scale said 226 this morning, another pound upwards. Drinking a lot of water in bed last night, had a lot of dry mouth. This morning my muscles felt pretty good, no back ache, felt strong, but my stomach was in a knot and while riding to school felt a little nauseous.

I like Chef G, she's a little punchy and scrappy, but when we bake sweets, I feel very uninspired.

AM SNACKING: 9-11am, a couple of pieces of french bread, a couple handfuls of chocolate, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5
Felt queasy when waking, skipped breakfast.

LUNCH: 1:30pm, stirfried shrimp and broccoli with brown rice noodle, 1 quart water, hunger 4/5
Feel like I may be getting a little better at assembling a proper stir fry -- using fish stock (Saturday's had to be vegan) made a big difference.

PM DRUGGING: 2:30pm, 2 tylenol
Got sharp shooting migraine pains in the back of my head, almost blinding. Took these then another quart of water, went away literally a minute after the water.

DINNER: 5:30pm, masala dosai, pakora, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Kosher vegan Indian food, yum. Tastes remind me of my year in England.

EVENING SNORT: 7-9pm, about 1 glass of wine, assorted cheese n' crackers, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5
Wine class, all about Italy. Except for Barolo, they all kinda tasted samey.

Weekend Report (Physical Pheats of Phearless Phrenzy)

On Saturday I did my first unassisted shoulder stand in yoga, on Sunday I road in the North Fork Century, doing my highest average speed over such a long distance. And I wolfed down 2 burgers, a hot dog, an ear of corn and THREE slices of pie in the space of an hour or so.

SATURDAY
BREAKFAST: 5:30am, 2 pancakes, 1 school-made madeline, bacon, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 10am, 1 tiny chocolate vegan sniggidy snack

LUNCH: 12:15pm, vegan stirfry with brown sticky rice, a few bits of maple candy,3 thimbles of sake, seltzer, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Got a bunch of good looking veg from the farmer's market with D and HVS, came out good, but not great. Needed ginger and stock, less mirin, cooked the mushrooms a little longer, the peppers a little less.

PM SNACK: 3pm, handful of school-made cookies, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5 I gotta get rid of these things. Anyone want cookies?

DINNER: 5pm, wholewheat pasta with garlic & olive oil, fresh tomato, grated parm, a pat of butter, salt and pepper, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Eating some extra carbs in anticipation of tomorrow's ride. Didn't sweat the garlic enough.

EVENING SNACK: 6:30pm, a handful of school cookies, 2 school-made chocolate truffles, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
If you think I'M bad, my wife just ate an entire pint of chocolate truffles!

SUNDAY
BREAKFAST: 3:30am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla, raw nuts, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 4:45am, 2 dunkin' donuts donuts, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 8:15am, 1 small piece of pound cake, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 9:45am, PB&J on graham crackers, small piece of crumb cake, 8 oz of gatorade, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 11:30am, small piece of focaccia, 1 piece wholewheat bread with nutella, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 1:30pm, 3 pieces of apple crumble pie, small handful of individually wrapped chocolates, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 2:30pm, 1 hamburger, 1 cheeseburger, 1 hotdog, 1 ear of corn, 1/2 a can of sprite, can of diet coke, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
The water fountain wasn't very cold, and the sodas were on ice.

DINNER: 8:15pm, shrimp in garlic sauce with black beans and yellow rice, water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5

Introduction to Chocolate (Temper, Temper)

They say chocolate is addictive, I say it simply tempts the glutton in a person. The class started with a silly 5-question quiz (which I scrambled to study for 5 minutes before, as I was absent yesterday), then a lecture about chocolate. The cacao tree, cocoa beans and nibs, which produce cocoa solids (like cocoa powder) and cocoa butter. Chocolate as we know it is mixed with sugar to make anywhere from semisweet (61% cocoa solids and butter) to unsweetened (99%) Mix in milk powder and you got milk chocolate. Being that chocolate has so much fat in it, if you were to add liquid milk, it would never solidify. We tasted everything form baking chocolate to white chocolate, which isn't actually chocolate, but cocoa butter mixed with sugar. It doesn't taste so much like chocolate as it does like fat.

The main activity of the day was making chocolate truffles, so named because they kind of look like the rare fungi of the same name. First step is to make the ganache. Simmer 1 part heavy cream with a shot of light corn syrup. (Weird to cook with this ingredient that I find synonymous with crappy industrial food, but it works to prevent sugar in the chocolate from crystallizing.) Add 2 parts chocolate and melt. Once melted, throw in some solid butter and stir. Keep stirring, occasionally putting over ice till it gets thick but not lumpy.

Put into a plastic pastry bag with a metal tip, squeeze out onto a sheetpan in the shape of small balls. This was a little bit tricky, piping out with the right twist of the wrist to get an orb-shape that doesn't have too much of a nipple.

Those were put on the speed-rack to get solid, and then we prepared chocolate to cover the ganache. To melt chocolate that will resolidify when brought to room temperature, it must be tempered. Over a hot water bath, chocolate is melted and monitored with a chocolate thermometer (a thermometer with every number on it for finer measurement) till it hits 115. It is then poured on a cold marble slab and moved around with bench-scrapers till it measures 85 degrees. Once cooled, it is placed back un the metal bowl and placed over the hot water till it reaches 91. It is now ready to be used to cover the ganaches. As it cools, the chocolate becomes as solid as it was before melting. Chef G said that this is usually done by a machine, rarely by hand -- many variables, room temp, humidity, air movement, can all randomly affect tempering.

We dipped the truffles in assorted nuts and cocoa powder, and I ended up eating enough to get buzzy and nauseous, to the point where I forgot to take pictures of the final product. It didn't help that the ones that Norbert and I made were extremely lumpy and misshapen, due to our chocolate-induced ADD.

ADDENDA:
All the sugar in the morning made me feel weird, woozy in the stomach. No meat or heavy proteins appealed to me in this state.

BREAKFAST: 5:30am, smoothie, hunger 4/5

AM TASTINGS: 8-12noon, chocolate pieces, chocolate ganache, melted chocolate, madelines, biscotti, chocolate covered madelines, chocolate covered biscotti, 1 bowl of chocolate, hunger 4/5 to 2/5

LUNCH: 2:15pm, braised wheatgluten sandwich, spinach dumplings, stick rice, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 3/5

DINNER: 8:30pm, falafel platter with hummus, baba, couscous, seltzer, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5
Still feeling woozy from this morning's sugar bomb.

Sick (Rufus, Get off My Head)

Well, not actually sick, but took action to avoid getting sick. After getting severely delayed by poor New Jersey mass transportation, got home around midnight, needed a few minutes to unwind. When I woke to the alarm at 6am after less than 5 hours of sleep, I made a quick fuzzy judgment that went something like this:

Not enough sleep....gotta freelance gig this afternoon...need to be healthy for century bike ride on Sunday....doing sweets in class today....petit fours, who needs 'em....Dora the Explorer is so annoying....B feels so snuggly....not enough sleep....I'll still have one more absence and still be able to graduate with honors....Rufus, get off my head....

Tomorrow, a day of chocolate. Let's hope I don't end up like this by the end of the day:



BREAKFAST: 11:30am, 2 school made chocolate croissants, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 2:30pm, 2 samosas, tomato salad, ginger tofu, sesame noodles, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Snicklesnacks with the HVS.

PM SNACK: 5:45pm, half a white chocolate bar, sesame pretzels, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 6:30pm, school made pretzel with peanut butter, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 8pm, pork loin chop with pan sauce, 2 ears boiled corn, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Added no salt to the pan sauce, still too salty due to the excess seasoning on the chop. Good 2 inches thick, cooked it long and low, came out a bit medium well, but rested so still juicy. Used sake in the pan sauce, really good. Corn was really sweet, perfect summer food.

Pizza and Focaccia (-sigh-)

I've been looking forward to 'pizza day' at culinary school for a while, but in the end it wasn't nearly exciting as I thought it would be -- as with anything worthwhile, appreciation has to be acquired with experience. The 'sushi day' at school was ridiculous for the same reason: people have to study and train in the world of sushi for 10-20 years before becoming a full fledged sushi chef, and one day of "creatively" assembling fish on rice doesn't really do it justice. Likewise, one day of "creatively" assembling a line of standardized toppings on dough left me feeling somewhat bereft.

That's not to say I didn't learn anything -- Chef G is clearly not only a master baker, but passionate about pizza and knows more about it than any snooty blogger-culinary student. The dough we made yesterday sat in the refrigerator overnight. The dough was scaled out into 8 ounce balls. The dough had to be rounded by hand on the metal tables. I tried several times and the seams kept on popping up, while Chef G's came out in perfect orbs. She showed me the specific motions, and how important it was not to have the dough too dry -- it needs to catch on the surface a little to round it without kneading it. I never bothered rounding my dough too much at home because in the end, it's going to be shaped into a disk, but this is the professional, traditional way to do it, and is one of many small details that'll help deliver an even, uniform product.

At first, the dough was left to rise at room temperature on the speedracks. Chef G had instructed us to place all the dough into the proofing box, which has a slightly elevated temperature and higher moister. She could judge the speed and volume of the yeast's activity just by looking at the dough, and by placing it in the proofer made it speed up a little. Again, one only learns that kind of judgement from experience.

When the dough was properly risen, Chef G did a demo on how to roll and assemble the pizza. She used cornmeal to keep the dough from sticking to the table, something I'd avoided because I don't like the gritty feeling in my mouth. She said she doesn't like to use flour because it's too easy to use too much, and can potentially dry out the dough (which would alter the whole texture profile in the final product). She artfully spread the cornmeal to minimize its presence -- the exact opposite of, say, Two Boots style, a NYC pizzeria which uses a thick layer of cornmeal on the bottom of the crust as a calling-card (yuck!)...

After pushing the ball of dough down into a disk, she stretched the dough by hand, not bothering with a rolling pin at all. By holding the edge of the disk and gently tugging it while turning it in a circle, the familiar pie shape emerged. She laid the disc on a gently-corn-floured pizza peal (a large wooden paddle with a long handle) and pushed the dough out a bit further to give a slightly raised handle to the crust. The dough was put at the edge of the peel; in this way, when it came time to place it on a heated stone in the oven, it wouldn't have too far to go to be slid off.

Then she topped it. First thing she did was brush a layer of olive oil on the dough. She said this would create a hydrophobic barrier between the toppings and the dough -- any water released from the toppings would be prevented from soaking the dough, creating that most horrible of things, the flibbidy-flobbidy slice. It also encourages browning, which in our vastly inappropriate ovens, would not get anywhere near the 900+ degrees needed to make a properly blistered and charred pie.

She topped hers with some delicate combination of goat cheese and onion, and when it came out after a good 12 minutes, added prosciutto, arugula, and extra virgin olive oil. She said all toppings on a pie go on before baking, EXCEPT for greens (including basil) and delicate cured meats, all of which should be placed on a pie as soon as it comes out of the oven. Thus, the radiant heat of the pie will gently wilt these ingredients, while the full blast of a pizza oven will carbonize them.

Then everyone went and did their pies. I did three: a simple margherita (chopped whole canned San Marzano tomatoes, moz, and finished with torn basil, olive oil, and salt); mushroom (cooked sauce, moz, and sautéed mushrooms); and roasted pepper (cooked sauce with radially-laid out roasted peppers covered generously with parmesan, finished with arugula and oil). The flavor of the crust was pretty good, and indeed treating it with oil helped firm it. But the quality of the ingredients (particularly the flavorless, oily moz) plus the low temp of the ovens prevented any hope of pizza nirvana.

Dirty Kim did bust out a fabulous Mornay-sauced pie, and Natasha mistook some herbs with mint, creating a very odd flavor profile. Dora the Explorer clumsily threw her pie into the oven above mine, and a good portion of her toppings fell onto my margherita. Pizzacrime!

I also brought in my own dough. But, after sitting on the proofing rack for 3 hours, it become a loose, shapeless, liquidy mess. I look forward to experimenting with the ratios of the school dough and the double-0 flour crossed with the recipes I've been using.

Oh yeah, we did breadsticks and focaccia, too. Sicilian pizza is just focaccia treated like pizza, an American invention. Whatevah!

ADDENDA:
Went out to deep NJ to visit a friend and her kid. Unfortunately, there was some problems with the buses and had to wangle a train, putting me home close to midnight.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, god granola with good milk, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM TASTINGS: 11-11:30am, various small tastes of pizzas, a bite of breadstick, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 4pm, 1 piece of school made focaccia, 1 breadstick, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 5:30pm, roast beef sandwich, Thai chocolate gelato, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 11:45pm, big spoonful of peanut butter, water, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

Bread and Breadsticks (Makin' Pizza Dough)

Bread, staff of life, mortal enemy of carbophobes, kind of boring out of a bag but transcendental when hot out of an oven. Today we made two doughs that had to slow rise in the fridge overnight (bread stick dough and pizza dough) and two that required a rise a and a proof before hitting up the ovens by the end of class (semolina bread and soft rolls)

I paid close attention while Chef G reviewed the recipes, particularly the pizza dough. The book called for bread flour, but Chef called up for Italian 00 flour, the most authentic and high quality flour to make pizza with. Unfortunately, despite listening, I misheard 3 lbs of flour to 3lbs plus 4 to 8 ounces as 3lbs to 4lbs and 8oz. In the dough recipe I use, after you got the yeast, water, oil, salt mixed and adding the flour, you get it so the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. As I'm adding my flour, Chef stops me and says it's too dry and not tacky enough, even though it's wetter than how I get it at home. She says it should be ok, I'll have a little bit more dough than the others. She measured what flour I had left, and I went over by about 6 oz. Into a greased bag and into the fridge for tomorrow.

I also made the semolina dough, which again is not hell of a lot different, just a different set of ratios, mixing AP flour with semolina. Into a greased bowl, into the proofing box, which is heated to the 80s with steam heat.

When taken out of the proofing box, it's rolled into a few strands, breaded, then put into the box to proof a final time. Dirty Kim and Long Island Lolita made a couple of batches of 'soft roll' dough, basically a mild white bread. Most of it is rolled into small balls, some brushed with poppy or sesame, some of it is rolled out and cut into squares and folded around sauteed onions.

Out of the oven, everything tasted pretty good, though the white bread stuff was kinda dull. Tomorrow, pizza and focaccia. Today I took home a quart of 00 flour for some home work, and tomorrow, I'll be bringing in some of my own dough and sauce from the freezer to cook up for Chef, to get her professional opinion. I hope she's brutal!

ADDENDA:
Scale told me 225 this morning. I told it to shut uuuuup.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5
So fresh n' delicious.

AM TASTINGS: 10-11am, french bread with a little chocolate, couple of onion pockets,couple of small rolls, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH 1: 12:15am, pasta with pistachio/lemon cream sauce, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Not tempted to eat the bread at the restaurant at all.

LUNCH 2: 4pm, seitan, hijiki, quinoa, tahini dressing, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Post yoga snicklesnack.

PM SNACK: 6:45pm, watermelon, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Pre-swim snacklesnick.

DINNER: 8pm, large green salad with Italian dressing, 3 sausage brioche roll thingies, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 8:30pm, 3 chocolate croissants, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5 Still hungry after dinner. Just too healthy all day!!