I still don’t have a cake to show you, but I believe tomorrow we’ll be finished with one. We’re making special French mousse cakes called entremets, and they’re layered with dacquoise, mousse, whipped cream, and sometimes fruit or something crunchy. We made a coconut dacquoise today from shredded coconut, pastry flour, almond flour, egg whites and sugar. I’m excited to try this one – I love coconut.
This is two layers of coconut dacquoise. Sandwiched in between is a layer of apricot-passion fruit gelee, made from apricot and passion fruit puree, gelatin and sugar.
We also candied some pineapple. It was pretty simple: just simmer chopped pineapple in simple syrup.
We also made some mirror glaze that we’ll be using to glaze our cakes with. It’s a mixture of clear glaze, simple syrup, glucose and dye.
We had some extra time today, so chef showed us how to make macaron. I took very detailed notes. He’s French, so he knows his macaron.
Tomorrow I think he’ll fill them with homemade Nutella… and hopefully we get to taste them.
Looking forward to seeing the cakes! Macarons are my fav. TJs has pumpkin ones right now that are awesome (if you can forgive them for being frozen at one point).
ReplyDeleteWow! I'll have to look for those! What other goodies do they have in there right now?
DeleteMacarons are really hard to make well. After years of mediocre attempts I found a book that explained it all, Les Petits Macarons by Kathryn Gordon and Anne McBride. They age the egg whites, add dried egg white powder along with the liquid ones, and dry out their almond flour. The photos really helped me see what the batter is supposed to look like. Works every time!
ReplyDeleteTom, you are so smart and amazing! That's exactly what our chef told us. Same advice!
DeleteI've never even eaten a macaron before, let alone made them!
ReplyDeleteOhhh Jolene, you must try them! Maybe I could ship you a box when I make them?
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