The Art of Entremet

Hello All! Last week I did not get a chance to blog, so tonight is overload!

We are on week two of cakes/entremets.

First off, what is an entremet? or what does entremet mean?

Entremet translates to "between servings". Dishes that were intended to be eaten as well as entertain can be traced back at least to the early Roman Empire. In the 14th century entremets began to involve not just eye-catching displays of amusing haute cuisine, but also more prominent and often highly symbolic forms of inedible entertainment.

Today entremet, the term is used to name mousse cakes or cakes with lots of layers and components.

So far we have made 3 entremets. 

Coconut Passionfruit Cake
2  layers of coconut dacquoise ( a think layer of meringue and nut flour), passionfruit mousse, candied pineapple and coconut mousse

 EXPRESS YOURSELF- as Chef Dimitri says!

 So pretty!

Audrey loved this one:)


Next one:
Honey Nougat Mousse Cake
2 layers of pistachio dacquoise, apricot passionfruit gelee, honey nougat mousse and dried fruits and nuts.

 Chef spreading the dacqouise

 Heather with the baked dacqiouse :)

 Let the layering begin!

 Yummmy...like a traditional nougat or torrone, as we like to say in Italian

The last one was an award winning cake from 1997
Chocolate Hazelnut Mousse Cake

1 layer of hazelnut dacquoise, 1 layer of chocolate biscuit, chocolate and hazelnut mousse and caramelized hazelnuts.

 Hazelnut dacqouise with candied hazelnuts

 Baked chocolate biscuit

Filling the last layer.

Now for the decoration on the chocolate hazelnut cake- a chocolate mirror glaze coats the whole cake and we topped the cake with chocolate decorations made by chef Dimitri, which we will be learning in chocolate class very soon.

 Un-molding the cakes

 Glazing the cake with chocolate mirror glaze

 Chef Dimitri's cake

 My cake

 Crystal's cake

Alexa's cake

Come on back this week...we are making more puff pastry and started components for our Raspberry Silk Cake.
Lots more love to come...

-N

St.Honore, Mille Feuille et Chocolat Nougat Tart!

Today was a happy day...D
I think I made the ladies in my building very happy as well when I adorned them with all my goodies.

Lets get to it...
First things first, we had to get a nice glaze on our puff pastry with confectionary sugar for our Mille Feuille.

Then we assembled our Mille Feuille..
Mille Feuille translates to thousand layers or sheets...or also called napoleans. 
We cut them into different sizes and layered three layers of puff with pastry cream. Simple and tasty!

We made a chocolate pudding mixture for our chocolate nougat tart.
We filled the tarts, let them set in the oven for 5 minutes and then topped with pieces of chocolate almond nougat.

 So rich and velvety with a nutty sweet crunch!

On t the St. Honore, the God of pastry!
This cake is a true staple for the French and displays a Pastry Chefs true skills:
Puff pastry, pate a choux, pastry cream and cooked sugar!

Here we go....

 Filling our choux! We had big choux's to fill---Caracci! haha

 Dipped pate a choux in cooked sugar to add a crunchy texture

 Filling with creme legere- pastry cream and whip cream!

 Tac Tac!

 A mini:) I put the creme legere (pastry cream and whip cream) in the center and whip on the out

Life was good today!
Stay tuned to next week....entremets with Chef Dimitri!
So excited:)

-N

More Lemon...More Tart!

Today we made another lemon tart....
This time with a lemon curd which consists of less butter and more egg than yesterday's which makes for more of a "tart" taste.

We then made an Italian meringue and piped those teardrops once again in a circular pattern....and torched it...smelt like yummy toasty marshmallows. :)

 Piping teardrops with our Italian Merigue

 So pretty:)

 Abby piping her tart

 Toasty!

A little baby!....I loved it...but gave it away haha

We continued with our puff pastry again...
we rolled it out for its final roll, docked the dough and chilled it until ready to cut.
We then cut the puff into circles for our St.Honore cakes and pastries which then we piped pate a choux on top which is the way a traditional St. Honore cake is made. We also took the rest of our choux pastry and piped puffs which we will bake tomorrow and assemble around the cake. It is going to be delicious...and if it that is not good it is going to be filled with a pastry cream/whipping cream combo. yum!

I am so physced for tomorrow, please come back and check over the weekend to see how my St.Honore's turned out..:) And if that doesnt get you, then maybe the chocolate nougat tart will....or just maybe the mille feuille is more of your thing! Yup we are making that too!

Nighty night pastry Gods!

-N

We are Tart!

Here we go...the start of a new section....a short section, only 4 days.

So what have we accomplished so far?

1.Baked fruit tarts
2. Lemon Cream tart
3.The start of inverted puff pastry

We have a new chef as our instructor this week, Chef Della Gosset

Lets get started...

Baked fruit tarts....figs, sour cherries and apricots! yum
A pate foncer was the base for our tart. Of course a buttery tart with an extra fine texture.
We filled the tart with frangipane (pastry cream and almond cream) with a combo of fruits.
My large tart was a fig sour cherry combo and the minis had apricots and sour cherries.
They were also topped with crushed almonds and powdered sugar.

Haha my tarts in a Dunkin Donuts box- I forgot to bring my tupperware..I traded a mini tart for a box! Works for me:)


We also started making inverted puff pastry for our St. Honore which we will finish Friday.
Almost like the croissant dough, but rather then enrobing butter with dough, we enrobed dough in BUTTER! Crazy! 6 turns get made to our puff pastry dough....

Chef Della demonstrating the steps to making inverted puff...come back to see how that turns out later this week!

Lastly, our lemon cream tart.
A nice play on the classic lemon meringue...which is made with lemon curd *which we will be making tomorrow*
This one is made with a lemon cream rather then curd and topped with meringue delight with sucre gran as the garnish.

 Piping teardrops with our mernigue

 Meringues flavored with vanilla bean and topped with sucre gran

 Our almond sablee tart baked unfilled

 Our 8 inch lemon tart complete!

A mini version to the large tart:)


Check out tomorrow.. more lemons....more tart!
Bon Soir!

Croquembouche

The day has come where we accomplish the croquembouche!
A whole lot of work and effort, but all so worth it in the end...

First off, what is a croquembouche?
For all of you who do not know, a croquembouche is a French pastry that is traditionally served at weddings and religious events. It is a high cone of pate a choux filled with pastry cream and then dipped in caramel and bound together. Traditionally the layers are alternated with sucre gran (sugar crystals). Other components also include sugar work, flowers or ribbons!


Shall we begin...

We started on Thursday by making our pate a choux and nougatine for the base or basket that the tower would set into.

                      Chef Kristin doing a demo of the nougatine

                       Piping a border for the basket

                       String work for our basket

Then we made a sugar piece out of isomalt to ask a topper for our tower.
An organic fountain shape:)

So pretty!:)

Now time to stack the choux for our tower.

 So each puff is dipped in caramel laid out on a silpat to dry and then the stacking begins in our ring.

After two layers are stacked and alternated we pull it out of the ring and continue stacking into a tower shape using the hot caramel as our glue.


And Ta-Da!!

Chef Kristens example of the tower. See we added the tower inside the basket of nougatine and topped it with the fountain and added the orchids we made last week.

My croquembouche....not bad for the first time, the only thing I did not have time for was the string work. ah...next time!

-N