The First Buffet

We spent our last day on entremets with Chef Richard doing some final assembly and decoration of our cakes.  I do fine on the assembly part, but I must say that the artistic elements of finishing and decoration definitely push the limits of my engineer's brain.

Putting together the final pieces of our Black Forest Cake - layers of chocolate sponge cake soaked in Kirsh syrup, chocolate mousse and chantilly cream, and cherries soaked in kirsch syrup,

All covered with shavings of dark chocolate...

 

We practiced our writing skills on our Moka cake.  The cake has several layers of a daquoise filled and surrounded by a rich, smooth mocha buttercream.  Those of you who know me know that my penmanship leaves alot to be desired...suffice it to say that it didn't improve when I was piping with melted chocolate!

A pear charlotte - my personal favorite.  This cake had lovely, light genoise (sponge cake) with a rich pear bavarian cream and caramelized pears for a garnish.

 

Our fruit rouge amandes - or almond cake with red fruits.  This was the most modern of our entremets - it contained an almond crunch layer, a daquoise, white chocolate mousse and a red fruit coulis gel.   It was glazed with white chocolate, decorated with red fruits and finished off around the base with toasted almonds that had been coated in silver  -- I think it looks very French!

We each had four cakes, as well as a large cake we had prepared together.  We selected the best looking ones for our class buffet - of course, making sure that each of us had something to display.  

 

Here it is, the final fruits of our first week at ENSP!  We were all quite proud of our cakes - several of the other chef instructors and the school administrators joined us for our buffet - tasting each of them and giving us some feedback.  We also took a selection of them up to lunch that afternoon for the rest of the students.

 

So - one week down and 7 to go - unbelievable!  It was amazing how the week progressed - we were all very nervous at first, but that ended quickly and we all worked very hard and learned alot.  Of course, not everything was perfect, but Chef Richard was great and very committed to helping us learn. It was definitely a tiring week - we started in the kitchen right after lunch and usually ended about 9 pm.  Regardless, it was a great week..we start chocolate next...should be interesting!