Piece of Cake
This week in baking & pastry, we made cookies and cakes. I must admit, it has been a lot more interesting than bread week. I got to choose the kind of cookie I made (caramel pecan bar), we were allowed some flexibility when we made eclairs and cream puffs. I put rosewater in my pastry cream and it turned out really good, I am really happy with how it tasted. Yesterday we baked cakes, today we decorated them, and tomorrow we get to take them home. We had a lot of freedom in the flavors we used. The only constraint was that it be a chiffon cake and have buttercream frosting (made with swiss meringue). So the inspiration for my cake is vietnamese coffee. Anyone who has gotten me started talking about Vietnam will know that I loved it there and will go on and on about how great that country is. One thing I really loved were vietnamese coffee (or ca phe sua nong). It is basically 50% espresso and %50 sweetened condensed milk. So for my cake, I made the chiffon cake with espresso powder so it tastes like coffee (though not strong enough). For the filling, I made buttercream and added a caramel syrup to it so that it had a little of the caramel flavor that sweetened condensed milk has. That was between the first two layers. Between the 2nd and 3rd layers, I made a whipped cream with sweetend condensed milk and cream, and added espresso powder to it for more coffee flavor. For the icing, I made coffee buttercream (espresso powder in the buttercream). The individual parts taste great, and I look forward to tasting it all tomorrow. Chef Judy said she was looking forward to tasting it too. For decoration I used a comb around the sides and put chocolate flakes about 1/3 up the sides. On the top, I made a circle stencil and put a disc of chocolate flakes right in the middle. Around the edge I piped rosettes out of buttercream and made chocolate filigrees and stood them up againt the rosettes. I put a single chocolate coffee bean on top of each slice. A fellow student whose opinion matters said it looked “professional” and he would pay for it. That felt really good to hear. I will take a picture tomorrow and post it.
