le cordon bleu - day 29

I had fun today assembling my cakes :D. In particular, ecstatic that my sponges were thick enough to cut into three; the fact that I didn't cut myself in the process and I suppose, just the simple fact that I assembled a rather fancy cake from scratch. There's definitely a lot I still have to learn with cake decoration (seriously, I'm quite hopeless...I was probably looking at my cake for 10 minutes and then managed to pipe some blobs of poo which i ended up squashing down...and well let's forget that now, my end products look alright). The other thing is that my cakes are probably too tall to be French cakes; the French prefer more petite cakes compared to what you see here in Sydney and what my product ended up to be. Anyhow, I didn't want to waste my three layers of sponge so I'll remember for next time that 2 pieces of japonaise and 2 pieces of sponge will make a more decent cake. Lol...I can't wait till mum comes home so I can slice both the cakes and see how they turned out on the inside. *fingers crossed that the buttercream layers aren't too thick*

And well, what is buttercream? I'd always thought it was some combination of butter and cream whipped together and really, it goes without saying that buttercream tastes a lot nicer than frosting and icing sugar mixes. Well, I suppose I got half the ingredients correct; buttercream does contain butter, in fact, 750g of it in the recipe we used today. To that, you've got 300g of egg whites and another 500g of sugar syrup; just a bit over a kilogram of fat and sugar sweetness. Might I add, you're really meant to flavour buttercream otherwise you're eating a cake that tastes purely of butter. And did I tell you that I absolutely love praline paste and chocolate? Well I divided by buttercream batter into two and added a good heap of each into each batter. I don't even want to think about the number of calories that are in the buttercream alone. *shudders*

As a special treat from Chef Geraldine (a chef who is passionate about what she does and a source of immense knowledge - she's been one awesome chef during Basic Patisserie!), she made us a traditional Swiss cake which she has back at home. Far out, I don't know much Kirsch she soaked the sponge cake with but when I bit into it, a torrent of it came flying out of my mouth - literally. Surprisingly, I didn't go red in the face but then Justin tells me that there's not much alcohol in Kirsch. Anyhow, something I've learnt is that the Swiss are big on their alcohol. Then again, I've never been a big fan of alcohol but still, that cake was yummy!


Hmmm...cheesecakes tomorrow, can't wait!