The Culinary Tales Week 19: Just Shoot Me

July 10, 2014

 

 

It was the first week of Baking 2, the advanced advanced class, where we get to elevate our dessert-making skills and put out some high-end work. (We’re talking $80 teeny cakes and high-end dessert plates.)

 

But of course, it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park:

1. We had two new chefs to contend with (I actually missed chefs Giggles and Satan.)
2. Annoying Girl was back on our table. (damn, it was good while it lasted)
3. A pot fell on my head. (I’m ok.)
4. Another pot (larger and heavier than the first) was slammed against my shoulder during cleanup. (Still ok.)

 

I could keep enumerating the things that went wrong that week, but I was too tired to remember the details.

 

The first week was when you wanted to bring your “A” game. (Actually, every week was when you should bring your “A” game.) But I thought it especially important to make an excellent first impression during the first few days.

 

I missed Giggles and Satan dearly and felt very much like a kid going off to college for the first time and missing Mom and Dad.

 

There were no lectures in Baking 2, it seemed. Just quick demos and that was it. On our first day, we had to make devil’s food cake and sponge made a Dobos Torte.

 

My week got off to a blazing start as, for once, I got a mixer that worked. Unfortunately, we ran out of electrical outlets. Annoying Girl had reached across two benches and taken what should have been MY outlet. So I had to wait until someone was done with their work to plug in my machine.

 

Day One and I was already behind. I managed to get the cakes done, but I didn’t have time to do the fillings.

 

 

On the second day, we made the black forest. Black forest cake is basically made up of a devil’s food cake cut into three layers. Then we dabbed each layer with a simple syrup/kirshwasser mixture.
Kirshwasser is a German liqueur that translates literally to “cherry water.” The lower filling layer is made up of chantilly cream piped in circles with dried sweet cherries filled in the gaps. The upper filling layer is all chantilly cream – which is whipped cream with sugar and vanilla added. Then the entire cake is coated with cake crumbs and final-coated with more chantilly cream. A lot harder to do than with buttercream because it’s much softer, and much easier to nick some cake crumbs onto it. Not to mention the fact that it’s a soft white cream going on top of a brown cake, not easy to hide imperfections.

 

Then we crumbcoated the outside edge, piped 12 rosettes topped with pretty little cherries, and then dumped a mound of shaved chocolate in the center. There was a time the black forest cake was my favorite dessert – that was before I discovered mousse and the concorde cake, of course. And no wonder. There’s liquor in it. Makes sense now.

 

I almost didn’t finish the task. The added difficulty of Baking 2 was that not only did we have to set up the cakes on cake stands, but we had to plate a slice and piped the name of the dish and our names on the plate. I completed this at the very last nanosecond, a fact which wasn’t lost on Chef Hooks (more on how that name came about later) who was impressed with the piping considering it was done last-minute and one-handed.

 

I baptized our new teacher Chef Hooks in honor of Laverne Hooks from Police Academy. Remember her? She was the diminutive one with the painfully small voice. Chef Hooks is a tall, dark, intimidating-looking woman. Until she spoke. She had one of those soft voices that belied her imposing figure. Chef Satan had called her one of the nicest ladies around. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her.

 

The other teacher I called Chef Tries Too Hard. CTTH. Because that’s the kinder name.

 

Then I thought about calling her Chef Annoying Senior, because many of us concurred that that was exactly what Annoying Girl would be like if she were teaching. We got the feeling that even Chef Hooks got annoyed with her.

 

On Day Three, we had to assemble the Dobos Torte, which was just torture. Torte-ure. (I slay me.)

 

Dobos, a Hungarian specialty, is seven thin layers of sponge cake (dabbed with a brandy-simple syrup mixture) with alternating cocoa french buttercream layers. It is coated with the same buttercream, with rosettes piped on top, and a caramel wedge on each of 8 pieces.

 

This was the torte that broke me and I cried a little in frustration.

 

We were supposed to get this started on Day Two, but I managed only one layer before time ran out. So on Day Three when it was due, I barely got the cake together but the buttercream was just disastrous.

 

French buttercream was made by first whipping egg yolks to full volume, then slowly adding in 240-degree melted sugar (what we call “softball”.) This was set aside as you whipped egg whites to medium peak and then the two mixtures were combined. If the sugar did not get to the right temperature, the cream could break.

 

It appeared that my cream was breaking, or in civilian terms, melting. I had to ice bath it, throw it in the walk-in, throw it in the blast chiller… it went all Wicked Witch on me. By the time I got to piping the rosettes, the cream kept losing its shape that the rosettes were a downright pain.

 

Then, to make the caramel wedges, we had to caramelize sugar, pour it over a thin layer of sponge cake, then cut it at the right time into wedges. (Timing was everything because the caramel needed to be hard enough to cut but at the same time not be too hard that the whole piece cracked.) I burned the sugar the first time around, to the point where it was the color of very black coffee. Far from the dark honey color we wanted. At least I didn’t actually scorch the sugar to the point where I couldn’t get the pot cleaned. (That already happened once.)

 

Sugar takes a while to caramelize. Just when you think it’s getting to the right color, you realize that you’re still far off. Then you put it back on the stove, turn your back to grab a spoon, and all of a sudden it’s darker than a frappuccino.

 

It’s a sensitive little bitch.

 

I made another attempt and actually ran out of time. I got to the point where I was able to pour the hot sugar (it was way too early for that anyway, the color was nowhere near “honey” and was more like a dark beige) but the clock ran out. I had to present without the wedges. With melting rosettes. And on closer inspection, you would have seen that the buttercream filling had melted too.

 

Strike One.

 

On top of this, we were supposed to have the roulade done for the Charlotte Royal. Chef Satan had affectionately called it the “Brain Cake.”

 

 

 

First, we baked a thin layer of cake. Then we spread raspberry jam on one layer and rolled it up. (Carefully, I might add, so as not to tear the cake.) It’s also known as a jelly roll.

 

To add insult to injury, I got hit on the head with a pot. Advertising Buddy was reaching for a pot above my head and lost his grip. It hurt, but I had to suck it up so I could get the Dobos done. (I had my balls’ reputation to uphold.)

 

Later, during cleanup, Class Buddy brought a pot over to the sink for cleaning and slammed my shoulder with it.

 

Strikes Two and Three.

 

Day Four was looking like a reprieve and I seriously needed one. We didn’t have anything due that night, so it was all prep for the following day. Which was great, because I could make the charlotte from scratch all over again. And that was the day I had the commute from hell.

 

For the first time in almost five months, I was actually late to class. By the way, almost every day this week, traffic was so abyssmal that I had to change into my uniform while driving, alternating feet on the brake pedal so I didn’t actually cause accidents. Yes, I know, not the brightest thing to do. BUT, I got really GOOD at it. At least I stopped trying to read and drive at the same time. Now that was living dangerously.)

 

I missed a lot of the demo so prep was a nightmare. I had to do my Bavarian cream twice (I overboiled the milk on the first try.) Bavarian cream was the filling for the Charlotte Royal. Then we sliced up the jelly roulade into quarter-inch pieces, then packed them around the inside edges of a bowl to make a bowl mold. Then we poured in Bavarian cream and put some more roulade slices on top. (We trimmed the cake neatly and turned it over the next day.)

 

On the second pass, I dumped the cream into the bowl, and after wondering why it didn’t even fill up 1/2 of the bowl, realized that I missed adding in the whipped cream.

 

So, (A) I had to re-pack the slices in, and (B) the gelatin had set in the cream so I had to melt it down before I could add in the whipped cream.

 

In the end, the cream looked like what it should look like and I managed to get the cake into the walk-in on time. We were also supposed to layer up our mousse cakes and start on our sauces – creme Anglaise and raspberry coulis – neither of which I got done.

 

Day Four was just about as bad for Advertising Buddy, who flew into a rage when Annoying Girl snapped at him while we were doing dishes. Once I got over the shock (he had always been the quiet guy in the back), I got him to calm down.

 

I had a lot of catching up to do on Day Five but I was feeling ok because all I had to do was finish the Charlotte (coated with nappage and added a pistacchio border to the bottom) and the mousse. Don’t ask me where the time went, because I barely got my sauces done. We were also supposed to play around with fancy decorating, drawing chocolate filigrees and filling the bound areas with sauce, but I didn’t get a chance to do all that.

 

No time for slow, deliberate plating, so I carelessly spooned some sauce on the plate and called it a day. I just wanted to get the sauce on the plate so that chef could at least check out my sauce work (Advertising Buddy didn’t even bother plating the mousse.)

 

 

 

I still had my Saturday classes, and this time I was in Math 2, in which we were supposed to tackle statistics and restaurant management/planning. We were even going to get some kitchen time as we studied yield percentages and figure out how much of a pound of potatoes can actually be used for cooking.

 

And I finally understood why so often during our first term, we were constantly being harrassed by the “upperclassmen”. I asked if the look of angst gave us away. No. It was because of how clean our chef jackets looked.

 

We had been working with chocolate every day and so I understood. I usually tried to make a jacket go for two days before it went into the laundry hamper, but it became increasingly difficult as one class can get you covered in chocolate, raspberry and cream. Sometimes there was even a little egg yolk and caramelized sugar. But thank goodness for friends in high places… my friend Dara the former professional pastry chef once advised me to put a little baking soda in with the wash to get stains out.

 

It’s funny how some of the best cleaning agents are found right in your cupboard. Lemons and maple syrup will feed you for days as well as clean your intestines. I’ve heard Coke will clean your toilet nicely. Vinegar + water are a cheap and good substitute for Pine Sol (minus the fresh Carolina pine forest smell), and baking soda, which can also get burned food off your expensive cookware, is a nifty get-the-stains-out prestidigitator.

 

It’s great that everyday food items can be used to clean. Then again, what does it say that you can actually eat your cleaning supplies? Frightening.

 

 

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