Chocolate obsession

Gateau Concorde

IP Lesson IX- Tarte au chocolat noir and gateau concorde

I’m still lagging in my blogging! We made tarte au chocolat noir and gateau concorde last Saturday.

Chocolate desserts are such a great hit aren’t they?

Tarte au chocolat noir is a dark chocolate tart made with chocolate short pastry filled with dark chocolate ganache and decorated with raspberries. I think this recipe is one of the best that I’ve tried. It’s rich, not overly sweet. Dark chocolate lovers will adore this one!

The chocolate short pastry is made with cocoa powder, icing sugar, butter and it’s a much more delicate dough compared to the pate sucree (sweet pastry) that we have been making. Even after resting the dough (like all other pastry doughs) for twenty minutes, it still tears really easily so we had to handle it with care.

The chocolate filling is pretty easy to make. The key to getting a great tarte au chocolat noir (apart from using good chocolate couverture) is to give it plenty of attention. By attention, I mean when you put them in the oven, you need to make sure that the filling doesn’t bubble and boil if not you wouldn’t have a nice smooth surface.

The Gateau Concorde was a joy to make. It is basically chocolate meringue discs layered with chocolate mousse and decorated with chocolate meringue tubes. We made French meringue for this purpose and bake the meringues at a low temperature for about 1.5 hours to dry them out. This results in a crispy meringue that simply cracks in your mouth.

The Gateau Concorde is a little too sweet for my liking! Yes, even for a sweet tooth like me. The chocolate mousse is really perfect on its own. Rich, creamy and really chocolatey. The meringues were really too sweet. If you know the amount of sugar that actually goes into this meringue, you probably will think twice about eating it!

I’m heading off for a picnic in Royal Botanic gardens now. Shall blog about this week’s classes soon. I promise.

For now, I’ll leave you with the tarte au chocolate noir recipe because it’s simply fantastic!

Tarte Aux Chocolat Noir
(Recipe from Le Cordon Bleu)

Chocolate Short Pastry

280g Bakers Flour

200g butter

50g cocoa powder

120g pure icing sugar

2 egg yolks

pinch of salt

Sieve dry ingredients, rub in butter till crumbly.

Add egg yolks and incoporate. Do not overwork the dough!

Roll the dough out into the size of your palm and flattened it. Leave it in the fridge to rest for about 20 minutes.

After resting the dough, roll it out to about 3mm thickness, line it on a tart dish. At this point, you can give your dough more rest if you wish to. If not blind bake the tart at about 180 degrees for about 15-20 minutes, until it is cooked.

Tart Filling

80ml Milk

200ml cream

200g Dark Couverture

1 Egg, beaten

Boil milk and cream.

Pour over chocolate pieces (you will need to chop up your chocolate if it comes in a block) and stir to melt it.

Add egg and stir till well combined.

Pour into tart mould and bake at 150 C till set.

When it sets, it wouldn’t be wobbly if you shake it. Do not overbake the chocolate tart till the chocolate filling is bubbling/boiling. Leave the tart in the tart dish for awhile before removing it to cool the tart in the fridge.

Decorate with fresh raspberries and icing sugar.

Fear no more...

I have overcame my fear of tempering chocolates..

That's enough reason to celebrate!

[reading] Chloe Dutre-Roussel's The Chocolate Connoisser

The comforts a tart can bring

Linzer torte




IP Lesson VII- Linzer Torte and Tarte Aux Fruits

When you talk about comfort foods, it usually is something rustic and homely. Rarely would you hear someone mention cavier or truffles (the mushroom variety) as their comfort foods.

While most may list out savoury items as their comfort foods, I know a few people, including myself who would seek solace in sweets. For my sister, it would be a good bar of chocolate or a nice warm chocolate cake. As for myself, a good rustic tart, savoury or sweet would really make me feel all better inside. Strange as it may seem, a simple fruit tart or spinach and feta cheese tart has the ability to release endorphins in my body and make me feel happy.

For class on Thursday, we made two rustic tart- Linzer Torte and tarte aux fruits.

The Linzer torte originated in a small town called Linz, Austria. It is in fact a tart made with ground nuts (either hazelnuts or almond) and spice with a layer of raspberry jam in the centre, finished with its characteristic lattice-patterned top.

You know what I love about studying in Le Cordon Bleu is that I get to learn and taste these new desserts. It is my first time tasting and making this torte/tart. You can say it is love at first taste. It is little wonder why it remains a favourite amongst the Austrians. Another interesting fact of this torte is that it’s one of the oldest known cakes in the world.

Rustic but comforting.

After making a few fruit tarts during basic classes, we were back to making another fruit tart. This time, it was a fruit tart not only with crème patisserie but also with frangipane filling made from ground almonds and rum. What can I say? I really love the frangipane paste filling. Almonds and alcohol: the two ‘A’s that comforts thy soul!

In my opinion, the frangipane filling works well in the tart giving it another element of texture as well as flavour. The sweet crust pastry or pate sucree is made with some ground almonds which gives the pastry a richer flavour which I think taste better as compared to just using flour alone.

The fun part with this tart lies with the arrangement of the fruits. I have always liked the tarts with fruits tumbled on the top, looking absolutely gorgeous even in its haphazard manner. The funny thing about doing this is that there is actually some order in its haphazardness. That’s the beauty of it.

I love the way that Chef K*aren does it. She makes it seem so effortless, just tumbling the berries off her hands onto the tart. As contradictory as it may sound, it took me quite a while to arrange the orderly disorder on my tart!

Feeling pretty pleased with my virgin effort, I rewarded myself by digging into a huge slice of that tart when I got home. After a long day at school, and a long bus journey home, it was pure bliss and contentment. For that moment, it took away my physical weariness and my emotional worries.

Such is the comfort a tart can bring!

Tarte aux fruits, rustic style

You can't stop at one

My truffle tower

IP Lesson VI- Chocolate Croquembouche

A croquembouche is a traditional French wedding cake or sometimes it’s used for christening. Its name ‘Croque en Bouche’ means ‘crunch/crackling in the mouth’ in French. The original croquembouche is a cone made with profiteroles filled with crème patisserie coated with caramel (thus, giving it the crunch when you bite into it). It is decorated with spun caramel, almonds or flowers. Can you imagine such a lovely showpiece? I would really want to make one for my wedding. That’s just one frivolous reason why I’m taking this course at Le Cordon Bleu now!

Before I start rambling on about the croquembouche and my wedding, I should get back to the chocolate croquembouche proper. A chocolate croquembouche is a modern interpretation of the French classic. Imagine a cone made from chocolate truffles. I believe that the chocolate croquembouche is heaven for some of you.

What we did was to make chocolate ganaches (with alcohol like kirsch, Malibu, rum) and coat them with tempered chocolate (Dark, milk and white). And all we had to do is to ‘glue’ them together with chocolate.

The joy of building your own truffle tower (that’s what I like to call it) is incredibly immense! It’s such a showpiece you know what I mean. My truffle tower was made from about 80-90 chocolate truffles.

What do you think of that as a birthday cake? You wouldn’t even need to cut into it? All your friends can just pull out a truffle each to munch on. The only problem with it is that you probably need a really tall tower because no one can just stop at a one.

What's there not to love about chocolates?

Chocolate pieces

IP Lesson V: More Chocolates


It was time to coat our pralines and Vienna almonds.

Tempered dark chocolate was used to enrobe these yummy goodies before we decorated them with little specks of crystallized lavender. I really like purple on chocolate. it makes the chocolate pieces look gorgeous!

I thought this would be pretty simple but it isn’t that easy to coat the pieces nicely all round without getting “feet” around the bottom of the chocolate pieces.

I finally realised why handmade chocolates are so expensive. This is a tedious process, really. A few of us only got it right after a couple of attempts which meant that we had more than a couple of ugly but great tasting chocolates!

The best way to do it is to use two dipping forks.

Put the square/diamond-shaped praline pieces into your tempered dark chocolate with a dipping fork. Lift the praline from the chocolate pool and proceed to tap the dipping fork against the edge of the bowl (about 20 times) to knock out the excess chocolate. Then gently place the chocolate coated praline onto a piece of silicon (baking) paper. Use the other (clean) dipping fork to push the praline piece away to remove any feet that remains.

And there you have it. To have pretty chocolate pieces, you would need to get your chocolate properly tempered which isn’t the same as melting chocolate really. Tempering chocolate is a process that stabilizes the structure of the cocoa solids in chocolate. This method is essential for moulded or dipping chocolates which would allow the chocolate to set quickly, to give it shine and a clean snap.

And so we had a plateful of little chocolate pieces to take home. I really had to resist them.
Now, name me a person who doesn't like chocolates?

I can't, honestly. What about you?


***


Tempering chocolates 101:
(My attempt at explaining something really complicated)

The method that produces consistent good results is the tabling/marbling method.
Start off with dark chocolate couverture. Put the chocolate pieces into a bain marie and to melt the chocolate at 45-50 deg celcius.

Then pour 2/3 of this melted chocolate onto a cool marble surface and use a metal scrapper to manipulate the chocolate back and forth to cool the chocolate. You should manipulate the chocolate till the temperature falls to 27-29 degree celcius.

By this time, the chocolate on the marble surface would have thickened and have lost some of its glossiness. At this point, transfer the chocolate from the marble surface into the bowl containing the remaining 1/3.

Stir to combine both the chocolates till you get a temperature of 31-32 degrees celcius. At this stage, your chocolate is tempered and it should be glossy and shiny and sets quickly

Chocolate is our friend..indeed

IP Lesson IV: Pralines, fudge, ganache


It’s back to a week of chocolates.

After my chocolate disaster in Basic, I was feeling a tad apprehensive about class this week.

That sense of apprenhension was kind of eased when I woke up on Sunday morning to find myself in poodles of laughter.

This was what I saw written on the mirror in my bathroom:

“Don’t worry, Joanna…Chocolate is our friend. Once we are done with them, we will eat them!”

To sum up this week, I'm glad to say that the week did not end up in disaster.

After we conquered the chocolates, we ate them, very willingly.

***

We spent Thursday class preparing a variety of ganaches to be used for the chocolate truffles for Saturday's class- Dark chocolate with rum, dark chocolate with kirsch, milk chocolate (omitting the caradamon pods), white chocolate with Malibu.

Chocolate is great. Even better when it comes with alcohol.

Preparing the ganaches is an easy task; simply put a pot of cream to a solid boil before pouring the boiled cream over the chopped couverture pieces, stirring till smooth and incorporated and lastly adding in the alcohol/and butter.

We also made pralines and white chocolate fudge. Fudge is such an English thing. You’ll find shops dotted around the countryside specializing in fudge alone.

As for me, I can never understanding people’s fascination for fudge. It’s far too saccharine sweet for me. The funny thing is that Chef K*aren, who’s an English, doesn’t like fudge either.

Which brings us back to question why we are making fudge at all, white chocolate fudge at that! Fudge is made from cooking sugar, glucose and cream in a pot. You will boil it till it bubbles and thickens (Till about 110 deg celcius). Then, you take it off the heat and add in the white chocolates and stir it quickly before adding a little of butter. That explains why it is so sweet.

Pralines, on the other hand, is another story altogether. My love for pralines begins with my love for all things nuts. Since pralines is quite simply hazelnut and milk chocolate, what’s there not to love.

We made Vienna almonds too- those caramelized almonds..those beautiful almonds enrobed with a caramel coating with dotted flavours from the vanilla bean. It is so lovely that I can eat a bag of those and feel guilty only after I am done with them.

The ability to make caramel comes from the understanding of how sugar cooks and the different stages of cooked syrup (Soft ball, hard ball, soft crack, hard crack and then caramel).For me, today's lesson today cleared up some of the mystery surronding it.

Sugar work is serious business and we will be learning more and working more with sugar when we reach Superior stage. That will be the time when we will be getting our hands dirty (and hopefully not burnt) moulding sugar to create showpieces.

Class was pretty fun. We worked in teams which made class a lot more fun and less stressful. Working in teams did help a lot in terms of completion of the tasks. After all, working in the kitchen, like any other industry, is very much about team work.

Failing to rise to the occassion

IP Lesson III: Gateau Mille Feuille

'a thousand layers'



What else could you do with a reverse puff pasty?

A mille feuille, of couse!


The Mille Feuille means ‘a thousand layers’ in French. Frankly speaking, it really does have a thousand of butter and dough layers in the puff which makes it so crispy and its ‘melt-in-your-mouth’ kind of goodness.

The Mille Feuille go by other names such as vanilla slices and/or napoleon.

But a mille feuille by any other name will still taste as sweet.

This is one of my favourite ways of using, or rather eating puff pastry.

First of all, we had to bake three equal-sized discs of reverse puff pastry so we can assemble them. We had to ‘dock them like crazy’ in the words of one of my coursemates to prevent ‘blisters’ from forming; we don’t want a high puff, we just want the crispy layers.

It was really rewarding to take the reverse puff pasty out of the oven- the even tan of the puff pasty, the consistent puff amongst all three of the puff pasty. Next we had to prepare crème diplomat which will be the layers in between the puff pasty. Crème diplomat is similar to crème patisserie; the difference lie in the use of the gelatine in the crème diplomat which will give it a more stable structure and holding the crème in place in between the puff pastry layers.

The elements of my gateau mille feuille were coming together beautifully in a manner that I would be very proud of. Even the assembling of the gateau went without a hitch. However, the fondant icing failed me.

Or technically speaking, I failed it.

Fondant is such a finicky creature. It is easy to dismiss fondant as a sickly sweet sugar mess. You can probably say that as a consumer but as a chef working with it, you are under its mercy. Work too slowly, and you will have it setting before you can say ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ (well, that’s the longest word I know..)

That was precisely the thing that happen to my fondant. I had to spread a layer of fondant in its original state over the cake before piping a round spiral of chocolate and neon pink over it before making a design by feathering it. Before I got to the feathering bit, the fondant decides to play some mind games with me.

The worse thing about pastry is that you can’t do much corrective action like in cuisine; to add more seasoning if the soup is bland. All I could do is to helplessly allow the fondant to set before me and accept the way that my gateau had turned out. It wasn't a pretty sight (both my gateau and I).

My three hours in the kitchen has been wasted. There’s no point in having a perfectly great tasting gateau when it doesn’t look good, not to the Chef at least.

Despite it all, he was being very encouraging towards me.

"We all have these moments. Don't be too hard on yourself. Even the best chefs take time and practice to get things right."

Which brings me to this question: what if this is my one chance, that one opportunity and I let it slip? I have a feeling that there wouldn't be that many chances and opportunities for me to waste.