So we finally took a break from chocolate with this week’s cake – a lovely raspberry & passionfruit entremet. Even though I was really glad to get a break from chocolate for a while, I was wondering why this recipe had the exact same flavours as that of the tart we did in lesson 3. I guess passionfruit & raspberry pair well together?

Anyhoo, this cake is made up of a passionfruit cream, a raspberry mousse, coconut dacquoise biscuit, wrapped with a tie-dyed joconde biscuit & topped with raspberry gelee. The coconut dacquoise is probably my favourite dacquoise thus far. Yum yum in my tum tum!

We had Chef Verger for this practical again. It was nice to have to practice speaking French even though my French is really really bad haha. Shoutout to Charlie from Street French who I’ve been having classes with – really helped me with understanding what Chef was saying in prac + in communicating with him.

We had to work in pairs AND fours for this practical. Because we only need a 2-inch strip of tie-dyed joconde around the cake, one sheet was shared between four people. Mardi, Youjeong, Jianhua & I did this together, with Jianhua & I taking charge of the coloured part of it. Thank goodness we spread it quickly enough and we managed to retain colour differences (rather than everything combining together to be an orangey hue). This cake was definitely wayyy more manageable than last week’s *phew*.

Really love this cake – think I’ll attempt it again sometime when I’m home Perhaps it’s because I love raspberry & passionfruit (I guess answering my question on why the school is repeating this pairing of flavours haha). To those who are back home, I’ll post it on Instag if I do!

Also, the sun is out more and we’re having much better weather. Super super happy bout that.

Got a huge backlog of posts to go though (this is supposed to be an end-Feb post haha) so stay tuned!!!

xx,
Eug

The post Lesson 12: Entremets Passionata | Raspberry & Passionfruit appeared first on CAKE IS THE NEW BLACK.

I think I mentioned before that at the start of the whole programme, I was super excited as I knew that we were going to be making entremets. I’d basically ‘memorised’ the entire table of contents for the course and was really looking forward to this lesson’s entremet – the belle hélène.

The belle hélène has a total of 7 components, a clear signal (to me, at least) that the difficulty of the course would probably increase steeply from this point. Chef began the demo by explaining to us how we’d assemble this cake. Entremets typically have an ‘insert’ component and the one for the belle hélène has a chocolate streusel, pear coulis & of course, the classic chocolate biscuit. 

Given that there are so many components to the cake, it was imperative that we worked quickly in the practical. Chef himself didn’t manage to finish the cake within the 3 hours of demo (granted, he spent time explaining techniques and all along the way) and that kinda set the stage for how tough we’d be.

We got Chef Verger for this practical and from the start, everyone moved super quickly to ensure that we would not be late. The whole way, Jianhua and I split the work & tried our best to keep ourselves clean (chocolate stains are a pain to remove…). So continuing from what the entremet is made of, the insert is surrounded by some luscious chocolate mousse and then glazed with a dark chocolate glaze. Additionally, we had to make a creamy chocolate spiral to place on top of the cake as well as temper chocolate to put around the cake and as decorative pieces on top. Just repeating what the cake is made of makes me feel exhausted haha.

I think the cake turned out pretty fine Gave Jo the cake to bring back to Lyon when she was here over the weekend & her colleague said that it was a “real luxurious cake” – hehe huge compliment and boost to my cake-making abilities

Looking forward to trying to recreate this cake when I’m back in Singapore, possibly with other fruit purees apart from pear *slurps*

Wished that I could share the goodness of this cake with all of you – hopefully these pictures will help satisfy any cravings though!

Till the next post!

xx,
Eug

The post Lesson 11: Belle Hélène appeared first on CAKE IS THE NEW BLACK.

This week was all about chocolate, something that’s a key focus for the Intermediate course!

Prior to making my decision on whether I wanted to do the IP, I looked through a gazillion pics on the Le Cordon Bleu location tag. Of course, being in school to learn more about something I really love was the key propeller to making me register. But what really confirmed that decision was the exposure to chocolate work and entremets. With that, I was super excited for this week of lessons – lots and lots of tempering (something I’d never done before & was sure would be super challenging).

We started off demo with a new chef – Chef Fabrice Danniel, Assistant Culinary Arts Director
Head of Le Cordon Bleu Pastry Department. He’d just flown back from Bangkok, where he is the Technical Director, and was going to be taking us for most of the demonstrations to come. As it was his first lesson back in Paris, he had Chef Park as his assistant, rather than the usual alumni assistants. It was quite a sight to see 4 chefs in our demo – Chef Danniel & Park up there and Chef Guillaume & Verger watching the class as well.

Chef went through the basics of tempering chocolate, something that seems really simple in theory but extremely difficult to achieve. He completed 4 different kinds of chocolate bon bons, with us having to complete 2 of them in practical. Initially, we thought that it was rather strange that we’d only be doing two of the bonbons. But when practical came, it was clear why this was so.

Tempering chocolate and making bonbons by hand is no easy feat! We had to table the chocolate which is a lot more messy and complicated than it seems! Firstly, you need to closely monitor the temperatures of the chocolate at each stage. Secondly, you have to be super clean. Dirt & water are huge enemies to chocolate & any of these could spoil the temperage of your choc.

It seems really simple – melt the chocolate, cool it down, heat it up. At least that’s what I thought! When my chocolate finally set (after a mad rush of a practical), I realised that I’d not tempered it well at all! There were white streaks in my chocolate (cocoa butter, I’m quite sure), meaning that I did not temper the choc well. Furthermore, I was not neat at all. My apron had some chocolate stains at the end of it = more washing for me! The positive was that the choc was super yummy haha (supposed to be yummier if it’s tempered well haha). The difficulties I faced tempering choc in this class helped me realise why we were only doing two bonbons and scared me for the next practical – the heavenly chocolate.

As the name of the cake suggests, this is one that is heavenly. Created first by Pierre Hermé, this cake is super decadent, hazelnuts, milk chocolate, praline, basically a giant ferrero roche *slurps*.

What really scared me during the demo was how we’d have to create two circle discs of chocolate by tempering the milk chocolate, spreading it evenly on a plastic, and then assembling the cake. Chef Danniel made it seem so easy (again) but I had a bad feeling about how practical was going to be.

Again, I followed the temperage curves and tried my best to replicate what I’d seen during the demo. But many many many things went wrong this practical >< Firstly, I didn’t manage to get my dacquoise out of the ring smoothly. If you see the pic below, the sides of my cake aren’t so pretty Secondly, I followed the curve but alas, my chocolate still wasn’t well tempered! Jianhua’s one turned out PERFECT, shiny and all, while mine had those beautiful white streaks again haha. Was so frustrated with myself as I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and neither could Chef Guillaume (oh yes, we got him for the prev practical too), because chocolate is such a finicky little thing~ This propelled me to buy a laser thermometer from Amazon hahaha. Going to have like 3 thermometers the next time I temper my choc!!!

Still, the cake was yummy and being able to give it away and hear that people still enjoyed it was awesome.

Things I took away from this week of chocolate:

1. Tempering is a pain in the butt
2. I love chocolate. A lot.
3. Tempering is a pain in the butt

Next week’s cakes are all gna be about mousse and entremets – super super super excited for that Till my next post!

xx,
Eug

P.S. pls pardon my shaky pics – I keep rushing to catch sunlight to photograph the cakes + my hands are always trembling after practical (with all that whipping) :'(

The post Lessons 9 & 10: Chocolate Bonbons & Heavenly Chocolate appeared first on CAKE IS THE NEW BLACK.

So after an amazing weekend in London chomping down all that Asian goodness for Lunar New Year, I was back in school, ever ready for an awesome week ahead.

I’d seen the cake that we’d be making this week (Dome aux Marrons –> Chesnut Dome) on Instagram (via the LCB location tag) before and was super excited to work on it. The aesthetic of the cake, in my opinion, is simply amazing. It also reminds me of the Esplanade back home in Singapore – kinda like a durian haha.

I really enjoyed the demo, with Chef Verger showing us how to use the spray gun for the first time ever! I’ve always been very intrigued by this effect that’s commonly used by pastry shops so knowing that I was going to be repeating it in practical was very exciting for me.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take too well to the taste of the chesnut (the cake is three layers of halzenut dacquoise, chesnut mousse and piped all round with chesnut cream). Although I’m a fan of freshly roasted chesnuts, these canned/candied ones were too sweet for my liking (probably the same reason why I’m not a fan of mont blanc).

Practical was awesome – we got Chef Park again Class is always very organised and calm under her watch. As usual, Jianhua and I split up the recipe and got cracking. Really enjoy working with her! The best partner I could ever ask for :*

Ended up with what I think I can call a pretty decent chesnut dome  Excited to try this again when I’m back home, albeit in another flavour (will also have to buy myself a spray gun hehe).

The next few posts are just going to be about chocolate and more chocolate so I’m thinking of lumping them all together. But we’ll see, I’m getting slower and lazier in my post updates haha :p

xx,
Eugenia

The post Lesson 8: Dome aux Marrons appeared first on CAKE IS THE NEW BLACK.

Writing this as a super belated post so hopefully I remember all the details :p

When I first saw this recipe (or more like the name of the recipe), I thought it was really strange that we were doing something with maple syrup. The first thing that ran through my head was – how’s maple syrup even vaguely close to anything French?

Also, when demo started and I saw that there was a generous serving of chantilly maple cream, I figured that I wouldn’t be a fan of this dessert (cos too much cream always makes me feel sick). However, I realised during tasting that I was very wrong. The base of this tart was amazing – a deconstructed sable crumble with hazelnut and milk chocolate. It was pure decadence. Even the chantilly cream, lightly flavoured with maple syrup, had an amazing texture and flavour that was well complemented by the choquettes on the side, filled with coffee pastry cream.

Needless to say, this tart had quite a few components, hinting at the fact that we’d need to be quick during practical (+ the fact that we needed to temper chocolate for the squares on top).

We got Chef Park for practical, something that I was very happy about. She’s always very calm and the aura that she exudes during class really gets us (me at least) into this rhythm of doing work. The whole practical went very smoothly except for a point where I put my wire rack with the parchment paper and sable on it on top of the stove (we have the induction kinds and I didn’t realise it was on), burning the paper a bit. Oops!

Because I’d done piping with the St Honore tip before, the piping part of the tart went pretty smoothly Really loving all the piping work we’ve had to do.

As it was CNY weekend, I rushed home, grabbed my bags & took a train to London to spend the new year’s with Mena Jie and family (+Amanda Jie & a couple of Mena Jie’s friends were there so that was awesome). It was a caloric-filled weekend with lots of Asian cuisine that was amazing and making my stomach extremely happy, made even better because I got to see Syaz & Pin that weekend too.

Anyhoo, going to try update more frequently over the next few weeks. I’m a good 6 classes behind right now :S

xx,
Eug

The post Lesson 7: Choquette Tart with Maple Syrup appeared first on CAKE IS THE NEW BLACK.

So in my last two posts, I mentioned that I’d be talking about some delicious chocolate desserts that we had to make for practical. Instead of just covering the one lesson that I’d intended to talk about, I decided to combine the two lessons into one post, since they were both on chocolate & very delicious (also cos if I keep updating it post by post, I’ll end up being quite behind oopsie).

Lesson 5

Translated, the choux craquant au chocolat noir is a dark chocolate craquelin choux (basically a dark chocolate choux pastry with a craquelin layer – the craquant is that bumpy thing you see on top). For this lesson, Chef demonstrated this dessert and the religious nuns – another choux dessert but filled with caramel cream instead of chocolate ones. Pictorially, the religious nuns looked more complex and challenging to make. Taste-wise, however, I must say that the chocolate choux was way better, making me glad after tasting the two desserts that we were making the latter.

We had Chef Olivier for practical. He started off by warning us that two groups that’d made the dessert in the morning were unable to complete their desserts within the 3 hours. This made all of us pretty worried – the choux seemed really simple during demo – how could it be that bad?

Alas, when practical started, I began to understand why we were so time-pressed. For starters, Chef had instructed all of us to do all the components individually, rather than in pairs. Because the quantities were so small, it might little sense for us to use mixer either –> more time spent on making & more work for each of us. There are also so many components to this dessert – the choux, the choc pastry cream, the craquelin, a lovely hazelnut praline chocolate insert and the glaze.

At the end of class, Chef informed us that we were his first class to finish everything on time, with 5 minutes to spare. Was pretty proud of my group for this feat & glad that everything turned out well.

This is probably one of my favourite desserts thus far & I’m glad that I managed to give some of these away to people I met over the weekend

Lesson 6

From Day 1, I’d been counting down the days till I’d have to make the elusive Opéra. I recall that back in Basic in 2013, Intermediate students would come out of the Opéra demos with their aprons all stained with chocolate & warning us that the cake was one that we wouldn’t want to mess with.

I braced myself for the demo and told myself that everything would be all right. Chef showed us how the entire cake was done, skillfully and effortlessly putting together the layers. He made it all seem so simple and manageable that I left the demo room feeling less nervous than when I’d stepped in.

We got Chef Jean Jacques for this practical, which was kind of a relief to me because he’s generally more chill (i.e. less pressurizing during prac class, especially for a cake like this which requires intense concentration, in my opinion). The whole practical was fine, less my buttercream. I ended up having not enough cream for the two layers (you can see from my pics that I have only have one visible layer of buttercream oops) and needed chef’s help to spread the top layer Thankfully we covered the cake with a layer of chocolate glaze, hiding the defect of my cake. Really wondering why I keep having issues with creams this set :/

The wording “Opéra” on the top of the cake is a traditional style of décor that was used when the cake was first created. So even though none of us find it attractive, we all had to pipe it out. Furthermore, the writing of the word “Opéra” is going to be tested for the Intermediate set’s technical component :S

I loved the taste of this cake and am glad I managed to share the cake with others (Charlie, Robyn & Sarah and Mena Jie’s family). Albeit challenging, this cake is definitely manageable and just requires a calm state of mind to complete

Well I’ve come to the end of this super long post – stay tuned for the next dessert + a snippet of my weekend to London for CNY!

xx
Eugenia

The post Lessons 5 & 6: Choux Craquant au Chocolat Noir and Opéra appeared first on CAKE IS THE NEW BLACK.

If you’ve been following my posts, you might remember me mentioning that I was headed to Lyon to visit Joyee over a weekend, and that she’d be getting some of the passionfruit & raspberry tart.

<3

Unlike most trips that I go on, I didn’t bother planning for this at all (i.e. I didn’t really know what there was to see/eat in Lyon) because I figured Jo would know all the best things to do. All I did was book my transport to & fro and I decided she’d handle the rest haha. The train to Lyon was super quick, approximately 2 hours, and in no time, I was reunited with Jo (after 4-5 months of not seeing her!!!).

I was blessed with beautiful weather (blue skies) over the weekend, contrary to what had been forecast (cloudy, rainy), even witnessing Lyon’s ‘first snowfall’ on Monday when I left. The beautiful weather, coupled with the awesome company (thanks Jo & Ben, Jon you were missed ) truly made for a great weekend trip.

Just a few snippets of my time in beautiful Lyon below:

Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière

Exploring the Traboules (feat. BLACK, cos Cake is the New Black of course)

Stay tuned for my next few posts! It’s going to feature loads of chocolate yum yum ~

xx,
Eugenia

The post Weekend to Lyon appeared first on CAKE IS THE NEW BLACK.

Salut!

So this week started off with a demo on two very traditional French desserts – the Baba (usually Baba au Rhum) and the Kugelhopf (you can click on the links to find out more about the history behind the two desserts).

I’ve only tried Baba au Rhum a few times, the most memorable one being at La Cantine (Bruno Menard’s restaurant that used to be at Asia Square, Singapore). Although that Baba was one of the best I’d ever tasted, the dessert is one that I’ll never crave for. As such, I wasn’t as excited for this practical as I’d been for the previous ones.

We got Chef Cotte for this practical, a Chef that I’d spoken quite a bit about when I was here for Basic. He was exactly like how I’d remembered, warm, fun and strict all at the same time.

Practical went on as per usual, with the whole class just minding their own business (the kitchen is usually super quiet with this group). Super glad to be working with Jianhua for the past few practicals – I think we’ve got a kind of dynamic going on and she’s been super helpful whenever I needed any help.

Everything was going well with my Baba until I completed my pastry + whipping cream mixture. That’s when I realised that my pastry cream was kinda softer than it should be and would probably be a problem for piping later on. I showed it to Chef but he told me to just put it in the fridge (it was near-ish the end of class & I guess re-making a pastry cream would be rather time consuming).

As I’d expected, piping was quite a pain in the butt because I needed the swirls to hold up and retain the shape that I wanted. Thankfully I went to get my Baba graded before the pastry cream started to lose the definition of the star piping tip :S Lesson learnt – gotta make sure that my pastry cream is stiff enough for piping next time!

I was also initially kinda sad cos I forgot to bring my Tupperware along to class (i.e. I wouldn’t be able to bring it home in a box to photograph). BUT given that I didn’t feel as happy with today’s cake, I decided to just photograph it on my iPhone in class, and leave the cake in the fridge for whoever who wanted to take it home (there is a system we have in place where you can just take/leave anything in this fridge). Sooo, today’s pictures are i) featuring a black background (vs the usual white) and ii) featuring the school table top heh.

We’re making some really yummy chocolate choux tomorrow so I’m pretty excited for that! Stay tuned!

Till next time,
Eugenia

The post Lesson 4: Baba appeared first on CAKE IS THE NEW BLACK.

Bonjour everyone!

For our third demo, chef covered 2 different tarts. The tarte passion framboises (passionfruit raspberry tart) & a chocolate cognac orange cream tart (can’t remember the exact name right now). I liked the taste of the passionfruit tart more so I was quite glad we were making that for our practical, rather than the chocolate one

We got Chef Soyoun for this practical again! Think the entire class was really happy to have her. Think the whole class is getting into the swing of things, getting familiar with one another and all. It’s a pretty quiet group but I think that’s good cos we can all concentrate on our work.

This class was my first foray into tempering chocolate and I must say it’s really quite tricky. I attempted the tabling method that Chef showed during the demonstration and… the clean-up for that is horrible :'( I was quite proud of myself though, for being able to get the chocolate to the temperatures as he’d described during the demo.

I’m not usually a tart person but this was really quite good! I don’t know if you noticed but the glaze on the top of my tart isn’t super smooth. I think the problem was that my glaze wasn’t warm/liquified enough. I believe this will be an issue even for entremets -getting the glaze warm enough but not too warm to be able to pour it.

The end of the practical marked the start of my weekend! Heading to Lyon to find Joyee & deliver some tart to her

À bientôt!

xx,
Eugenia

The post Lesson 3: Tarte Passion Framboises appeared first on CAKE IS THE NEW BLACK.

Hi everyone~

So class started this week on Tuesday, meaning that I had a long weekend to run more errands (lots and lots of grocery shopping) and settle in. It was really chilly the whole weekend + week thanks to the drizzling and wind

For the second demonstration, the chef showed us the mille feuille & the tarte aux fruit rouges. I really liked this demo cause of the lovely colours of the desserts (lots of red!). In our first practical (and in chef’s first demo), we had to save about 250g of inverted puff pastry to be used for our mille feuille in the second practical. I like how there was this nice transition from the first to the second class.

For every class, we have 4 people that are assigned to be team leaders. This was my week to be assigned & I was kinda nervous about it cos being a team leader means getting stuff for people (and I felt like I was going to be a burden since I’m still not the most familiar with the kitchen). Thankfully, the other 3 were super efficient & could guide me on what to do.

We got Chef Soyoun for this practical. She’s super impressive, speaking Korean, French & English all fluently (she might speak even more but these are the 3 she uses in class). This was my first time in a practical with her given that she wasn’t in the Paris campus back in 2013, but I must say that I really liked the practical with her

Overall, I was extremely pleased with how my Mille Feuille turned out – dry butter & good weather works wonders! The lighting on the day of practical was also favourable for me to take some good pictures heh. Had dinner with Julie & Isabelle (exchange friends) that night and brought Mille Feuille along. Glad that the cake didn’t go to waste & that I got a stamp of approval from two Parisians

Really enjoying the Intermediate syllabus so far & very happy bout meeting new people.

Till the next post!

xx,
Eugenia

P.S. Pardon the slightly weird focus of my photos – still getting used to my new camera (Fujifilm XT-10, with 27mm pancake lens)

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