Cakes
Cakes Class, taught by Chef Jake Ference, CEPC. CCE
This has been quite an experience! Each cake we make teaches us certain techniques. We make everything from scratch, including our own ladyfingers, marzipan and fondant. When I made Tiramisu I said to myself, once is enough! As it turns out, that was one of the easiest cakes to make.
We are now working on our wedding cakes. American wedding cakes are made for children. They are a fluffy cake with butter cream frosting. The cake we are making has some body to it, like a pound cake or fruit cake. The cake is covered with marzipan and then fondant. It almost looks like a plastic mold when done. It generally has been flavored with a liquor. I selected a pound cake with fruit. The traditional English wedding cake is a fruit cake, yes, FRUIT CAKE, which has been soaked in bourbon and aged up to 1 year, certainly no less than a couple of months. Then comes the one quarter inch thick marzipan "crumb coat", and an icing. Our chef made such a cake for a friend of his. She wanted royal icing on the outside. Royal icing is what is often used for decorations like roses on an American wedding cake. It dries as hard as a rock. That is exactly what the bride wanted. She was delighted with the cake. The top of the cake of course cracked when sliced – great. They serve pieces that are about the size of a finger because it is so rich. While the bride was happy, the relatives thought the marzipan coat on the top of the cake was too thin. It should have been 1 inch thick!
Our chef is quite a character. He is charming and kind. When he critiques a cake with you it is more like a consultation with you on what you could do to make it better. His demos are facinating. Besides showing us technique we often hear the history of the cake and even some of the world history surrounding the we are to make. He likes to sing and nearly anything can make a song come to mind. Soaking a cake layer three times with cake syrup usually brings on "Once, twice, three times a lady". Most days I come home with the theme from Green Acers in my head. I would never want to play 'Name That Tune' with him. It sounds like he speaks several languages but claims to only speak English. French is the language of cooking so we are learning proper pronunciation for French and German cooking terms. Many times he will present some information and then say "Ya?", to which we are expected to respond with "Ya!". This reminds me of home. Growing up in the Scandinavian and German Russian country in North Dakota I always used "ya" instead of "yes". My eighth grade math teacher refused to accept that for an answer however. No one graduated from that school saying "ya", at least not to that teacher. So, now I am learning to say it again. :-)
When Chef sprinkles powdered sugar on the cakes for decoration he says it is snowing in the Alps. If he sprinkles cocoa powder on too he says "Now it is snowing in Pittsburg.".
The scope of making a cake in class is sometimes mind boggling. One Wednesday morning I was thinking of what to say about my day in class when I got home. That day I was cracking and separating 60 eggs to make an Opera Cake. We were working in teams so had doubled the recipe. Many recipes make 2 cakes to start with. We have 20 quart mixers, 12 quart mixers, and 8 quart mixers. We can bake about 50 cakes at a time in the various ovens to accomodate all 24 students.
This has been quite an experience! Each cake we make teaches us certain techniques. We make everything from scratch, including our own ladyfingers, marzipan and fondant. When I made Tiramisu I said to myself, once is enough! As it turns out, that was one of the easiest cakes to make.
We are now working on our wedding cakes. American wedding cakes are made for children. They are a fluffy cake with butter cream frosting. The cake we are making has some body to it, like a pound cake or fruit cake. The cake is covered with marzipan and then fondant. It almost looks like a plastic mold when done. It generally has been flavored with a liquor. I selected a pound cake with fruit. The traditional English wedding cake is a fruit cake, yes, FRUIT CAKE, which has been soaked in bourbon and aged up to 1 year, certainly no less than a couple of months. Then comes the one quarter inch thick marzipan "crumb coat", and an icing. Our chef made such a cake for a friend of his. She wanted royal icing on the outside. Royal icing is what is often used for decorations like roses on an American wedding cake. It dries as hard as a rock. That is exactly what the bride wanted. She was delighted with the cake. The top of the cake of course cracked when sliced – great. They serve pieces that are about the size of a finger because it is so rich. While the bride was happy, the relatives thought the marzipan coat on the top of the cake was too thin. It should have been 1 inch thick!
Our chef is quite a character. He is charming and kind. When he critiques a cake with you it is more like a consultation with you on what you could do to make it better. His demos are facinating. Besides showing us technique we often hear the history of the cake and even some of the world history surrounding the we are to make. He likes to sing and nearly anything can make a song come to mind. Soaking a cake layer three times with cake syrup usually brings on "Once, twice, three times a lady". Most days I come home with the theme from Green Acers in my head. I would never want to play 'Name That Tune' with him. It sounds like he speaks several languages but claims to only speak English. French is the language of cooking so we are learning proper pronunciation for French and German cooking terms. Many times he will present some information and then say "Ya?", to which we are expected to respond with "Ya!". This reminds me of home. Growing up in the Scandinavian and German Russian country in North Dakota I always used "ya" instead of "yes". My eighth grade math teacher refused to accept that for an answer however. No one graduated from that school saying "ya", at least not to that teacher. So, now I am learning to say it again. :-)
When Chef sprinkles powdered sugar on the cakes for decoration he says it is snowing in the Alps. If he sprinkles cocoa powder on too he says "Now it is snowing in Pittsburg.".
The scope of making a cake in class is sometimes mind boggling. One Wednesday morning I was thinking of what to say about my day in class when I got home. That day I was cracking and separating 60 eggs to make an Opera Cake. We were working in teams so had doubled the recipe. Many recipes make 2 cakes to start with. We have 20 quart mixers, 12 quart mixers, and 8 quart mixers. We can bake about 50 cakes at a time in the various ovens to accomodate all 24 students.
We learn terms like Baine-Marie (water bath), Bisquit a cuillere (lady fingers), and Miece en Place (everything ready before you start). I did not know until class that there are 5 different types of butter cream, American, French, Swiss, Italian, and German. We have no written tests, only competencies. We do not get graded on all of the cakes. Some are just for experience. Did you know that pound cake got its name because it has a pound of sugar, a pound of butter, and a pound of flour in it? I never made a pound cake before this class because I could not bear to put that much butter in a cake.
We have cooking rules. Tom's favorite one is "Kill no one, use pasteurized eggs and cream". My favorite is "Decorate to hide mistakes.".
posted by Eunice @ 11:29 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home