Lesson 15: Traditional Christmas Log Cake

Even though it is not christmas yet, our menu today is to make the traditional christmas log cake. This is also part of the meringue lessons that we have been doing for the past few practicals. Again, we are using the meringue sponge. This meringue has very little sugar and more egg white, so we had to be very careful not to over-beat the egg white as less sugar makes the meringue less stable.

The log cake basically consists of sponge being rolled up like a swiss roll with pastry cream in between (coffee pastry cream this time). The sponge is called viennese biscuits. I totally love it! And then we decorate the log cake with butter cream! We also moisten the sponge cake with imbibing syrup which is sugar syrup with rum. I think this does make a lot of difference (although it is just sugar syrup) as it keeps the cake moist and yummy!

This is definitely my favorite cake to date! Love how the sponge is so moist and not too sweet, and the butter cream (when cold) is really nice! However, Chef's comment on my butter cream was that it was in the brink of splitting, so I had to be careful to whisk the cream more or cool it down a bit more next time.

Chef Geraldine's Log Cake with real santa!

Li Lian's log cake with mushrooms and christmas tree!

Lesson 14: Dacquoius

Finally, we are done with choux pastry! Now comes a new phase, which is getting to know the meringue. We learnt about the Italian Meringue which is the 'hot meringue' and the french 'cool' meringue and the swiss meringue which is the toughest meringue of them all! Basically the difference in meringues is the ratio of egg whites and sugar. The higher the sugar content, the more stable the meringues are.

The first item we made was the dacquoius. When Chef Geraldine was making the sponge, I really couldn't imagine how by just using egg white, we can make sponges for cakes! Basically dacquoius is two pieces of sponge and in between that is the praline butter cream, which we have to pipe in. The tough part about this is, as it is our first time beating the meringue (by hand!), we have to make sure we put the sugar in three stages and in the right stage of the meringue. My meringue came out ok.. phew that was a relief! and i really love the soft and fluffy sponge! (Well I really did not know that egg white could make such soft sponges!) The cake was so yummy! When you bite into the sponge you can taste the cream and also the almond sticks inside. Totally Heavenly!

Dacquoius by Chef Geraldine

Dacquoius by Li Lian

Lesson 13: Chocolate Eclairs

This morning during demo class, we got a surprise from Chef Geraldine! She first asked if we were all familiar with making choux pastry already, and when most answered yes, she announced that the next practical will be our 'white exam'! White exam in Le Cordon Bleu is like a mock exam, to make us feel how the 'real' exam will be like. I would say all of us got a bit nervous though, even though we have all done the choux pastry for the past few practicals, it is still nerve wrecking!

For the white exam, the equipments were already prepared for us. However, they rearranged our position in class so that we will feel 'uncomfortable' with the new setting. Initially I was a bit nervous but after a while it was just like another practical class, except that everyone was so quietly doing their own eclairs instead of chatting or discussing what is the next step with each other. My eclairs, was, as you will see from the picture later, like a banana fritter! Or goring pisang because it was too big! The reason why my piping as so big was for the previous 2 choux pastry, i realized that my piping was too small, and so for this time I decided to make it bigger! So it turned out bigger than expected. We then pumped chocolate pastry cream (yummy yummy!) into the eclair and finally topped it up with chocolate fondant! I think the double dose of chocolate fondant and chocolate pastry cream was a bit too sweet though, would be just nice i think without the fondant. But of course the fondant makes it look nice and smooth on the surface.

Chocolate Eclairs by Chef Geraldine

Chocolate Eclairs by Li Lian

Lesson 12: Paris Brest

Guess what! We only had to make one thing for the practical class today! But of course the school is not gonna let us off so easily! What we had to make was Paris Brest! So here comes the history of Paris Brest. Chef Am, who replaced Chef Geraldine today as she was doing the advanced chocolate workshop, told us that this was to commemorate the cycling race from Paris to Brest in France every year. Hence, the shape of this pastry looks like the shape of a wheel.

This is also another shape of choux pastry and it is totally nerve-wrecking to do this! But am glad we all pulled it through though at the end. Firstly, we need to pipe the choux pastry on two separate circles. One was called the core of the circle, and the second was the Brest. What the Brest consisted of was three circles, one inside, one outside, and one on top and in between the two first circles. Sounds confusing isn't it! We were all pretty confused too until we really did it in practical class.

But one thing I liked about this pastry was the cream. As we added the praline, which is like a jam made out of grinding nuts and sugar after cooking them, it made the cream smell really nice!But Chef Am's comment was that I could have beaten the cream more so that it is lighter and more uniform piping.

Here is how the Paris Brest looks like! What a sigh of relief after finishing it! Some people who tasted it at my home said it tasted like ice cream! Panya gave a 7.0 for this. I didn't think he liked the cream that much.

Paris Brest by Chef Am

Paris Brest by Li Lian

Lesson 11 - Beard Papa aka Choux Pastries!

Finally! No more Puff Pastry! But we will be starting three lessons of choux pastry starting today, which is pretty exciting, as I am always wondering how they make the beard papa or bake a wish cream puffs. It is not that easy to make the choux pastry I would say, to ensure that it has the right consistency. We had to mix the dough, roast it and then slowly add in eggs to make it to a certain consistency.

We were all very very careful when making the choux pastry so that we do not add too much eggs else it will be too runny! My choux pastry itself came out ok, but the next trick is the piping! We had to draw circles on the baking paper and then pipe on them. We used the same mix for the choux chantilly, which is choux with cream in between, and for the smaller ones, we just piped it on smaller circles without cream but with almond and nib sugars.

Chef Guil commented that my choux pastry was a bit too small. And for the small ones, the sizes were not even. Really need to improve on the piping!! Hopefully there will be better piping for the next class!

Chefs Choux Chantilly

Smaller Choux by the Chef

Li Lian's Choux Pastry and Small Choux Pastries

Panya's rating for the Choux Pastry was 7.5 (thanks to the cream) and the smaller choux was 7.0!

Lesson 10: Mille-Feuille and Flan Pattisier

Finally, we have come to the final lesson of puff pastry! I think by this lesson I was a bit sick of puff pastry already and I totally did not eat the products that I made today! But am glad its over and we learnt all the foldings and whats nots! Chef said that next will be beard papa lessons! Or Choux Pastries! So am excited about that!

For this class, we first had to make the Flan, which what I think is like a giant portuguese egg tart! After that, we made the Mille-Feuille which was basically a sandwich of puff pastry with raspberry jam in between.

For the flan, the highlight was the pastry cream (the egg filling of the tart). We bake the tart base first, and then proceeded with the very hot pastry cream filling before baking it again together with the pastry cream. The important thing about this tart is that we have to fill the pastry cream when it is very very hot so that the pastry cream does not get hardened. For the tart base, we used the leftover puff pastry from the previous lesson. The tart was ok overall I would say, but the sides of the tart was not even. A big portion of the tart shrunk a lot during baking. Chef Am told us that this was ok as we did not have much time to let the tart base rest before baking, hence the shrinking.

Here is how my giant egg tart looks like in comparison to Chef Geraldine's! Giving me an inspiration to make traditional chinese egg tarts though, which i think i will like better than this one!

Flan by Chef Geraldine

Flan by Li Lian

Next, we moved on to do the Mille-Feuille which is what i call the sandwich puff pastry. The most tricky thing to doing this is cutting the Mille-Feuille into perfect 8 x 8 cm squares! I don't think I did a good job though as the crusts kept coming out when I was cutting this. Here are my not-so-perfect squares.

Mille-Feuille by Chef Geraldine (Perfect Squares)

Not so perfect Mille-Feuille by Li Lian

No ratings from Panya for this as I have distributed all of them before Panya got a chance to eat it! He did manage to eat a bit of the Mille-Feuille though, but I will skip the ratings for this round!

Lesson 9: Apple Turnovers

Finally it's Friday! So glad that today I only have one recipe sheet to bring in. And true enough, the class was quite relaxing. I had food poisoning two days back, so my tummy was still feeling a bit unstable. But good thing the class really took my mind off that!

So we had Chef Marc today finally! And the interesting thing about Chef Marc is he always suggests an alternative way of doing things from our demo chef Geraldine. He told us that it is good to learn two ways to do things! He is also as usual very particular about neatness and cleanliness, which i like.

Today we also didn't have to start another puff pastry, but just continuing with puff pastry that we did yesterday. We also had to cut out the shapes for the chaussons (or apple turnovers), which was a bit hard for my dough as it was very soft. But good thing it still came out ok! As usual, I wish it was curry inside! Think we have done too much apples already in this course!

Apple Turnovers by Chef Geraldine

Apple Turnover by Li Lian

Lesson 8: Palmiers and Puff Pastry Sandwich with Raspberry

For today, we used the puff pastry that we have prepared the day before to do the palters and puff pastry with raspberry (I forgot the french name for this). It was another tiring lesson as we had so many things to do! And this is the first lesson that we had to alter our practical workflow according to how our pastries are. Each pastry needs about 5 turns so if you have not done up to the third turn on this lesson, you will have to do more turns! So it was quite a frantic rush I would say, working non-stop for the whole three hours of practical class. We had Chef Geraldine today, which was very very good as I really learnt a lot from her. Remember I mentioned that my pastries were a bit non-rectangular? She taught us ways to 'fix' this and i think it looks so much better now! Although I still have to improve on the ways to incorporate the butter but i think it is getting better.

We also had to start a new puff pastry today, and using the 'french' method instead of the normal method to incorporate the butter. I was very very careful as I really want to make a nice pastry this time. And it is definitely a great improvement from the previous pastry.

For the pastry dough that we made in the previous lesson, we used it to do palters, or they call it butterflies. Those you can normally buy it in stores. Didn't know it is so hard to make! (If you start from making the dough). And because for palmiers and the puff pastry with raspberry jam, we need to trim off some parts of the pastry, I managed to trim off quite a bit of the bad parts of my pastry, and I would say, the pastry turned out quite well and even! So am quite happy with this lesson!

So after the lesson today, me and Aileen decided to talk to the student services about the number of people in the class, as we are feeling quite squeezy. Also, we heard that there were only 8 people in another Basic Pastry Group and less than 12 in other groups. Just wanted to raise our concern since this will be for the rest of the semester. The office's reply was that for the 8 people class, the class was small, and maximum that it can fit is 7 people but they squeezed in 8. For the rest, she said that the class size has been fixed as they need to order ingredients for different classes so they can't change us now. She also mentioned that the maximum the class can fit is 14, and we only have 13. Well, I guess if we wanted to keep talking we could raise concerns about how come they didn't put some people in classes with lesser people, but I personally thought it was quite pointless. So we just have to make do then and probably redistribute the position in the class a bit. But one thing I found out was that there are different standards, as in some people get to choose their classes and some didn't. Whoever paid in advance, they got to choose the class. And those that didn't pay before the dateline didn't get to choose. Something that I find can be improved as it has inconvenienced quite a lot of people. I was lucky to get to choose though. And it does look like the school is taking in a lot of students, probably up to the brim already. Well, I do hope that they will improve on this as they are raising the fees again and if students do not feel comfortable in the class the 'standard' of the school might drop.

For the butterflies, panya gave me a very high rating of 8.0! and 8.5 for the one with raspberry! I personally like this very much too!

Palmiers by Chef Geraldine

Palmiers by Li Lian

Puff with Raspberry by Chef Geraldine

Puff with Raspberry By Li Lian

Lesson 7: Croissants (Plain and Chocolate)

This week is the start of a very tough week! The tough rolling week! We are doing croissants and puff pastry and because we need to incorporate butter into the dough to 'moisten' the dough, or 'Detrempe' as the French call it, we need to do a lot of rolling and turning. So we already did the croissant dough the last week, so today was just to cut the right triangle sizes and then roll the croissants accordingly. And in between that, we have to start preparing two puff pastries for the next lessons. This means that we all do double portions of puff pastry dough and leave it for the next lessons.

Doing puff pastry was quite tough for me, as I have no idea why I can't roll it to perfect rectangles. So at the end my puff parties have an odd round shape on the top. Chef Am said it was ok so I just continued to do it. Let's see if those pastries turn out well. Was totally drained out after this class as we did so many rollings and turnings. Went back and slept right away!

And last week, our class size was increased from 12 to 13. And our new classmate's name was Khun Chef. Initially i thought that he was the teaching chef, but turns out his name is Chef! Which was funny. During practical class, we all stand along the marble tables and normally two people occupy one 'block' of marble. However, after an additional classmate, me, Aileen and chef had to share the same block, which was a bit squeeze for us. Even Sohny next to me was slightly affected as I crossed my border to use some of her space as well. A bit uncomfortable but nevertheless, we still managed to roll!

Panya only had the croissants the next day and he didn't like it as it was a bit hard he said. So rating was only 6.5. Chef Am mentioned that if we had more time for the croissants to proof it would be softer, so maybe I could try that at home!

Basket of Croissants by Chef Geraldine

Croissants by Li Lian

Lesson 6: Brioche and Croissants

We made the dough for the brioche during lesson 5 so that we can bake it for this lesson. We got to use a machine this time as the chef mentioned that it will be hard to knead this dough by hand. Brioche is really one of my favourite breads! And when Chef Geraldine made it the smell that came out from the kitchen was amazing! We also had to make croissant dough or we called it the 'detremp' - the dough and the 'tourage' which is to put butter into the dough.

My brioche was ok as we just have to roll the dough and put it in the mould. For the croissants dough, we had to knead the dough using machines, and then do the tourage (double-single-double folding - I am not sure if that's what it is called). Its like folding origami haha. But before the tourage, we have to incorporate the butter in. My problem came when I was trying to incorporate the butter in. When I rolled it out, the butter kind of oozed out a bit, which is no good! Chef Am mentioned that I didn't put enough flour during rolling which is why it became like that. After the folding, we cut the dough in the correct size and put it in the chiller and leave it for the next lesson. I hope my croissants will come out ok despite the glitch! Definitely a disappointing week, but still fun to be doing croissants and brioche.

For the brioche, we put in the mouselline cream, which is a mix of butter cream and pastry cream in between the brioche. Panya gave me 10 for the cream and 7.5 for the bread. He said the bread was a bit hard and dry though but he loved the cream so much! Must be the orange water in the cream!

Posting the photos for this another time as I forgot to put in my memory card and Aileen has my brioche photo. And this was a 'funny' class as at the end of the class, Sohny mentioned that we were all suppose to be in the class next door with Chef Marc instead of being in this class with Chef Am! No wonder! Because Chef Marc was suppose to attend to us this class and we get Chef Marc on Tuesdays! Well we will still get him next week I guess!

Brioche by Chef Geraldine

Brioche by Li Lian (Courtesy of Aileen!)

Lesson 5: Traditional French Apple Tart

So today's lesson was about tarts again. The difference between this tart and the fruit tart in Lesson 4 was that the the traditional apple tart has to be baked twice. Once with just the pastry and the second time with the apple filling. Today we had a new chef instructor, chef Guillame. I only knew later that he is the 'bakery' guru! And such a nice instructor he was! The nicest so far I would say.

We were suppose to roll out the pastry to for the apple tart. And I already sensed that something was not very right when I first rolled it out. My pastry cracked at the sides, and I still kept rolling it, and it still cracked! So I got a bit of help from the chef. He asked me to put my dough in the fridge for a while, and after that it was a bit better but still cracked. So this was the first mistake. The second was worse! We were suppose to put the dough on top of the tart ring, with the parchment paper below. And guess what! I forgot to put a parchment paper below! And was a bit panicky at that stage. Good thing chef came to the rescue again, and he helped me put the dough in the blast chiller, and later used a scraper to scrape the dough out. The dough broke a bit, but it was ok. Second mistake, checked!

Here comes the third one! We were suppose to press the sides of the dough with our fingers so that we can crimp the pastry later. So what I did was ok, but I didn't leave enough dough to crimp!!! So when the crimping was done, it looked quite bad! Felt a bit disappointed that day actually, but I guess I can do a bit of practice at home with this.

Chef's Apple Tart

Li Lian's Apple Tart

Panya gave a 6.5 for this apple tart. Chef said it turned out ok despite all the screw-ups I did! But if you do look closely, all the edges are not properly done! Definitely an item to practice this one!

Lesson 4: Fruit Tart

Last week was a very tiring week! Touched down from KL at about 10.30pm at night on Monday and had to go to school early on Tuesday. So was like a zombie almost the whole of last week and only updating my blog this week!

I can't really remember what we did in demo as I did not bring my file back, so I will just touch on the practical part of the class. Today, we used the dough (pate sucre) that we did before last week to make our fruit tart. We first bake the pastry and then fill it with yummy pastry cream before topping it with fruits which we scooped up with our parisian scoop. Like I mentioned before, Le Cordon Bleu has a very strict system. We had Chef Am today, and for some reason, the diverted slightly from the practical flow that our demo chef Geraldine mentioned. One of the important points mentioned was that we need to put the baking of the pastry as a priority as it takes quite a long time. So when Chef Geraldine walked in (she was supervising the class next door), she saw that we have not started baking yet. We were all doing stuff 'other' than baking! So she stopped all of us, and told us off basically, that if we do not follow the practical flow, no point coming to her class. And even though all the chefs guiding us are very qualified, they wouldn't know the flow because they have not attended her classes. So we all started to follow strictly to the flow. Definitely learnt our lesson here.

I was quite satisfied with my fruit tart, except for the glaze part. The glaze was lumpy and made the tart look pretty ugly! We also prepared the pastry for our apple tart the next day. When I prepared the apple tart pastry, i actually measured the butter wrongly, so I had to redo it again (too much butter!). Beginning of a very bad week for me I would say! More mistakes to come!

Fruit Tart (The perfect one by Chef Geraldine)

Fruit Tart (With some lumpy glaze by me)

Panya gave me a rating of 7. Even though it is lumpy, but the taste is still not too bad!

Lesson 3: International Flavour

Lesson 3 was interesting as we explored pastries that came from different countries and finally I am seeing something that is pretty common and that I am familiar with - Chocolates! During demo class, Chef Geraldine made Chocolate cookies, Chocolate Muffins, Brownies (Yums!), Baklava (Supposedly from Greece) and strudel. Finally, she also made the dough for a Pate Sucre, which will be used for our fruit tart later. I would say the highlight for me was the strudel. Chef said that the strudel was like a 'Giant Roti Canai' as they use pretty much the same kind of dough. But it was hard to make as you need to really make the pastry very very thin (needed four people to just stretch the dough). But the result was just delicious! Not only the pastry was thin and crunchy, but the apple filling as well. Smells so good and not too sweet, just nice!

For practical, we had to make the brownie first, followed by the muffin and the Pate Sucre dough. Today's chef was Chef Marc. I was a bit nervous before going into the class when I knew it was Chef Marc as he is one of the chefs coming from LCB France. True enough, he was very very strict! Tables must be neat and clean at ALL times, and he also helped us 'rearrange' our table if it is not up to standard. I did learn a thing or two though from Chef Marc, especially on how to minimize wastage when in the kitchen. The scraper (I am not sure if that is what it is called) or the dough cutter is our best friend so that we can scrape off whatever is left in the mixing bowl. However, on the second practical, I lost the scraper that came with the toolkit though, sighs. Good thing my classmate Yu Min had one extra so I am using his now. And yes, Chef Marc noticed that I was using a different scraper too!

This is the brownie and muffins that I made today. Chef's comment about my brownie was that the butter was slightly emulsified. This means that I will need the butter a bit lesser with the whisk. Muffins was ok. I tried the muffins after class and I thought it was not bad! Not too sweet and can taste the chocolate chips! As Panya is my most loyal food tester, he agreed that he will give me a rating every time he try my pastry. I will just start with this one then. For the muffin, he gave a rating of 8.5 for the muffin and 8 for the brownie. So far the best tasting out of the stuff that I made since Day 1 in LCB. Well everyone loves chocolate don't they!

My Brownie!

Chef's Demo Brownie

My Muffins

Chef's Muffins

I will be heading back for Chinese New Year today and back on Monday night! Short Chinese New Year holidays this time as I have classes on Tuesdays! Happy Chinese New Year!

Lesson 2: Christmas in January - Fruit Cake and Madeleines

Today's lesson was quite a handful! We were taught how to make things like Fruit Cake, Marble Pound Cake, Apple Strudel filling and dough, rum raisins, chocolate cookies (I think that's all!)

For practical lesson today we had first make the fruit cake, then bake the madeleine from the mixture that we have prepared the day before. You know those fruit cakes soaked with rum which they eat for christmas? I would say it is quite tough looking at Chef Geraldine's demonstration as there were a lot of steps required to make this fruit cake. And for today, I changed my note-taking strategy slightly by taking down every single detail (like which tool to use - spatula or whisks) as from the first practical I realized that I forgot a lot of things even though I thought I would remember. And the fact that they have a translator to translate what the chef said to thai, it gives me just enough time to take down proper notes.

Here is how my cake and madeleines look like! I was quite amazed that I was able to bake this (as I have never baked this before!) and quite happy with the results actually! Today's practical lesson was with our demo chef Chef Geraldine instead of yesterday's Chef Am. And I found that they have quite different styles. I would say that Chef Geraldine is stricter compared to Chef Am and changing from that class to this class, there were slightly different rules and regulations.

Li Lian's Fruit Cake and Madeleines!

Chef's Madeleines aka French 鸡蛋仔

Chef's Fruit Cake

The comment about my madeleines was that it was not of even sizes. Yeah I expected that as I didn't do my piping that well :o) but it was a good experience for me as I have not piped anything before! The fruit cake glaze was also lumpy and Chef's comment was that we had to add some water to the glaze and heat it up! Also we were told to be more organized and clean while making our pastry.

Another tiring but fulfilling day! Only two pieces of fruit cake and two madeleines left at home!

Le Cordon Bleu Dusit Basic Pastry Lesson 1

Today was the first day of the class. Indeed, as expected, the atmosphere in class was quite a serious one. Our pastry chef, Chef Geraldine Mueller started with just a little introduction of herself before spending about 40 minutes on the house rules at Le Cordon Bleu. We then moved on to make 4 types of pastry - The Diamonds, Shortbread Biscuits, Brittany Shortbread Biscuits and finally Madeleines. Will put the french name the next time I bring my file back. There are really too many things to carry to school so I thought I will just leave them in my locker.

In the afternoon it was the pastry practical class and we were asked to make the diamonds and the mixture for madeleines to be made tomorrow. I thought practical class was quite interesting. The instructor checked that we all have neat and clean uniforms with our hairs tied up properly. Our working area has to be neat and clean as well while making the pastries. Everything went well for me except that towards the end of the lesson, I cut my finger! It happened while I was helping my classmate William wash his knife. Like my brother said, I am really accident prone! Oh well the wound took a while to eventually stop bleeding and it is ok now.

For the Diamonds, I feel like it is lemon flavored butter cookies with sugar coatings. The toughest part about making this pastry has to be the rolling part. Every time I tried rolling it, the pastry became so thin in the middle. We did ask the chef if we can recombine the dough again if it becomes thin in the middle. He said yes we can put it in the fridge and take it out and redo. But since time is of the essence in practical we couldn't do that.

Here are my precious diamonds! Odd shaped! I think I would call it shortbread cookies.

This is what the Chef did

Orientation Day at Le Cordon Bleu Dusit

I have always wanted to start a blog since I came to Bangkok in September. But me being me, it didn't materialize until I watched the show New Year's Eve earlier last week. It was really a good wake-up call for me to go accomplish things that I have set out to do! So here I am, writing this blog. This blog will mainly be about my life here in Bangkok (Mostly food related of course!) and maybe some occasional traveling.

To start the blog off I will be writing about my course in Le Cordon Bleu Dusit. I signed up for the Basic Pastry Course and today was the orientation day. Here is how the school logo looks like and the teaching kitchen.

There were two separate orientations. One for the Thais and the other for the International students. There were 19 of us if I am not mistaken for International. And it was nice to meet another fellow Malaysian who came all the way here to learn in the school. Also met people from Bangkok, Taiwan, Brunei, South Africa, Philippines etc. Not sure about the rest as I did not have the chance to say hi to everyone.

We were given our welcome packs which consisted of the following:

1. Uniforms - Chef Jacket, Pants, Neck Scarf, Tea Towel, Hat and Apron. Thanks to my friend Maggie I managed to save some money buying the jacket and one apron! Too bad I couldn't wear her pants!

2. A set of tools with 48 tools including knives and other accessories. I don't have a picture of this now! Will post it later!

3. Course Notes/Menu - A file consisting of all the ingredients only! And no instructions! Guess we will have to write it all down during the class! No handphones allowed as well so its compulsory to write everything down!

Class only starts next Tuesday! Looking forward to it after 'resting' for so many months!