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 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 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

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