Sweet Tooth Journals

Peter Gilmore's Eight Texture Cake Had an extremely tiring morning in the Patisserie Practical Class today. Well for obvious reasons. Considering my classmate Sukanya and I took up the task of recreating Peter Gilmore's Eight Texture Cake. Yes. That dreadfully complicated and sort of dramatic dessert we all saw on Master Chef Australia. Let's just say it is not that easy to keep your head when you have to make eight different and complicated desserts elements in less than 5 hours. We had to make a Cake Base, Chocolate Mousse, Chocolate Hazelnut Dacquoise, Chocolate Caramel Vanilla Ganache, Chocolate Caramel Cream Milk Chocolate Praline Disc, Dark Chocolate Disc and Hot Chocolate Sauce.  Well we slogged, panicked, rushed and almost gave up, but with a lot of help from all our other classmates and by the strength of our wills we got through the preparation day. We did not finish all 8 elements, but the 6 most time consuming ones are done. Both the chocolate di

Wife Cake Husband Cake Good morning!! It is a really rainy and dark day in Manipal today. Wanted to sleep in but compulsion got the better of me and now I’m sitting in class. This semester we are doing Asian Cuisine and currently we are involved with China. Needless to say I’ve been cooking and eating a lot of Chinese food of late. The desserts in the menu are however extremely few and far between.  So I did a bit of research. Now the Chinese aren’t people with the biggest sweet tooth in the world but the sweets they eat are really VERY sweet. The main components of Chinese desserts are glutinous rice, dry fruits, honey, wheat flour, agar agar, sweet bean pastes and eggs. While the wheat flour sweets such as Darshan, Bing, Moon Cake and Sun Cake are fried or baked, the sweets made using glutinous rice such as Nian Gao, Red Tortoise Cake (Ang Ku Kueh) and Tangyuan are usually steamed. The Chinese also consume a variety of sweet hot soups known as Tong Sui as a dessert.

I know I haven't posted in a very long time. In my defence I was down with fever, my internet connection was acting up and a hundred other problems. Excuses aside, I am now back with a post. This time it is about Creme Patisserie.  Creme Patisserie, Confectioner's Custard, Pastry Cream or Creme Pat, whatever you may know it as, is an indispensable ingredient if you are a baker. Creme Patisserie originated in bakeries in France and has now become an essential ingredient for any pastry products, be it Tarts, Danish Pastries, Éclairs, Cream Rolls, Pastries, Puddings or Pies. It can also be used as a filling or sauce. Creme Patisserie is a type of custard made with milk, egg yolks, sugar and flour. Vanilla is traditionally used as a flavouring agent. Crème Patisserie is cooked over a double boiler at about 80 o C. So I was making Creme Pat for my practical class a couple of days ago and I thought this would be a good topic because most people are too scared to make this si

Since my previous post was about laminated yeasted products we made in our patisserie class, I thought this post should be about the world’s most popular laminated yeasted product: the Croissant. The croissant is a buttery and flaky bread roll with a unique shape which is described by some as a ‘crescent moon’ and by some as a ‘crab’. An earlier variant of the croissant, the ‘Kipferl’, developed around the 13 th century in Austria.  The story goes that in 1683, the Ottoman Turks invaded Vienna, Austria. They lay seize outside the city for a few weeks and then decided to get inside the city by digging a tunnel underground. They started digging the tunnel around night time and continued till before dawn. It is said that the Viennese bakers were the only ones awake at such unearthly hours of the morning as they were preparing breads for the next morning. The bakers heard the Turks digging under the city and alerted the military. The Viennese military collapsed the tunnel and defea

We had our advanced patisserie practical class today. The topic for this class was Croissant, Danish Pastries, Brioche and Doughnuts. So these are some of the products we spend the whole morning making. We made a few more as well but I can't seem to find the pictures. Shall post the remaining as soon as I can. I tried adding these into a separate photograph gallery on my blog, but failed miserably, being the tech-impaired little girl that I am. (-.-) I would be really glad if someone would help me work out how to do that. Plus any comments or questions about these photographs are most welcome as well.  Goodnight. :)  Danish Pastry Envelopes  Croissants Almond Croissants Pain au Chocolat Bear's Paw Apple and Litchi Danish Pastry Sugar Doughnuts Doughnut Fruit Burger Long Johns Cock's Combs Assorted Doughnuts The Entire Spread

My first post about an actual food and I choose to talk about the ‘ Financiére ’. The financiére is a small French cake. It is quite simply a light and moist sponge cake with a crispy crust. While the financier does not get much prominence in recipe books, it is quite popular in good patisseries in France. ‘Visitandines’ have been made in French bakeries for many years. They were made in muffin moulds or any small mould. The visitandine was meant to be a finger food and was popular in the area near the Paris Stock Exchange. The bankers and stock brokers would want food which could be eaten quickly and without getting their hand dirty and therefore this cake became popular. However it was only in 1890 that French Pastry Chef Lasne came up with the idea of baking the cakes in small rectangular moulds, so that they resembled gold bars. The time, place and audience was right and the financiére was born. Financiére are made using egg whites, flour and powdered sugar, like an

I didn't think I'd be blogging again so soon but I forgot to mention something important.  Aside from desserts, you'll also be reading a bit about books, poetry, movies and alcohols. This post isn't however just a 'oops I forgot to mention' post. I would like to pay tribute to one of my favourite poets, who passed away yesterday. Seamus Heaney.  I first came across Heaney in my final year of school, in my Literature in English class. He was one of the last listed 20th century poet in that collection of poetry and the moment I read 'Punishment', I was in love. The emotions Heaney evoked in me were unmatched. The beautiful arrangement of words and most importantly the honesty with which he wrote was awe-inducing. His poems  'At a Potato Digging' and 'Follower'  took me to Irish fields while 'Casuality' and 'Punishment' sent shivers down my spine. In conclusion I would like to say that Heaney may have been a Nobel Laureat

Hello fellow bloggers and blog-readers. I am Priyanjana. I was born and brought up in Kolkata, India. Currently I am in my second year of college, studying Culinary Arts in Karnataka, India. Why choose a career in a globally-accepted male dominated field? Well...I don't want to prove that women can cook. Neither have I chosen to do this to break the 'the best chefs are male' notion. I simply chose do this because I love desserts. Be it cakes, mousses, cookies, tarts, puddings and muffins or sandesh, rosogolla, gulab jamun, barfi, mishti doi, jalebi and rabri, anything sweet makes me happy. :) So this is an aspiring pastry chef's very first blog post from her hostel room on the second floor.   I have been wanting to start my own blog for a long time, but never really got the push to actually go ahead and create one. So, a class assignment on 'creating your own blog' and a day's thought later, here I am.  I spent the last two hours going through a hundred