Not only have we had our business plans to complete & hand in, we've also had our Flour Confectionery assessments to tackle!
Well, the business plan's done, handed in, not exactly happy with it, but it'll do for now... And at least it's over now! =)
The Flour confectionery assessments done with too. That happened on Thursday, & it was such a long day! 8 hours, pretty much non stop. Lunch was provided at the usual time, but I was in the second group, which started at 11am, so I didn't really want to stop an hour in to eat...
Mostly it went alright; I was pleased with how the lemon meringue pie came out, although I do wish I'd put more meringue on top... Last time we made them in class, the meringue expanded all over the place & it looked rather crazy, so I was more sparing with it this time round, & of course it didn't expand... =/
The muffins came out looking fine & dandy, & I was really pleased with my madeleines & the ginger/chocolate tartlets =)
However, I *HATE* choux pastry! I've made this recipe half a dozen times, & aside from a few timing issues, it had always come out nice. It rose, coloured well, it was lovely. Except on Thursday, when it point blank refused to rise... So I had nicely coloured, rather flat eclairs... Which was a shame, but once they'd been pumped full of creme patissiere & coated in chocolate ganache, they looked alright =)
This was my display =) Looked alright in the end!
So that's all done with now, one less thing to stress about =)
The week before the assessment, we looked at viennoiserie with Mickael Jahan. Viennoiserie is the name for all lovely tasty laminated dough goods, like croissants, pain au chocolates, that sort of thing.
We made plenty of brioche too, so not a good week for those trying to watch their weight!
These were baguette viennoise! A soft sweet brioche type bread, shaped like a baguette but scored a much greater number of times.
These were brioche with roasted hazelnuts in the dough, & a bundle of caramelised apples hidden in the centre! So delicious! =D
Oh, & these were amazing! Little bits of orange brioche, deep fried & tossed in caster sugar =D Light, fluffy, so full of flavour, like little donuts of heaven!
And here's a selection of our laminated doughs =)
So it's been fairly full on, & it's all coming to an end rather rapidly. We've only got one more week at School, then four weeks on our last placements, then back to School for the last two weeks, including our final bakery assessments!
This last week is a freestyle week, so I think I'm going to use it to practise recipes for the final assessment; perfect my brioche recipe & decide how I want to scale & shape it. In the past I've scaled it at 80g & made it into buns, but I have to use a flour weight of 3kg for the final assessment, & the total dough weight I'd end up with would mean I have over 100 buns!! Probably not the best plan for the assessment =)
So that's that. I should be able to blog more regularly from here on in; we've got one more essay to hand in at the end of the week, but that shouldn't take too long to get sorted =)
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