All about Shrinkage, and the Meringue got left out.

After deciding that I've procrastinated for way too long (a week to be exact), I thought it was about time I started exam prep-ing. One of the exam topics will be on the deceptively simple Tarte au Citron. Why Deceptively Simple? Because everything can go wrong, right from stage 1- the dough.

Shrinkage of the dough is every pastry chef's greatest nightmare (or at least mine). I was fixated on not overworking the dough, letting the dough rest amply before doing anything to it and letting it come out of the oven when it cried out for me. The tart was possibly the best I've done to date, with little shrinkage. So yay me!

The second part wasn't as daunting of course, but there's the potential risk of curdling your curd- as strange as that sounds. I didn't think I did too badly for this bit as well.

BUT. Lusting after the perfect tart, when really I have only been two-thirds successful, I neglected my Meringue. Ah, the Meringue in my Lemon Meringue Tart got smooshed. It looks great here, but really, I added the sugar in too quickly :( and perhaps the sugar wasn't ready as well. Also, biggest boo boo was not covering the tart in its entirety, so you can still see yellow bits.

So there, Cherylina really needs to keep her head on her shoulders and not forget the 33.33333% chance of failure.

Big lessons to learn. and hopefully Round 2 Tarte au Citron will yield one for the win :D

How to be a Good Neighbour (When you have too many cakes)

It's official, the team of eaters has disbanded for various reasons (home, diet, whatnots) and zero credit on my phone has severely disconnected me from the rest of the world (limiting my ability to invite people over)

So this leaves me with several options:
(a) Eat up everything - which will probably give my mom nightmares about the ball rolling towards her when I land at Changi.

(b) Give larger portions to my only loyal member in the team - which will probably scare her mom when she finds out what I've been passing to her daughter.

(c) Give to ex-colleagues- Probably the best solution- but an hour walk away in the London rain didn't sound as appealing as curling up with a hot bowl of soup (not cake).

Hence, given my extreme sloth-like inertia to venture out of the building, I had to find a way to split cake. With the Charlotte au chocolat and the Charlotte aux Cassis staring back at me when I got home, I half regreted not distributing it to the gazillion people staring at me (and my transparent cake box) on my way home.

Next best solution: NEIGHBOURS! Cue How to be a Good Neighbour Lesson 101 for a win-win situation. I wouldn't have to leave the building and mom will not get nightmares, tres bien!

Thé Vert Genoise à la Confiture de Marron

An update on one of the potentials for the big day in 2 weeks :) The birthday girl wanted her green tea - something cake, while I needed practice, so voila! I tweaked the recipe a little and altered the classic genoise to a green tea base sandwiched with buttercream and a layer of chestnut creme.

My masking and coating could do with a little more practice. I had the shakes halfway (trying to whip up genoise with a small whisk instead of the balloon was crazy!) so piping's still (very) much to be desired. But I was pretty pleased with the overall result, texture and taste :D Oh and everyone's telling me to bake wedding cakes.

En route to a career plan change?

The Last Day of What We Call Summer

The new chef today said something that made a lot of sense: Pastry is a luxury. We don't need to survive- we need meat, vegetables and carbohydrates to survive. We don't need sugar. So, because Pastry is a gift, we have to make it look the best we can. Yet, looks are worth nothing if the cake itself tastes bad-- and no one can forgive a cake that tastes awful, despite the successful prettification it has undergone.

Doesn't that make sense? Yes, for sure my cake deco skills can be much improved, but at least I can seek consolation in the fact that the basics that I've learnt on my escapade at LCB will be something that I'll keep with me for life. As long as the ingredients are chosen carefully, reproduction of it will not be as daunting. Cake deco comes with practice, and practice I shall :)

We made Genoise a la Confiture de Framboises and Gateau Foret Noire yesterday. While I was completely disappointed with my medusa resembling vines on the cake, making the Foret Noire was quite enjoyable for me. Only thing was that the cherries were completely mascerated in some really potent alcohol that I'm pretty sure eating a few during the class itself would have rendered me incapable of weighing and measuring anything.

I know the pictures completely don't do the cakes any justice, but it was a quick shot in school before the next class came in for their practical. My cakes didn't really survive the trip home and I blame all 30 degrees of London's blazing heat (hence, no chance for phototaking no.2).

Before Day-Break

If London were personified, she'd be an enigma. I've always thought I knew London, but the London I know never fails to amaze me. Right smack in the middle of the city, sandwiched between amazing partying hotspots and the financial district is the wholesale Smithfields Meat Market. Isn't that the last place you'd expect to find a market, let alone a wholesale meat market?

Well, at the serviced apartments where I was working at, I was asked where the market was on two separate occasions. I've heard of friends going really early in the morning (because like all wholesale markets they open at insanely early hours and close by 8/9am) just to get fresh eggs and ginormous cuts of meat. Interested as I was then, the small voice in my head nagged at me to not be silly because nothing was worth me getting out of bed at 4am in the morning.

Yet, these two guests piqued my interest! Seriously, if tourists bother to make it one of the must-do activities here in London- where we are famous for so many other things and certainly not our meat, then surely I'd have to make a trip there!

So, me and shun dragged ourselves out of bed at 5 to get there and we were definitely not disappointed :) I haven't placed any pictures up because the sight of the many many carcasses weren't exactly very appetizing and could be slighly offensive. But woah, we got 2 racks of ribs (all 1.8 kilos of it) for a fiver. YES. A FIVER. 'Twas totally worth leaving the warm comfort of my bed that early in the morning.

I really want to kill that little voice in my head.

Off Duty Chefs

Living for food, living to create wonderful dishes for friends, and living to share that joy with friends. That was what connected us from the beginning and transcended from our weekly Tuesday dinners at nouveau restaurants into my living room.

Pitch was at the helm tonight, cooking dish after dish so effortlessly, flipping and tossing the pan's spicy, fish-sauced contents. Dessert was done by SH - the Korean Ho Duk! With its intriguing textures and flavours all coming together in a bite, eating it became addictive after a while.

So with the venue for our weekly gathering fixed at my place for at least the next couple of weeks, I'll say this is probably going to be one more thing I'm going to miss badly once I get home.

New found friendships, and home-cooked food in our home away from home. What's not to like?

Folie dans la Cuisine

We got a new chef today. And boy o boy, for once, I wished it was Chef Graeme's reassuring face we would be seeing.

Our practicals are 2.5h sessions with assessments at the end of it. Usually, our chef would be on hand to assist. Today, ours just looked and rushed us. We were thrown into the deep end and forced to swim. Well, that wouldn't have been too bad, apart from the fact that we had to make 3 different things.

Not two like the usual, not two like what the other classes did. Why? Because he didn't know and a classmate thought we were doing it.

And yea, maybe 3 things in 2.5hours isn't life threatening, but nothing was going my way. Nothing. The kitchen staff under prepared ingredients, and I had to run up and down 3 flights of stairs twice to get the stuff.

Yes I gym, but all that running takes TIME. and time was ticking away.


















































The only consolation perhaps was that the Madeleines, Pain Gene AND Lemon Cake turned out fine. But because we didn't have time to make the glacage, our lemon cake went sans glacage.

It was mad mad mad in the kitchen and that was only first half. Only one finished all 3 and the rest of us probably got terrible grades for that class. :( Hoping to score more points in the second half, we stayed in the kitchen during lunch to go through the recipes and processes. And, surprisingly, despite it being probably the most difficult to date, my Alhambra turned out quite well :):) [and my apron was decently white at the end of it! whoop!]

I do need to work on my horrible writing though.

But, we've never been more relieved that our Wednesday has came and gone.

The (School)made Puff Pastry and the Giant Scone

For some strange reason, I felt like supergirl today :) I was moving at top speed, weighing, mixing, and even my knife felt like a superhero gadget! Cutting fruits never seemed faster (and easier!)

We made more members of the puff pastry family today, with the puff pastry that we made from scratch. Mind you, all that violence in molding our butter, all that repeated rolling and turning of course resulted in the end product that was far from what you'd get in your friendly neighbourhood supermarket. Call it psychological but it really did taste a lot better!

Palmiers and the Bande were the order of the day and while Chef said that my Palmiers were a tad big, everything turned out pretty nicely :) But aren't Palmiers supposed to be nice and big anyway?





















Part 2 of Wednesday was spent on Bread 101. Seriously, who needs anger management therapy when you can knead (pulverise), throw (whack) and punch your dough! Plus, you get to eat the product of violence! Tell me just how often and under what circumstances can violence be this delicious?

The white rolls turned out much better than our little adventure earlier this week while the Soda Bread we made looked like a x10 version of a scone!! Even its texture too was kinda crumbly like my all time favourite :)

Thank goodness I managed to divide and pack everything to my team of eaters (which has dwindled to a very sad 4). Eating these sweet/savoury treats can get addictive.

And Superheroes can't have such a diet, can they?

East Meets West: Tarte Bordaloue and Kaya Buns!

It was one of those days really, where the baking craze kicked in and I really had to make everything and anything. Egged on by my schoolmate KP, the two of us decided to bake the Tarte Bordaloue that looked so yummy (but we couldn't make during practicals) and filled buns!

And since we will have to present a marzipan rose in a few weeks, the ever thoughtful KP bought marzipan so the two of us could practice. Voila! not bad for a first attempt, non? The tart came out perfect, so we were very pleased :)

On top of our diet-busting tart, we decided to put our new knowledge on bread to good use. So in came the bottle of Kaya and Sun dried tomatoes- the sweet and the savoury. I was being really annoying, insisting on making more Kaya buns but hey! its been a year since I had Kaya, so be nice :D Our creative shapes turned out.. strange, but the loaf ones came out nice and fluffy. Double Yay! Can't wait to go back and bake bread for gramps.