Fun with fondant

Today I learned why fondant is usually very thick. "Thick" meaning at least 1/8 inch, sometimes as much as 1/2 inch. If you ask me, any fondant on a cake is too much, but that's beside the point.

You make fondant by mixing together shortening, glycerin, gelatin, and a shitload of powdered sugar. Sounds yummy right? Then you roll it out. Then you lay it over the cake and smooth it out. The problem is that the thinner it is, the more difficult it is to work with. If it's less than about 1/8 inch, it rips and wrinkles all over.

Today we practiced rolling out fondant and covering a dummy styrofoam cake. When I rolled the fondant out to less than 1/8 inch, it was impossible. It ripped apart in several places, and it's easier to roll the whole thing out again than to fix the rips. When I rolled it out to more like 1/4 inch, it was easy.

Tomorrow we finish assembling the delicious three-tiered, fondant covered styrofoam "cake." Then we'll attach our purty gum paste flowers on it somehow.

5 things you will never see in my restaurant/bakery/pastry shop/whatever

#1: Whipped cream on sorbet

This is a crime. The whole point of a sorbet is the fruit or whatever flavor is the main component of the sorbet. The only thing whipped cream can possibly do is cover up that flavor.

#2: Fondant

Hey, I've got an idea! Let's spend a lot of time and effort making a really nice layer cake. Then, let's cover it with a 1/4 inch thick shell of vapid flavorless sugar paste that will make people gag when they put it in their mouth and totally ruin their entire cake-eating experience!

Shockingly, there are people who say they like fondant. These people will try to tell you that there's good fondant and bad fondant. These people are idiots. There is no good fondant. There is horrible fondant, and slightly less horrible fondant.

#3: Inedible Garnishes

Here is a picture of a plated dessert. It's roasted pineapple with pineapple sorbet and pineapple chips. It tastes good, but suffers from a huge presentation fail.

Yes, those are pineapple leaves. Inedible. You will need to pluck them off the plate. And yes, that's a WHOLE VANILLA BEAN. What exactly is the person who ordered this supposed to do with a whole vanilla bean? If it were me, I guess I'd stick it in my pocket and take it home.

#4: Baked Meringue

Never have I been eating something and thought to myself "you know what, this would be better if it had some chalky flavorless whipped egg whites on it." I'm not talking about all meringues here. Italian meringue has some legit applications. Baked French meringue is similar to fondant in that it instantly ruins anything you put it on.

#5 Piped Cake Decorations

You might have the impression that cake decorating requires great artistic ability. This is true for some modern specialty cake decorators. But the vast majority of cakes do not require artisitic ability. In fact, they don't require any thought either.

The only things they require are a star tip and a KitchenAid bowl full of white shit (whipped cream, meringue, buttercream, etc.). Plus maybe some food coloring. Just squirt the shit out onto the cake and you can be sure some old geezer rube will come along thinking it looks purty and buy it.

Piping with a star tip is for pastry chefs who are devoid of artistic ability.

Exam week #2

Exam weeks generally make me angry. I know that I'm not going to be learning anything, so it's a waste of time and money to begin with. On top of that, if I'm confident I can make all the products perfectly, the only way I could feel is disappointed if they don't come out perfectly.

Usually we have two practice days before the three exam days. But this time, on monday we were forced to watch a 6 hour gum paste flower demo. It was every bit as boring as I thought it would be. It might have been better if we were actually making the flowers and practicing the techniques. But no, we just sat there in hard plastic chairs and watched chef Lodge make little flowers all day. I actually fell asleep for about 10 seconds, and then sprang up when I almost fell over onto the lap of the dude sitting next to me. Wedding cakes are not my thing. To add insult to injury, chef Lodge used the demo as a way to repeatedly make an aggressive sales pitch for his line of instructional DVDs, tools, and equipment for making wedding cake decorations. He was like an older, gay British version of Ron Popeil.

Tuesday was practice day for exams. I spent the entire day making chocolate candy shells. The techniques chef Sebastian taught us during chocolate candy class don't work very well. I followed his instructions exactly three times during chocolate candy class and the shells would never be good enough to sell in a chocolate shop. So I bought Peter Greweling's book and followed his directions for making shells.

There were three things Greweling says you must do, which chef Sebastian said didn't matter or didn't say anything about:

1) You should flip the mold over and keep it elevated after pouring out the chocolate. If you don't, the chocolate will collect at the bottom of the mold (the top of the shells) causing the tops of the shells to be too thick, and the sides too thin.

2) Warm the mold to 25-30*C before pouring chocolate into it. If the mold is significantly colder than the chocolate, the chocolate won't set evenly.

On tuesday, I made 4 molds full of shells, tempering my own chocolate each time, and they all came out perfect. I didn't fill the shells with anything and make actual candies, I just unmolded them after they set.

On thursday during the exam, I forgot about the third thing Greweling says, which is to warm up and soften the filled shells with a hair dryer or heat gun before capping them. This helps the newly poured layer adhere to the sides of shells. Since I didn't do that, some of my shells cracked and separated on the seam between the bottom and sides.

I also think I poured out the chocolate too early when making the shells. The tops were a little too thin. They cracked or shattered in a few places, and some of them were impossible to unmold. I might still get a decent grade on them though, because the chefs here seem to have rather low standads for chocolate shells.

The other products for this exam were a lemon curd tart with sweet dough crust, and simplified versions of the sugar and chocolate showpieces we made in each showpiece class.

The lemon curd tasted like ass, I have no idea why. The showpieces I don't really care about, I just did them as fast as possible.

The next two weeks are cakes with chef Dimitri. There's 6 cake recipes in the textbook. I'm allergic to 4 of them.