becky
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We’ve arrived at week six: Gâteau St. Honoré, madelines, gâteau marbré, and the classic genoise sponge. It’s incredibly hard to believe that a month from now we’ll be heading into final exams for our basic certificate, but here we are!
Gâteau St. Honoré
This week was another busy one. We started off with a rare night class, where we made the Gâteau St. Honoré we’d watched the chef make in the demo on Saturday. I think this is one of my favorite dishes so far. Not so much in terms of taste, really, but in presentation. It combines lots of different techniques: choux pastry, shortcrust pastry, pastry cream, and decorative piping. (We got to try out the St. Honoré tip.) I was really happy with how my cake turned out:
Gâteau de Base
Following another product identification class (this one focused on dairy, fats, and oils) we headed back to the demo kitchen to learn the gâteau de base, kicking off our unit on classic French pâtisserie cakes. The chef demonstrated a gâteau marbre (marble cake) with oranges. Then, we learned how to make madeleines.
I really enjoyed this lesson, and was happy with my overall performance in the practical. I finished ahead of time and with pretty good results. Definitely still need some practice with the citrus peel julienne (chef said my orange pieces were a little too wide and not quite uniform enough) and I learned not to let my madeleines rest on the cooling rack (some of mine ended up with dents in the tops) but otherwise things went okay. Plus, the cake tasted really good–taste-wise, I think it’s my new favorite thing we’ve made in class:
Génoise Sponge Cake
For our final demo of the week, we spent Saturday morning watching the chef make a génoise à la confiture de framboise. A.K.A. génoise sponge cake with raspberry jam. Chef also demonstrated a génoise à la roulade (sponge roll). Here are the chef’s demo dishes:
Student Social Night
One other fun thing that happened this week was our first student social night. This was a fun evening event featuring various chefs from the school, superior-level students, and outside food and beverage vendors. There were lots of demonstrations and plenty of things to taste! I enjoyed several nice wines and cheeses. I also had a delicious asparagus-puff pastry roll, and a chocolate mousse with passion fruit made by students in the culinary management program. But the boulangerie display was the real star of the show:
Palmiers
Outside of class, I had fun practicing the puff pastry palmier cookies we’d learned to make in a demonstration the previous week. I made the classic variety, as well as a chocolate version. These were incredibly tasty, and I can’t wait to make them again:
Now on to week seven: more pâtisserie cakes, boulangerie, and the much-anticipated wine lecture!
Missed last week’s recap? Read about week five here.
About Rebecca:
Rebecca earned the Diplôme de Pâtisserie from Le Cordon Bleu London in 2020. She kept this detailed diary as a record of her journey, and as a way to help others decide if pastry school might be the right choice for them. Rebecca also holds an MSc in Culinary Innovation from Le Cordon Bleu and Birkbeck, University of London, and a Professional Chocolatier’s Certificate from Ecole Chocolate. She currently works as a recipe developer, food stylist, food photographer, writer, and pastry chef. Feel free to make one of her original recipes, or to follow her on Instagram @bastecutfold for more baking and pastry inspiration!
