Strawberry Mousse Cake

In class last week we made Genoise cakes in the egg-levening segment and refrigerated them to use this week with the mousses.

Using gelatin to make a stable Pate a Bombe mouse with strawberry puree, we filled the top of the cake, held together with cellophane and refrigerated it until it hardened a little.

It looks SO cute, and tasted great! Light and fluffy like a strawberry short cake .

Happy Valentine's Day

It's been a while, but wanted to share these chocolate strawberries I made! I bought huge organic strawberries from Whole Foods and dipped them in 65% dark Cordillera chocolate, some are topped with toffee.  Happy cheat day!! 

Pastry Class: Cakes

On my last day of Pastry Class we made two different cakes and learned some very basic decorating techniques.  I am so sad this series is over, and even more sad that I have to wait for Pro Pastry 2 to be on a Sunday again.  In the meantime, I'm really excited about trying new recipes from the CIA book we were given in class. 

This is a Hot Milk Cake adapted from the Miette book.  It's a pretty standard white cake, but using a cup of milk allows the very wet batter to create a spongy cake.

We baked two cakes, trimmed town the tops and layered them with Italian (egg white meringue) Buttercream.  I made two flavors: Strawberry for the center and Almond for the Icing. While I did love how this turned out, I think I prefer regular buttercream to Italian, this was a little over the top, even for me.

I used these heart shaped sprinkles to cover up and imperfections in my side frosting job.  That was not easy!  One trick I learned was to coat the cake in a very thin layer of frosting first and stick it in the fridge to harden.  This will allow the rest of the frosting you put on to spread around more evenly. 

We also made a Chocolate Decedent cake that was pretty amazing.  We practiced slicing the cake in half here, look how well  I did! 

I used a basic dark chocolate ganache as a frosting, which I layered on thick.

It turned out really well.  I could put this ganache on everything. 

For More Recipes and Information Check Out The Gourmandise School 

Valentine's Day at La Provence

As usual, La Provence has whipped up the most adorable sweet treats for Valentine's Day! The chocolate heart cake is still my favortie dessert they've ever made. It's dense, it's rich, it's perfect.

Mezze's Donut Holes

These desserts from Mezze were both terrific. The strawberries and cream was a great match to these sticky doughy donut holes.


They were filled with an apricot glaze that oozed out of these bit sized treats! They're great, but not a regular item on the menu, so make sure to ask to hear the dessert specials of the day!

More Homemade Cake Pops

For a friend's birthday I decided to make some more cake pops, and used this opportunity to try new flavors. I chose Strawberry and Mint Chocolate, both were terrific! These flavors are great alternatives to the usual Vanilla and Chocolate.

For one I used Strawberry cake mix, with Strawberry icing, and a Vanilla candy shell. For the other I used a Dark Chocolate cake mix, Dark Chocolate icing, added Peppermint flavoring to the batter, and used a Mint Chocolate candy shell.

To see full Cake Pop baking instructions, click HERE

Beard Papa's Cream Puff

I've seen Beard Papa's locations around NY and LA but never tried it until recently. It was super sweet, but I liked it much more than I thought I would!


I tried the strawberry, luckily with a fork and knife, because the puff was stuffed with strawberry filling. It was so messy! I'm not sure this is the kind of pastry I would pick up often, but I'm very curious about their other flavors like coffee or pumpkin.

Lavo

After eating a metric ton worth of pasta and kobe beef at Lavo, the amazing waiter brought us three desserts:


Strawberry shortcake puff pastry with cream..


Malted ice cream...



and Fried Oreos...

There were all amazing!! I've never had fried Oreos before, it was so exciting, but the Strawberry pastry was unreal. Despite being painfully full from dinner, we managed to polish off every bite of the desserts. Yum.