Cake Bake and Sweets Show + A Modern Paris Brest

A few weekends ago I was lucky enough to attend the Cake Bake and Sweets Show in Sydney. The show was fully devoted to all things sweet with over 100 vendors a range of things from handmade sweet treats to all the equipment you need to create your own cakes and desserts. As well as that there were some well known cake and dessert personalities from across Australia and the world who were demostrating desserts or sharing skills and techniques at various theatres and classrooms across the venue. At the show I attended demonstrations by some of my food idols including Kirsten Tibballs from Savour School in Melbourne , Tim Clark from Cacao Fine Chocolates, Pierrick Boyer from Le Petite Gateaux, Adriano Zumbo and a few others. I also bought myself a two new cookbooks which were Chocolate to Savour by Kirsten Tibballs and The Zumbo Files by Adriano Zumbo, both of which I got to meet the authors of and get the books signed. The weekend I had at the Cake Bake and Sweets Show was an amazing experience and I gained so much through both knowledge and experience that I will never forget.

A few weeks after the show, once school holidays came along I felt inspired to make an attempt at recreating Kirsten Tibballs' Modern Paris Brest which she demonstrated at the Cake Bake and Sweets Show. It was a very impressive dessert and when Kirsten had made it she displayed it on a hand crafted chocolate showpiece.

While I definitely wanted to recreate this dessert, I don't yet have the skills and knowledge to make a chocolate showpiece so I chose to emit that part. 

This dessert is a modern take on a traditional French choux pastry based dessert. 

The base of the dessert was a Breton Shortbread which contained baking powder to give it a small amount of rise. I baked it in a donut shape and once it was baked there was a small dip in the centre like a well. This was the stable structure to be used as the base for this dessert. In was then topped with a caramel which was infused with vanilla and star anise.

The next and most important part was the choux pastry. Small choux puffs topped with sable sat on top of the shortbread base in the donut shape. 

These were filled with a vanilla custard and raspberry jelly. My raspberry jelly did not set correctly so I used it more like a jam and it still added the bitterness to counteract the overall sweetness of the dish. 

Once the Paris Brest was assembled, a chocolate disk was added as a garnish. This only added colour and beauty tonthe disk. I chose to leave off the other garnishes from the dish.

I was really happy with how the dish turned out however there is room for improvement next time. The flavours were delicious and complemented each other well making the dish pleasurable to eat. The recipe can be found in the Cake Bake and Sweets Show recipe book for those who attended the show or on the Savour School Blog (link to the recipe is earlier in this post). This dessert took less that one day to complete and is quite easy for those who don't have much experience in making desserts.

Recently I also recieved some fresh homegrown lemons from a family friend. To use them up I decided to make a lemon curd.

With the lemon curd I made some lemon meringue macarons. I have had the idea for these macarons for awhile now and I finally got to try them. These had a bright yellow shell (I used a new food colouring for these and was surprised at just how bright the colour turned out), homemade tangy lemon curd and a torched italian meringue. I gave them as a gift to our friend who had kindly given me the delicious fresh lemons.

This holidays I also made another recipe from my Darren Purchese book Sweet Studio. They were Explosive Raspberry Marshmallows. A chocolate popping candy base, soft raspberry jelly centre, raspberry marshmallow and freeze dried raspberry powder for the appearance.

This was my first attempt at tempering chocolate using the marbling method. I used my new marble cutting board I recieved for Christmas. I haven't tried this method until now due to the hot summer temperatures we had. They worked perfectly which I was happy about because tempering chocolate is hard to master. I used this new skill to make my chocolate garnish for my paris brest.

That was the last of my school holiday baking but I was happy with the amount that I got to cook and also the new skills I taught myself and the personal boundaries I pushed which I may not have gotten around to if I were at school. 

Thanks for reading.

Caramelised White Chocolate Entremet

This week I decided to give my first ever entremet a go. I first began admiring these mousse based cakes last year and the possibility of making one that tasted and looked delicious seemed nearly impossible at the time. When I recieved the book Sweet Studio by Darren Purchese last Christmas, that dream became somewhat more of a reality. Now 6 months later and after purchasing a few essential ingredients and pieces of equipment I can finally say that I have done it!

The recipe that caught my eye first in the book was one with caramelised white chocolate due to my major love affair with this chocolate! I have made chocolate blocks and ice cream with it before so I knew I couldn't go wrong. The other flavours in the entremet were passionfruit and spiced macadamia. The original recipe also contained caramelised banana creme but I chose to emit thus element so that I could keep it a little bit more simple. 

When assembling this entremet, like any other you begin by making the inserts. For this, I made a spiced macadamia pastry - this added crunch and some spice to cut through the sweetness of the cake. I also made two passionfruit elements, curd and jelly - these added tartness to cut through the sweetness of the white chocolate. Once each of the elements were ready, I assembled them together ready for construction of the cake. 

Next I had to make the caramelised white chocolate mousse so that I could assemble the cake. This was a fairly simple step. Once that was ready and my  entremet ring was lined with acetate on a baking tray, I was ready to go. First I filled the ring with 2/3 of the mousse. Then i placed my insert into the centre upsode down and gently pressed it down. I filled in around the insert with the remaining mousse and levelled it off. As I decided to make a slightly larger entremet, I did not quite have enough mousse to fill my ring which left me with a slightly smaller entremet. I froze the entremet for 3 hours. 

While that was freezing I made some chocolate garnishes to decorate the cake with once I was finished. I decided to decorate the cake differently to how it was suggested in the recipe by glazing it instead of using a velvet spray as I don't yet have a spray machine. For the chocolate garnishes I wanted to represent the passionfruit so I used some black cocoa butter to paint 'seeds' onto an acetate sheet. I learnt this technique from the book Chocolate to Savour by Kirsten Tibbals. 

Once that had set, I tempered some white chocolate using the seeding method and coloured it yellow. Then i spread it over the cocoa butter on the acetate and once it had set it cut it into circles. 

For the cake I was inspired by Anna Polyviou's Carrot Cake om Masterchef and I wanted to do a caramelised white chocolate glaze with yellow lines on it. Once I had made both of the glazes and they were are the right temperature, I took the entremet from the freezer and set it up for glazing. Once I had glazed it, I used a paper cone to pipe some lines of yellow along the side of the cake and then inserted some of the garnishes into the edge next to the lines.

Once it was complete, I transferred it to a cake stand until it was time for dessert. It was a big hit among everyone who tried it. I loved the way that all of the flavours and textures worked really well together to create a superb dessert that I definitely want to try again.

I would love to share the recipe for this entremet with you all but as it isn't my recipe I'm not going to share it without permission but I strongly encourage everyone to get their hands on this book if they are interested in patisserie. I have cooked a few things from it and they have all been easy to follow and the final product is always great. Most of the recipes require some specialist ingredients but I still believe that its worth it.

Thanks for reading!