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.