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Thursday, January 27, 2011

Gateâu St. Honoré

Today was a much better day!

I got to school in the early morning, with the intention of going to another class. However, it had been cancelled, so I found myself with a lot of down time. I took the time to do some homework and take an online test. I was in my uniform and into the baking classroom half an hour early today. And boy, I was determined to not let today kick me in the butt!


Today we made Gateâu St. Honoré. It's quite the cake! My baking theory teacher loves talking about this cake! No joke. It was made to honor the patron saint of bakers, St. Honoré. Either that, or it was named after the bakery where it originated. No one knows for sure.

This cake is made up of a pie dough (or puff pastry) bottom, with caramel covered cream puffs and pastry cream. Choux paste (which makes up the cream puffs) is such an interesting paste. You have to boil shortening and add some flour to make the paste, and it's leavened completely by steam. It's really neat how much it puffs up while in the oven. We learned how to make caramel today and spent a lot of time playing with sugar. So much fun! We made caramel, and then once it had cooled a bit, we used an open ended whisk to whip the sugar and create little nests! We also learned how to make corkscrews out of the caramel.

Can you see my little corkscrew?

I forgot my camera at home, so my lovely baking partner took some pictures! She keeps saying that she'll upload them all at the end of the year...so I'll put them up when I get them. Meanwhile, the pictures here of the extras that we made- I made a few extra pie shells and cream puffs. I'm very excited, because I also got to take home a bit of pastry cream, so I'm definitely filling these bad boys sometime in the near future!

Close up of sugar nest

I would have taken more pictures of the extra cakes, but I promptly ate them as soon as I was done taking that picture. I was excited, what can I say?

I'm back!! I'm excited about school again, which is just grand. Happy and cheery posts to follow!

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