From the start of Superior, the Chefs begin to review what will be expected from you as it pertains to the Final Exam.  The final is a a 5 hour practical where you produce an Entremet and 2 identical plated desserts.  We are given 2 chances in class practicals to practice these.  They must be restaurant quality.  Prepared correctly with proper hygiene, good organization, correct preparation, taste good and present well.  Plates must be perfectly clean just as you would receive in a restaurant.   We are all given the same ingredient list and a specific amount of each item you can not go over but must use a minimum of 22 ingredients from the list. We’ve also prepared our dish, weighed the wastage and figured the cost of our Entremet.   The first 2 practices are mainly to help you can accomplish all this and to provide feedback on presentation, taste and appearance.  Between school and practicing at home, I believe I made my Entremets about 6 times.  As for my plated dessert, I changed it twice before the final with suggestions from the chefs.

The chocolate show piece was honestly a disaster for me because my chocolate tempering was setting so fast it caught me off guard.  I should have simply re-tempered the chocolate but instead learned a valuable lesson is setting chocolate which took 25 minutes (of which you don’t have to spare) and had to really rush through the process of putting the show piece together.   Should I ever do this again, I got it.  But it didn’t serve me well on that day.  Its the lowest grade I had in Superior.  But if you mess up the preparation, you mess up and your grade reflects it.

We’ve worked a lot with sugar in Superior as well.  Our sugar showpiece was fun.  Hard and very hot but fun.  I wear two pairs of cotton gloves and rubber gloves but still manage to loose some skin off my fingers.  Not convinced all my fingertips have identifying prints any longer but those grow back. Right?

Croquembouche is also a sugar exercise.   This is traditionally a wedding cake made with chow pastry filled with flavored pastry cream and dipped in caramel.  The choux is then placed on top of each other and formed into a cone shape.   The chef filled his choux in demo but in the interest of time, our choux was empty.  But dipped in caramel, still tasty and of course nice and crunchy loud to eat.   The Croquembouche we made sits on top of a Nougatine base.  Boiling sugar with flaked almonds cooked to just the right point.  This is delicious and you can’t help yourself breaking off pieces of the finished product.  Its meant to eat.  There is piped Royal Icing and we cooked sugar and dyed it one more time to create our sugar flowers to go on top.

There was also the Modern Tart we made just before the exam.  We made the Exotic (tropical) version which was an almond sable tart cace with a Normandy (custard) filling, macerated pineapple, coconut mousse with a white glaze and tempered white chocolate.

The Normandy filling with pineapple in the crust was the best part.  The white glaze is chemically produced and not appealing to me.  But is to most and very popular.

We have a well deserved week off between our final debrief and graduation.  Bob arrived this past Friday and we are renting a car today and driving up to Cheltenham, England in the Cotswolds.   Last night we spent the evening with one of our best friends, Al, who is in town for work which was really cool to hang with him in London.  Wish there was more time and Sarah could have joined us but she had work obligations keeping her home.