** Succès (dacquoise with praliné buttercream)
Progrès (dacquoise with chocolate buttercream)
Gâteau russe aux noix (Russian buttercream cake)
Students made only the Succès in the practical class.
A dacquoise is a cake base made with nut flour (e.g. almond powder). It is basically whipped egg whites + nut flour + icing sugar + sugar. When baked, it is quite light, and it has a lovely aroma.
The buttercreams used in this lesson are known basically as French buttercreams (= egg yolks + sugar syrup + butter).
The Succès has three piped and baked dacquoise discs, with two layers of praliné buttercream sandwiched in between. It is masked with almond slices around the side, and dusted with icing sugar on top. Then we add the decorations on top.
(Aside: Praliné is hazelnut paste with sugar. It tastes like nutella because nutella is basically hazelnut paste + sugar + milk chocolate.)
Here's my Succès (photo courtesy of a classmate, because I forgot to bring my camera to the practical class):
Chef T tasted my cake and said I should have baked my dacquoise for 2 minutes longer. (These chef instructors are pretty good with things like that, and I guess that is because they have tasted lots and lots of students' cakes over the years.) And he said I still need more practice with chocolate piping. Otherwise, the cake tasted fine because the buttercream was OK.
PS. I was successful in making a Black Forest Cake at home the other day (13 October 2008). It's the first time I have been able to get the genoise sponge cake to rise so nicely. Of course, some of my housemates (Intermediate Pastry students) were on hand to give me tips on various techniques -- they picked up on all my little mistakes and corrected me. Now I can finally say I can make a sponge cake properly. (Aside: 13 October was Canadian Thanksgiving Day, and I give thanks to my housemates.)
My second Black Forest Cake
