Chef H made two beautiful cakes (see photo above) in this lesson: The Pavé du Roy and the Entremets Casino. I liked the taste of both of them.
The Pavé du Roy is a rectangular, 3-layered chocolate cake, with chocolate ganache in between the chocolate sponge layers, which has been imbibed with rum syrup. The sides of this decadent chocolate cake are covered with chocolate vermicelli. If you like chocolate cakes, you will love this cake.
The Entremets Casino has a layer of thinly-sliced rolled sponge (i.e. a swiss roll) as the outer shell, and inside this "shell" is bavaroise (bavarian cream = créme anglaise + whipped cream + gelatin) and fresh raspberries. It tastes like an ice cream cake. It is apparently called Entremets Casino because the rolled sponge looks like roulette wheels.
Students only had to make the Pavé du Roy in the practicals, and we had a chance to make some chocolate decorations for the cake. I found it fun to make the chocolate decorations, but it was not easy. I spread some tempered chocolate (tempered by the chefs) onto acetate sheets and then did the following: (1) cut the sheet of chocolate into triangles, (2) scrape another sheet of chocolate with the comb, then folded the ends over so that it formed a teardrop shape, and (3) scrape a third sheet of chocolate with a comb (so that I would get long, ribbon-like strips), then twisted it. When these chocolate strips/pieces hardened, I used them to form the decorations you see on my Pavé du Roy in the photo below:
Everything turned out quite well. Chef T was very encouraging with his comments. I had imbibed enough syrup inside the chocolate sponge, and I had relatively even layers for the montage. I finally feel like I am making progress with my baking. At least now I can bake a chocolate sponge cake properly. It wasn't so long ago I had trouble with it. However, I do know I still need some practice spreading chocolate ganache and making chocolate decorations.
