These are apparently the last two cakes we will make in our Superior Pastry practical class. After this, it is basically chocolate work (in particular, a chocolate showpiece) and also sugar work (specifically, a sugar showpiece).
Here are the two cakes Chef made in the demo:
The Nid d'abeille is a honey and fruit dacquoise. It has a base of dacquoise, a layer of jellified strawberry coulis, sandwiched between honey mousse. The top is decorated with a "florentine" decoration (i.e. a dacquoise disc coated with some "florentine" mixture, which is baked in the oven and then sliced into segments). I found the jellified strawberry coulis inside the cake quite refreshing, but I couldn't really taste the honey in the chiboust mousse. Not that I mind, because I am not a big fan of the honey found in Canada; in the past, I have only liked a couple of types of honey from Australia (e.g. from trees like the Blue Gum and the Brown Barrel, which have really strong and intensely rich flavours).
I like the presentation of this one. The Feuille d'automne is a cake with layers of almond meringue and chocolate mousse. It is covered with chocolate fans, and dusted with icing sugar (to resemble snow, I guess). Chef CF showed us this new technique (new for us) of using a warm baking tray for making chocolate fans, but I think it is rather complicated. It looked quite a complicated technique even for the chef, imagine what it would be like for us beginners. He said this technique was tricky -- it works sometimes, and it doesn't at other times. If I had a choice, I would use the cold marble board instead...
Anyway, our group will not have our practical class until Friday, so I will continue this blog post after the 5-hour workshop on Friday afternoon.
