Gum Paste Flowers

Today was the third time I have done stage at Buttercream Bakery. They were busy preparing products for the upcoming Mother's Day, but I worked on gum paste flowers again.

I finally had the chance to paint some colour on the gum paste flowers I made two weeks ago, and I also painted some royal icing flowers that someone else had prepared. Please see photos below.


Large gum paste flowers, made with a gum paste cutter, shaped, dried and painted. These are to be used on buttercream cakes.

In the next two photos, you will see the smaller gum paste flowers I made two weeks ago. Today I got to play with some colour combinations for the centres and the petals, and I enjoyed working out (through a bit of trial and error) which colours look good together. See which one(s) you like.




And you might have noticed a couple of the flowers have broken petals. Well, the gum paste flowers are fragile, and they break easily. After breaking a couple, I learnt to handle and paint them more gently, and there were no more mishaps after that.


These are the tiny royal icing flowers I brushed with colour. It took me nearly 5 hours to do these ones. Every single one hand-painted very carefully, with colour all over the flower. These are to be used on wedding cakes, hence the painstaking work.


These are the gum paste flowers I made last week. They are just left out to dry. These will be used on a wedding cake too.

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Here's a photo of an odd-shaped egg we came across in the bakery this morning:



When we cracked the egg open, we found there was nothing wrong with it.

Another Stage (Internship)

Today I didn't have any classes at School, but I managed to arrange it so that I started another stage (internship). This time at Buttercream Bakery.

Bus No. 5, which stops outside Wilbrod House, stops near the Buttercream Bakery (on Bank Street in the downtown area), so it is very convenient for me.

I pretty much spent my entire day making gum paste flowers, which are usually used on special cakes and wedding cakes. I asked to do it because I wanted to learn to make something pretty out of gum paste.

I think I was quite slow today, but I enjoyed myself immensely. I have a lot of patience for things like that (i.e. delicate work). I want to do pastry with great love, not with great haste. My philosophy is: I am not in this business for the money (I've been told you need to be able to work fast to make money); I am in it for the artistry.

Yes, I understand they are not mutually exclusive, but at this stage, I cannot even work at 60% of the speed that the chefs at School can do things, so I must bide my time and keep practising. I am realistic.

Anyway, the flowers I made were laid out to dry, and then I can paint them next week. Hopefully, with more practice, I will be able to make nice gum paste flowers more quickly and easily.

My Last Day of Stage (Marzipan Fruits)

Today was my last day of stage at Stubbe Chocolates, and I spent the better part of the day making the following marzipan fruits. It was a really interesting practical experience...


Marzipan apples, strawberries and apricots


Marzipan oranges and lemons


Marzipan pears, apples, strawberries and apricots

What I learnt about making all these marzipan fruits is how to capture the most prototypical features of each fruit and reproducing them in marzipan form with just a few efficient movements with my hands (plus some air-brushing). For example, the shape (e.g. apricots are round and have an indent across the middle of the fruits), the texture (e.g. sugar coating for strawberries), and the colours/shades (e.g. a slight red blush on the cheeks of the apricots, which are basically yellow-orange in colour).

Acknowledgment: My heartfelt thanks and gratitude to Chef Heinrich Stubbe and everyone at Stubbe Chocolates for all the time, energy and resources you had committed to teaching me (and many other aspiring pastry chefs/students) so many efficient mass production skills and techniques with chocolate work. I am glad I was given the opportunity to experience what a real-life chocolate shop and pastry kitchen is like. I shall never forget this special experience.

Practice Makes Perfect

Yesterday I did my stage at Stubbe Chocolates again, and this time I dipped and decorated over 750 chocolate truffles (various flavours). The first few I made were not that neat and nice, but by the 700th I was getting good at it. :)


These are the beer truffles I dipped and sprinkled with white chocolate shavings. The shavings had to be sprinkled before the dark chocolate coating dried, so that meant I had to dip 5 or 6 chocolates at a time, sprinkle the shavings, then dip another 5 or 6, and so on.


These are some of the chocolate boxes I made and decorated. I am slowly getting the hang of making chocolate boxes with molds, and of tempering chocolate with the seeding method (we mainly do the tabling method at School).

On Monday, I made my second Pain Soleil in Production Kitchen. It was similar to the first one I made, but I added some apricot pieces in the middle (as you can see in the photo), and I brushed the bread with apricot glaze after baking. The bread turned out well, and was served to the staff at LCB Ottawa at lunch.


Practice makes perfect indeed. I actually noticed a significant improvement in my performance, even in the space of a few hours doing the same task. That is why stage (or even volunteering in Production Kitchen) means so much to me.

"Playing" with Chocolate: My Catharsis

Yesterday I did my stage at Stubbe Chocolates again. I got to "play" with chocolate and it was fun! I used different kinds of chocolate molds to make easter eggs (hollow ones). I also made various chocolate items which were meant for children, for example:


These are some of the dozen chocolate bird houses that I helped make and assemble. I made some of the bases with molds as well. I had used hot cookie cutters to cut the holes in the chocolate easter eggs two weeks ago, and I decorated and assembled the roofs yesterday. Later, a marzipan chicken (see photo below) will be placed at the opening of the bird house.


The marzipan chickens I made two weeks ago. The bodies and heads of the chickens were air-brushed with yellow food-coloring, and then the red beaks and combs were stuck on with white chocolate. I am glad I got to practise some of the skills I learnt in Basic Pastry.


This is a race-car bunny that I helped assemble. Cute, isn't it? It is amazing what you can do with chocolate and marzipan (two of my favorite ingredients in pastry).


These are chocolate boxes in the shape of Easter eggs. I made the chocolate boxes with molds before lunch, and then finished off the product in the afternoon. The lid of the chocolate box is studded with dark chocolate almond clusters (which I made first thing yesterday morning). Then I piped the milk chocolate and white chocolate decorations on each lid. Finally, I dusted the lid with "gold powder" (the same stuff we use at School). I was surprised how attractive the finished product looked with a light dusting of "gold powder". These chocolate boxes will be filled with a selection of chocolate truffles later.


This was one of the cakes from the successful batch of Streussel I made last Thursday, to make up for the failed batch on Tuesday (where a vital ingredient was left out of the streussel topping by mistake).


It's the first time I'd ever tasted Streussel (this one has cranberries, blueberries and raspberries), and it is so good. I love the contrast in texture and taste. The base is moist and spongy, the fruits give it a lovely sweet-and-sour flavor, and the topping has a sandy and crumbly texture, with just the right amount of sweetness. I highly recommend this cake -- when I brought one home to share with my housemates, they all enjoyed it too.

All in all, yesterday was a good day for me (I hope I get to work with chocolate again tomorrow). Seven hours of working with chocolate was cathartic for me because it helped to rebuild a shattered self-confidence. At the very least, my enthusiasm for chocolate dulled the pain of disappointment with my exam performance. I am still trying hard not to think about the "evil fondant curse" (as I call it) ...

Seriously, I have had to use fondant for glazing 5 times in my life: BP lesson on pâte à choux, BP Open Lab (pâte à choux practice), IP lesson on pâte à choux petits fours, IP lesson on petits fours glacés, IP practical exam with pâte à choux petits fours, and I have not had a single success with fondant glazing. :(

Either I am too thick to learn from my mistakes, or fondant is just an impossible ingredient to work with for glazing (/sigh/). I would rather believe I am capable of learning, so I can only conclude that fondant is an impossible ingredient to work with! I know the theory about fondant glazing - optimum temperature of 35 degrees Celsius, a smooth, shiny and liquid consistency, etc., etc., but getting it just right is pretty much hit-or-miss for me. No, make that 5 out of 5 misses.

Actually, I don't mind making pâte à choux at all because I know the recipe by heart (125-125-100-5-5-163-4/5 for the quantities of water, milk, butter, salt, sugar, flour and eggs, just like a number to a combination lock), but there was little I could do about the glazing on the petits fours. I felt I was in a no-win situation for the exam. If truth be told, I was found wanting, and that hurts the most. What made me extra sad was also the fact that my favorite cake in Intermediate Pastry -- the Opéra cake -- was in the exam; I just wasn't lucky enough to pick it or the other exam cake - the Triple Chocolate Bavaroise. I would also have been glad if the Blood Orange Mousse Cake had been one of the exam cakes. In fact, all of us from my group had expected this to be one of the three exam cakes, and we were confident we could make this cake in 2.5 hours.

[Aside: By a strange coincidence, I got envelope number 9 again for my IP exam. In my BP exam, envelope number 9 was Pavé du Roy - my favorite cake in BP. No such luck, this time around.]

Anyway, there's no point crying over spilt milk, as they say. I just hope I did enough to pass the practical exam. I think my mini-swans were ok -- at least I was able to make a decent chantilly cream for that.

To my family and friends, I just want you to know I will be fine. Life goes on ... even with the "evil fondant curse".

And if I ever have my own pastry or chocolate shop one day, fondant glazing will be banned!!! :D Besides, I'm sure pâte à choux tastes better with a chocolate ganache topping or just vanilla chantilly cream. Trust me! ;-)

My Week in Review

I've been quite busy this week, so I haven't really had time to write about all the new things I learnt. But today is my rest day, so here is my week in review:

Monday: I had trouble with my Marquise au Chocolat (mousse cake), and ran out of time to plate my mini-Marquise. Then I spent the late-afternoon and evening watching Chef H do a demo on the croquembouche. A long day ...

Tuesday: I did my stage (internship) at Stubbe. I learnt to make the centre of the praliné-marzipan chocolate truffle, lemon cream, white wine cream and hazelnut pound cakes, and I practised making marzipan roses and leaves.

Wednesday: I spent 5 hours at School making the croquembouche (French wedding cake). I was pleased with the results, even if my croquembouche was not the prettiest in my class.

Thursday: I did my stage at Stubbe again. This time, I was taught to make a special blend of hot chocolate that Stubbe sells at the shop. I made some dark chocolate glaze for covering cakes. I also learnt to layer and mask the lemon cakes with lemon buttercream (I did about 9 cakes) and to cover some of them with marzipan, to glaze the cakes with dark chocolate glaze, and decorate them with piped rosettes and so on. The tricky part was to get the cakes to all end up the same size (even layering and same height), which I could not do at first, but by the end of the day, I managed fine. I have to say I learnt so much about the techniques for mass producing cakes (unlike at School, where we only make one cake at a time)... In mass production, one learns to be very organised and much more efficient indeed.

Friday: I volunteered in Production Kitchen, starting at 6am. As usual, I made and baked three kinds of baguettes for Bistro Cordon Bleu -- 1. plain baguettes with egg wash and sesame seeds, 2. baguettes with dried cranberries and chopped walnuts, 3. baguettes with chopped kalamata olives. Later I helped with the assembly of some demo boxes, and mentored a couple of Basic Pastry students (on Chef CP's orders). In the afternoon, I went to the Canadian War Museum with some classmates.

Saturday: I went to School to watch Chef B (Cuisine chef) do a demo on Spanish food. I love Spanish food, so I couldn't resist the opportunity to watch the demo. (Aside: LCB students who volunteer to assist the chef are allowed to watch demos when the chefs present short courses to the public on Saturdays. But because I used to attend French language classes on Saturdays, I missed out on those opportunities.) Anyway, I now know how to make Gazpacho, Horchata, Paella and Churros. It was such a stimulating class!!! I really like the way Chef B presented the techniques for preparing and cooking the ingredients. Like Chef H (from Pastry), he too is a methodical teacher! Now I wish I were taking French cuisine courses ... I hope the pastry chefs at school don't see this, or I would end up in their bad books. Heheheh!

[Aside: There's a bit of friendly rivalry between the cuisine and pastry chefs, and pastry students who are interested in cuisine (like me) get teased mercilessly by the pastry chefs about being tempted by "the dark side". :D]

Next week promises to be exhausting too. We have to make 3 different cakes at School (the Pacific cake, the Opera cake, and the Triple Chocolate Bavarois cake), as well as sitting for a written exam on Tuesday morning. I am giving stage a miss for a week, just because things are so hectic right now.

Stay tuned for pictures of the cakes I make next week!

Working with Chocolates

Today at Stubbe, where I am doing my internship once a week, I learnt to temper chocolate with a method different from what I am used to at school. I also dipped over 150 truffles, made heart-shaped chocolate boxes and some fruit-and-nut bars (as shown in the photos below).


A delicious fruit-and-nut bar. Contains hazelnuts, almonds, pistachios, dried cranberries, blueberries, cherries and dark chocolate.


The finished product.

It was an interesting day. I learnt and practised so many new techniques. I know in my heart now that I want to work with chocolates if I get the chance in the future.

My First Day of Stage (Internship)

Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa encourages its Intermediate and Superior Pastry students to undertake stage (French for "internship") at local pastry shops or restaurants to gain more practical experience. Earlier this month, I applied for an internship at a local chocolate shop, and was fortunate enough to get it.

Today I began my once-a-week internship at Stubbe Chocolates (a small family business specialising in chocolates and cakes), and it was a wonderful learning experience. I am so glad to have this opportunity to practise my skills in a real-life pastry kitchen, and to learn from some of the leading pastry chefs in the industry here.

I didn't work with chocolates this time, but I made many small florentines, a batch of pastry cream and a dozen flourless hazelnut cakes instead. It took me a while to get into a rhythm, but the supervising chef was really patient with me (she was also good at explaining what needed to be done). I know I was really slow at first (and I almost burnt the first batch of florentines), but I gradually got the hang of it...

In my opinion, Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa teaches good techniques, but one still has to get some real-life experience by working in a kitchen outside of school. And a reputable business with mentors who are generous with their time is a real bonus.

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PS. My stage at Stubbe Chocolate Shop was arranged by LCB Ottawa, therefore I am covered by the School's insurance should anything untoward happen (e.g. workplace accidents, liabilities). The fact that LCB Ottawa arranges stage for their students was one of the reasons why I chose to study at this School.