Disclaimer: Keep in mind the following while you look at the photos: I haven't made chocolates since October and this is my second sugar sculpture since November. I have never before made the spiral sables (and it shows!) but I made the brioche a few times last week. You can see what was practiced recently and what wasn't...I'd fix the formatting but it's difficult to keep my eyes open and I have an early class, so must get on with it.
Compulsories started well enough. The first hour was a frantic rush - the brioche got made, the sables were finished and rolled and by the second hour, the chocolate shells for the truffles had set and were filled with ganache. It all started to come apart in the third hour - my sables ended up way too big (I'll make a half recipe next time) and the brioche took twice as long as it should have to prove.
Then the truffles - the seal went on well enough, but they were really stuck when I tried to get them out at the end. Chef asked if I had cleaned my mould well - yes I had, and I had the extra spilled over bits of chocolate which had gotten into other holds in the mould which had come out easily, all shiny and pretty. The culprit was my white chocolate - it had gone out of temper when I brushed it onto the mould because I wanted to get a lot of definition on the white lines. Too many brush strokes and it kills your chocolate - the truffles stick to the mould and they don't come out cleanly, if at all. The result - broken chocolates. Since we have to present 6 identical chocolates on the day, this is a bit of a failure unless you count the broken-ness as them being identical. I think the chefs might consider that an identical lack of skill...
I don't know what happened to my sugar but it was all bad. It crystallized, which it had never done before, so it was hideous when I tried to stick things together. Then the main piece was too top heavy (and answers the question of which way the teardrop window should face) and it broke before I managed to present it to the chef. In the exam you have to somehow glue the pieces back together and present something because the compulsories are just that - compulsory. Failure to present one is an automatic disqualification - i.e. you fail the exam and the course - or at least, that's how I understand it. If you manage to stick something on a cake board, you might eke out a half point, keeping you in the game - as long as the rest of your work is good. I think most people had a shocker of a day today, although not all. In my case, most of the tasting seemed ok but the execution of the techniques - oh my. I so don't want to put up photos because it was all a bit of a disaster, but the whole point of this is to share the good (sometimes) and the not-so-good (lately feels like an awful lot of the time).
The brioche wasn't so bad although the head was on crooked. I felt so disorganized this morning - my kit and bits and pieces had all been left at home because I had taken things out of my bag or put them back in or I thought I had put them back in. When I found I didn't have a few things, there was some mild panicking for the first hour or so. Hopefully tomorrow will go more smoothly now that I kind of have a better idea of what I want to do and I've reviewed my knife kit / Patisserie toolbox. It's kind of stupid - there's a rule that you can't bring in a bag other than your knife kit because people were stealing stuff from the old school. The thing is, we need a lot of extra stuff in Patisserie so you actually do need that extra bag for things like our paint scrapers, grout spreaders (I'm not sure if that's even the right term), extra palette knife - and since there are quite a few of us who seem to want to do the same thing, I've packed my own moulds. This way I am guaranteed to have the correct sized moulds for various things, like my chocolate and tuile decorations, as well as the actual dessert itself.
Lunch provided a sop to the OCD part of my personality -a sink right in the middle of a casual Portuguese chicken place! No need for hand sanitizer, I could wash my hands after I paid for my food and before I sat down. How could any germaphobe or a self-professed clean freak not be happy?
Wish us Merde - we will need it in order to survive our feedback and the subsequent change of recipes.
Until next time, may you feel more competent at whatever it is you're doing than I have felt today.
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