ThePurpleSpatula

We’re focusing on Ice Cream this week. Today we made a Bombe Alaska which is made up of two flavours of ice cream (we made chocolate and hazelnut)  encased in sponge cake and italian meringue. The meringue is then torched or baked to colour it but without melting the ice cream inside. It was a fairly hectic class, having to make from scratch two flavours of ice cream, a sponge sheet and italian meringue. Not to mention assembling the whole thing. Running up and down to the blast freezer in the kitchen next door was….weird. Anyway, results were good! The chocolate ice cream was positively heavenly. I suppose the generous handful of dark chocolate couverture didn’t hurt. I’ll post pics of what the inside looks like when I cut it tomorrow. I’m saving it for someone special!

A classic french cake composed of layers of joconde biscuit, coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache. The distinct layers and clean lines are the distinguishing characteristics of this cake. Ideally the entire cake shouldn’t be taller than 4cm. They didn’t enforce this rule with us but I think I could’ve done it if I’d tried. Sadly my piping on the cake turned out wonky even though my practice piping turned out nicely. SO frustrating.

I despise caramel. It stabbed me and made valiant attempts to burn me. I hate it. That said, making the croquembouche wasnt all bad. My choux puffs turned out to be the best I’ve ever made. The nougatine base was yummy and making spun sugar was fun!

P.S. Does anyone else think the chef’s croquembouche is just a mad sugar monstrosity? Scary.

Apologies for the lack of updates of late. I’ve been..uh…busy. yeah let’s go with that. Anyway, we made bread last week. They turned out really well and I really enjoyed the lessons. On thursday we made a savoury vegie bread and pagnottas, which are a traditional italian peasant bread. Friday was baguettes and Saturday we made a fruit loaf and soured french bread. Very very yummy. My no-carb diet, on the other hand, was completely ruined.