My exam on Friday… I got my lowest score yet in the practical exam…

I only managed 190/200 *grins*

I did however manage 102/100 in the theory!

I lost the 10 points in the practical for my chocolate. 5 for it developing a fat bloom and 5 for having a bit too much on my madelines so it formed small ‘feet’

Chocolate isn’t the easiest thing to work with, the feeling of triumph when you get it right.. for me at any rate. It has to be melted to a very precise temperature, then taken off the heat and agitated vigourously while it’s cooled down, again to a precise temperature, then back on the heat literally for seconds to get it back to a workable temperature (as cooling it thickens it too much for use).  At that point get it even one or two degrees over the required temperature and you’re starting again as you’ve just melted the fat molecules you (hopefully) just got to align so nicely.

If you melt it to the wrong temperatures it fails, if you don’t agitate it enough it fails, if you get the slightest amount of water in it fails.

The fat bloom on my madelines are most likely that I got it minutely hotter than it should have been when reheated, I was working next to the ovens.

I have managed to get it right a couple of times and had beautifully tempered chocolate.

So now you can see why not many Chefs bother with tempering chocolate, they avoid it like the plague.. It is, though, a sign of a good Patissiere so I’m determined to be able to get it right!

After dipping my madelines I got to use the chocolate for piping practice, piping out hundreds of little filligrees (twiddly bits that will go on top of my petit four cakes) and practicing my writing too.

I also had to make macaroons for my exam, filled with a flavoured French Buttercream, coloured to match the flavour. I did alright with them earlier in the week, they were good enough, but there were many points where they could be better, and I got them nailed in the exam. They were perfect! Now I just have to do it again in my exam again this week.

It’s been a nice weekend, made better by the fact I have today off. We went to an Indian buffet for lunch, I drove us there which went mostly alright, we made it in tact even if I was a tad tense!

I had to pick up a poster board and some coloured pencils and pens for my petit four presentation (which I will be making once I finish procrastinating and writing here) so we went and got them on the way home (DmentD driving, I had had enough!). We found there a tub of Halloween cookie cutters so we decided to get them with the spurious reason that I can practice my royal icing and colourflow and decorating of cookies *grins*

Going through them to see what we had we found the spider cutters missing and these in their place

A prize to whoever can figure out what they are.. we don’t have a clue!

We washed the car and had people round Saturday night and then had a nice lazy but productive Sunday. Doing laundry and making skeletal hands out of copper as a base for our next paid cake (so so excited about making it, it’s going to be awesome!). I made some Bakewell Tarts, they turned out mostly ok.

I experimented with putting them in paper muffin cases which worked out nicely. My pastry for some unknown reason, decided to fail and just went completely dry when I pulled it out the fridge after resting it.

I stewed/candied some of DmentD’s Bounced Cherries for the bottom instead of using the traditional preserve and that worked fantastically, the sharp tanginess worked wonderfully against the sweetness of the rest of the frangipane and the icing. I kept the pastry savoury too which worked nicely even though that technically makes it not a tart *grins*

And today, I’ve done my ironing *pulls faces* procrastinated for a while, I’ll have lunch and then I get to make a poster of my intended presentation for my Petit Four display, and write some blurb on why I chose those items.. Apparently “because they’re tasty” isn’t good enough, it’s a lesson in chutzpah, I have to come up with something along the lines of main ingredients in the items representing the season.. or some other rubbish!