Firstly, at New Years was a friend’s birthday that Michael and I made the cake for. Maxfield Parrish was a favourite artist of the recipient with The Latern Bearers being her favourite piece. So keeping this in mind we made an orange chiffon cake and after covering it in buttercream we decorated it with the elements from that piece. Finishing the cake with some homemade candied orange peel.

Back to this week, school has been fun. I’m enjoying this unit more than I originally anticipated. It’s hectic but (at the moment) not we’re not being snowed under so I’m liking that I’m kept busy and being challenged. We had the first of our standard (plate-up) exams on Thursday. The exams have a new structure than what we’re used to. The day before Chef demonstrates various items we can use, and tells us what the plate has to contain, then the next day we can make whatever we like as long as it fulfils those criteria and we can finish it in time. We have to be finished earlier as the grading takes longer, but it’s good.

This week was custards, so we had to have an infused custard. We had to have an ice cream or sorbet depending on what we made (higher in fat items need a sorbet so there’s not too much fat on the plate) a tuile and if necessary a sauce (it wouldn’t be needed with a creme brulee or creme caramel for example). Then on top of this we need to keep in mind all the standard guidelines we were given at the start of the unit, we need height, colour, textures etc.

So I made an earl grey panna cotta (I made earl grey taste good!) with a spiced honey sauce and a lemon sorbet. I made a honey tuile and then to add the necessary colour some blueberries and a coulis.

We had the chocolate tasting on Friday which was fun, and interesting. I can say with knowledge that chocolate with bacon in doesn’t taste as good as you’d hope.. and lavender chocolate tastes like soap! The various chili chocolates were pretty good, but oddly good, it works better with darker chocolate, and the coconut curry bar was bizarre. It was amusing to see the differences in my tastes to the rest of the class. As a standard in the uk it’s not really dark chocolate until 70%, here it’s dark chocolate at 55% so a lot of people were saying that they found it bitter from there onwards.. it took me to the 99% cooking chocolate (as opposed to the 99% chocolate bar which was divine!) to feel the bitterness.

After the tasting we tempered chocolate and practised garnishes, I finally managed to get semi decent cigarettes that are even and uniform and I made some curls and played about with transfer sheets for cutouts. We’ve saved them and if they’ve kept well then we’re allowed to use them for our chocolate plate-up tomorrow.

We have 3 exams this week! The chocolate plate-up tomorrow, our only written test on Wednesday with a timed test on sauces, and then on Friday our filo plate-up.. a busy busy week!