rice cake confessional

Awww it’s the second to the last Palate Sensations Western Basics class!

Having been to other cooking schools I appreciate the kitchen at PS even more these days. It’s so organized, homey, and well stocked. You feel like you can really cook anything in there. It’s fun puttering around the kitchen all day especially when you don’t have to do the dishes (thanks Loretta!).

The last 2 classes are all about desserts and this lesson we covered cakes and tarts. Two words for you today: sugar headache.

Two other words: worth it.

We had a huge 3 kilo bag of high quality chocolate (Valrhona, I think). We melted these over a bain marie with chocolate’s best friend, buttah. Actually, I think peanut butter is chocolate’s best friend. Butter is more like it’s friendly neighbor.

Melted chocolate is a little bit hypnotic.

So is watching the Kitchenaid turn the egg whites into meringue.

Not hypnotic? Whipping up cream by hand.

Fold it all gently to make the chocolate mousse.

For the cakey part, we made a genoise. The directions called for whipping eggs and flour until it comes to a sabayon texture. Thick, creamy, ribbony, but not like a custard. We sifted flour and cocoa powder into it and plopped it down onto the always welcoming Silpat.

A few minutes in the oven and you are greeted by a chocolate field.

We cut out pieces to fit into our little individual cake molds, plopped in some of the chocolate mousse, and gently plopped in another layer of cake. Looks like a hamburger patty in the pic though.

One more layer of mousse and a little chocolate glaze later you get the starting picture from above.

So now we have a cake and we need a tart (or two). Flour and buttah and shugah and cream come together to form the short crust. There’s a specific method to it. You start with a sandy texture and little by little it will start coming together to form the now familiar dough ball.

Lazy dough rests and then tortures us as we lay it ever so gently into the tart molds. It breaks and falls and laughs in our faces but we patch it up and move along. The crusts are prebaked. Half of them are filled with sliced apples and a light custardy filling. This was my favorite of the 3 desserts we made.

The other tarts were filled with a thicker custard, topped with blueberries, and finished with confectioner’s sugar.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the dentist.