Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 5 - Mexican Paste

Ahhh chocolate!! How I love thee!! 

The lesson started with us slowly cooking certain ingredients of chocolate fudge cake on a stove and then slowly combining this mixture with dry ingredients - the key is to temper the dry ingredients gradually to avoid them from getting cooked by the hot mixture. This whole process was rather tiring as we each prepared enough batter for at least 5 cake tins. Stirring and making sure everything is well mixed made my arms and hands sooooo sore! The cake tins are then sent to be baked for the next lesson. 

We then moved on to making our own Mexican paste. This was my first encounter with the paste and I never knew making it would be rather easy - tylose powder is the key! The chef then demonstrated how to use the paste to make drapes, swags, frill and ribbons. As time was running out for us to decorate a dummy cake using techniques learnt from this lesson, my dummy cake only showcased drapes and swags.

I actually attempted to make some frills but as my palms were hurting like hell from rolling the Mexican paste as this as possible (which I failed to do so.....the force was not with me that evening), using toothpicks to roll the frills was too much for me......... 

Now I understand why some cake decorators are so skinny when they are surrounded with cakes - rolling pastes is definitely an energy consuming task!

Sparkling Piggy

First ever self-made fondant iced cake

As I will be leaving my current job after the end of January, I've decided to make a decorated cake (Victoria sponge flavoured - my favourite) as a parting gift for my colleagues. Many tricks I've learnt so far from the cake decorating course were applied to the cake - not the best looking cake in the world but as my first ever solo project it is acceptable (I hope). 

The cake received good reviews - even guys ate some happily even though it looked very girlish :)

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 4 - The disaster continues....

After an eventful second lesson at Le Cordon Bleu, I was honestly hoping for things to settle down a bit in the third one, only to have my cake making/decorating confidence completely shattered during this lesson. 

The afternoon began with us lining and greasing 4 tins each and melting ingredients over a hob for chocolate fudge cake. After this is done the chef then showed us how to make marzipan from scratch. This is when everything went downhill. My goldfish brain simply didn't have the capacity to memorise every single detail of the demonstration. The list of things done/went wrong during this lesson just goes on and on and on and here are some examples:

1. Cream of tartar for the marzipan was added when the pan was still on the hob (when it shouldn't be)
2. It took forever to dry the marzipan mixture on the hob and the marzipan mixture actually got burned a bit at the the bottom of the pan
3. Very little time was left to work with the marzipan mixture on the working bench until it is cooled and paste like - everyone was already moving onto the next thing. Worst thing was that too much icing sugar was added to the marzipan went into pieces instead of forming into a nice looking dough. The chef simply came to my bench and scraped the marzipan mixture into a ball and told me to wrap it up (whilst looking rather serious).......didn't even get to have the chance to handle it myself properly
4. Mixing sifted dry ingredients with the melted chocolate fudge mixture took forever when everyone else seemed to get on with the task fast and easy..........
5. Applying marzipan (thankfully not the ones we made during the lesson) to the wonky lemon cake I made in the previous lesson proved to be difficult
6. Rolling out fondant icing for the first time to cover the cake in a short time resulted in really thick icing and ugly looking cake (the icing at the base of the cake was all smudged up)

By the time we finished covering the cake with fondant icing is was already 7pm (the lesson started at 3pm). I was in an emotional train wreck and actually felt like crying! The programme is not supposed to be stressful at all but it just felt like we are on a battlefield all the time. 

After a short 20 minutes break we returned to the kitchen to decorate the cake with royal icing using brush embroidery technique and other techniques we learnt during the first lesson. Whilst my classmates' flowers looked immaculate mine looked like they were chewed on by dogs........... I made another mistake by asking for alcohol to dampen the pain brushes when the chef clearly told us to use water during the demonstration (got another dirty look from him again........). Arrrrrgh!

You can spot icing cracks and the dodgy royal icing piping techniques all over this cake. 

The lesson finished by us lining the cake board with ribbons. It was such a relieve for the series of disasters to be over with but at the same time I felt like a failure holding a cakebox containing an ugly cake on my way home. 

Now I serious dread the next lesson as we are to apply the marzipan we made to the chocolate fudge cake! Luckily my family and friends are supportive and advised me to simply get on with the rest of the programme and then practice in my own time and this is exactly what I intend to do. Fingers crossed that I don't run out of any lessons in tears before the end of the programme! 

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 3 - It's a bumpy ride (part two)!

Waking up on a Saturday morning at 6am is such an inhumane thing to do. Everything was still totally dark and all the typical London weather was telling you to stay at home. Unfortunately all saturday lessons on the cake decorating programme start at 8am on Saturdays. Imagine having to do this most days if you are a full time student at Le Cordon Bleu (it is one of the important reasons why I am not their full time student........)........

Chef Matthew was already at the 3rd floor patisserie kitchen at 7:50am with everything prepped and ready to go. We are to make a lemon cake and butter cream and then prep it for cake decorating today.

The lemon cake uses the creaming method - you first cream the butter in the mixer (use fire torch to warm bowl up to soften (not melt) the butter), then gradually add sugar, lemon zest and egg in the bowl (wait for each ingredient to be fully mixed before adding another one). Sift flour and baking powder together and add to the mixer on low setting. Finally add milk to achieve a dropping consistency.

We then continued to make the butter cream. Sugar and water were heated on in a pan to achieve a thread texture. This is then immediately poured to the mixer with well beaten eggs and egg yolks. Once fully mixed it is then time to add softened butter and beat until the right consistency is reached.

Sounds rather easy to make a lemon cake and butter cream right? WRONG! The whole experience could not have been more disastrous and stressful for me. My cake looked ugly and you could see bits of it not being perfectly baked when it was sliced in half horizontally. My butter cream was runnier and more yellow my other classmates'. It is as if the same nightmare repeated itself from when I attended a cake baking course not long ago - none of my cakes turned out ok and I am starting to think that maybe being a baker is not a wise career choice :(

The most horrifying thing is.......we now had to assemble and prep the cake as we are to use it for cake decorating in the next lesson. The cake already looked bad to begin with after the brown bits were chopped off (chef Matthew wanted a "white cake" look). After filling it with maple syrup and the runny butter cream I made earlier, the cake kind of tilted to one side while others look nice and straight. Honestly I had the urge to simply smash my cake to the ground and walk out of the room........

The last thing we did to prep the cake was "casting". Chef Matthew used two blenders to help us blend our leftover cake bits (the brown bits we chopped off) with apricot jam to reach a spreadable consistency. We then had to use palette knives to smooth the jam/cake mixture over our cakes (which had been set in a blast fridge for at least 30 minutes) to give perfect straight and smooth surface and sharp edges. This proved to be too difficult for me again........my cake was already tilting and bumpy so it took a long while fill the gaps. My palette knife skills is not really up to scratch to nothing could be smoothed no matter how much I tried. Chef Matthew again came to the rescue. He simply applied more jam/cake mixture to the sloping side of the cake and dipped the palette knife in hot water to make the mixture more spreadable. He then demonstrated that the correct way to hold a palette knife is at an angle. The end result was definitely much better than what I originally came up with. It was then time to pack up for the day.

It was a confident destroying lesson for me as nothing turned out to be just right. Even forgot to take photos of the cake (which I will repost after I see it again). However, perseverance is my motto and there will always be more challenges along the way! Practice and patience are the two things I absolutely need right now.

The journey continues......fingers crossed that the next lesson will be so much better!

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 2 - It's a bumpy ride (part one)!

My first visit to the new Le Cordon Bleu London campus on 15th January 2014 was not exactly a smooth one. It was easy to find the campus but I arrived when the next wave of classes were about to start so everything was rather chaotic. The receptionist didn't even get to store my fingerprint to their system which is required to gain access to the classrooms - luckily it was sorted at a later stage.

Chef Julie (one of our programme instructors) was able to fish me out of the million other students waiting in the narrow campus corridor for their next classes to begin (well it was not a hard thing to do as I stood out for not wearing the full body chef's outfit) and led me to a lecture room for our first lesson. There are 9 of us on the programme in total - including 2 full-time students who are doing their intermediate patisserie diploma. It tool chef Julie a while to finally gather the full crowd before we can finally begin the lesson. Chef Matthew prompted joined the lecture room and the two of them talked for a few hours on course content, health & safety and then a tour around the campus followed by a 45 minutes break.

My classmates also include a Le Cordon Bleu cuisine diploma graduate, a business woman from India who owns a little bakery shop back home, a full-time mom from Malaysia who would like to continue with the Sugar Artistry Programme afterwards, an audiologist and a DJ who would both like to venture into the cake decorating world, and finally a girl from Nigeria who simply wants learn something crafty. Everyone joined the programme for different reasons.

After the break, we regrouped again in the 2nd floor patisserie kitchen for our first practical lesson - making royal icing and piping it on a dummy cake. It is rather nice that you get to actually make things you are going to use for cake decorating in the programme. We all had our own ingredients, kitchen bench and equipments.

Chef Matthew demonstrated how to make royal icing and then it was our turn. It was my first time using a Kitchenaid mixer but things proceeded without issues (though my royal icing was a tiny bit too thick to be piped in the end). Chef Matthew then showed us how to make piping bags using baking parchments. I had learnt how to make them before from other cake decorating courses but Le Cordon Bleu really taught it the best - simply explanations and I am finally confident to make one without getting lost!

Now it is time to get piping! We were each given a no.2 piping tube and practiced piping basic things using templates from our course book. It was not the most confidence boosting thing to do as the piped patterns seem of have a will of their own......most of the time! As my royal icing a bit too thick my thumb was in pain after rather quickly so I had to take breaks a lot.

Chef Matthew then showed us how to pipe loops on a dummy cake with equal spacing. This took me a while to get to as marking the dummy cake with naked eye was simply too difficult - I ended up with markers that are not equally spaced so I had to wipe them out and then restart again. Luckily chef Matthew came to the rescue and showed me how to make a round parchment paper with equally spaced creases to make things soooo much easier for me.

We simply practiced piping for the whole night. When and my hands were absolutely sore and it was reaching the end of the class it was time to stop. The dummy cake was still covered with amateur-level piping patterns but hey practice makes perfect so watch this space. Below is a picture of my dummy cake:

(Note to self - must also practice piping shells at the bottom rim of the cake)

Chef's piping:

 Chef Julie also showed us her skills and these swirls are simply divine!

One lesson down, 9 more to go!!

Sparkling Piggy

Le Cordon Blue Cake Decorating Programme 1 - This is happening!

After months of odd day/half day courses here and there, I've finally decided to enroll in the Cake Decorating Programme at Le Cordon Bleu as the course content looks really comprehensive compared to other course providers out there. The most exciting thing is - it starts today! Am not particularly looking forward to the 14.5 hr schedule though as day job is still in the way and the programme takes place between 3pm - 9:30pm! 

It has been a long time dream of mine to open a bakery (hopefully in the near future) - the cake decorating programme is only a tiny element to help me to achieve that dream (after all cake decorating is really in right now). I will update progress of the programme in future blog entries so watch this space! Le Cordon Bleu is such a reputable culinary school so fingers crossed that the programme will not be too daunting for me. After the cake decorating programme I wish to continue with their Bakery Programme which starts in March 2014. The best thing would be to do the full Patisserie Diploma but that would see me being almost £15,000 poorer! Never say never though.........now better pop out to get those tickets soon........

It would great that by the end of this programme to upgrade my cake decorating skills from this - 

(Pumpkin cupcakes I made for Halloween 2013)

....to any products such as those made by MAISIE FANTAISIE  - her cakes are so elegant and perfectly made! 

So the journey begins! 

Sparkling Piggy