little sleep, another spill, and playing with chocolate

this weekend my friend sue was in town, so like all weekends when someone is visiting i stayed out too late on a school night. both nights actually. add another fall on my bike and some very intricate cake construction and you have the summary of my life this past few days.

in school on sunday i actually was keeping on schedule with the rest of my classmates for once. at times i almost felt like i had taken up the reigns as fellow students asked my advice on tasks i had completed before them. then my horse broke its leg. my over perfecting self leaped forward to steer me off a cliff.

we were working on creating a chocolate band to go around one of the cakes. a chiffon cake to be exact with a whipped chocolate ganache. the construction of this band involved tempering chocolate, which in short requires heating then cooling the chocolate in such a way that crystals are formed in the chocolates structure allowing it to set and take shape while keeping a glossy finish.

in order to make the band, a sheet of acetate (a plastic film) was cut to the length of the circumference of the cake. then a design in white chocolate was pipped onto the band. once this began to set a thin coat of dark chocolate was spread evenly over the entire piece of acetate. the whole things was then lifted off the table to insure clean edges from where the chocolate ran off the plastic. as the chocolate began to set, but was still malleable, it was quickly wrapped around and adhered to the outside of the cake.

with this level of intricacy and the constant washing of our hands for sanitation, i wouldn't be shocked if a trauma victim ended up on one of the tables in class. if this ever did happen i believe my patent would flat line from the constant resewing of the suchers as they bled out. which in essence is what took place in class as i continued to redraw my design over and over again until next thing i knew time was nearly up. at which point i quickly squirted down a pattern and managed to wrap the cake just as students shuffled out.

well, that is enough rambling, now on to some photos. pictured is a mouse cake, charlotte royale (a roll cake cut into pieces and molded to shape a dome filled with a bavarian cream), and chiffon cake with the troublesome chocolate band. i really enjoyed making the filigree (the designs stuck into the whipped cream) on top of the mouse cake.