The Strawberry Hazelnut gateau used a dacquoise base, covered with a strawberry bavarian cream, and with a strawberry jelly on top. The dacquoise is like a meringue, with hazelnuts and almonds. And a bavaroise is basically a sauce anglaise with gelatin, into which you fold whipped cream and whipped egg whites. This makes for a pretty light, pretty stable, mousse-type filling.
Now, I'd taken ages to carefully lay out strawberry slices to form a flower on the entire top of the gateau. And you really were supposed to be able to see it, but because we used fresh fruit for the jelly, the jelly turned out too dark, and not clear enough. So all my time spent making sure to fill up all the gaps, and carefully slipping in 'petals' had just gone to waste.
We also did some of our prep for Wednesday's gateau, a caramelised orange gateau. We made an almond sponge for this, to use as a base, to use around the sides of the gateau, and to insert as discs in the middle of the gateau to give us layers. So we lined the inside of a metal ring with squares of sponge, and put a disk at the bottom. It's got to be quite snug, or you could have some leakage ('eeewww!' I always look absolutely horrified when this happens to someone in my clas.) A layer of orange mousse goes onto the bottom layer of sponge, but don't make it too thick because there's lots to go in yet! A second layer of sponge is placed on top of the mousse, which is firm enough to hold it up without sinking. Adding layers of sponge is a good idea because it creates distinct layers, and provides a bit more substance to a gateau which would otherwise be a bit unbalanced. A second layer of mousse goes on top of this, and a final sponge disc. The top layer of the gateau is an orange cream. You should try to make all of the layers the same size, not only will it look a lot prettier, it'll also be easier to serve and eat, and you'll get a nicer flavour balance. This needs to be chilled so that the gelatine can set. After chilling, slide the ring off. Sometimes you need to warm it up a bit, but I just put the tinniest bit of butter on mine and it slid right off. The gateau isn't finished yet though, because it's not caramelised yet! The top of the orange cream needs to be sprinkled with sugar (granulated or castor,) and then torched, like with a creme brulee.
There's a lot to this gateau, and I was the only student who got it done in one day. It's important to read all the recipes that you need for the different conponents of the gateau. For example, both the orange mousse and the orange cream needed pastry cream and orange curd. And the recipe that we received for orange curd took one hour to cook and roughly another hour to cool enough to be used. We also used two types of syrup; a simple syrup to go in the mousse and the cream, and an orange syrup to moisten the sponge.
I really liked this week; I felt that I accomplished something with these gateaus, and I actually learned some new things.
I've also gone into panic stage 2. We only have nex week and then we're off until the new year, so I'm working my butt off on chocolates, trying to get as much done as possible before the break. I'm finalising things now for three of them, and I should have them boxed and all ready to go by the end of the week. (yay!)
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