Cake Week: Round Two!

This was a delicious week.  The cakes may have even been better than the first cake week, which is really saying something.

Cake 1:


This was probably my least favorite cake out of all the cakes we've made.  This cake had a pate a sucre (sugar dough) base, and on top of that was a brownie.  I feel like I should describe this brownie though, because it is not a normal brownie-- it's a frenchified brownie.  It started out pretty normal (melted chocolate, sugar, nuts, etc.), but we made a meringue which we then folded into the chocolate mixture.  The brownie was not at all fudge-y and gooey, it was light and relatively dry.  It would have been good if we had left it at that, but on top of the brownie we spread a layer of really bitter orange marmalade.  I was not a fan.  On top of the orange marmalade was a chocolate-tea mousse.  I actually really liked that, but not everyone was fond of the tea in it.  We decorated the top with chocolate decorations we made ourselves.  Pretty cool!

Cake 2:

This was suuuuuper good.  Chef called it an Inflorescence cake.  It was layers of almond dacquoise, milk chocolate mousse, cherry jam, and another layer of the almond dacquoise.  We then submerged it in an amaretto flavored bavarian cream, then poured a marble glaze on top.  The decoration on top is made of isomalt, which we painted with an really pretty mauve-ish colored edible powder.  I think it's the prettiest thing we've made since I've been here. Gorgeous.



Cake 3:

This may have been my favorite of both cake weeks thus far.  It's a coconut cream tart with exotic fruits and a lime mousse.  I'm normally a sucker for chocolate desserts and often skip over the fruity desserts, but this fruity dessert is giving all of the chocolate desserts I've eaten a run for their money.  The dough is a pate a sucre dough, and we baked that slightly then filled it with a coconut cream we made and put it back in the oven.  We put an apricot glaze over that, then sliced the lime mousse we made (which we poured into tubes and froze to get the round shaped slices) and decorated the tart with the mousse and a bunch of fresh fruit.  We used mango, baby bananas (which I still don't know the technical name for), pineapple, kiwi, papaya, passion fruit seeds, and dried pieces of coconut.  Then we sprayed it with apricot glaze again, et voila!  Delicieux!