Blast From The Past

First of all, wish you all a belated HAPPY NEW YEAR 09! Hope you all had a good break and to friends working in the hospitality industry, unfortunately that would not be the case.
This time around I would like to post some of my cakes that I made a couple of years back either out of boredom, curiosity, friend’s birthday or just happen to have the ingredients at that particular time. Here we go...





Cassis

This one falls into curiosity as I never work with cassis and just happen to have the raw material at that particular time( as a friend happen to gave me a box of cassis puree). After some intense research and development, the box of puree along with other ingredients) was turn into that thing above. Unfortunately, I do not have a sliced picture of the cakes so you just have to take my word for the components inside it.

• Cassis mousse
  
• Cassis and Creme de cassis coulis
  
• Creme brulee with chestnut confit
  
• Cassis glaze
  

Foret Noir (that’s the closes thing to it…I think)
I made this for Retrohells birthday at that time. I have just learnt a few new techniques and recipe so I decide to apply it straight away No, this is no guinea pig cakes!

• Ivory Chantilly infused with tons of vanilla pods... yummy
  
• Chocolate soufflé sponge soaked with chocolate punch
  
• Mixed berries macerated with raspberry and framboise liquor
  

Don't know what to call this one
This was made for J's birthday; a new technique such as sugar pulling was applied for the garnish.

• Raspberry mousse
  
• Green tea sponge soaked with green tea milk punch
  
• Green tea pannacota
  
• Raspberry coulis
  

Melbourne
I made this for a Melbourne based company that did a machine and product demonstration for their clienteles in Sydney. It was extremely fun and interesting working with them.

• Vanilla Bavarian cream
  
• Praline mousse
  
• Force Noir Ganache
  
• Garnish with Isomalt, crushed praline and chocolate of course
  

Goodness, now I realize that I overly abuse the chocolate disc as a garnish, oh well. These are made in a home lab except for the Melbourne gig. During that time it was in a proper lab and I get to use a pasteurizer, chilling and freezing machine in 1! This baby can make your pastry cream, bombe mix, all other sorts of creams, curds, ganache, gelatos, sorbets, u name it, programmed it and the baby will make it. All yours for only AUD 35k, if not more. They also brought a mini blast freezer and plenty of silicone molds. Not to mention all the awesome pastry ingredients that they take along. I was like a child in a toy store. This demo was supposed to be carried out by Kirsten Tibballs, one of the leading chocolatier in the Southern Hemisphere and me as an assistant, kitchen hand, runner, what ever she needs. How ever she was not well during that appointed time so my mentor / lecturer at Le Cordon Bleu advised on what to be done and I carried out the physical demonstration.

Special thanks to bro Retrohell for the advice, guidance and for the design of the watermark (you should see it in all the pictures now). He sure is patience in guiding an adobe noob such as my self... Cheers mate!!

Thanks for dropping by and reading my babble, until next time!!

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