Loooong Monday

Today is just Monday, but it already feels like more days have passed, all in just one day. I began the day with demo at 8:30 am.
It started a bit shaky, since from the administration they gave us our written exam guidelines, which means is also closer. and explained us how will it break down, and what we need to study. Which always lights of the mood before class (yeah right!).
Putting that aside, and after a few minutes to finally concentrate, it was a good demo, and in fact in felt quick and short. The chef made Dacquise, which is a meringue based "cake" since it has a thick cake like texture, and filled with delicious praline butter cream. The tricky part of this "cake is the marzipan rose we had to do for decoration, since let me tell you is not an easy task to do. Besides this, the chef showed us how to make two other kinds of meringues, the French Meringue, and the Swiss Meringue, as well as different types of shapes we can make them into. He even taught us how to make a really good Raspberry Sorbet, which is so easy to make.

So here is what the chef prepared:

Swiss and French Meringues in different flavors

Here are the Dacquoises the Chef made and three ways of decorating the top.

Marzipan Flower detail

As every class we get to sample everything. Here you can see better the texture of the Dacquoise. The praline butter cream is good, but after you see how much butter is used to make it, you can totally feel it when you eat it. I mean as I tell you is good, and not greasy at all, is just that after being aware of the amount of butter, you don't want to eat it all. After all is called butter cream for a reason!!

After the demo, we had a 6 hours "break" which I really needed, to eat, rewrite my recipe, and catch up on the blog. I was able to accomplish many things, so that was good.
Then I went back to school for the 6:30 class, which makes your day feel really long.
For demo we only had to do the Dacquoise, but that was plenty enough of work. Beating all those egg white to make the meringue by hand, and then beating for like what felt like forever those egg yolks and syrup for the praline cream, and then how it really thickened as we added all that butter, my arm needed a rest. And then once you are already tired of all that beating, your shoulder hurts, and you are red, because all the heat of the oven next to you, you still have to work on making the marzipan flower, and not only make it, but make it look pretty too, since we need a rose not a cabbage looking figure to decorate (which I might add I am really good making rather than the desired rose looking one, hahahaha). In the end, my meringue came out good, except for when I removed it from the ring, I cut off a bit, making it later the back of the cake. The filling (praline butter cream) came out good, but I am already forgetting how to pipe. It was descent enough but I have to practice, and I need to make the inside taller, since once I put the top layer it looked a bit thin. And finally my rose, I have to agree is not totally ugly, but again I am forgetting and I definitively need to somehow practice more.

I definitively have to put more filling inside!!

My attempt of the marzipan rose

Thank God, after this long day I get two days off!!