THE CHOCOLATE CHALLENGE

The final assignment of LCBK 212 Advanced Pastry Techniques class is to make a chocolate centerpiece.  For most students, this is the first time in the Le Cordon Bleu program they must create an artistic design, temper (pre-crystallize) chocolate for large structural pieces, use new techniques for chocolate molding, modeling, painting and construction.  Their work was colorful, creative and delightful.  When I asked what they learned in the process, they responded, “Chocolate is dirty.”  “It is delicate.”  “It takes a lot of patience.”  “Chocolate can be anything you want it to be – all you need is your imagination.”

Congrats to “D” shift pastry students Amanda, Raul, Lili, Kellyn, Liana, Christina, Priscilla, Lemons, Jen-Bunny, Ashley, Tori and Denise.

World Chocolate Masters 2011 - Welcome to the 2011 edition

SO not your average chocolate showpiece. Check out this chocolate competition live from Paris.

World Chocolate Masters 2011 - Welcome to the 2011 edition

MOZZA-the simple things

If you like your mozzarella with flavorful salt and moistened with a fruity, herbed olive oil and served with hand-made bread and tiny heirloom tomatoes, then Mozza in LA will be worth the price for you.   Portions are small, flavors and freshness big.

From Nancy Silverton and Mario Battali

http://www.osteriamozza.com/LA/home.cfm

Don't miss the write up in this month's Bon Appetit....

http://www.bonappetit.com/magazine/mozza

Systematic review: Chocolate can reduce heart disease risk by a third

Good chocolate news here!

Systematic review: Chocolate can reduce heart disease risk by a third

Notes from LCBLA Baking Class

 Baking student Jaime Gravinni had some bad luck.  His learning abilities and comprehension were made worse by a recent car accident.  His luck changed when he met Mai Nguyen and Chase Rodgers.   Mai’s determination and detail-orientation made it possible for her to take notes and translate them for Jaime.  Chase recently served as a rifle coach in the Marines - making sure soldiers knew how to shoot their pistols and their standard issue rifles.  This became a straight-shooting team.  “It’s all about confidence, Jaime,” I heard Chase say over and over as they broke eggs, cooked their Pate a Choux together on the stovetop or wrestled the lumps out of lemon curd. I knew that Jaime could count on Mai and Chase because of their steadiness, strength of character and generosity.  I was proud to teach this team, but much prouder to observe the humbling selflessness and leadership that make the world a better place.  If you discover Mai or Chase in a restaurant some day, your luck will change for the better.  If you run into Jaime, he can make you a batch of cinnamon rolls, no problem.

Most students struggle with making their first cake - that pesky buttercream, the crumbs, the patience required to cool it between coats then the rush to decorate it in time to hit their presentation window.   Several of my recent baking students embraced this challenge and loved cake week in Baking 150.  When Chef Salazar and I  signed up to teach the cake-decorating class of the Master Chef Series, we knew we’d need help so we called in the culinary bakers and her patisserie students.  32 cakes later, our students had assisted with mis en place, production, cake transportation, coordinating non-professional students, helping  them slice assemble their cakes and competing in a Mystery Box Cake Competition. Ah, youth.

BEET THIS...

This article made Zester's Most Popular list.....http://www.zesterdaily.com/

Red velvet cake's striking combination of ruby-red chocolate crumb and tangy white cream cheese icing has captured the allegiance of a whole new generation of devotees. Although it's now associated closely with high-end cupcake shops, this storied cake got its start in the American South -- and before that, arguably, in beet cakes from Russia.

Red velvet's roots trace back to an apocryphal story of a southern gourmet’s trip to New York City in the 1920s. Legend has it that she visited the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and was able to pry the cake recipe from the head chef, who in turn sent her a large bill. Miffed, she took it back to her home in Georgia, where she popularized it among her many friends. Yet, when the current chef of the Waldorf's restaurant checked the archives, no record could be found of a red velvet cake recipe, nor of the mysterious chef who may have created it. Despite its irresolute origins, this cake remains larger and more enduring than the sum of its stories.

Today, the red color usually comes courtesy of food coloring (many recipes call for a whole bottle!), but natural cocoa powder and a chemical reaction between vinegar, buttermilk and baking soda also contribute to the cake’s ruddy color. Before red food coloring was invented, and long before cupcakes commanded their own storefronts, cakes were made red by another means: beets.

Russians take pride in preserving the prizes of their summer harvests in jams, preserves and pickles. Preserves and sweetening agents were often included in foods when fruits were scarce, and the naturally sweet, colorful beet found its way into peasant cakes throughout Russia in the 1800s. To achieve the brilliant red hue, the beets were boiled or baked, then mashed into the cake batter.

Beet Red Velvet Cake

Beets may seem like an usual addition to chocolate cake, but they keep the the crumb wonderfully moist. Even more surprising? They’re undetectable. The flavor of this cake is unmistakably chocolate.

Ingredients

2 ¼ cups cake flour

3 tablespoon. cocoa powder (preferably “natural” or non-alkalised)

1 teaspoon salt

1 ½ stick (6 ounces) butter (at room temperature)

1 ½ cups sugar

2 eggs

½ cup beets (boiled, peeled and pureed*)

1 tablespoon vanilla

½ cup sour cream

½ cup buttermilk

4 ounces melted bittersweet chocolate

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon white vinegar

A few drops of red food coloring (optional)

Directions

1.Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare 2 cake pans by lining them with parchment paper.

2.Combine flour, cocoa powder, salt and set aside.

3.Cream butter and sugar together until it becomes light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Add the pureed beets and vanilla to the batter.

4.In a separate medium bowl, blend the sour cream and buttermilk together. Then, starting with the four mixture, alternate flour mixture and the buttermilk-sour cream mixture in thirds until both are mixed into the batter. Add the melted chocolate. Finally, place the baking soda in a separate small bowl and add the vinegar to it. (It will foam up.) Fold the soda and vinegar mixture into the cake batter.

5.Pour the batter into prepared pans and bake for about 35 minutes, until cake is firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out with just a few crumbs. Allow the cakes to cool to room temperature, then unmold. Ice them with white chocolate cream cheese icing (see recipe, below).

White Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing

Ingredients

3 (8 ounce) packages of cream cheese

4 ounces melted white chocolate

1 tablespoon. vanilla

½ cup milk

½ cup cream

½ cup sifted powdered sugar

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Directions

1.Unwrap the packages of cream cheese and place them in the bowl of an electric mixer. Allow them to come to room temperature, then use the paddle attachment and mix the cream cheese on low until it is completely soft and smooth.

2.Stop the mixer and add all the other ingredients, then mix on medium until the icing is smooth. Adjust to taste. Allow the icing to chill for about ½ hour before applying it to the cake.

*To puree fresh beets, cut off their stems and boil them for 15 minutes. Let them cool enough to handle, then peel off their skins with a vegetable peeler and purée them in a food processor, blender or by hand with a potato masher.

CROISSANTS

CROISSANTS

A pale golden color and a uniform puff lure unsuspecting buyers to second rate croissants. Plenty of grocery stores and delis have them, but their flavor is bland and their texture dull and doughy. Their impressive disguise mimics the classic good looks and famous famous flakiness of the well-known French croissant, omni-present in the boulangeries and pastry shops of Paris.. But the blonder, more uniform imposters are missing one key ingredient: pure butter. For cost purposes, makers of industrial croissants replace much of the butter with cheaper, shelf-stable shortening. Shortening does not melt as easily as better and makes the dough easy to produce, but it does not impart the same magical flavor as pure butter. No silky melt, no peaks and valleys of fresh yeast flavor, no slightly carmelized base.

The smell of lightly salted butter and fresh yeast encase a real, handmade criossant - an alluring halo of authenticity. Real butter croissants have a wider range of color, starting with a crisp, warm brown on top because they are brushed with layer of "eggwah" before baking, a too-expensive luxury for the mass producers of faux croissants. The egg-wased top supports a paler level of soft pastry that gives way to a golden yellow, egg-infused interior. This palette is only possible when eggs are mixed with white fours and real, pale yellow butter. Shortening (a stable creation made from whipped oil, otherwise known as a "transfat") is florescent white, which accounts for the paler color of mass-prodeced croissants.. A real croissant looks a little rougher, offers an artistic palette of freshly-baked yellow-browns and its flavor is a burst of buttery sunshine.

As you might expect, real croissants are made by hand in small batches - part of the morning process for artisan bakers in food-focused American spots, France and other pastry-centric countries like Austria where the croissant originated. Much lore surrounds these little creseats, but little proof exists on when or why they became the signature pastry of France, but they did.. They were modeled after a poplular pastry from Vienna, the kipfel, which dates back to the Renaissance.

Croissants live in a family of French pastries called “laminated doughs” along with their cousins, Danish and Puff Pastry. Croissant dough relies on fresh yeast, an important factor in creating a true croissant's layered texture and flavor. Rich bread dough made from white flour, butter, yeast and water is lightly kneaded together, then folded around a square of pure softened butter. Through a series of careful folds intercut with long periods of “resting” where the dough sits idly in the fridge, layers of dough are “laminated” with layers of butter. Once the chilled, lacquered dough is ready to shape, it is cut into long triangles that resemble the Eifel Tower. Then each piece is rolled up to take the familiar crescent shape, allowed to "proof" or puff up as the yeast starts its work, carefully painted with eggwash, then baked.

In Gisslen’s Professional Coooking, the text book used by the keeper of the torch of French culinary techniques, Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, croissants are given a 4 page spread. The recipe below is a simplifed version. The process of chilling the dough for 20 minute intervals along the way just does not have to dominate the day, but instead can be part of a productive kitchen session. The novice baker might be intimidated by the many steps and time lapses, and consequently appreciate the convenient, transfatty fakes from the grocery store. But with some planning, the croissant-making process is easy, and freshly baked croissants at home are rich reward.