Let Them Eat Cake- Week 10

After the Easter break, we were back, and to kick off the proceedings, a day of vegetable cakes. I was so unimpressed with that idea. Carrot Cake, and Zucchini Cake. Zucchini! What a concept! I'm happy to report, though, that the zucchini cake was delish! The pineapple in the batter helped to make it sweet and moist, and really, you can't go wrong with cream cheese icing.

Zucchini

I'm not a massive carrot cake fan, so all I'll say here is that tasted like carrot cake. But it did have cute carrot decorations! 

Carrot cake, carrot cake, have you any nuts?

The next cake we were faced with was a gluten free option- Orange and Almond Cake with a Coffee and Cardamon Anglaise. Unfortunately, all of our cakes exploded in the oven, so we had nothing to plate up, but it was a delicious combo. Because we had nothing to serve the anglaise with, we turned it into icecream- yum! 

Cake morsels

Next up was a cake prep day- when we made the cake component of a Sacher Torte, and also a Genoese Sponge Cake. When the cakes were out of the oven they were cooled, wrapped and popped into the fridge for later use, because only a silly ninny would bake and fill a sponge cake in the same day! We also practiced our chocolate writing. 

Merry Christmas everyone!

Last task of the week was to assemble the Sacher Torte and make a Swiss Roll for use the following week. First job- cut the sacher sponge evenly into two layers. Oh dear. We all have to start somewhere! Next, we brushed each layer with apricot jam, and then covered it with a thin layer of marzipan. 

Marzipan cake!

Next up, we had to heat up the chocolate glaze that we'd made the day before, and evenly coat the top and sides. Then we left it to set while we made the sponge for a Swiss Roll. This was all fine and dandy, once the sponge was out of the oven, it was rolled up and let to set for 30 seconds. Then it was unrolled, and spread with jam and rolled up and wrapped. Into the fridge, and back to the Sacher. 

Time for the defining feature of a Sacher Torte- the name. We had been instructed to pipe it in chocolate, but our supervising chef of the day suggested to me that I pipe it in ganache, because it "looks better". Oh how wrong he was. My letters all ran into one another and it looked awful, so he scraped it off and told me to re-melt and set the ganache on top. Oh yeah? And how do I do that? "Just put it back in the oven!" he said. So back into the oven my cake went. Upon removal, the chef piped it again, and when the writing was complete, he took one look at it and scraped it off. Back the drawing board again! This time though, an industrial paint stripper, much like a hairdryer was fetched so that my cake didn't melt anymore. I was not willing to try ganache for the third time, and so went for the suggest chocolate method. Surprise, surprise, it was fine! Sadly though, after I had packaged the cake into a box, I dropped the lot, and so the borders and icing all came off onto the box's interior. What an end to the week! 

Post-drop. 

Next week- more cake! Weeeee! xx