So, our second week of entremets has come and gone and I’m all the stronger for it. It was my week to be partnered with Chef, which is hard. He knows what he’s doing, knows where we’re going with this and in general, thinks that if we’ve done it once, we have mastered it and therefore demos aren’t needed (he believes in us – until you whip the cream into butter). They might not be needed, but when you are partnered with Chef, demos are super helpful. Otherwise it’s you by your lonesome while he checks on everyone. Good chance to get some practice, but stressful!
But I did it and loved it. Entremets are fun to make, as they make a dramatic scene when you unveil 5 all sitting together, like this.
Incredibly impressed yet? Score!
Above is the Equateur (in the middle, of course), Framboisie (closest to you if you were standing where I was taking the picture), Soleil Indien (clockwise, or at 9 o’clock), Macaron Ananas Estragon (in the back with the pineapple and chocolate sticking up like a cowlick) and the Mogador (last one on the right).
Starting with the Equateur, let’s build us an entremet. First up, the classic – a coffee dacquois. Chef piped it lovely, even though we would be covering it up. Good thing too; while everyone was off looking at the croquembouches, I stayed behind to transfer both chef and mine dacquois from the countertop to the baking sheet to put in the oven. Easier said than done by yourself.
On top of that cooked dacquois, you place a frozen crème brulee – milk, cream, sugar, yolks, and a vanilla bean. Hi friend, bake away little buddy.
Layer it up with a coffee geniose (sponge cake like, but a bit dyer, which we solve by soaking it with simple syrup infused with instant coffee).
And holding this all together, inside and out, is a coffee flavored Saint-Honore cream, similar to a pastry cream but with gelatin and meringue. Stupid gelatin. To get the distinct caramelized look and flavor on top, we iron powdered sugar on top with a big old fire starting iron. Its pretty fun.
Push some genoise crumbs around the edge and voila!
And a cross-cut…
With that pup dog done, we move right along to Framboisie. Similar looking to the Giverny, but different once you get inside. We start with a pistachio dacquois, with a ring of pistachio joconde around the edge.
On top of that, we pour a vanilla supreme cream, made like crème anglaise, then add gelatin and whipped cream to it to thicken. A ring of raspberries is placed inside the cream.
Top this cake off with a pistachio butter cream, with a slight dome in the center when you ice it (it’s a frozen cake, so when you take it out to serve, it warms up a bit and tends to deflate a bit). Note – not this big of a dome.
Then, like the Giverny, you glaze it with a few drops of raspberry jam and natural glaze.
Throw some raspberries and pistachio dust, and you’re done! My little cake.
Rolling along, next up Soleil Indien. Bottom it with walnut dacquois, soaked in pear juice and cognac.
Cut a pineapple and soak in syrup and cognac. Try not to eat all of this, because its class and that’s booze. Pile up the fruit on the dacquois.
Yum. On this, goes a caramel supreme cream, piled up into a dome.
And then its time for more powdered sugar and the iron!
Cross-cut of the yummy pineapple goodness.
Hitting my stride now. Here’s the make-up of a Macaron Ananas Estragon. I love saying the name of this one. Its basically a big old macaron.
The base is an interesting hazelnut, Szechuan pepper macaron. In the center is an anise flavored diplomat cream (pastry cream with whipped cream; we added gelatin to add stability and to make it non-veggie for me), combined with pineapple that has been soaked overnight in a simple syrup/anise liquor/tarragon mix. For some reason, I have no pictures of this being made. Must have been during the whipped cream incident.
We topped this with some powered sugar, then covered the edges with hazelnut pieces.
And last, my most favorite (no gelatin!!!), the Mogador. It’s a pretty simple entremet, but I thought it was delicious. You start out with a chocolate genoise, or sponge cake.
Then you soak the cake with a raspberry syrup, made up of raspberry juice, raspberry syrup, raspberry liquor, and simple syrup. Not a bad combo. Then a thin layer of raspberry jam with seeds goes down. Then you cover the cake with chocolate Chantilly cream. I told you this one was good.
Then we spread another layer of the raspberry jam on top and decorated the sides the cake crumbs, much like the Equateur. We also added some raspberries for decoration. So super delicious. I could go for another piece right now actually…
Cross-cut. Not the prettiest, I was hungrily awaiting a bite and rushed it.
A successful week! You can tell when I was busy, I have less pictures of the process. The making also started to get jumbled together in my head, since we were making 5 cakes all at the same time, and pictures I thought had taken didn’t exist or were of another cake. Oops. But it was fun, we made great cake and I even got to take pieces home of anything I wanted (Mogador!). All in all, another awesome time as a Chef!
