by Jenna Weber
Working carefully, I inverted my sheet cake, then slowly peeled back the parchment paper on top. By itself, the cake was pretty bland. It was a simple sponge cake, using egg whites and powdered almonds folded into a mixture of sugar, butter, and cake flour. The recipe intentionally produced a bland, dry cake because it was meant to be soaked in liqueur, coffee buttercream, and chocolate. A moist, dense cake would crumble under the weight of it all, but a dry cake would be able to absorb everything nicely. I trimmed the edges of my cake and then brushed the liqueur all over the top, followed by a nice big plop of buttercream. Desserts like this seemed so old-fashioned to me, but there really was a special joy in creating them. I felt like anyone could bake muffins or chocolate cupcakes, but assembling a classic Opera Torte really took skill.
As I spread the buttercream across the whole cake with my offset spatula, I thought back upon all the bustling pastry shops on the Left Bank in Paris. Desserts like this one lined the glass cases, and fresh artisanal bread was stacked high on shelves above. Sometimes after school, I would stop in one of the shops on my way home and get a special treat to take home for dessert. Unlike many American women, the French women I met were not concerned with who was the thinnest and who exercised the most. Instead, French women seemed to take much more joy in living a pleasurable life, whether that meant picking up an occasional pastry from the pâtisserie or catching up with an old friend for hours over creamy cappuccinos. I missed the Parisian mindset relating to food and life and hoped that after I graduated, I would be able to share it with others.
Later that evening, as my chocolate glaze set up shiny over my torte, I listened to Chef Becker lecture about the next day’s events. My dad was coming up for the open house, and I couldn’t wait to show off everything I had been working on. The Opera Torte was finished and looking wonderful (only a tiny bit slanted), and my group mates were about to get busy working on the traditional almond petits fours and tiny French macarons, my favorite. To me, there was not a more perfect cookie than the French macaron. Unlike the cloyingly sweet American macaroon, laden with sugary flaked coconut and chocolate, French macarons consist of two light almond meringue cookies sandwiched together with a dab of chocolate ganache or fruit preserves. I fell in love with these little treats while living in Paris, where they were typically served five to a plate alongside an espresso.
The next day, when my dad arrived, everything was set out perfectly. I had dark circles underneath my eyes from working late the night before, but it was well worth the effort. Our station looked like a mini pâtisserie, with all of our pastries arranged over a decorative mirror that Chef just happened to have in her car and let us borrow.
“It seems like you really have found your niche, Jennifer,” Dad said, as he bit into a tiny square of Opera Torte. Right before all the guests arrived, I had carefully written the word Opera on every small slice. My wrist felt sore to prove it.
“Yeah, it’s a lot of fun, and I feel more at home here than in the regular Culinary Program,” I said. I really did. When I looked back and thought that only two months ago I was breaking down chickens and deboning fish, I shuddered. Here, I was constantly surrounded by freshly baked bread, frosting in every color, and petits fours. Dad was right; I did feel like I had found my niche.
“There are more pastries across the hall,” I told him, signaling into the next kitchen, which was a more advanced pastry class.
“This is just unreal!” Dad said as we passed rows and rows of perfect lemon tarts, miniature chocolate-chip cookies, and two-inch slices of flourless chocolate torte. In the next kitchen, there were macarons of every flavor and color: coconut, lime, licorice, chocolate, vanilla, peach, and rose. All were no larger than a quarter and were filled with bright, creamy fillings. I grabbed a coconut and rose macaron to sample, since I hadn’t had anything to eat since dinner, and that was hours ago. Usually on school nights I packed a snack, such as a granola bar or some dried fruit and nuts, but tonight I had been too rushed to think of anything besides how to spell Opera.
As I bit into the rose macaron, I was transported right back to France. The exterior crackled on my tongue and tasted lightly of flowers and sugar-sweet perfume. Surprisingly, rose is a very popular flavor in France, and often it’s paired with raspberry in candies and pastries. The macaron I was eating had a delicate raspberry jellylike filling that went perfectly with the crumbly rose cookie.
Raspberry-Rose Macarons
Makes about 18 macarons
Raspberry-rose is a traditional flavor combination in France, but if you’d rather make plain macarons, substitute the rose extract for vanilla and sandwich the cookies together with chocolate or vanilla buttercream frosting.
For the white chocolate-raspberry ganache
4 ounces white-chocolate chips
¼ cup half-and-half or cream
2 tablespoons raspberry jam (I use Bonne Maman)
For the cookies
1 cup powdered sugar
½ cup ground almonds
2 egg whites, room temperature
5 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon rose extract
1 drop red food coloring
First, make the ganache filling: Melt white chocolate and cream using a double boiler (or in a metal bowl set over a pot of simmering water). Whisk chocolate and cream together, breaking up any lumps. Add the jam and stir well. Push ganache through a fine-mesh strainer (I use a sifter) to get rid of the raspberry seeds. Let ganache cool for at least 2 hours at room temperature before using. It will thicken as it cools.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Make the cookies: Combine the powdered sugar and almonds in a bowl and mix well to combine. Using a stand mixer, whip the egg whites until foamy. Add the granulated sugar, rose extract, and food coloring and continue to whip until stiff, glossy peaks form. In two batches, fold in the powdered sugar and almond mixture. Scrape batter into a pastry bag with a ¼-inch pastry tip, and pipe out tablespoon-size mounds of batter onto a lined baking sheet.
Bake the macarons for 12 minutes. Let cool completely, then peel macarons off baking sheet.
When cookies are totally cool, spread a teaspoon or so of white chocolate–raspberry ganache on half the cookies, and sandwich with the other half.
Blood Orange Tarts
Makes four 3-inch individual tarts or one 8-inch tart
Save any extra curd from these tarts to spread on muffins and scones. The puckery taste and stunning color are wonderful.
For the blood orange curd
Juice of one blood orange
Juice of one lemon
Zest of one lemon
½ cup sugar
3 eggs, plus 1 egg yolk
½ stick (4 tablespoons) butter at room temperature, cut into small chunks
For the tart shells
¾ cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
Pinch of salt
½ stick (4 tablespoons) cold butter, cut into chunks
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon whole milk or cream
Make the curd first so that it has ample time to chill and set in the refrigerator: Line a sheet tray with wax paper. Whisk together the blood orange juice, lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, eggs, and egg yolk in a large heatproof bowl. Place the bowl over a pot of simmering water to make a double boiler and add the butter. Whisk continuously until the mixture begins to thicken, about 10 minutes, then, using a rubber spatula, continue to gently stir until the curd is thick and creamy and coats the back of the spatula completely. (This entire process will take about 15–20 minutes.) Once the curd is thick, take it off the heat and pour onto the wax paper–lined sheet tray, spreading it thin. Press a piece of plastic wrap on top of the curd to cover it completely and transfer to the refrigerator for an hour to set.
Preheat the oven to 375°F.
Make the tart shells: Mix together the flour, sugar, and salt. Cut in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles sand.
Add the yolk and cream and combine until mixture forms a ball.
Knead the dough until a smooth dough forms. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and press it into greased mini-tart shells. You could also roll out the dough and press it into a pie dish. Prick dough with a fork. Bake the shells or pie shell until slightly golden, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool completely.
Fill the tart shells (or pie) with the curd and transfer to the refrigerator for at least 8 hours to set completely.
13
PIECE OF CAKE
WEDDING CAKE CLASS STARTED OFF PAINFULLY. Granted, I was assigned to be in a group with Samantha and Jake, and it was fun to work with friends, spending the late evenings laughing and making fondant, sugar roses, and Styrofoam cake layers. But the class quickly cemented my sense that I had no knack whatsoever for decorating cakes, not to mention zero patience. It made me almost miss the crazy, fast-paced mess of Basic Skills I, where I’d at least been able to release some stress by chopping and sautéing; in Wedding Cakes, I felt stifled and awkward. To make matters worse, I realized just how artistic some of the other students in the class were, including Samantha.
“See? You just gently twirl the cake stand while you squeeze icing from your other hand,” she said, trying to show me how to make a buttercream rose for the second time. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t seem to spin the stand and form the creamy rose petals at the same time. I always just ended up with a blob of frosting melting all over my fingers. It was hopeless, and maddening.
“I can’t get it!” I said, gritting my teeth in frustration. This wasn’t just about the buttercream roses. I’d always thought of myself as a good cook and baker, someone who was good with her hands and thoughtful in the kitchen. Someone who got it. These buttercream roses made me wonder if I was really cut out for any of this. I felt defeated.
Samantha already had seven perfect buttercream roses sitting on tiny pieces of wax paper in front of her. Jake, on the other hand, was more on my level and at that moment was discussing his plight with Chef Matthews. I shifted around on my bar stool and picked up the pastry bag once again. I never thought I would rather be cutting meat than frosting cakes, but this was getting ridiculous.
“What did your wedding cake look like?” I asked Samantha, while picking pieces of dried frosting out from underneath my fingernails.
She laughed. “Well, you know we got married at Disney, right? The cake was a big pumpkin, like the one from Cinderella! Vanilla cake and lots of buttercream. It was perfect.”
On the outside I smiled, but on the inside I felt like I was about to die laughing. Living in Orlando had introduced me to the subculture of Disney World “groupies.” Every day on my drive to school, I saw them all dressed as their favorite characters, boarding buses into the park. Samantha was a great girl, but she was one of those groupies, and sometimes I questioned her taste.
In my mind, a wedding cake should be tall and white with lots of delicate frosting swirls. Not that I was offering to make one—that seemed like a clear recipe for disaster. But at the end of the night, that’s exactly what Chef Matthews told us we had to do. Each of us would make a wedding cake—no partners on this assignment—for the last night of class. It would be worth exactly half of our total grade. I was doomed.
When I got home it was close to 12:30 a.m. Every time I took a step, my black rubber clogs squeaked from a glob of frosting that had spread out on the soles. The wedding cake project already was looming over my head, even though it wasn’t due for two and half weeks. I had no clue what I would do or what it would look like. Paging through wedding magazines had never been one of my priorities. I flopped down on my queen-size bed and debated calling Rob to say goodnight but then remembered what time it was. Lately, our conversations had been shorter than before due to my school schedule and his job. But that was normal, I told myself. We had been dating for so long that we didn’t need to have deep, hour-long conversations late at night when we were both already exhausted. Rob with his fishing, rum and Cokes, and good-natured laughter. We were opposites in every way possible, yet somehow we still managed to make things work.
The next night in school, I sat with Samantha and Jake in the computer lab doing “research” on different wedding cake styles. Not too surprisingly, Samantha had chosen a gothic Halloween theme for her cake and was busy finding patterns of skulls and crossbones online to copy onto her cake. Like me, Jake had no idea what he wanted his cake to look like yet, and the two of us spent the hour goofing off instead of researching like we were supposed to. Jake was an interesting guy, and I enjoyed getting to know him. He was incredibly intelligent and loved video games, baking bread, and physics. He was a geek, the kind who probably dresses up to go see Harry Potter movies. Talking to him is a lot more fun than talking to most of Rob’s friends, I thought to myself.
“What about this one?” I asked Jake as I scrolled through a site of simple blue wedding cakes with cherry blossoms winding over the layers.
“That looks like it might be sort of difficult, but I love the colors!” Jake responded enthusiastically. Hmmm, I thought to myself. How hard could this really be?
In the kitchen the next day, we were handed rolls of white fondant. The fondant was soft and felt like pie dough made out of smooth clay. It smelled sweet, like frosting, and could be easily molded and cut into various shapes and sizes. I immediately pulled off a tiny edge of mine and brought it to my lips. There was no real flavor other than sugar, and it tasted intensely sweet. I chose to dye my fondant a robin’s-egg blue, like the wedding cake I had seen on the Internet, and soon my palms had turned the same color. In my excitement to get started, I had forgotten the crucial step of wearing gloves while working with the food coloring. Blue dye sank into the lines of my hands and onto my short fingernails. This will be interesting to explain to Tony tomorrow at work, I thought. But I kept squeezing my fondant, which was now swirled blue and white, to get an even color before I attempted to cover my first cake layer. I had decided to go with a completely blue cake and then, despite Jake’s doubts, make a rather intricate cherry-blossom pattern winding up from the base. I thought it would be interesting if nothing else.
The next day I rushed from work to school with bright blue hands and a new sense of determination. Even though I knew that decorating cakes was not my strong suit, I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. My blue fondant was waiting for me right where I’d left it, and I immediately began rolling it out with a large wooden rolling pin. After a few minutes of hard rolling, I had a large, smooth disk of fondant in front of me. I dotted the top of my first Styrofoam layer with glue and neatly laid the fondant on top. I still found it ironic that we were using Styrofoam and glue to decorate wedding cakes. For the sake of time, we weren’t actually baking the cakes that we were decorating. I’d initially felt a little let down when I heard that, but I realized that it made sense to focus on the decorating aspect instead of more baking. Still, the whole process seemed more like a child’s arts and crafts project than an advanced class at Le Cordon Bleu.
I kept rolling and working with my fondant for the next hour, until small beads of sweat dotted my eyebrows and my neck, where my cravat remained tied tight. There were still air bubbles around the sides of the layers, bubbles that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to smooth out. Every time I smoothed one, another one would pop up right next to it. Feeling frustrated and hungry, I grabbed my snack of a homemade oatmeal cookie and fled to the hallway to eat in peace. I had baked these cookies for Rob and my brother last weekend when I was home in Tampa, and I’d taken a few home with me for late-night school snacks. They were pretty healthy, really, and contained flaxseeds, almond butter, and dark-chocolate chips. Come to think of it, I probably liked them a lot better than the boys did.
After taking my time eating my cookie, checking my voicemail, and stopping by the hallway water fountain, I made my way back inside the cool classroom kitchen. All seventeen students were working d
iligently on their cakes, and as a result, the room was almost silent. Back at my table, Samantha had her headphones on and was deep in concentration. In the time it took me to wrap my three Styrofoam layers alone, she had already begun working on the meticulous border of ghoul faces that wrapped around every layer of her cake. Jake, on the other hand, was still trying to cover his pieces and looked just as frustrated as I’d felt all evening.
“How’s it goin’ over here, guys?” Chef Matthews asked as he suddenly appeared at the end of our table.
“Pretty good,” I responded, trying to stay positive. “I’m almost ready to start the cherry-blossom pattern on my cake.” Chef nodded and glanced at Samantha, who was still working away, most likely while listening to a Disney soundtrack.
“Samantha?” Chef asked, inches from her face.
She grew beet red. “I’m sorry, Chef! I was totally absorbed in this. Did you say something?” she asked.
“I’d rather you not have headphones on in class. It makes it hard for me to direct the entire class as one body. I thought I mentioned that the first night we met.”
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again, Chef. I honestly didn’t realize.” Samantha stuffed her iPod into her backpack and smiled sweetly up at him. Chef just nodded and moved on to the next table.
Once he was gone, Samantha sighed dramatically. “I can’t believe he won’t even let us listen to music! Decorating cakes is all about artistic passion. How are we expected to let that passion out when we can’t get in our zone?”
For the rest of the evening we worked in silence, and by the time 11:30 rolled around, I had made a batch of brown fondant and begun cutting it into thin ropes to serve as my cherry-blossom branches. The cake still wasn’t as smooth as I had hoped, but it was turning out just fine. On the way home, my cell phone buzzed and Rob’s face lit up my caller ID. What in the world is he doing up so late? I wondered before answering.