It was like I was competing in a Food Network challenge.

That's exactly how it felt. Well, exactly how I imagine it would feel.

We had our first practical exam a couple weeks ago. A shortened version of our final practical exam we'll have in September. It was a timed, 8 hour test. At 8:15 we were all given the same assignment.

1 Fôret Noir (Black Forest cake -see previous post)
1 Paris Breast
9 croissants
9 pain au chocolates
1 marzipan flower
2 marzipan leaves
1 marzipan plaque with "Honoreus Saint Valentin" written in chocolate.
And an assortment tempered chocolate covered ganache bonbons (The ganache was already made, but we needed to temper the dark chocolate.)

The first half hour was dedicated to planning. We were given a blank spreadsheet to fill in with our schedule for the day. It's our organization method. What are we going to do when. When one thing is in the oven, what will we be working on. The schedule is great for us so we can map out the day and make use of every minute. And it's great for the judges so they know that we know what we're doing and not just winging it. At the end of the first thirty minutes we had to turn in our plans which were then then photocopied and handed back. The judges follow along throughout the day and if we detour off our map, we lose points.

I filled out my schedule with modest confidence. I felt good about the Foret Noir and Paris Breast. However the croissants and pain au chocolate, not so much. All the timings for the fridge and proofing were still a little hazy in my head. But I filled in my schedule and handed it in just in time.

At 8:45 the cooking began.

I started with my pâte à choux for my Paris Breast. Everyone in class had secretly agreed before hand that if there was pâte à choux on the test, we'd all do it first. This is because when you cook a pâte à choux you can't open the oven during cooking. And it takes about 42 minutes to bake. We only had one oven between us, so we had to coordinate.

The pâte à choux came together just fine and I dressed it and put it in the oven with the others, no problem. I swiftly moved on to the croissants and pain au chocolat. Now these are essentially the same thing. A painn au chocolate is a croissant, only it starts as a rectangle, not a triangle, and you put chocolate inside. Personally, I don't know why you'd ever eat a croissant if a pain au chocolate was near by. But that's just me.

So I mixed up the dough and wrapped it up in plastic to let it rest beside me while I continued to work on my other assignments. Next up, the chocolate genoise. This is cake that is the base for the fôret noir. It is a very simple cake to make. In fact, I was telling my mother the night before, oh yeah, my parents were in town and mom wanted so much to help me study for my exam. One of the best ways to learn is to teach, so I went though all my recipes and explained the process to my mother. When I got to the genoise, I told her this is so simple it's almost impossible to mess up. You just have to remember to sift in the flower and coco powder. While that is true, it's also true that you gently fold in that sifted flower by hand, NOT the mixer. Then bake. So when I got to my chocolate genoise in class, I didn't hesitate at all. "This cake is so easy, it's impossible to mess up," I thought.

Once again, I am reminded, nothing is impossible. I pulled my genoise out of the oven and it was much shorter than normal. I cut it into three layers and it was more dense than normal. This normally light and fluffy cake was a dense hard brick. And I couldn't figure out why. I set it aside and moved on to other tasks. I'd come back to that later.

I gave my croissant dough a tour, put it in the fridge. I whipped up my praine moussiline for the Paris Breast and put it in the fridge to cool. I rolled out my marzipan plaque and torched it to give it some character. I sculpted a pink flower and a couple of green leaves. Gave my croissants a few more tours and chills. I was on a roll and ahead of schedule. Before I knew it, it was just about time for our 30 minute break. I quickly cut and formed my croissants and pain au chocolates, gave them an egg wash and threw them in the proof box.

At break I was feeling good. I was ahead of my schedule, so I decided to redo my genoise just after the break. So that's what I did. I asked chef if this was allowed. He gave me one of his classic answers that isn't an answer at all. "Do you think you need to redo it?" He has a way of turning very simple questions into twisted mind games. I still wasn't sure if this was allowed, but I did it anyway. I had the time, I may as well. So I did it again.

I believe it was Einstein who said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Well, I think the excitement of a timed exam was altering my logic, and I made my genoise exactly as I did before. My result? The exact same hard dense brick. Duh.

But by this time, I was out of time. I had to move on to my chocolate and put all the pieces together to present my buffet. I moved fast and tempered my chocolate, assembled my Paris Breast, baked my croissants, inscribed my marzipan plaque and finally assembled my Foret Noir.

Everything was good except for the Foret Noir. The genoise killed it. And my chocolate shavings were not as pretty as the first time. So that didn't help either. I was hoping it could at least look good on the outside. At least make a first impression, you know? But it wasn't great. No way around it.

But I finished. All in all I was happy. My croissants were the best I'd ever made (still MUCH room for improvement), my chocolate writing was better than before, my Paris Breast looked good, and my work station was all cleaned up. I did my best. That's all I could ask.


Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures before the judges cut into things and moved it all around. But here are the remains. And here is the terrible Fôret Noir.


Not so bad flower.

And the delicious Paris Breast.

All in all, this exercise confirmed that I love to bake. I think I thrive with a little competition and pressure. It makes it more fun. And I loved doing everything on my own. This was the first time that we were able to make things from start to finish on our own and all at once. For me, this made it much easier to spot areas where I need to improve. But overall I loved it. So much fun.

At the end, we were interviewed about the day. Chef asked me how I thought I did. I told him what I told you and explained the trouble with my genoise. He said I was brave to take the time to do it over, but that I did it over wrong. He said you NEVER put the flower in the mixer. But he was confident that I'd never make that mistake again. Me too. So my marks were low in organization. (I'm pretty sure I could keep a neater work station.) But despite my genoise, my taste marks were high. Not bad for the first round.

Our final exam is 15 hours long over two days, and will include ice cream. Yikes. I really need to organize my notes.

My parents came by to pick me up when we were done. We boxed up my exam and hit the road for Provence. Vacation pictures to come....