Basic and Classical Cakes

I finally started my first cakes class in Pastry school! A moment I've been looking forward to since, well, ever. So far in school, I've had a six week long hiatus from the bakeshop and I have been itching to get my hands back on some cake (if you're interested at all in the CIA Pastry Program, remember you can follow along with me by following the school's blog that I also write school specific posts for here). I'm still only in my second semester here in school so we're still learning basics - no fancy wedding cakes yet. But even without all the gumpaste glitz and glamour, I found my Basic and Classical Cakes class to be interesting in a different way. Instead of learning over the top flavor combinations and crazy sugar design (although we did do a little of that...) we focused on what makes a cake, cake and why. One of my favorite parts of this was the role that cake has had throughout history, and the different cultures and celebrations that its been the center of. My inner dork was very happy.

Take the New Orleans' King Cake for example. Most people are familiar with the tradition of eating this cake around Mardi Gras and know that it looks something like this: 

photo cred: foodnetwork.com

The King's Cake is actually a tradition handed down from the French town of Pithiviers, where they would frequently serve an almond tart with a prize baked inside like a small chain necklace. Whoever was sliced the piece of cake containing the prize won the honor of being 'King' or 'Queen' for the day. It was two disks of puff pastry, decorated and stuffed with an almond filling called frangipane and it looked something more like this:

Or another dessert that was popular in America around the 1950's, but was originally created for a Russian princess, The Charlotte Russe. The classical version is vanilla sponge cake filled with Bavarian cream and chocolate shavings and encircled with ladyfingers (who have a story of their own) and tied up like a present with a red ribbon. Usually today, we spice Charlottes up quite a bit, if they are even served at all. In class I made a modern version that is circled with Jaconde (decorated) sponge cake instead of ladyfingers, and glazed with strawberry and passionfruit puree instead of chocolate shavings:

We made four different kinds of sponge cake, four different kinds of buttercream, and five different types of tarts. It wasn't quite as high production as my last bakeshop class, but we really focused on perfecting the techniques instead of churning things out. After the Pithivier and the Charlotte we got a lot more familiar:

Chocolate, caramel, and macadamia nut tart.

Traditional carrot cake with walnuts and cream cheese frosting.

Sliced and ready for service!

Traditional Black Forrest cake: chocolate sponge soaked in brandied cherry syrup, layered with cherry filling and fresh whipped cream. Garnished with chocolate curls.

Mocha cake: chocolate sponge filled with espresso buttercream and garnished with chocolate candies.

Hazelnut torte: hazelnut sponge filled with hazelnut buttercream and garnished with hazelnut Florentine.

It was a fantastic three week filled with cake, and I got to practice a lot of cake decorating techniques that I'll   use forever. I'm currently on a three week break from school which means I get to put all of my attention into this site, finally. Lots of updates, improvements, and cake R&D to come!