Prevailing in the Patisserie!

It is often said that the essence of cuisine is all about care: as a chef you must always tend to your food ‘as if it was the love of your life,’ or so my mentor tells me. If this is true than Patisserie is all about passion. A passion for perfection and precision is the mark of any superior pastry chef. I know this to be true because today I had the privilege of performing our practical for such a chef.

Under the expert tutelage of the school’s head pastry chef, who is rumored to have been single handedly responsible for the Queen Mum’s 100th Birthday celebration cake, us basic patisserie students tackled what I call the 5 C’s: Crème Anglaise, Crème Caramel, Crème Brulee, Coulis, and cookies (I could actually be caned for calling them ‘cookies’ but Tuile Biscuit frankly just doesn’t work).

Conquering the 5 C's is no small feat. After a grueling two part practical (6hrs) that allowed for our stirred and baked custards to set, our coulis to sweeten, and our caramel to harden, we poured our hearts out with the hopes of presenting something worthy of our illustrious teacher's time.

And so I give you the stuff that “intermediates our made of”- that's a direct quote from my practical review that I am more than pleased with. Hell, I’ll take any victory, however small, I can get at this point.



I call this ‘Robinson Caru-mel’:



A Crème Caramel encased in a caramel sugar raft afloat on a wave of Crème Anglaise with a tuile biscuit breaker. Let’s just say this was not in the castaway pile, nor was there anything left to save by lesson's end. But should you doubt my glowing review, and I don’t blame you given my performance up to this point, look closely where Chef went ahead and took a taste before I could even snap my shots…



The true mark of a very sweet success.


Darcy Jones