My first cake in school!

I brought home a cake yesterday! It was the first cake we made in French Pastry School and it was delicious. :) The cake in the picture above however, is the chef's cake. The poor lighting in my dungeon-like studio is impossible for photo taking without artificial light source. :(

Unlike the cakes that I am used to bake at home, the preparation of the various elements in the cake takes days. This nougat mousse cake for instant, took us 3 days. We made the dacquoise on the first day,the apricot gelee and nougat mousse on the second, and final glazing on the third day. I love that we are making all the elements from scratch and seeing the final cake taking shape day by day.

In the cake classes, we arebeing introduced to many professional products like glucose, trimoline, gelatin sheets, cocoa paste etc that are only used in the professional kitchen. It is going to take some time before I can decipher the nuance of using them in my baked goods as opposed to the normal baking ingredients I have at home.

We are lucky to have 2 highly accomplished chefs as our instructors for cake classes. While imparting the techniques and skills in class, they also injected great sense of humour that make learning so much more enjoyable.

More cakes coming up soon!