Practice makes perfect

Part of this culinary school experience is tackling things you may likely not make again.  Cakes, for me, would be one of those items.  If I'm going to make a dessert or a sweet I tend to make tarts or ice cream, maybe a custard or steamed pudding, something I am not going to find at my local bakery.  We recently spent 4 weeks in cakes and one of the key cakes we have to learn is a Genoise.  We also all know that it is one of the items that will turn up in the practicum so I needed to practice.

Most of the Genoise we made in class were soaked in a sugar syrup. All of us hated this process and we often didn't like the end result either so I skipped that step when I made this one.  I decided it would have to be chocolate to appeal to husband and the orange buttercream we made in class was really quite good, the fates had been sealed.

A classic Genoise recipe we are to memorize is 6-1-1-6.

6 eggs
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of flour
6 TBS clarified butter

In this case it was a 1/2 cup of flour and a 1/2 cup of natural cocoa powder.  2 TBS of cornstarch are added to lighten the all-purpose flour and make it more like a cake flour.  All the dry ingredients are measured and then sifted adding a pinch of salt.

Over the heat you combine the eggs and sugar and using a hand mixer and being very careful to not cook your eggs you whip this until it becomes triple in volume. Take it off the heat.
Sift on one third of the dry ingredients, fold it in, sift in another third of the dry ingredients, fold it in. Into the clarified butter add 1.5 TBS of Grand Marnier.  Take some of the batter and combine it with the clarified butter and liquor.  It will seem at first like it won't incorporate, but it will. Add this mix back into the batter along with the final third of the dry ingredients Now fold carefully because you want to keep all of the air you just whipped in.  Pour this into two cake pans, lined with parchment, greased and dusted with cocoa. Allow your husband or s.o. to lick the beaters. Cook in a 350 oven for 20 minutes.  Turn out immediately onto racks and peel off the parchment.  Let them cool.

Make your buttercream

Take 2 cups of butter and allow it to soften slightly.  Using the side of a bench scraper or a pastry cutter, soften he butter and make it a bit more cohesive.  You don't want it room temperature, but you want it workable enough so that you can pull chunks of it off with your fingers and toss it in to the buttercream.

In a saucepan combine 1.25 cups of sugar and .5 cup of water, 1/4 tsp cream of tartar and 2 TBS of orange juice.  Cook this until it reaches softball stage or 239F.

Ribbon 8 yolks and salt in a mixer until they are thick.  Now carefully pour the syrup you made down the side of the bowl.  Try NOT to let it hit the beaters or it will shoot it around the inside of the bowl and it will hit the sides and turn into hard sugar chunks.  Not good. Keep beating, this is aerating and cooling the mixture.Keep beating until you can feel the outside of the bowl begin to cool.

Now break off TBS size clumps of the butter and toss them in to the bowl.  Allow it to incorporate, toss in another and so on and so on until all the butter is incorporated.  It if starts to separate and look like cottage cheese.  DON'T PANIC.  Take the bowl off the mixer, put it on the stove top on low and let it warm up a bit.  Not a lot, just enough to warm the butter a bit.  Alternatively if it is too soupy, pop it in the fridge for 10 or 15 minutes. 
Once all your butter is in, add 1/4 cup of Grand Marnier and allow the mixer to incorporate it.
Put the bowl in the fridge to cool until it is firm, but still spreadable.  Be careful, don't let it get hard.

Frost away!

Cake 1 on dish, buttercream in the middle, cake two.  Frost outside lightly and thinly.  Allow this to chill and set, again about 10 - 15, this is the crumb layer. Then frost with the remaining buttercream.  I put some in a pastry bag and piped stars on top and I used a cake comb to create the side pattern.

Surprisingly, it was good, and not too painful. Here's a bigger photo if you are so inclined.

 

Comments

[ulteriorepicure]

amuse.

what culinary program are you undertaking?

u.e.

[jo]

Since I was laid off from major corporation last December and I knew I would only have one year to go to school, I chose the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts program. I'm really very happy with it so far.
You are welcome to read over here if you want to see the first hand what Brian and I think.

[Jamie]

Because you are familiar with my particular brand of insanity, you know that this is exactly the sort of thing I would decide to do for no reason at all. :-)

The method for the eggs and sugar is just like making a zabaglione, isn't it?

I am totally amazed that you can substitute that much cocoa powder for flour.