Gateau St Honore vs. my arch nemesis the Pate Feuilletee

First of all let me say a quick apology to all of my readers who know that there should be accent marks in the title of this blog…but I couldn’t figure out how to get them on there.

Does anyone know what its like to sleep in Time Square? Well living on the corner of Oxford Street and another street that shall remain nameless is literally like living 2 stories above Time Square in New York. The location is amazing and SO close to school, but at night I do not appreciate the drunken people under my window yelling, the garbage trucks that seem to come around 5 times a night, the 5 busses that stop and go just around the corner on regular 20 minute intervals. On the up side everything is literally just outside my door. I guess my lack of sleep is worth only having to go 2 tube stops instead of 7.

Today was my first day back to class after a much too long break. My binder has gone from a 1inch to a 2 inch binder filled to the brim with recipes, there are pictures above of my binder with a few pages of my cryptic handwriting and drawings of Thursday's daunting tasks. It felt a little strange walking back into the building considering everyone was looking at me and whispering ‘who is that girl? Is she new?’; however, the humor in it all is that no one asked me if I was new. I was definitely tempted to turn around in class 2 or 3 times and say ‘hi my name is Sarah and yes, I am new to this group’, but I resisted. I guess they will all figure it out eventually when we start cooking together on Thursday. Today we learned to make the ever so prestigious Gateau St Honore. This gateau (cake) is a patronage to St. Honore the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. The gateau is supposed to show many different levels of skills and boy does it ever. To be honest when I looked at the pictures I thought to myself, ‘this is no big deal! I have made all of these things separately, I just have to put them all together now’…well I think that St. Horore is going to have the last laugh on this one. I can just see him looking down on me and saying ‘bahahahahahaha you thought this would be easy!?’. The gateau is a base of puff pastry (pate feuilletee) then a layer of pate choux (cream puff pastry), crème diplomate (pastry cream folded gently into whipped cream), then crowned with a circle of pate choux buns dipped in caramel with a slivered almond, and towering the entire structure is a nest of spun sugar with candied violets. I am exhausted just typing out the basics of the cake! Oh and did I mention that he also has a pastry tip named after him? One of the more complicated pastry tips that most of us try to avoid whenever possible. St. Honore isn’t going to let us out of this one, when that thing was brought out you could hear the moans and groans throughout the classroom.

The spun sugar is definitely the most amusing part of this towering concoction. You start by boiling sugar to a particular temperature, then you take a tool that looks like you just cut a whisk in half and all you are left with is a handle with a bunch of spokes. You dip the cut off whisk into the boiling sugar and then you flail the ‘wand’ about in the air like a ribbon dancer. All the while you must catch all of the spun sugar flying off of it. The spun sugar ends up looking like golden strands of hair, but before you even have time to absorb the fact that you just flailed boiling sugar about, you must roll up the sugar fast, while its still hot. I am definitely expecting an amusing Thursday.

All the while during any breaks in time you have whilst making this saintly cake, a batch of puff pastry or pate feuilletee must be made for our next practical session. Puff pastry must be made at least 12 hours before you need to use it, due to the fact that you must let the pastry rest to make sure it is not overworked. Now we all know that it took me 3 attempts to get my puff pastry correct in basics, lets just pray that I can get my block of butter pounded out to the correct size and that the butter does not seep out of the pastry during all the rolling and folding that inevitably must occur.

PS- I got stuck with a bottom locker…to all my tall fans out there you know how painful that bottom locker can be.

One last though…my singing and dancing ‘friends’ just walked under my window, they now have now accumulated a tambourine.