nothing in particular

Today we are making fruit mousse cakes. Personally, I have never liked mousse stuff its quite yucky to me as cream cakes are..but learning about cakes means learning ALL about em'. And silly me forgot to bring my phone out again, luckily YJ's at home and was about to go out too. *PHEW*

Cakes we are making today:
1.) Mango mousse cake
2.) Strawberry mousse cake

Main cake:
- Sponge cake x 2

Misc stuffs:
- Mango mousse
- Strawberry mousse
- Sponge fingers





Overall stuff for today's lesson: Mango, sugar *and more sugar* , hongkong flour and many egg whites + egg yolks.





Half way while doing the sponge cake. Well..I think we overbeaten the egg white/mixture. ZZzz~



Some ingredients required for doing the mousses(from bottom left, clockwise): Gelatin, egg whites, strawberry puree, mango puree. Some other stuffs includes sugar, glucose, cream.




The main body, 2 sponge cakes were done but they were flat ='( *meow* I think i needa go do more sponge cakes.




As flat as I am ._.''' and we are supposed to cut this cake into 2 or 3 layers.




Making the mousse in progress. Heated the puree together with gelatin and added lemon juice after the gelatin has melted.




Meanwhile, sugar + glucose + water were mixed together over the flame and boiled till 115 degrees Celsius. In the background, I was whipping the egg whites with the SPAR(brand) mixer. Somehow, I am not used to such a powerful machine that does the same job thrice/twice as fast as a $38 handheld mixer...the powerful machine makes me nervous.




Thud thud thud thud thud.....*metal whisk hitting metal bowl*




Add in the sugar+ glucose + water mixture into egg white and whisk till cool to make italian meringue.

Done and let's leave this aside. Meanwhile, I start whipping the dairy cream too.

Next, the egg white and cream were mixed into the mixture above. Woo so much work and finally we are done for MOUSSE. -_-



Adding the cake + mousse + some fresh mango cubes. Layer by layer then pour the remaining mousse to cover the entire cake.



Color of the strawberry mousse made the same way as above except you put strawberry into it.



I was mixing the sponge fingers' mixture with all my attention but it seems like I took tad too long in mixing -_-'' The above is K spreading the mixture onto a non stick baking paper.



Next, the tool above is used to run through the spreaded mixture to create lines, which turns the baked product into SPONGE FINGERS *after cutting of cos*




The sponge fingers *blur pic* were not very well defined so I gather that we should run this tool through for at least twice instead.



Before we did the sponge fingers, we were doing the gelatine mixture for the top layer of the cake. The mango fruit was thinly sliced and placed on top of the mango mousse cake, then the gelatine mixture*room temperature* was poured over the entire cake. (see 3rd pic from top left)

For the strawberry cake, the gelatine mixture was too light in color so a few drops of red coloring was added to make it look cheery red.



After the cakes have been chilled, its time to remove the mousse tin from the cakes. That's me (bottom left)*ignore my spastic look* and K (top left) using a torch to heat up the mousse tin so that we don't damage the cakes with forceful knocks when removing the tin. The semi finished product strawberry mousse cake(bottom right).

The mango mousse cake(top right) was covered with roasted almond bits at the side and we are done for this cake.



Now for strawberry mousse cake..that's K cutting the sponge fingers *after measuring the height of the cake* , he made sure all the fingers were of the same height. Good job~



Wrapping the sponge fingers around the cake. My sponge fingers did not rise as much as I thought it would but it was not too bad afterall, except that it wasn't well defined.




The final product, Strawberry Charlotte. *Judy says its called a 'Charlotte', when a cake is decorated with sponge fingers round its side* On hindsight, the strawberries could have been added to the centre though.

Somewhere in the middle of the lesson, the koose appeared and was complaining about lack of space on the table. Oh for goodness sake, we have the entire table to ourselves unlike other groups having half the table. I simply don't know what was he frustrated about. I hate it when someone beside me, being involved in the same task (e.g. gaming, shopping..etc) is frustrated but yet I don't know WHY. But anyway, he calmed down and managed to plan his to-do tasks and so we managed to produce the two cakes in the end.

And there were some observations about other tables. There was one group that was doing professionally for all cakes e.g. their cakes rose the most, deco well done..etc. For ourselves, we were obviously lacking in the folding and egg white beating techniques which resulted in not-so nice and fluffy cakes. But I have pretty good faith in our aesthetic skills.

For some of the other tables, they had nice sponges but I wondered what happened when it came to making mousse and gelatin. Some poured hot gelatin over mousse @_@'' As the result, you get a cloudy cake cos the mousse melted. Some had slanted surface, cos others were vying for space in the chiller and shifted their stuffs.

Another one made me quite sad, cos the sponge was quite well done but she did not cut the sponge fingers into equal height which prompted the instructor, Judy to ask,"Can you tell me..will you buy this cake?" The auntie replied her,"Of cos NOT!" and proceeds to giggle. =.=

Went home and next morning K cut the mango cake for breakfast..I need to brush up on cutting a cake horizontally ._.





K's strawberry charlotte and the mango cake done by me, side by side comparison.




The leftover sponge fingers were baked till dry -> into biscuits!