White Lily Cake

This is a lovely photo of the White Lily Cake (pg 202)

It consists of 1 recipe White Genoise (pg 127), 1/2 cup Cointreau (we used Grand Marnier, since we had it), 1/2 recipe Orange Fruit Mousseline (pg 245), 1 recipe of Rolled Fondant with orange flower water (page 306), & 1 recipe of Royal Icing.

Really, since we've done this so many times, we're no longer intimidated by the recipes. Well, I still say a quick, silent prayer whenever we have to do any piping work. But, it's a lot like doing hair color: Break it down into its component steps. And, since we know we can make a genoise, a mousseline and a fondant, we can surely put it together. And, I think that we did a fine job of it.

Even the piping turned out nice. They are supposed to look like lilies, and they do!

This was made e asy for a host of reasons. We had made the white genoise a few weeks ago. Frozen, it'll keep 2 months. We just defrosted it and followed the directions. J had the idea to make the cake layers at our last baking session. And, I thank her.

As for the Cointreau, we decided an orange flavored liquor could be substituted with another one, right? So we used the Grand Marnier that we had on hand.

We decided that making Orange Curd was a big waste of time. While we loved the color and the flavor, the runny texture and effort of making it is too big a drawback. We just substituted lemon curd, and added it to the mousseline.

Do you remember the mousseline? Neither could I. It is the one with a syrup of water and sugar, that gets drizzled into egg whites beaten with sugar. You beat this until it's cool, which has never happened in the prescribed time of 2 minutes. Then, you add butter, lots of butter, and beat until smooth. If you want to add liqueur or a flavor variation, you do so now. Yum!

I really don't care for fondant. It never tastes as good as you want it to and I usually pull it off. While I'm slowly lobbing blobs of butter into the kitchen aid full of egg whites, J made the fondant. We only had dark corn syrup. So, you'll notice that there is a lovely light beige tone to the fondant. We liked it quite a bit. The slight color difference made the piping really stand out and look more beautiful. The flavor of the fondant was enha nced with orange flower water. There was a nice fragrance wafting from the cake; a flowery orange aroma followed by the orange flavor of the cake. In tasting our slice, we actually ate the fondant!!

Periodically J and I would stop what we were doing and wander over to the other's station to check on the progress. The fondant starts out a crumbly mess. With some kneading, the gelatin, water, glucose(that's where the corn syrup is substituted), glycerin, solid white shortening and powdered sugar all come together at first, it looks a bit like a very dry biscuit dough. You'll notice how smooth J got it. The cracks seem to happen to us because we are too slow applying it to the cake.

It's come to the point that we've developed almost a short hand and have to constantly check to make sure we've not skipped or doubled up on steps. We each know what the other is going to do and rarely are we wrong about it.

I have to thank J for doing all the pre prep stuff. Sometimes, I feel like a FoodTV chef who's production assistants have done everything so all I have to do is smile for the camera and pour the pre-measured amounts into the stunningly clean Kitchen Aid.

This cake was lovely. We were both so excited, not just by how it looks or just by how good it tasted. For the first time, in a long time, we liked the cake we made! Then, on the first sunny day we've had baking in a long, long while, there we were, all done, sitting outside in the sun, sipping soda and tea and just chattin'

Welcome to Spring.

Robb

Cooking Class: Part 3

Week three in our wonderfully exciting class was really terrific. We can hardly believe that there is only one more class, and we are sad at the idea of having this experience come to a close.

Robb discovered that he likes coconut after all! Naturally, the coconut used by Chef Steenman is top notch. We used a wonderful puree of coconut and a grated coconut. This is not the flaked sticky sweet stuff you are used to. It is a smaller piece and is not sticky or coated with sugar. It gives a coconut flavor that you cannot achieve with the sugared angel flake. The coconut was added to (our favorite!!) Italian meringue and whipped cream to make a delicious, brilliant white mousse.

We made a vanilla sponge cake- pretty standard, although there is always something to learn from Chef Steenman. For example there is no vanilla in this vanilla cake. In fact, we noticed that there has been no vanilla extract in anything thus far. For pastry cream, creme anglais, etc. he does use beans, that is, he uses the most fantastically terrific vanilla beans from Tahiti. He gave us each one to take home. I had never seen a vanilla bean so moist, fat, soft and dizzyingly fragrant. As we've said before, his ingredients are tip top.


We also made a mango mousseline. What's the difference between mousseline and mousse you ask? Good question. A mousse seems to be lighter in texture, although not the fluffed up stuff you may have had. Chef Steenman's mousse is light and smooth in texture, like a good gelato. In this case it was made with Italian meringue, whipped cream and fruit puree. The mousseline was firmer and more dense, made with pastry cream and knock your socks off mango puree, and the tasty Plugra butter.

The cake was assembled in a terrine mold, like what you'd use for pate, or well, terrine. The sponge was cut to fit- yes Robb got to measure with a metric ruler and math! The mango mousseline was piped- yes more piping- onto a long skinny rectangle of sponge cake, topped with another rectangle of cake and chilled until it was firm. It was a sort of ice cream sandwich, but not with ice cream and much longer. Cake lined the mold, coconut mousse was spooned in, the sandwich of mango mousseline was nestled in, topped with more mousse, and topped (bottomed really) with the last layer of cake. Once unmolded, we covered it with Italian meringue and had fun using a torch to get it brown. The most delicious coconut tuile cookies decorated the sides.

Normally one would not combine the textures of mousse and mousseline in one dessert this way. The mousseline is much firmer than the mousse and that makes them incompatible. But Chef wanted to show us how to do as much as possible.

I know that some of you are thinking, yeah coconut and mango, what ever. Tropical flavors are so so, and you're thinking about syrupy sweet pineappley polynesian stuff, or the hurt your teeth with so much sugar creamed coconut that you put in a pina colada. Well, that's not what you get with Chef Steenman. Each of the components of this were tasty individually, not favorites for me, but darn good. None of the flavors were too sweet. Instead they were concentrated fruit flavors. The mousse tasted like actual coconut not like Coco Lopez. The mousseline tasted like buttery melt in your mouth mango. And then put together- Pow! Zoom! Bam! (picture batman fight scenes). The combination of flavors with the crunch and toast of the coconut cookie totally blew me away. It was amazing, and a lot of fun to put together.

Visit La Tulipe if you can. It's expensive, there's really no way to suggest otherwise. But, you won't be simply purchasing a dessert, pastry or chocolate, you'll be supporting an artist and you get to take home a work of art.

Janet