oh noes, I almost forgot about the Daring Baker post. *pat on head for being so forgetful*.

Yup, so here’s a short introduction about the Daring Bakers Group. It’s co-founded by Cream Puffs in Venice – Ivonne and
La Mia Cucina – Lis. Then the main rule of this DB group is that, each month, someone would suggest a cake or rather a challenge (previously, red velvet cake, chocolate crepe cake, croissants, etc) and all the members would then try out the exact same recipe and see if each one has its challenges and difficulties in making them. We do have professionals in the group as I can see from the list of members and they’re really nice too!. Unfortunately, the db website is only accessible for members, but if u keep clicking and browsing, u’d be amazed to find how many Gateau St Honores are there this weekend. (that wouuld be the challenge for this month)

This month’s challenge was co-hosted by Dessert First’s Anita and Helen of Tartelette fame. Click on their blogs for full recipes and updates/links on other DBs.

Ok, so my story of this gateau came about many months ago when I was still in LCB. Because Gateau St. Honore is sorta a ‘must’ in French Patisserie schools, I had the exposure of it to ease my job. But I did had some problems. U know like how home ovens and commercial ovens don’t work the same, and different recipes could gain different tastes and products. But I must say, the one I did in LCB looks way way way better than the one I did at home. bummer

For the cake, there’s puff pastry, choux (pronounced as shoe) pastry, diplomat creme and cream chantily, and caramel / spun sugar. I bought puff pastry from the store because I was just lazy to make my own puff. I’m being dependant on pastry rolling machines. Haha. For the Choux, I did pretty alright with the mixture although I did use my hand because the pastry keeps rolling up into the beater like this..

As for the diplomate cream, the one listed on the challenge was a totally different recipe from the one I did in school. In School, I did a creme patisserie, added gelatin when it’s at almost room temperature but still warm, and let it cooled. added whipped cream. (I think). The other way was to cook almost everything together, and add in cream and whipped egg whites. I had a runny mixture so, in the end there weren’t much diplomat cream on the puff and choux cases.

Plus, my choux kinda collapsed abit in the oven. @#%#@

So, I had to chill the diplomat cream in the fridge, while I go out and enjoy my birthday dinner. I came back to find the diplomat cream has already set and it was good as I added a tiny bit of Kirsh in it.

And because my choux kinda collapsed I didn’t really use it on the cake.

My idea was to make mini eclairs on a rectangle shaped one instead of a round one. But in the end, I had some couple of very tiny ones, like about 6cm in diameter, and a longish one without any choux ontop.

It would look nice if there were some small choux balls with caramel ontop eh ??

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• Daring Bakers Challenge
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