French Pastry Fundamentals: Souffle, Tarts and Chocolate Mousse Cake

1. Introduction to the Course: Welcome to this class. My name is Shubranshu, and I'm a professionally trained baker and chef. I've worked in some really amazing restaurants as a pastry chef, and I want to share all my knowledge with you in this class. We start this class by learning how to make a light and airy passion fruit souffle. Souffles can be a little tricky to master. But this lesson covers all the steps, from lining the ramekins, making a French meringue, passion fruit custard, and the baking techniques, so that your souffle rises perfectly every time. Our second recipe, we learn how to make a coffee creme brulee. Learning how to make a coffee infused custard, and also the perfect oven setup to achieve a creamy and delicious creme brulee. We will also learn how to brulee the custard to get that classic caramel coating on top. The next recipe, we create a beautiful raspberry tart, with a rose flavored custard. This recipe, will cover all the steps from making the pate sucree to lining, and baking the tart. We will learn the importance of blind baking, and tips on how to prevent the tart from shrinking. To fill the tart, we will make a rose flavored diplomat cream, and finish the tart with fresh raspberries filled with raspberry jam. Our final recipe will be a mirror glaze chocolate mousse cake. We will learn how to make a really creamy, and red chocolate mousse. Learn how to assemble, and glaze the cake by making a shiny and beautiful chocolate mirror glaze. The class also comes with a D-Day recipe book, so you can master all the recipes easily. French pastry is based on really simple ingredients. But this class aims to cover the techniques, to convert these ingredients into something really beautiful. 2. Class Outline and Project: In this lesson, I'm going to briefly discuss the class outline as well as the project for this class. The class is basically divided into four recipes, but all the recipes have different elements to them. I've tried to explain all the elements in real detail so you can actually take those elements and make other recipes. For example, the chocolate mousse cake has a chocolate sponge, a chocolate mirror glaze, and a chocolate mousse. You can take a chocolate mousse and make a different recipe out of that, or use the chocolate sponge to make another dessert. That's why I wanted to basically teach different concepts in this class. The project for this class is for you to share pictures of any one dessert in this class, and I would surely like the see and critique your dessert. So let's move on and understand the equipment and tools required for this class. 3. Tools and Equipment : In this lesson, let's have a look at some of the equipment we'll be needing for this class. For the first recipe, for the passion fruit souffle, you need ramekins. Make sure the ramekins are quite thick so that they can basically take a lot of heat so it rises really well. You can use either one of these ramekins and they work really well. The second one for our custard, you need a tray as well as ramekins. You need the tray because you need hot water to bake the custard so that it doesn't split and it remains really smooth. Make sure that the tray is quite thick, so basically it retains the heat when it's baking. The next one is a tart. For that, you need a tart tin. This is a 20 centimeter tart tin in diameter. This is really nice because it's quite thick and it's got a non-stick coating on it, so it bakes really well in this. If you can find this, definitely, that will be really good. The next one is for our mousse. You can do it three ways, the first one is in a glass. Whatever glass you can find, you can set the mousse in that. The next one is a ring. The ring will give you really professional look. If you can get this online, that would be really nice. We'll be putting an acetate sheet around it, so it comes out really well. This one looks really beautiful when we glaze it, so I really like the ring. The next one is a silicone mold. If you can find one of these, that'll be really nice. These are really nice because it looks really classy and very professional. These are some of the equipment you need. You don't need to have all of them, but some of them would be really good. Let's have a look at some of the tools you'll need as well. The most important one in French pastry is a digital scale. Because French pastry, you have to be really accurate with the ingredients because even small differences can have big changes to your product and you want to be exact, so that is why I'd really like using a scale. The next one is a whisk. I can't even imagine French pastry without a whisk. This one is one of the most used tools in French pastry. Used to combine, used to whisk, [inaudible] , so many different uses. If you have an electronic one, that would be even better, but you can also use this one. The next one is a silicone spatula. I prefer this to a wooden spatula because it's really easy to [inaudible] and work really keenly. Also, this is heat resistance, you can basically take it to really high temperature and this would still stay really good. That is why I really like this one. The next one to prolate the custard. Now, this is really important, we'll be using a blowtorch. This is one of those where you just assemble this here, but whichever one you can get, that would be really nice. Blowtorch is also a really nice tool to use in French pastry, it has a lot of applications. You can use it for sugar work, you can use it for prolating like we do in a custard, you can use it for a lot of things. I just wanted to introduce this in this lesson, that is by we use it in the grand prolate, so it's a good technique to learn. The next one, which we use so often in French pastry is a piping bag. This is really useful because it helps us to work really neatly and also gives us a lot of control when we are working with, say cream or mousses, just in the final presentation, assembling, it really helps to have a piping bag. If you like making cakes or if you like decorating cakes, this is usually important. The next one is one of these acetate sheets. We'll use this when we make the mousse. What this does is it's got a coding in here and the mousse comes out really smoothly. This is also used in cakes. If you're making sponge cakes or pastries and if you're assembling them with cream, this is really important. We use this in professional kitchens as well. The next one is a thermometer. This one is one of those infrared thermometers, so you just press it and it will tell you the temperature. This is really useful because it gives us a lot of control over what we are doing, also helps us to follow the correct technique when we're making a mousse or glaze or anything for that matter. In our recipe, we'll check the temperature when we make the glaze, because the glaze is very temperature sensitive. So this is really useful in that case. You can use other thermometers as well. This is not the only one, you have other thermometers which can be used. So definitely if you can get those, that would be really nice. The next one, and this is only specific to this class, is an immersion blender. This is super useful if you're making a glaze, because it basically homogenizes the glaze really well. You can make a glaze without it as well, but I just wanted to show you how to do it because that is how we do it in professional kitchens. This basically what it does is, because it's so strong, it just combines everything really well and it gives it a really shiny texture, so that is why this is really important when you make a glaze. These are some other tools we'll be using in the class, so let's move on to our first recipe of learning how to make a passion fruit souffle. 4. Souffle- Understanding Ingredients: Welcome to the first lesson in this course. In this lesson, we'll be learning how to make a passion fruit souffle. Honestly, this is one of my favorite recipes and I used to make this in a restaurant I used to work at. I used to make a lot of these, but at home you just have to make two or three so you don't have to be under stress when you make it. Make sure to follow all the techniques and small tips I give during this lesson as it will be really important to get a really nice souffle. So let's start by understanding the ingredients. The souffle actually doesn't have a lot of ingredients. It's so easy with the ingredients, but it's just the process which is a little bit tricky. First what we'll do is we'll make a custard, we let it cool down and then we'll make a meringue and we'll fold that together and we'll bake that. I'm going to separate the eggs into yolks and whites, the yolks will go in the custard and the whites will go as meringue. The eggs actually are the base of this recipe, that is what gives a lot of structure to the souffle and I think it would be really hard to make it without eggs. Second one is sugar, I'm using caster sugar here, so half of this will go in the custard and the other half will go in the meringue. I like using caster sugar because it does all this quite easily. The next one is flour, so we'll be using flour in the custard to give it a really nice structure. The flour also gives a lot of structure to the souffle when it rises, it holds it really nicely together. The next one is milk. Milk I'm going to use in the custard as well, so if you are lactose intolerant, you can use almond milk or soy milk it's completely fine. I'm going to flavor this with passion fruit, you can flavor it with almost anything, with lemon zest, with lemon juice, orange zest. You can even put raspberries, you can put chocolate, but the process remains the same. It's really beautiful how you can make such a nice desert with such simple ingredients. Let's begin with the recipe now. The first step when we make a souffle is to always line the ramekins with butter and caster sugar. This is a really important step and watch closely how I do it, because that will really impact the way the souffle rises. Take some softened butter and a brush and stick your ramekin. The bottom we just do it that way, but the sides just do it upwards. This is really important because this will really help the souffle to rise, because I've seen sometimes people do it randomly, but it doesn't work well, you have to do it upwards. This will give you the best result. Similarly the next one as well. After you finish this step, what we do is we take some caster sugar and we use caster sugar because it has finer grains, so it caramelizes really well and it also causes the souffle to rise well. Just put a little bit of caster sugar and just move the ramekin around so that it sticks really well and the remaining one just put it in the other ramekin and similarly just move it around. So when the heat basically hits the souffle batter, the sugar and the butter melts and caramelizes and helps the souffle to rise really well. This step, you'd probably do it in any souffle you make, not just this one. If you're making a chocolate souffle, it's the same step. Let's move on to making the batter. 5. Souffle- Custard and French Meringue: The first step when we make the custard is to separate the eggs into whites and yolks. I'm going to show you two ways to do this. The first one, you break the egg and basically just use both the shells and just keep shifting the egg yolk, and then just put the egg yolk in the bowl. The next one, just open the egg, and just use your hand, you can even wear a glove if you want, and just keep shifting it really delicately so the yolk doesn't break, and that's how you do it. In professional kitchens, we usually wear gloves because we have to do it in a really big quantity, and we just do it by the hand because it's much faster. You can use either method, whichever you like. I'm going to set the whites aside and I'm going to start first with making the custard. Making the custard is quite straightforward. What we're going to do is put half the castor sugar, and the remaining half we're going to use for the meringue. Just whisk this through for about 30 seconds.[NOISE] Then just add the flour in. You should get a really thick paste. Something like this. It should just flow really well. That's ready. Now what I'm going to do is heat the milk and then get it to a simmer and then temper eggs. Just put the pot on the gas. We want to get it to a really light simmer, I would advise not to boil it to get a really smooth base between. When you start seeing bubbles on the side, that's good. Just take it off the gas. Just pour the milk in a really thin stream to temper the eggs. [NOISE]This step is really important because what happens is if you put it directly in the pot, it might curdle, but this will really help it to come to room temperature. Just cook really nicely. In pastry usually this step, we do this for all the custards we make. If you're making an [inaudible] , if you're making any other type of pastry cream as well, it's the same step. We always temper the eggs. After you've done this step, it goes back in the pot and we'll cook it until it comes to a boil. The reason why we boil this is because you want to cook the starch out. Because remember we have flour in this custard and we want to cook that out. That is why we need to boil it. Just put the gas on medium heat. It shouldn't be too high because we want to cook the custard slowly. Keep whisking. You want to keep whisking otherwise it will curdle for sure. When you get a thick paste like this, [NOISE] that's perfect. Let's put it back in our bowl. Just use the same bowl and just put the pastry cream inside. This pastry cream is quite thick because we're going to be adding passion fruit juice to it. If it's too thin, then the souffle doesn't rise really well. Let's add the passion fruit in it now. Just take the passion fruit. If you want, you can take a sieve and just get the juice, but I really like the seeds as well because it tastes really nice and it gives good texture and gives good flavor as well than it takes. Make sure to do this when the pastry cream is still hot because then it will combine really well. After adding the juice in the bowl, just take a whisk and make it really smooth.[NOISE] It smells so good already because the passion fruit is infusing with the pastry cream. To clean your whisk, you can take a spatula and just twist it and it should fall out really easily.[NOISE] Just scrape the sides really well. We're going to cover this and set this aside so that it cools down for about 15, 20 minutes because we cannot use it when this is warm because that will cause the meringue to deflate and the souffle won't rise really well. If you want, actually, you can even store this overnight and you can just whip it, whenever you like, you can put the meringue in it and make a souffle out of it. We do that in professional kitchens. We prepare this beforehand and we make the meringue and before that and make a souffle. That basically saves time. To store the pastry cream, what we'll do is take a plastic wrap and always cover the pastry cream touching the surface. Because if we cover it like that, it's going to form a skin and it won't taste nice. Always with any custard, just put it on the surface. After 15 minutes when the pastry cream is cooled down, what I'm going to do is to set the oven to preheat at 190 degrees Celsius. You want to do this before you make the meringue because the oven needs to be hot when you put the souffle. I usually put the oven to preheat 10 minutes before I whip the meringue so that it's nicely preheated. When we make the French meringue, the most important thing is that there is no fat in the egg whites and also there is no water anywhere close to the egg whites. Make sure that this is clean, it has no water on it. Because then your meringue won't really whip up if there's any fat or water. These are the only two things you need to be careful about. When we make the meringue, we're going to add the sugar in parts. I usually add it in two parts. Once it whips up slightly, I'm going to add the first part, and then I'm going to add the second part later. Let's make the meringue now. You can see that it's slightly [inaudible] so this is the time I'm going to put the first part of my sugar in and keep whisking it. We're going to take this to soft whisks and I'll show you how it'll look like.[NOISE] When you start getting a little bit more stable structure, I'm going to add the rest of the sugar in. The reason why we add the sugar in parts is because if we add it all together, it might not be very stable. But if we add it in parts you get a better meringue. You can see the meringue is really nice and smooth, and this is exactly what you want, soft whisk, it's just lightly hanging down. That is perfect. Take your cool pastry cream. It should have set slightly. I'm going to add the meringue in three parts. The first one is just to get it really nicely emulsified and then get the texture a little bit more smoother. The second part I'm going to add really gently so that it gets really airy and nice. Really vigorously. [NOISE] The next to is going to be really nicely folded so that it doesn't deflate. You want to be really nice and airy because the airy it is the more nicely it would rise in the oven. It's almost I'm just cutting it through just like that. Add the final bit of the meringue. You can already see that feels really nice and airy. Don't over mix the puddle just when it's emulsify, that's good. [inaudible] I cannot see any meringue in it now. It's nicely combined. Let's put it and bake it. 6. Souffle- Baking and Final Result: Take a tray and I'm going to put it in my ramekins now. I'll show you how I like doing it, and I'll show you a few ways to do it as well. The first way to do this is just to take a big spoon, and put it really gently. The second way is that you can actually use a piping bag, so that'll it'll be visually neat. But the thing with piping bag is sometimes it deflates the meringue, so I find this way is probably the best one because it doesn't deflate the meringue. You want to fill it till the top. After filling this, what I'm going to do is take a palette knife, and you have to do it in one go, so what you do is just take it like this and just till the edge like that, so it becomes really smooth. Just take it like this, so you get a really nice and smooth top. The same thing for the next one, and always keep a bowl next to you so you can just put the excess. Let's begin with the next one, let's take it in one go. Just makes it really nice and even. That's perfect. Before baking, use a thumb and make a really nice line on the ends, so this will cause the souffle to rise evenly, and this is something you learn in pastry school because this is a really French technique. Take a thumb and gently make a border on the corners, and because of this, you get a really nice rise. If you want, you can use a spoon as well to do this. Another tip I want to give you is that if you want to bake this later, you can store this in the fridge, just wrap it, you can put it in the fridge for about four hours, so if you have guest coming for dinner, just make it in lunch and then put it in the fridge, and when you want to bake it, just take it straight from the fridge and put it in the oven and it will rise really nicely. You don't have to make it on the spot at the last moment, you can bake it from the fridge. In restaurants usually we make it about say, 50 portions of this, and we just take it out of the fridge and bake it just when we have an order so that it's really fresh. This takes about 13-15 minutes to cook through, and you'll be able to see in the oven it rising really nicely, and it's really nice, it's really beautiful to watch it rise in the oven as well, so I really enjoy baking in this. Let's see how it looks like. This is what a fine souffle looks like, and it looks so beautiful. You have to eat it straight away because otherwise it's going to deflate, so I'm going to put this on a plate and do the final presentation. It is super airy, super light. I hope you enjoyed this lesson, and the souffle looks so beautiful. I want to discuss with you some common mistakes you can make when you make the souffle. The first one is when the souffle rises in a really uneven manner, this usually happens because the oven temperature is not correct or the oven does not heat evenly. Just make sure to recalibrate your oven with oven thermometer. It can also happen if you don't line the ramekin properly with butter, if you don't do it in an upward motion, because that is really important for it to raise evenly. The next mistake a lot of people make is to keep opening the oven door when they're making the souffle. This is the most common cause of the souffle completely collapsing when it comes out of the oven, so don't open the oven door until the end. Let's move on to the next recipe and learn how to make a beautiful coffee creme brulee. 7. Creme Brulee- Making the Custard: We're going to begin with our second lesson now on how to make a beautiful creme brulee. This is one of the desserts which is so classic to French pastry. The most important thing in this dessert is to make a really creamy custard. If you over bake it, it doesn't taste good at all. Just make sure to follow the tips I share with you, especially along the lines of the oven temperature, as well as when you heat the milk and cream. Just be really careful of that. Let's begin with the recipe. It has really simple ingredients, but it's just a process which is a little bit tricky. The first one is egg yolks. I've separated three egg yolks. The reason I'm using egg yolks and not whole eggs is because if we use egg whites in the custard, it tends to split because egg whites cook faster than egg yolks and the custard becomes very grainy. Definitely use egg yolks. The next one is cream. I'm using full-fat cream. But if you can get cream which has a fat percentage of anywhere between 30-35 percent, that would be really good. I'm using cream and not milk is because I want the custard to be really rich and really creamy. The next one is custard sugar. Custard sugar, it's basically gives it a lot of flavor and also it increases the temperature to which we can cook the custard to. Basically, it prevents the egg yolks from splitting in the custard so that's why sugar is very helpful when you make custards. This custard, I'm going to flavor with coffee and vanilla. With creme brulee, you can basically flavor with whatever flavorings you like. You can put [inaudible] , you can put cinnamon, you can put all types of different flavors. But I like to flavor it with coffee, that's why I'm using coffee today. The process is really easy. What we're going to do is infuse the milk with coffee and vanilla. Then you're going to temper the eggs and basically going to bake it in ramekins. Let's begin with the first step. Before we start assembling the custard, the first step we always do when we make the creme brulee is to put the oven to preheat at 160 degrees Celsius. By the time our custard is ready, the oven will be to temperature. Secondly, the ramekins I'm using make sure that they're quite and they are suitable to be used in the oven, because otherwise it will crack in the oven. Just be mindful of that. The third thing is we're going to be baking it in a water bath, so I'm going to take a tray, put some boiling water in it, and fill it up to here. What that does is that basically maintains the temperature of the oven and it gets a really smooth custard. This is a really nice technique to bake custards. These are the three steps we need to do. Let's move on to the next step of making the custard. I'm going to add the cream into the pot. Then add the coffee and the sugar. I'm just going to get this to simmer so the coffee dissolves, and it gets just about simmering on the side. We don't want to get it to a boil, just the light simmer. As you can see it's started to simmer from the side that's the stage you want to stop. State the egg yolks and slowly pour in the milk. What this does is it basically tampers the egg yolks. If you directly put the egg yolks, they might split. But this basically gets it to temperature and make sure that it doesn't split in the oven. Just add a little bit of vanilla. I'm going to add about a teaspoon. This is optional. If you don't like vanilla, it's fine. You can just flavor it with coffee. But I think coffee and vanilla go really well together. I really like putting little bit of vanilla. Now what I'm going to do is sieve this and put it in the ramekin and put it in the water bath, and I'll show you how to bake this as well. 8. Creme Brulee- Baking and Bruleeing the Custard: Just to make sure that the custard doesn't have any lumps or any cooked egg, I like to sieve it just before I put it in the ramekin. Perfect. Pour the custard in the ramekin, put the ramekins in the tray. In case you use smaller ramekins, it will tend to cook faster. Since our ramekins are slightly bigger, I'll be baking it for a slightly longer time. Usually, this takes about 30 minutes to cook, if you use a small ramekin. But in this case, I think it should take about 40 to 45 minutes. But I will definitely show you after 30 minutes how it looks like, so you'll be able to better identify how to bake the custard. Also, with Creme Brulee, we always slightly under-bake it because we are going to rest it in the fridge overnight, so it sets. Because if you over bake it, it tends to get really hard, that is why it's better to check when you're baking it. What I'm going to do next is put boiling water in the tray and bake it for 30 minutes, and then let's have a look at how it looks like. The custard looks like that after 30 minutes. If I touch this, it'll have a slight wobble. To know if it's baked, I'm just going to use a skewer and just put it in the center. I can feel that it's still quite raw because I can feel the raw custard there. I'm going to bake it for another 15 minutes, and then I'll show you how it looks like. It's been 15 minutes and our creme brulee is finally baked. The way to check it is to first just lightly touch this. If it's wobbly in the center, that means it's good because you don't want it to be completely form. The second way is to basically put a skewer and to see. The skewer is clean, that's good. I'm going to cool this down at room temperature for about two hours, and then I'm going to put it in the fridge overnight. Our custard has been cooling for two hours now, so it should feel quite firm. That is good. What I'm going to do is put a couple of plastic wraps just covering the surface, and put it in the fridge overnight to set. To Brulee the custard, I'm going be using a blow torch. You need to be quite safe when you use it. Always make sure that it's facing the other way when you turn it on. Just turn on the gas and click it, you can adjust the flame through this. Just be very careful when you use this. But it's really fun to use this as well, I highly recommend you learn how to use it. Let's learn how to Brulee a custard. What I'd like to do is keep a tray so that if we have any spillovers, just stay safe. Take some custard sugar, about a tablespoon, just put it on top and take the excess and put it back. We've got one layer of sugar on top, and I'm going to do it twice just to get a really nice crunchy layer. That's our first Brulee. I'm going to do another layer just to make it super crunchy. The same process again, just put a layer of sugar, move it around. Do you see how creamy that is? Just like cream, it's not set completely, but it's nicely cooked. I hope you enjoyed the lesson and it's so much fun to brulee the custard. I really hope you'll try it at home as well. The most common mistake students make is to set the oven at a really high temperature and then making the custard. This usually results in the custard splitting. Just make sure that the oven temperature is low. Also check your oven because usually, if it gets too hot, even at 160 degrees, it will definitely split. Just check the oven temperature. Other than that, this should be a really straightforward recipe. Let's move on to the next recipe of making a beautiful raspberry tart. 9. Raspberry Tart- Making the Pastry and Lining the Tart: Welcome to our third lesson. In this lesson, we're going to learn how to make a beautiful raspberry tart. This is honestly one of my favorite recipes. It's so delicious and it looks so beautiful. We'll cover different techniques in this recipe of making the pastry dough, lining the pastry in the ring, blind baking the tart and also making a rose diplomat cream and also how to finish a tart nicely. Let's begin with the lesson. The first step in making the raspberry tart is to make the tart dough. This tart dough is called pate sucree. What that means in French is sweet pastry dough. The ingredients are really easy. We've got some egg yolks, some plain flour, icing sugar, and butter. I've added a little bit of salt to the flour as well just to complement the sugar. Everything here should be at room temperature so that it makes a really nice dough and it doesn't split. The butter also, make sure it's at room temperature. To make the tart dough, what we'll do is we'll put the icing sugar in the butter and cream it slightly so it combines, then add the egg yolks and sieve in the flour. Let's have a look how to make this. Just take a sieve and put the icing sugar in. This is a really important step because sometimes what happens with icing sugar is that it forms these clumps, and if you add it directly, it might not combine really well. Just take a spoon so it makes it easier. Perfect. What I'm going to do is basically just combine the butter and sugar together. If you have a stand mixer, you can just beat it together, but I'll just do it with hand. Once it's completely combined, that is what we're looking for. I've been mixing this for about 30 seconds, and you can see that it's nicely combined, it's really creamy, and it's not split at all, so that is what you're looking for. Now, what I'm going to do is add my yolks. Just add them all together. I'm going to mix this together so it just forms a nice homogeneous mixture. You can see how nicely combined this is. It's nicely creamed. This happens only because the temperature of the butter, the sugar, and the egg is at room temperature. Because if the butter is cold, it will definitely split. This process usually takes about one minute, and until you get this creamy texture, you just keep mixing it. The reason I'm not using a whisk is because it can get really hard to clean a whisk, and you don't really need a whisk because you're not making a cake. You're just making a tart dough, so you can just use a spatula. It's perfect. When you get this texture, I'm just going to sieve in the flour. It's important to sieve the flour in because you don't want any lumps, and this goes for cakes as well. If you're making cakes as well, always sieve the flour. Just gently mix it. You can see the dough is slowly starting to come together, and that's looking much better now. Nice. That is perfect. It's nice and creamy, and that is exactly what you want, this consistency. Just take a Glad wrap and take your dough. The easiest [inaudible] is to take a bench scraper and just put it down like that and just gently fold it. I'm going to store this in the fridge for at least three hours, but if you can do it overnight, that's the best. Then, we're going to take it out and just roll it into a tart shell. I've rested the dough for three hours, and I'm just going to set it on the table roughly about 2-3 minutes so it becomes a little bit more pliable because if I roll it now, it might tend to crack. So just set it aside, then once it becomes more pliable, we'll roll it. After three minutes, I can feel the dough is more pliable now. That's perfect. What I'm going to do is take two sheets of baking paper, just put a little bit of flour, little bit of flour on top of this, and another sheet of baking paper on top. I'm just going to basically roll it in between this. It makes it really easy to roll as well, it doesn't stick to your work surface. Try to keep as even pressure as possible so you don't have any thick or thin spots anywhere. If this part is thick, what I try to do is basically just stretch it out and spread it to the side. To check if this length is good, just put your tart tin. I can see that it's going to fit, so that's good. I'm just going to set this aside in the fridge for roughly about 30 minutes so it sets up slightly because if I take it out now, it will break for sure. Then, we lie on the tart tin. I wanted to show you the thickness I'm aiming for. If you see, this is good thickness; it's not too thick and it's not too thin either. It should be roughly about two millimeters. This is good. After 20 minutes, our dough is nicely rested and it's become more colder now. Let's learn how to line the tart tin. Just [inaudible] the dough. The dough is really nice and flexible. Just put it down really gently and just tuck it in like that. First, what we'll do is we'll stick it to the base really well and then we'll stick it to the sides. Just use your fingers really gently. If you have any gaps or any tears, you can just take some dough and just stick it. Don't worry about that. After you finish this step, what I'm going to do is put it in the fridge for 30 minutes so that the dough can rest, and then I'll trim the tart dough out. After 30 minutes, our dough has been nicely rested. Just take a paring knife and just drag it. Perfect. You see how even that is. That is really nice. What I'm going to do is if I see any gaps, I'll just fill that just so that it's really even and nice. That is perfect. The excess dough, I'm going to store this. Don't throw this away; we can reuse it. You can store this in the fridge for up to 3-4 days definitely. Don't throw it away. One last thing we'll do before we put it in the fridge is just dock the pastry. Take a fork. What this does is that it basically prevents the dough from rising, and the pastry cooks really evenly and nicely. I'm going to put this in the fridge for 30 minutes uncovered because I want the base to dry out slightly. After that, we learn how to bake the pastry. 10. Raspberry Tart- Blind Baking the Tart and Pastry Cream: It's time to finally bake the tart. I preheated the oven for 15 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius, so the oven is nicely preheated. To bake this tart, I'm going to blind bake it first for 20 minutes. What that means is that you put a baking paper and you put pie weights on top of it. The reason we do this is because, firstly, we don't want the base to rise. Secondly, we want it to bake really evenly. Take a baking paper, and nicely press it to the side so it sticks nicely. I'm going to use chickpeas today for pie weights. You could use rice, you could use lentils, any dry grain would work which you can bake. Make sure it's nicely covered. I'm going to bake this with the pie weights for 20 minutes. Then I'm going to take the pie weights off, then bake it fully for another 10-15 minutes. It's been 20 minutes. Set your pie weights aside. You can see that the sides are nicely baked and they are set, but the center still feels a little bit raw. I'm going to put this in the oven for another 10 minutes so that the center sets as well. This is what our pie looks like after 30 minutes. It's about 70 percent baked, and the bottom should feel firm, and you'll have slight caramelization on the corners. We don't want to bake it fully at this point because you're going to put the almond cream as well, and we're going to bake it more. This is perfect. In this lesson, let's learn how to make almond cream. This is a really common component in French pastry, it's really easy to put together. The ingredients are really simple. You've got equal parts of caster sugar, melted butter, and then flour and egg. Super easy to make. What you do, you take the sugar, you add the butter to it. Just whisk it through. Then you add the almond flour and keep whisking until you get a paste. When you get something like a paste, you add the eggs. Just keep twisting it until it becomes really smooth. When you get a really nice and smooth texture like this, that's ready. I just whisked this for 30 seconds. It comes together really fast. Let's put this in a tart base and then bake it. You've got the tart base here and just put the almond cream. Just take a palette knife and just push it towards the corners so that it's evenly spread. Perfect. I'm going to bake this for 15 minutes at 170 degrees Celsius. The reason I've lowered the temperature down is because I don't want the tart to get too dark, I don't want it to burn, and I want the cake to cook little bit slowly. Let's see, after 15 minutes. This is how a tart looks like after 20 minutes. How do you know if the almond cake is baked? It will feel quite firm to touch and you'll see a [inaudible] amount of browning on top. I also want to say that when you're baking the almond cake, if your tart crust starts getting too dark, what you can do is take some foil and just put it around the edges like that so it won't get any more color. With this tart base, because it's slightly sweet, sometimes it can get too much caramelization, so you don't want it to get too dark, but this color is good. Let's finish the tart with the pastry cream and the raspberries. In this lesson, we're going to learn how to make creme patissiere, which is also called pastry cream. This is something you learn probably on the first day when you go to pastry school because we use it in so many different applications in French pastry. What it is basically is that it's a thickened custard with the starch, and it's really stable as well. It makes a really good filling for a choux pastry, in eclairs, even in cakes. The ingredients we have today are eggs. I'm going to be using egg yolks because yolks is what gives the silky texture to the custard, and also I can't use whites because when I cook the custard, the whites will tend to cool the custard, that's why I'm using egg yolks. I'm using half of vanilla bean, and sugar. What sugar does is that not only does it give sweetness, it also gives a really nice texture to the custard. Also sugar increases the temperature we can take the custard to, so it prevents it from curdling as well. I'm using flour. The floor is a starch, which is going to un-gelatinize the custard and bring it together, and also going to give a really good texture as well. This is just some whole milk, and to finish the custard, when it's cooked, I'm going to add some butter to it. This is called butter, and this will emulsify it and give it a really nice and rich texture. The first step in the custard is to heat the milk with the vanilla. You can use vanilla bean paste as well. But I like using the bean. Just split it from the middle like that. Just drag the knife like that and pull out all the seeds. You can see really beautiful. It looks like caviar, and it gives such an amazing flavor. I'm going to put this in the milk. Just pour the milk and the vanilla bean, and you just get this to a light simmer and just cover it and keep it for about 20 minutes so that the flavor of the bean infuses in the milk. As you can see, it started to simmer from the side, and I'll just take it off the gas now. To infuse the flavor better, just cover it with a wrap, and let this sit for about 20 minutes. Then we heat it up again and put it on the egg yolks. The next step is to separate the eggs. The best way I find to do this, it's just take your hand. The other way you can do this is just use the shell. After you've separated the egg yolks, we just add the sugar. We have to immediately whisk it because if you don't whisk it immediately, it might tend to form a skin on the egg yolks, and we don't really want that. Just whisk it for like 30 seconds, and after that it's add the flour. It should be completely combined and form a smooth texture. Once the egg mixture is ready, we just take the milk and get it to a simmer, and we'll then put the eggs. Once you see it starts to form bubbles on the edges, that's the time you want to take it off the gas. We don't want to boil it, we just want to get it just below boiling. Just pour it in a really dense cream really slowly. What this does, is it gets the eggs to, instead of temperature it tempers it, so it doesn't curdle if we directly cook it. It's a really important step. Just put it back. After we're done with the custard, we have to cook it to a boil. Always keep a whisk at hand to keep whisking it because we don't want it to curdle. Cook the custard at medium heat and keep whisking it because otherwise, it will curdle. The reason we boil it, is because we want to cook the starch out, otherwise we can taste the starch in the custard if we don't boil it out. Also, it makes a more stable custard. You can see it started to come to a boil and that's exactly when I want to take it off the heat. Whisking it for about 30 seconds. As you can see, the pastry cream is really smooth. At this point, just add the cold butter. We have to whisk really badly because we don't want the butter to split. The texture of the final cream should be really silky, almost like mayonnaise. After you've made your custard, what I like doing is taking a sieve and just sieving the custard so that if there are any lumps you can basically get rid of that. Just at the end, I'm going to add about a tablespoon of rose water. This is completely optional, but I really like the taste of rose water with the raspberries. Just whisk it through nicely. You should be able to get a really nice and smooth custard like this. See how smooth that is without any lumps. That's perfect. I'm going to set this aside. Just put a plastic wrap on top and make sure it's covering the surface so that it doesn't form a skin. Let's learn how to make cream diplomat. Cream diplomat is basically lightly whipped cream with a little bit of sugar, which is folded into a pastry cream. Our pastry cream has been cooling down for an hour so it's nicely cooled down now, it's not warm. When you make this, make sure that it's not warm because otherwise, the cream will split out of the mixture. Just take your whipping cream and add the caster sugar. Then you get this really light texture. As you can see that it's still quite liquidy, but it feels a little bit more tight now, that's the time you should stop. Just take your pastry cream, and just slightly whip this as well. It's nice and smooth. Just really gently foll our whipping cream. See, you get this really nice and rich cream. It will go really well with the raspberries. You can see its nicely mixed and it feels so nice and light. I'm going to put this in a polythene bag and set it aside in the fridge, and then I want to use it when I'm assembling the tot. 11. Raspberry Tart- Making the Jam and Finishing the Tart: The next element we're going to learn is how to make a raspberry jam. This is a really simple jam because I'm not going to put any pectin or any other chemical in it. It's just raspberries and sugar. If you don't have raspberries in season, you could also use frozen raspberries, you could also use frozen strawberries, it's the same process if you want to make any jam. What we're going to do is basically cook this together until it comes to a boil and thickens lightly. Just put the stove on medium heat, put the raspberries in, and the sugar as well. As this heats up, basically the sugar is going to caramelize and also break down the raspberries and then you'll start getting this jam consistency. This has been cooking for about two minutes now and you can see that the sugar has basically taken out all the water from the raspberries. As we keep cooking this, it's going to keep getting thicker. This process should take roughly about five minutes. I'll keep showing you the stages and when to stop as well. As you can see, it has become quite thick now and this is the stage where I want to stop. Because if I reduce this too much, I wouldn't be able to pipe it. Let's see with the spatula. As you can see, it's become quite thick now. Just to finish the job, and this is optional, what I like to do is put about 2,3 ml of lemon juice, just about 2,3 drops, and that's it. What this does is basically this prevents the sugars from crystallizing and the jam becoming really hard. Basically, the lemon juice will keep the jam really smooth and it will look very nice when we pipe it. I'm going to basically store this in a piping bag after it cools down for roughly about two minutes. After you've put the jam in the piping bag, just take a bench scraper, and take all the air bubbles out of it. Perfect. The next step, what I'm going to do is basically seal it. I like using one of these clips, it's just very easy to use. Perfect. I'm going to put this in the fridge now, and this will last in the fridge for about 1-2 weeks. Whenever you want to use it, you can definitely take it out. Then I'm going to assemble the tart. I'm going to take it out and I'm going to use it. Before I start assembling the tart, what I like to do is get all the [inaudible] plants ready. Whatever elements I need for the time because it makes it really easy to assemble the tart. You don't have to go around and look for ingredients, everything is ready. For the elements, I'm going to use some fresh raspberries, I've got some mint leaves from my garden, as well as some nastacian flowers. This is my pastry cream and jam. Everything is ready. Let's start assembling the tart now. First, put a layer of your diplomat cream, take a palette knife, and just make it quite even. Perfect. Then we're going to start assembling the raspberries. It's just facing upwards. Just finish it, put it in the center. We've just got a nice set of arrangement of raspberries. What I'm going to do is fill the raspberries with the jam. I filled all the raspberries with the jam in it and where you can see a few large gaps, I'm going to put a little bit of jam there as well. To finish the tart, I'm just going to put some flowers. To take the tart out, just take it with your finger and just slide it out like that. To finish the tart, I'm going to put a little bit of icing sugar. I hope you enjoyed the recipe. The most common mistake people do when they make tart is they wag the dough too much and develop too much gluten. This results in the tart shrinking. Just make sure to rest the dough properly when you roll it out. Also when you make the pastry cream, just be really gentle with it and don't overcook it too much because you don't want it to be creamy. The diplomat cream as well, just make sure to lightly whip the cream. When you portion the tart, make sure to freeze it for at least 2-3 hours or put it in the fridge overnight because the castor needs to set before you portion the tart. Other than that, it should be really nice. I hope you share pictures with me of this beautiful tart. Let's move on to the next recipe, which is a Chocolate Mirror Glaze Mousse Cake. 12. Mousse Cake- Making the Chocolate Sponge: Welcome to our 4th recipe. This is a chocolate mirror glaze mousse cake and this is so delicious, honestly. When I made it at home and I was making this recipe, I ate so much of it and I hope you'll also love the recipe. When you make this cake, the key points are when we're making the mousse, also, when we're glazing the cake. There are certain temperatures we need to be careful of, so just pay attention to that when I'm explaining in the lesson, and other than that, you should be good. Let's begin with the recipe. Before we start making the sponge, let's try to understand the ingredients we'll be using. I'm using two eggs and make sure that the eggs are at room temperature. Eggs will form the base of this recipe because they give so much volume to the sponge and it gives that really airy texture. The next one is flour and cocoa powder. Cocoa powder will give that chocolaty taste and flour, make sure to use cake flour or plain flour, either will do. This will give a lot of structure to the sponge. I'm also using caster sugar. In the process when we aerate the eggs, the caster sugar is really important because it gives so much stability to the eggs when we form it, so it doesn't deflate and it also gives a lot of flavor to the cake. I'm also going to add a little bit of oil. This basically makes sure that the cake remains really moist and it doesn't get dry. Before we make the chocolate batter for the cake, what we need to do is prepare the oven tray because if we make the batter and if the oven tray is not prepared with the baking paper, the process isn't that good. First step is always to prepare your baking tin. In this case, I'm just going to brush some oil, put a baking paper on it and I'm also going to set the oven to preheat at 180 degrees Celsius for roughly about 10-15 minutes so that when I put the cake in, it rises really well. We just put a little bit of oil. Perfect, and just a little bit of oil on top of this as well. That's good. You can even put butter if you want, but it's totally fine, it's just so that the cake doesn't stick. Let's move on to the next step of making the batter. The process is really easy. I'm just going to add the sugar to the eggs and I'm going to whip this until it gets really soft peaks. When you get a texture like this, where you can form a figure eight and the impression remains, that's really good. See how smooth that is. Let's sieve the other ingredients now in the batter. Especially when you're using cocoa powder, it's really important to sieve the flour because otherwise you'll get these clumps and it's not really nice to eat, so definitely sieve it. Just gently fold this through until it's almost mixed. After mixing for about 20 seconds, you can see that I cannot see any dry spots of flour or cocoa powder, so I'm going to add the oil. Even if you're using butter, always add it at the end and just mix it, so all the batter basically gets coated with the fat and that will make it really nice and soft. That looks perfect. It's really smooth and it's really airy. You want to stop at this point because you don't want to deflate it too much and this is perfect. Let's bake this now. Just pour the batter in your baking tray. I'm going to spread it slightly. I don't want it to be too thin but just a little bit. Just take a palette knife, just make it really even. When you get an even sponge like that, that is good. We're going to bake this for about 12 minutes and the way to check it, if it's done, is if you touch the surface, it should feel slightly firm but at the same time, the sponge should be soft. Make sure that it doesn't get over-baked as well. I'll show it to you after 12 minutes, and I'll also show you how to check when to know if it's ready. This is our sponge after 12 minutes. The way I can check if it's done is if I just touch the surface, it will feel a little bit soft but at the same time, it will feel like it's set. You won't be able to feel that it's anywhere or formed raw, that is good. You can even put a skewer inside and check. What I'd like to do next is just take it off the tray and put it on the cooling rack because if I leave it on the tray, the heat of the tray might overcook it. I want to remain soft. I'm going to cool this down for about 20 minutes and then I can use it to assemble the cake. After 10 minutes of cooling down, what I'd like to do is take a palette knife and just take it off the baking paper so that it doesn't stick. It's super easy. You just take it like that and dragging it. This will make sure that it doesn't really stick. Perfect. I'm going to set this aside until I assemble the cake. 13. Mousse Cake- Making the Chocolate Mousse: Before we begin making the chocolate mousse, let's try to understand the ingredients as well as the process of making it. This is basically a custard-based mousse, so we're going to be making a creme anglaise, and we're going to be tempering the chocolate with the creme anglaise, and then folding in softly whipped cream. I've got some dark chocolate here. What I'm going to do with the dark chocolate is put it over a pot of simmering water so that it gently tempers and melts down. The next step I'm going to do is basically make a creme anglaise with egg yolks, castor sugar, and a mixture of milk and cream. The mousse we're making is basically a custard-based mousse. Once we make the custard we pour it over the chocolate, let it cool down slightly, and fold in a softly whipped cream. In this mousse, I'm also going to add a sheet of gelatin. If you haven't used this before, this is really nice if you want to glaze the cake because it basically sets the mousse really nicely and the mousse also doesn't melt very easily as well with the gelatin, but if you're setting it in a glass, you don't really need to use gelatin. Also, you can make this without gelatin, but you just get a more professional results with it. The first step, what I'm going to do is melt the chocolate. Let's begin with that. Just pour some boiling water in a pot. That should be good, and put the bowl of chocolate and just let it melt with the steam. You don't want the bowl to actually touch the water, you want it to indirectly heat and melt the chocolate. This basically conserves the flavor of the chocolate and also prevents it from burning. I'm going to set this aside and let it melt slowly while I I my custard. The first step in making the custard is to hydrate the gelatin sheet. If you're using the gelatin sheet, you'll have to do this, because this takes about 5-10 minutes. Just make it into half and put it in a bowl, and just submerge it in some cold water. Make sure that the water is cold because if you use hot water it will not really work well, and make sure that it's really nicely submerged. This takes about anywhere between 5-10 minutes. Just set this aside and let's make the creme anglaise. To make the creme anglaise, I'm going to take the egg yolk and add the sugar. Just whisk it through nicely, and just when it's combined just leave it aside. I'm going to get this to simmer and then temper my eggs and then cook it. Let's get them into a simmer. Just add your liquids. I'm going to cook this at a medium flame because I don't want it to boil. I'm also going to flavor it with coffee because I found that if you flavor a chocolate mousse with coffee, it actually enhances the flavor of the chocolate and you can't really taste coffee as much, so I think it's a really good idea to add a little bit of coffee. Just add about half a teaspoon, that's good. You can see that the milk has started to simmer. That's the point I want to stop. Just pour the liquids in a timed stream and keep whisking continuously so that the eggs don't split. That's perfect. Pour it back in the pot. We're going to cook this to 82 degrees Celsius or until it thickens slightly. I'll show you how it looks like when it's done. Put it on the gas and make sure that the flame is not really strong and keep moving it around and whisking it because you don't want it to boil because if it boils, it's definitely going to split. You can see it's become really shiny and thick. That's really good consistency. What I'd like to do is just go to the back of your spoon with the custard, and if you basically put your finger, if it comes out clean, that means it's ready. Let's pour this over our melted chocolate. This is our melted chocolate mixture. Make sure it's completely smooth before you pour the anglaise on top of it because you don't want any pieces of chocolate which are not melted. In case the indirect method of melting doesn't work, you can also put it on the stove with the pot and the water and keep it at really low heat and gently melt it. This is perfect, so let's put the anglaise on top of this. Just pour the anglaise and get everything from the pot. Just mix this through and take your gelatin sheets which is in the water. This is really important. What you have to do is basically squeeze the water out from the gelatin sheet because you don't want the water going into the chocolate because that will tend to seize is it slightly, so you don't want that. Just take the gelatin and squeeze it as much as you can. Also, at this stage you can see that it's really nicely hydrated and the residual heat from the chocolate will melt it nicely. Just put the gelatin in the mousse. I'm going to mix this really well so it's really nicely combined. You see the shiny mixture, that is really good. If initially when you add it, it slightly stick, don't worry, just keep whisking it and you'll get really nice and shiny texture. At this point, what I have to do is basically check the temperature of the mousse. It's roughly about 43 degrees. If we add the whipped cream right now, it will definitely split because the fats of the cream will split. We need to cool this down to at least 32 degrees Celsius, and then we'll add the softly whipped cream to it. While we're waiting for the chocolate custard to cool down, I'm going to whip the cream. Just take your cream and I'm going to add a tablespoon of sugar to it just so that it whips very nicely and it gets more stability. Let's whip this to a soft peak. When we get a really nice and soft texture like this, that is really good. You don't want to over-whip this because otherwise the mousse will taste really grainy and it won't taste really nice. Our chocolate custard has finally come to temperature, so let's add the whipped cream to it. When we add the whipped cream, add about one-third and just mix it really well. This basically homogenizes the mixture and makes it really dyed. The next two additions, we'll add really gently. Gently fold it. Add the last part of it. You'll see that the custard is becoming so light now and it's basically becoming a really light mousse because of the whipped cream. That is perfect. You see how light the texture is, it's not split at all and it's really dyed. At this stage, I'm going to just put this in a piping bag and start assembling the cake. 14. Mousse Cake- Assembling the Cake: It's time to finally assemble the mousse cake. I'm going to show you three ways to do it, the first one is in a glass. This is the most easiest one. If you don't want to spend a lot of time making it, this is perfect. The second one is in a ring. This will get a really nice shape and look really professional. Then we'll also gaze it that at the end so it'll look really nice. The third one is in a silicone mold. This is a slightly different shape. Honestly, if you don't have this, it's completely fine, but I just wanted to show you a little bit more professional way of doing it, what we do in pastry shops. That is why I wanted to show it to you in this as well. Let's start with the first one, which is in a glass. For the glass, I'm going to take basically a circle of the sponge so that I can put it in the center. Just cut a little bit of the sponge and just drag it so it comes out fairly neatly. You see how soft that sponge is, and it's really good. Just set this aside. Let's assemble mousse. I've got all the elements I need to assemble the mousse. I like having everything at the same place because you don't have to run around to make it, you have everything ready. It's really easy to make it. With this one, I'm going to soak this sponge with some Baileys because it gives really good flavor, but you can do it with the sugar syrup as well, so it's completely fine. Just put a layer of the mousse at the bottom. Perfect. When you're not using the mousse, you can put it in a glass like that so it doesn't leak. That's good. Now I'm going to soak the sponge with the Baileys. It's very important to soak the sponge because you don't want it to get dry, and also to give flavor to the sponge. This goes here and then I'm going to put another layer of the mousse. That is perfect. Just to finish it, we're going to just even the top out. You can do it two ways. Either you can just shake this a little bit, and it evens it out, but you can use a palette knife if you want. When we're going to store it, just put a plastic wrap on top and put it in the fridge overnight if you can because then it will set really well, and it would taste really good as well with this sponge, will soak [inaudible] flavor. It's important to cover it as well because you don't want it to get any flavor from different food in the fridge. Let's have a look tomorrow when we finish this one. Let's learn how to make the mousse cake in a ring. The first step to do is to cut out a circle which will go in the ring. Just cut out the inside like that and just drag it and just set it aside. After cutting the sponge, what we'll do is take a flat surface. You can also take a plate or any flat surface and cover that with some plastic wrap. That will form the base of the mousse cake, and put your ring like that. Anytime you make a mousse cake, it's really important to cover the sides with an acetate sheet. What that does is basically it's got this coating on it. The mousse cake comes out really cleanly, so it looks very professional. This is what we use in professional kitchens as well. Just put it on the side like that. What I'm going to do is start by the mousse so that I can get the top layer of the cake. Perfect. After you've piped it, what I like to do is take a palette knife and just spread it on this side so that I can form an outer layer of the cake, so just take it up like that. When you've got this really nice and even outer layer, I'm going to basically put the sponge inside. Before putting the sponge and the mousse cake, I'll just cover it with some sugar syrup so it stays really nice and moist. You cover one side of it and then we put it in the mousse cake and then cover the other side. This side we soaked, it goes down just like that. Perfect. Then we soak the other side as well so that it remains really nice and moist when we cut it, and it doesn't become dry. Perfect. Let's put the other layer of the mousse. After filling the ring with the mousse, what we do is we try to flatten it out as much as we can so that it's really neat. What you can do is basically take your palette knife and just do it like that, just similar to how we did it in our souffle when we were filling the ramekin. You have to do the edge and fill all the gaps. This will lead to a really nice and smooth top. Perfect. After I fill the mousse cake, what I'm going to do is basically put it in the freezer for at least 12 hours because when we glaze a mousse cake, the more frozen it is, the more smoother the glaze goes on the cake and it's more easier to glaze as well. Just cover it lightly with plastic sheet, and we glaze this tomorrow. To make the mousse in the silicone mold, I'm going to cut a circle of the sponge. Make sure that the circle is actually less than the size of the mold. I'm also going to soak this with some rum, so it gets really nice flavor. When we fill this, just fill the center and we spread it to the sides. It's quite easy actually. This will basically form the sides of the cake, and the same thing for this one as well. Just put the sponge in the center and just press it slightly so the mousse covers it. Then we soak this side of the sponge as well and just finish it with the mousse. To finish it, what we do is we just level the top, just like that. Perfect. The excess on the side, you can just take it with your palette knife so that it's clean and nice. I like to put the mousse cakes on a tray so it's easy to handle. I like to put it in the freezer for at least 12 hours because you want it to be completely frozen before you glaze it. Otherwise, the glaze doesn't stick that well. Let's glaze it tomorrow. I'm just going to put this in the freezer now. 15. Mousse Cake- Mirror Glaze and Finishing the Cake: In this lesson, let's learn how to make a chocolate mirror glaze. How do you actually make a chocolate mirror glaze? There are a few techniques to make it, but all the recipes have similar ingredients, which are sugar and gelatin. These two is what actually causes the glaze to really shine. The ingredients we are going to be using are some chopped chocolate, cream, cocoa powder, water, sugar, and gelatin. The process is fairly straightforward. What we will do is first make a sugar syrup with the sugar and water. We'll get it up to about 105 degrees Celsius. Then we'll add the chocolate, cream, and cocoa powder. Then once that cools down to about 60 degrees Celsius, we'll add the gelatin, and with this gelatin, we need to soak it in cold water for about 5-10 minutes before we can add it to the mixture. Let's begin with our first step, which is to soak the gelatin sheets, because this takes about 5-10 minutes, so we need to do it before we start the process. What I like to do is basically cut it with a scissor, so then it can nicely soak. Always put this in cold water. Because if you put this in hot water, it will not set. I'm going to set this aside and start making my sugar syrup. Put the pot on medium flame. Put the sugar and the water. I've also got a thermometer with me. I keep checking the temperature and once it comes to about 105 degrees, I'll take it off the gas. It's been one minute, let's check the temperature. It's about 102, so it needs to rise a little bit more. After one and 1/2 minutes, our mixture is finally on the temperature, so I'm just going to take it off the heat. First, I'm going to whisk in the chocolate, and make sure to have a whisk because you want it to be nicely emulsified. Just let it sit there. What I'm going to do next is sieve the cocoa powder. Now, it's really important to sieve it. Because if you don't sieve it, it will form clumps and your glaze, it won't be smooth. Definitely you have to sieve it. After you've sieved this, we're just going to whisk it really well. Perfect. Then I'm going to add my cream in it. Make sure the cream is room temperature. Don't add cold cream. We already see it's quite shiny. But after we add the gelatin in it, it'll be really nice. I'm just going to wait for it to cool down to about 60 degrees Celsius and then I'll add the gelatin. Our chocolate mixture has been cooling for one minute now, and it's roughly at about 58 degrees Celsius. That's really good. You want it to be below 60 degrees Celsius. What I'm going to do next is I'm going to add the gelatin sheet in it. What we do is we basically squeeze out all the water because we don't want the water to go in the glaze. Just squeeze as much water as you can. You should be able to get this jelly texture, it should become really hydrated. Just add it to your pot and whisk really well. In professional kitchens, what we do is use one of these immersion blenders. This is really nice when you're making your glaze. Because what it does is it emulsifies it really well and makes it really, really shiny. If you don't have one, that's completely fine, you can still make this glaze and it will still turn out really well. But if you have one, you can get a really professional product. Let's learn how you can emulsify it really well. What I like doing is sieving the glaze in any glass you have. Because if you sieve it, all the clumps of cocoa powder, everything will just go away. It'll become really smooth. Perfect. Then what you do is take the immersion blender and just take it below. You don't want to aerate it. You just want to combine it really well and just start blending it. This is what it finally looks like. See how shiny that is. You can actually see the camera. That's perfect. To use this glaze, we need to cool it down to about 30 degrees Celsius. Right now, let's check the temperature. It's roughly about 35. I'm just going to let this sit for roughly about five minutes and then check again. If you want to use it, you can actually store this in the fridge as well and just heat it up in the microwave. That's also completely fine. Let's check the temperature of our glaze now. You can see that it's become quite thick. This is really good. It's about 31 degrees, which is fine. I can use it at 31. Let's glaze the cake. This is the mousse from yesterday. You could serve it like that, but I'll just put a little bit of glaze on top just to finish it. It will just add another layer of texture as well as it looks really nice. Just let it set aside for about five minutes and then I'll just finish with some gold leaf. Let's finally taste this smooth, and you see it's so smooth. It's got a really nice texture and the glaze as well, looks really nice. It is so delicious. I really hope you make this. While we wait for the glaze to cool down, I wanted to show you how to set up a glazing station. For that, we need a tray and a cooling rack. I'm going to put a plastic sheet here so that whatever glaze falls over, I can reuse it. We don't want to waste any glaze. Let's just put this here. Put the cooling rack, and this is ready. This is a mousse cake from yesterday, so it's nicely frozen. What I'm going to do is set this on our glazing station. Let me just unwrap it. When we actually glaze this cake, we'll be using the other side of the cake because that's more smoother. To take it out of the ring, we just press it down gently and the ring should just come out. I've also seen some people use a blow dryer. You could also do that as long as the ring comes out cleanly, and what we do is we basically flip it on our glazing tray. Just take it and it should flip out easily, and just put it down like that. If you have any ridges, or any uneven sides, you can just take a palette knife and just gently even it up. You can also use a little bit of hot water and dip it. But it's completely fine because we're going to glaze it anyways, so if there's any spots it will completely hide that. Just take the acetate sheet from the side. It should come off quite easily because the cake is frozen. Perfect, and just glaze the cake. Just pour it from the center, and then start putting more pressure so that it goes to the side. Perfect. If you see any gaps on the side, just pour it there as well, and just at the end to even it out. This is optional. If you don't feel like doing it, don't do it. There are two methods to do it, either you can shake the tray slightly so it just falls off, or you can take a palette knife and just do it in one go. Perfect, so that you get a flat surface. Make sure to take the glaze which is remaining and just squeeze it inside the glaze we have, so we don't waste anything. Perfect. After we've glazed the cake, I'm going to use a palette knife to lift the cake and put it on my cake board. You can see your hand on the mirror glaze and looks really nice. Just take your palette knife and gently just lift it like that. Then put another palette knife on the side, so that helps you lift it so it doesn't break. That's how you lift it, so it's quite stable. It's perfect. We've finally got our mousse cake. I'm going to take a chef's knife and put it in hot water and just wipe it with a cloth so you get a really nice and smooth cut. That's a fine cake, looks so beautiful. To glaze these small cakes, what we do is we put the glaze at the center and let it fall down. What you do is you start with the center and just twist it and let it fall down so it basically covers all the sides. Perfect. You can actually see my reflection in the glaze. So if I say hi, you can see it. Let the glaze sit for about five minutes and then I'll just use a palette knife to put it on a plate. To lift the mousse cake, take two palette knives, put one in the center and one on the side so you can easily lift it like that, and then put it on a plate. I hope you enjoyed that recipe and the mousse cakes look so beautiful. The most common mistake students do is that they overwhip the cream, and when you overwhip the cream what happens is that the mousse actually splits slightly when you put it in the fridge. Make sure to lightly whip it. Secondly, when you're glazing the cake, be very careful about the temperature. Because if the temperature is too high or too low, the glaze doesn't actually stick, it just falls off. These are the only two things, and it looks so beautiful and I'm sure you'll make it really nicely as well. I really hope you enjoyed this class and that you could learn a lot from it. 16. Thank you!: To conclude this class, I just wanted to say that I'm really proud of you because you've learned so much during this class, and I'm really sure that you will share amazing pictures with me as well. Make sure if you have any doubts, feel free to message me, and I'll definitely get back to you. Also follow me on YouTube and Instagram and check out some of my work as well. I hope to see you soon in some of my other classes. Thank you again for joining me in this class.