Pastry Masterclass with Cake ta Life: Entremet Cakes

The masterclass took place in Les Lilas, near Paris, in a wonderfully welcoming workshop: La cuisine de Bernard. 100 m² entirely dedicated to pastry! The place is truly delightful – you feel right at home. And since the workshop is a Kitchenaid partner cooking school, you can find dozens of stand mixers of all kinds there – enough to make your eyes light up!

We all sit down at the table and introduce ourselves while waiting for the latecomers. Morgane explains the weekend programme and gives us a little booklet containing all the recipes we’ll be making. The schedule is packed but we’re all excited! (yes, it’s all women!)

First step: the biscuits – chocolate brownie, lemon cake, almond cream (piped individually, which I’d never done before), coconut biscuit, coffee biscuit and banana cake. We spread them on trays, bake, cut into rounds and set aside. The chocolate brownie and banana cake left me with an unforgettable memory… we nibbled as we baked – let’s not pretend otherwise!

You can’t see it in the photos, but we also made the various pâtes sucrées (chocolate and lemon) as well as the reconstituted sablé. Ideally, the pâtes sucrées should be made the day before. They then need to be rolled out, cut and refrigerated before baking. This way, the pastry won’t deform during baking.

Second step: the inserts, which need to go in the freezer – soft caramel, vanilla crémeux with strawberry compote, pineapple marmalade and pineapple crémeux, coffee crémeux, banana confit with soft caramel, chocolate crémeux… we had plenty of work! I’m really not used to working in individual portions and I find it quite enjoyable. I think I’ll do it more often (especially since I’m rather well equipped with moulds *hehe*). Anyway, we pipe the inserts onto the biscuits and everything goes back into the blast chiller.

Now it’s time to prepare the mirror glazes, as they need to rest in the refrigerator. I get the feeling we’re all here for exactly this: to learn all the secrets of a perfectly executed mirror glaze. So we watch everything, take photos, film it, we don’t miss a single detail. How much colouring to add? How to tilt the immersion blender? Which blender to choose, for that matter? In short, we want to know everything!

Having already done my research beforehand, I already knew: the Bamix is THE immersion blender to have. I know some people will say they manage perfectly well with their little €20 stick blender, or even that a whisk can do the job. Personally, I have the Kitchenaid immersion blender which I thought was good quality, but in fact my glazes are always full of bubbles. No matter how careful I am, no matter how much I strain it, my glaze ends up far from perfect. Here, I was able to watch the beast in action and there’s simply no comparison!!! The glaze is absolutely magnificent. Not a single bubble, an incomparable shine – I couldn’t believe what a difference it made. But then again, the Bamix is a bit of an investment (for an immersion blender of all things…) – but it’s on my pastry wishlist, that’s for certain.

And to finish convincing you, here’s a video of the beast in action. Just so you know, I have no shares in Bamix. Besides, if I had a partnership with them, I’d already be well equipped!! 😛

Not everything is told in order, but no matter… we took advantage of the lunch break to catch our breath (it is intense, especially when your back is aching) and get to know each other better. We make a great group – we’re all there to learn, to share, the atmosphere is fun and relaxed and honestly, we’re having a great time! A little souvenir photo with the girls before heading back to the kitchen.

Chocolate decorations are the second thing we all wanted to learn. It’s true that it’s not easy to find your own style, to successfully temper your chocolate to create attractive decorations. In any case, I can’t manage it so I’m a good student and I watch everything, everything, everything! We also peek at what the others are doing next to us (since we all have different decorations and methods).

We’re rather unlucky as we’re right in the middle of a heatwave and it’s quite hot in the workshop. This isn’t ideal because in this heat, tempering chocolate (even with the Mycryo method) is really not straightforward. We use the blast chiller for a few seconds when we need to cool the chocolate down a little, but the results really aren’t there and many decorations weren’t a success.

I took care of making these little chocolate discs using a method I had never seen before. Once the tempered chocolate is spread on a guitar sheet, you sprinkle it with a sugar-colouring mixture (here bronze colouring) and go for it!! You can then retrieve the excess sugar by lifting the sheet. Let it crystallise a little, then cut out circles. The result is rather nice! Then simply assemble several circles together using a freeze spray.

Another nice technique: use a brush to colour the guitar sheet (mix cocoa butter and colouring), brush with one colour then another, allow to crystallise slightly, then spread the tempered chocolate. Allow to crystallise again then cut as desired.

Mirror glaze: the return. All the glazes have spent the night in the refrigerator. They need to be reheated in the microwave and then processed again with our wonderful Bamix friend to homogenise everything. I still can’t get over the efficiency of this machine :O Just look at this magnificent chocolate mirror! And don’t get me started on the little cake offcuts you can see in the photos… this entremets is incredible! I can’t wait to make it again!

The caramel glaze is very beautiful too. One by one, we glaze, we spike, we move the entremets and we decorate it. You have to be quite quick (it’s really hot in the workshop and it’s even harder when working on small pieces). This is the banana chocolate entremets.

Many of us wanted to try the zebra glaze. So Morgane changed her plans to show us. To do this, you simply need 2 different glaze colours (or more if you want something more colourful). Since it wasn’t planned in the programme, we didn’t necessarily have the right quantities to achieve perfection (there’s a bit lacking in contrast) but it was still very beautiful. In a jug, pour one glaze over another (the order depends on what effect you want), mix very roughly and there you have it!

Here’s an overview of the other mirror glazes we made: yellow, white, red… the recipe is the same, you just change the colouring. And that red! I’ve never managed to achieve that colour at home – now I know how to do it 😀 The technique is the same: glaze, spike, move and decorate.

Here’s the result of our 2 days of work. It was looking at this table that we realised just how much work had been done. Our entremets are magnificent and make us desperately want to eat them. Each of us leaves with our 6 entremets. They are beautiful and they are delicious. My darling and I had a wonderful time enjoying them.

That’s what I can tell you about the masterclass with Cake ta life. An intense weekend among enthusiasts, lots of good cheer, advice, plenty of advice. Thank you Morgane for all of that, and thank you to my weekend companions with whom I shared some wonderful moments. I fully intend to put to good use everything I learned during this masterclass.