Lesson 2 : Variety of Scones, Madeleines, Financiers/friands

Today we made more scones (sultanas and cheese scones), Madeleines, Financiers/friands (I still dunno how to pronouce Financiers correctly). Our chef for today was Chef Karin, little pretty lady from Switzerland)

Chef Karen did a nice presentation of her goodies !

Since we had many things to do today, Chef Karin let us work with partner. One made Fruit scones and one made cheese scones..You may think that why don’t we just make scone dough in 1 time and half put sultana, half put cheese...Because they try to teach us that there are many recipe for scones. For fruit scones, we use milk powder and use milk for cheese scones.

Fruit Scones from chef Karen

Cheese Scones from chef Karin

Madeleines from chef Karin

Financiers from chef Karin

My partner was Soo jin, a nice korean girl, she did the fruit scones perfectly. And also my cheese scones were a lot better from yesterday, fluffy and moist. Lots of cheese on top…ahhh…so yummy..It will be surely much better if we can put ham or bacon in it.

My cheese scones in Batching which means arranging them in rows on trays. Put the scones close together on thrays so that they all rise toghter and do not dry out after baking. Batching of scones saves room on the trays and makes the scones easier to handle.

Soo jin's fruit scones baked by individual makes scones look nicer.

Financiers (also known as Friands) are small desserts made from almond meal, sugar, egg whites, beurre noisette (brown butter), and flour. You can add it with small fruits like blueberries, or even oranges.

My Financiers turned out well too. Crispy outside, moist inside and can taste the almond meal. I think it is a bit similar as cookies..(maybe I baked it too long? *giggle*) l was satisfied my Financiers though.

Madeleines are very small and moisted cakes with a distinctive shell-like shape acquired from being baked in pans with shell-shaped depressions. Their flavour is similar to, but somewhat lighter than, pound cake, with a pronounced butter-and-lemon taste. They also go well with coffee or tea.

For madeleines, I like the one chef made..golden brown and have a lemon smell since we added some lemon peels..Mine was also lovely but I don’t really like it, just think that it was like normal Thai Kanom Kai...

The most important thing Chef Karin tough us today was about how politeness to your kitchen hands really pays off when you're working in the kitchen. Never be forget to be polite and respect them.

Anyway, I was thinking to have my own flour sifter cause school’s one is too big which is not convenient. One more thing as my friend, Ann who have just finished superior class, told me to buy is my own digital scale…we all were a bit annoying about waiting to get our ingredients measured out.

This time I forgot to bring my camera, too bad. I will try to get some photos from my friends

Lesson 1 : Plain Scones and Royal Icing

Since at 2 first weeks of being in Sydney, I stayed at Hyde Park Tower on Elizabeth Street. Then to arrive school at 7 am, I have to catch the bus 501 on George St. at World Square at 6.12 am…my gosh..so early, rite?

When I arrived at the bus stop, I saw some LCB students (as you can see they was carrying a big knife bag same as mine :D) and I was thinking these students might be my classmate..coz only Basic Patisserie in group 3 got this school time table. (some might be cuisine or whatever)

Ok…let’s start another new journey…

After changed uniform, we went to the demonstration class at K2 on Level 6 building A. We got chef Keith for first day…He is quite nice and mentally calm..

At first, we all who commenced Basic Patisserie at Le Cordon Bleu today seemed to be nervous and excited. Chef Keith did ice breaking by letting us introduce ourselves. There were 15 of us (some previous cuisine students, some who got the experiences in industry, with the majority of us being fresh-faced, dessert eating - love baking students which are 5 Koreans, 3 Thais, 3 Singaporeans, 1 Philippine, 1 Venezuelan , 1 Brazilian, 1 Indonesian) Looks like Asian international school..hehehe…

Chef Keith showed us how to make plain scone and some royal icing piping. It looked quite easy though. After that, we got time to take photos and taste products. Chef was very kind by making Chantilly cream (whipped cream with a bit of sugar and vanilla essence). It was good for today breakfast..haha…

Scones are English biscuits made from flour, sugar, butter, milk or cream. They usually use baking powder as a leavening agent. There are lots lots lots of variety of scones that you can make. sweet or salty. Tomorrow we will make 2 more kinds of scones : fruits scones with sultanas and Cheese Scones. Plain scones are best served with strawberry jam and cream. But I prefer butter and jam ^ ^

In kitchen, we learned about safety and hygiene, not only for ourselves but other colleages too. I found out that most of my classmates are quite good in baking. Since I saw most of scones came out very pretty. Just about 2-3 students who seemed like have never done scone before..(I did it only once before at home and not so successful). I made about 16 scones today…It was good to eat when just came out from the oven..But I think my scone can be better..maybe because I was afraid that I will work too much for the dough then what I did was too little mix the dough :P

I also have heard about one joke that chef said to students “When you buy the uniform, did they tell you to buy a bigger size? Cuz you will definitely grow up’’ hahahahaha...

After finished baking scones, we also made royal icing and practiced piping. It is made from white eggs, pure icing sugar and acid-cream of tartar or lemon juice. Mine was very ugly...^ ^''

We got about 1 hour break. Our late lunch were scone, scone and scone…haha..Then the last class was some theory about hygiene which I have learned before at William Angliss, Melbourne. (of course, already forgot most of them). Personally, I think we all did pretty good jobs on our first day in LCB.

And one more thing !!!, we have a kitchenhand to help us clean up!