Sounds like a school I'd like to go to. I might even be able to learn
french....although I've tried so often I've about given that up.. However I
could certainly learn some good baking tips! wendy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob (this one)" >
Newsgroups: rec.food.baking
To: >
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 8:02 AM
Subject: Birthday Cake report
> -L. wrote:
> > Wendy wrote:
> >
> >>Looks great. I have not worked with Marzipan myself. I think your cake
> >>looks terrific.
> >>I've taken a few cake decorating courses and loved them. I'm one of the
> >>least artistic people I know so cake decorating is a huge challenge. In
one
> >>of my classes I spent lots of energy baking the cakes we were to
decorate -
> >>that was the easy part for me. Then I'd sweat buckets over the
decorating.
> >>Some of class mates picked up all kinds of prebaked cakes and made them
look
> >>beautiful with no effort at all! Wendy
> >
> >
> > My philosophy is that it needs to taste better than it looks! 
This
> > one was pretty tasty - lemon cream cake filled with a
> > strawberry-apricot filling.
>
> <LOL> Agree with the taste/beauty relationship. But sometimes you luck
out.
>
> My daughter is taking French in school and I'm not above helping her
> suck up a bit - good grades are good grades. Over the past two years and
> this, we've made baguettes a few times. Brioches. A couple
> ****aladieres. Fougasse. Croquembouche (She walked into class carrying
> it and one kid who didn't see her come through the door and was standing
> with the teacher finally saw it and blurted out, "Holy shit." Teacher
> laughed so hard she fell into her seat.) Madelaines. Choux swans (filled
> with Bavarian cream). A tall Eiffel tower in gingerbread for X-mas that
> was wonderful and that she gave to her teacher. Smart kid.
>
> Last evening we made the layers for a dacquoise and assembled it this
> morning. Two different meringue layers - one with ground almonds like an
> Italian amaretto cookie, the other with cocoa and orange zest. Fillings
> were orange mousse and chocolate mousse, finished with mousse on the
> sides, ganache on top with finely chopped pistachios sprinkled through a
> paper doily onto the chocolate.
>
> She ought to get about 150% for this one. It's gorgeous. Should taste
> very good, too. She piped the layers out and, as you'd expect from a
> kid, got them all bumpy and irregular. Tried too hard to make it perfect
> and, of course, got them spluttery and uneven because of trying too
> hard. Showed her a wet spreader/spatula and what a wonderful tool it is.
> She made them more or less even and we dried them in preparation for
> this morning. Perfect texture, still a bit less than perfect-looking.
> But wait, here come the mousses and see how splendidly they mask all
> those imperfections. I pointed that out to The Kid and she laughed at
> all that worrying. She did the assembly while I made the ganache. I even
> peeled a bunch of pistachios, rubbed the skins off and chopped them. How
> good a daddy is that?
>
> She beamed when it was done. "It's pretty good, isn't it," she said. I
> laughed out loud. Many bakeries I've been in wouldn't have done as
> pretty a job as that. Did I remember to take a picture? Why do you ask?
> Of course not. Not until we were halfway to school and remembered that
> we hadn't. Not that we were giggling like, well, schoolkids or anything...
>
> There's Murphy's Law and Murphy's Dammit Law.
>
> Pastorio
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