Day 13: Preparation for Friday cupcakes

Hello fork musketeers!

We didn't do a lot today. Chef lectured about sugar, Baume, and refractometers today. If you're interested, I'll put that information at the bottom. Just search for the heading, "Today's lecture".

So the remainder of the week is dedicated to making cupcakes. Not necessarily doing a lot of cupcake batters; but on Friday we're going to present 10 cupcakes. We were given the freedom to choose whatever recipe we want - it doesn't have to be from our recipe book - and we can decorate it however we want.

I was quite unsure about what I wanted to do. At first I thought I would do something with Minecraft but then I'd be spending 3/4s of my time cutting out small squares. That would be no fun! Then I thought, oh I could do something with pandan and gula melaka.

Pandan

Gula melaka

For those who are unfamiliar, pandan and gula melaka are widely used in southeastern Asia. Pandan is a very fragrant, almost sweet, herb that is used in a lot of desserts. In Montreal, fresh pandan is easily accessible at your local Asian supermarket. It's extremely fibrous, so it's normally used as a herb to add and later remove, or the juices are extracted.

Gula melaka is a palm sugar made from the coconut tree and it has such a rich, complex flavour. It's fairly solid when it's chilled but as it warms up it starts to have the texture of wet brown sugar. It's honestly really tasty to eat by itself.

I want to do a pandan cupcake with gula melaka buttercream on top. I'm still working out the details but I'll most likely use this recipe as a base. I will post pictures of my experiments tomorrow. In the mean time, I wanted to prepare some pandan extract for tomorrow; or hopefully it will be ready for tomorrow. Cross your fingers for me! (I know I will be)

Extracting the pandan extract

This part will take you max 15 minutes to do. You'll need:

1. Fresh pandan
2. Water
3. A good food processor or blender
4. a fine strainer and/or cheese cloth.

The method

1. Separate your pandan leaves and wash well. Cut into small-ish pieces and discard the white bits. 
2. Place into your blender and add some water.
3. Blitz until it's well blended. You might have to push down some of your pandan leaves.
4. Once done, strain it through your sift or cheese cloth and squeeze squeeze squeeze the juices out.

You should end up with something like this:

You could, hypothetically, use this right away. However your pandan extract is watered down since you needed water to blitz it properly. Keep your watered-down pandan extract and in a few hours/days, the water and the pandan extract should separate. When it does, discard the water layer and keep the dark green sediment.

I did find a pretty useful blog post talking about this in more depth. Check it out if you're interested in trying this out.

So, hopefully, it should be ready by the time I go to school tomorrow. In a pinch, you can go to your local Asian supermarket and buy pandan extract. Which I will be doing if this isn't ready by then. Yeah...

Anyway, thanks for reading. Leave a comment down below if you have any questions or something. Don't be shy!

Today's lecture

Onto the more technical part of today: talking about syrups, almonds and proportions.

We covered some of sugar's properties. Have you ever thought about why jams don't really expire? You'd think, "yeah 'cause there's so much sugar in them!" But it's not simply because there's sugar in it - it's because sugar is an antiseptic.

Personally, it's really weird to think of sugar as an antiseptic. It's very easy for me to think that salt is an antiseptic, but sugar? Mind is blown. This is why you can leave jams and marzipan on the counter without worrying about it rotting. There's enough sugar to ward off bacteria.

Sugar also increases the density of water, just like salt. Check it out.

Looks like I was shakey here. My bad!

The container on the right has 1:1 ratio of water and sugar - otherwise known as 30˚ Baume syrup. It's dense enough to make the egg float. You can add water to decrease the density and suspend the egg in the syrup.

The container with the egg would be close to 15˚ Baume (2:1 ratio of water and sugar). A 60˚ Baume syrup is pretty much safe to keep on the counter without refirgeration.

Sugar density was originally measured with this method, but it's now illegal due to sanitation reasons (e.coli on the shells). Thanks to late 1700s modern technology though, we have a handy tool called the Baumé syrup density meter.

Tadaaaaaa!

You stick this in your syrup and it'll tell you how dense your syrup is. Neat! There's also an equivalent for more solid foods - a refractometer, measured in Brix.

Solid tadaaaaa!

You place a sample of your food/thing into the refractometer and point it at a light source (usually a window) and it will tell you how much sugar is in your food. Super neat! These proportions are handy because certain recipes call for a certain sugar density in the syrup. 

Another thing Chef told us - and wanted to make sure we understood - was the proportions of sugar and almond powder and what they make. For example, most people think almond croissants are filled with almond cream or paste - this is misleading since it's actually filled with frangipane. Marzipan and almond paste are only sugar and almonds - so what's the difference?!

So confusing! Don't fret though; here's a comprehensive list of these four very similar things:

1. Almond paste: AKA temps-pour-temps. It's a 60:40 ratio of almond powder and sugar. This is used to make almond cream.
2. Marzipan: A 40:60 ratio of almond powder and sugar. These can stay on the counter because they have a high sugar content.
3. Almond cream: made from almond paste but enriched with egg and a dash of rum. This was used in the pithivier I made a few days ago.
4. Frangipane: This is almond cream mixed with pastry cream. This is the filling you find in almond criossants.

It can be a little confusing but for a pastry chef (in-training) it's crucial to remember and know the differences between these similar ingredients.