Thread: Cake/Deserts

Originally Posted by rolodave

Is that a ganache, whipped cream and jam or are you using two chocolates?

Top is a dark chocolate ganache then whipped cream and homemade blackcurrant jam. I usually make far more ganache - enough to cover the full cake but i didnt have enough stuff in to make a full batch.

Cool thread! I did an apprenticeship, of sorts, back in the late 70's/ early 80's, in Classic French pastry. I worked at a chic Los Angeles restaurant that was somewhat famous in it's heyday called "Le Dome." Still there today, but new owners, menu, chefs, not quite the same place, or so I'm told. Haven't been back there since I left in 1981, or thereabouts.

The guy who taught me was a protege of Jean-Claude Bertenou (sp?) of the old Los Angeles French restaurant "L'Ermitage." My teacher was subsequently sent to study French pastry in France for one year with the famous French Pastry Chef Michele Richard. I was taught pretty much everything he learned. Or at least everything that was produced at Le Dome.

I learned everything you would ever need to know about making Feuilletage (Millfeuille or "Puff") pastry from scratch, and made the stuff in quantity almost daily (I was once told by one of the French chefs, actually the Sous Chef, that my puff pastry rose higher that any he'd ever seen! And the French hot line guys hated me! or at least resented me), Pastry creams, Creme Anglaise, French fruit tarts, Souffle, chocolate mousse, Classic Apple "Tarte Tatin" supposedly using the recipe and method adopted by Maxims in Paris... on and on.

It was a blast, but very hard, stressful, and HOT work (imagine standing in front of a couple of flat tops and about a dozen flaming burners for a solid 20-30 minutes constantly whipping a lemon cream to prevent it from curdling as it cooks. I had forearms like Popeye back then). I kept a lot of the methods and ingredients written down and still have them today. Once in a while I will still make something. But only if I plan on eating most of it (which is not so much anymore) since most people I know these days are afraid of the calories!

After leaving Le Dome, I worked for a time at the main bakery of the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City (Los Angeles), and then did a short stint in Santa Monica as Pastry Chef at a small French Vegetarian restaurant now defunct (their moto was, "Where the elite meatless meet to eat.")