taste buds world tour

Any desire to visit Italy? Tour the French countryside? Or perhaps meet a Russki? Whether your answer is yes or no, I bet your taste buds would like a sampling of the sweets for each of these countries are famous. Last Saturday in class we made three world-famous items, which took us all day because of the detailed steps involved, but the end results were totally worth the effort. I had a taste of Italy, France and Russia after eight hours of baking and assembling. And no passport was needed.

The first stop on our world sweets tour is Italy. Most people are familiar with the coffee flavored dessert of tiramisu. There are easy ways to make tiramisu, by using already made ladyfinger cookies, spreading on already made coffee syrup and an already mixed up mascarpone filling. But making this classic cake from scratch takes some time and detail work. First, we whipped up a lady finger sponge batter which we piped into a pan, baked and cooled. The mascarpone cheese filling is quite a process in itself because it starts with pouring boiling simple syrup into whipped egg yolks - very similar to making a butter cream frosting. This is something I could use a little practice on to say the least.

Once the mixture is complete, you add in the mascarpone cheese and fold in some freshly whipped cream. That's the white frosting-like stuff on your tiramisu. Next, you can heat up another simple syrup with an addition of coffee extract and Marsala. Then assembly begins.

Brush a good coating of coffee syrup on half of your ladyfinger sponge cake and spread a good amount on top. Repeat. Then top with sifted cocoa powder and chill for at least 12 hours. Most of my portion was gone in that amount of time, but what can I say? It was delizioso! See for yourself.

A visit to Russia is up next, with the lesser known Russian Cake. This is one seriously delicious cake and people should be more aware of its existence. The layering process is much the same as it is for tiramisu, however, the sponge cake has almonds involved and the filling is a praline butter cream frosting. Oh and the bottom of the cake is painted with melted chocolate. This baby has three layers on cake and frosting and the very top is coated with an apricot glaze. After assembly, the edges are chopped off for visual purposes.

And then each piece of cake is decorated with more butter cream icing, toasted almonds and powdered sugar. Or in my case, just toasted almonds and powdered sugar. A surefire way to impress any Russki (or any man in general for that matter).

Last, but definitely not least in my cookbook, is the famous French napoleon. This is a delectably rich pastry made with layers of puff pastry and pastry cream and topped with sweet fondant icing. We used frozen puff pastry that had been thawed and majorly docked (i.e., poking holes in the dough to prevent rising and poofage while baking) and let it bake until crispy and pretty brown. I managed to put my distaste for burnt things aside and let the French style take over. Instead of using the classic vanilla pastry cream, we decided to make a chocolate variety. Again, the layering process is used to build this pastry and the white fondant icing with chocolate design on top makes it complete. This is one treat that I must try en France at some point in my life. 

This concludes our world tour of pastry. Bon nuit!