Pastry Pro I: Week 11: Finished Product

At 10:00 PM it's hard to get excited about eating cake!

I thought today would be fairly simple--make cake with mango lime curd filling and Italian Meringue. I figured I'd even have time to make some other types of cake. After all I had already made two types of cake--"magnificent butter cake" and pound cake. My cakes seemed OK so I started on the mango lime curd. Now I made this at home but for some dumb reason I messed it up at school by adding some simple syrup to the mangos when I pureed them. Then when I mixed the mangos with the lime curd it became too thin and watery. Still tasted very good though. I was successful with the Italian Meringue, however, and had learned from previoius experience that I should be sure to heat up the sugar/water to a high enough temp or the egg whites would be dull. I made great meringue, however by the time I used it changes had occurred in it and the texture was not quite as nice. I made a 4 layer butter cake with the mango curd filling but when Chef Kurima cut into it you couldn't see the layers. She suggested trying some raspberry jam as a thin layer to make the filling more visible. The pound cake was so dry even the curd didn't and simple syrup didn't help. Over all, OK but not great night and I sure won't be making this cake for the final.

I found out my partner for the final will be Tela. I'm very happy to have her as a partner. She is very skilled and reliable. We have to make enough to earn 100 points but after tonight when it took 3 hours to make a couple little cakes I'm wondering how in the heck I'm going to make several things in 3 hours. It is not going to be easy.

Butter cakes with mango lime curd and Italian meringue