Today was all about vegan patisserie, and yet we ended up making something that looks like meat! We started by making a vegan layered gateaux with a vegan almond cake, almond praline ganache, and a dark chocolate shell. In the cake we replaced the eggs with aquafaba and for the ganache we replaced the cream with a vegan cream substitute. The sponge baked exactly the same as a regular sponge but was a slightly softer texture once cooled. We used a silicon mold to create the gateaux by setting the chocolate shell and then filling it with ganache, cake, ganache, cake.
We then set this in the freezer and then made a velvet spray from cocoa butter and dark chocolate to spray on the outside. Damien sprayed the cakes and then used some melted dark chocolate to create a very simple garnish. We also used almonds to show what the flavor is in a simple way, less is more.
After the gateux was done we started on a big MACaron, a play on a burger. To do this we made vegan macaron shells using the recipe from the first week of class. We then made a passion fruit dark chocolate ganache to create the burger meat. For the cheese we created a passionfruit peppercorn gel using some Sosa products. The Sosa brand creates different powders to help with gastronomy baking and also stabilizing products for mass production. They also make a few products that are great as egg substitutes so it can help with vegan patisserie.
We also created a strawberry jelly to use as the ketchup in the burger. Once all of the components were cooled and ready to use we bagan to stack and create all of the burgers. Damien talked about how we could have made lettuce out of twill batter and made pickles using a wavy mandolin piece. Of course at some point you have probably started to do too much with all the different components. I was very impressed by these burger macarons and I think they would sell very well in the states during summertime.
Once this was complete we started on some vegan tart components to prepare for tomorrow. Tomoorow we will start modern tarts but will start with a vegan tart to blend the classes a little bit. We made a blueberry black current confit, a coconut pipe-able cream, and a vegan tart shell. The vegan tart shell works the exact same as a regular tart shell except the vegan butter substitute is not as hard when cold so the dough can get softer faster. The coconut cream was a take on a vegan pastry cream but of coiurse without eggs. For this we used a Sosa product as the aquafaba would have given a weird taste and probably wouldn’t whip up the same. Tomorrow we will bake the tart shell from frozen and work on assembling with a strawberry whip as well.
There is a misspelling in the line “We started by making a vegan layered gateaux with a vegan almond cake, almond praline ganache, and a dark chocolate shell.” You should have used “gateau” (singular) instead of “gateaux” (plural).