28 February 2009

Japanese-French Pastries 09-I Class

Been looking forward to Chef Keiko's Jap-French Pastries Class, since attending her Christmas Traditional Goodies Class in Dec 08. Sadly, she will be returning to Japan soon and this Jap-French Pastries Class could be the third last class she's conducting in Singapore for some time to come.

Have enjoyed her classes very much as she's ever so gracious and her baked goodies always look so impeccable and stylish. Really hope she could come back from time to time to conduct more classes at Shermay's Cooking School.

For this class, she demonstrated the following recipes.
  • Japanese Pumpkin Tart - Sweet short pastry tart base with Japanese pumpkin cream filling
  • Matcha (jap green tea) Tiramisu - Green-tea flavour Italian mascarpone cream cheese cake
  • Matcha (jap green tea) Dacquoise - Traditional French almond pastry with matcha (jap green tea) flavored butter cream
  • Yuzu Chiffon Cake - Japanese Yuzu citrus flavored chiffon cake
The sweet short pastry looked quite manageable. Have not attempted any tart pastries before, so I guess this is a good start. Quite cool to be able to bake my own tart base rather than use store-bought ones.
Have never tried pumpkin tarts before so didn't think much of it initially. But I think my perception of this pastry changed after seeing and tasting Chef Keiko's creation. Not only did it look so pretty, it tasted yummy too. It's not just pure pumpkin puree, there were much more depth in ingredients and meticulous steps to make the filling so creamy, yet light in taste.

This is gonna be one recipe that I will be attempting soon!

Instead of using store-bought sponge fingers, it's actually fairly simple to make it at home! Great snacks for kids too.
I love this green tea tiramisu! It's so addictive, creamy with almost melt-in-the-mouth texture. The green tea powder complements the mascarpone cheese cream perfectly. I had thought that matcha powder would be too strong but surprising no. And I quite enjoy the tinge of rum added in the cream mixture which enhanced all the flavours.

Didn't enjoy the classic tiramisu as I'm not really a coffee person. I'm more into tea - chinese tea, english tea, green tea... So this matcha tiramisu would be perfect for me!

Actually I never heard of dacquoise before. Another new pastry learnt today. It may not be a good looker, but this french tea cake tasted quite yummy. Texture is somewhat between cake and biscuit? I like the green tea buttercream filling which can also be used for swiss roll.
My favourite recipe of the lot - Yuzu Chiffon Cake! In fact, I signed up for this class mainly because of this! I am totally in love with yuzu. Bought quite a lot of yuzu products when I went to Japan - yuzu honey, yuzu lip gloss, yuzu facial blotters. LOL.

Instead of using cream of tartar to stabilise the meringue, a small quantity of corn flour is used. The chiffon turned out so light and fluffy and of course with the alluring aroma of yuzu!

I must get my hands on some yuzu!!! Gotta go Mediya or Isetan Supermarket one of these days. Although yuzu looks very much like orange, the taste and aroma is unique, slightly more zesty with an addictive fragrance (but not to the extent of lemon). I love yuzu. LOL.

And as usual, all participants took home a box of goodies, lovingly made by Chef Keiko!

Tip of the iceberg, each participant received a goodie bag of Top Flour and Super Lite Flour, compliments of Prima. Shermay managed to invite Prima to sponsor flour for all of us (previously we received canola oil from Sunbeam as well!). Chef Keiko's recipes usually use Top Flour; and Super Lite Flour is apparently very good for chiffon cakes. What a perfect sponsorship :D

Looking forward to more classes and I have a crave to bake now!

2 comments:

  1. Do you mind to share the recipes?

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  2. Hi Yoon,
    I'm afraid I can't share the recipes here because they are under copyright by the chef and cooking school. Some of the recipes are from Chef Keiko's book, Okashi. Perhaps you may like to check from there.

    ReplyDelete