Day 31 – “The bomb” (yes, pate a bombe)…more sweets

This is a picture of my very own Genoise: whole egg foam cake with a coffee-buttercream. I’d like to say the few flaws on it are due to the jostling and car ride home, but honestly, it’s my lack of precision cake-decorating skills. However, overall, I’m pretty psyched it turned out looking as good as it did and that it tasted yummy, as well. So, where does the bombe come in? It’s the base of the buttercream filling and frosting. You have to boil water and sugar until it reaches a “softball” or “bombe” stage – 234-240 degrees F. Then, you temper that in the 6 egg yolks and a bunch of butter (yep, about 1 1/2 pounds) at the end. It’s a pretty simple recipe if you don’t add the butter into the egg yolk-bombe mixture when the mix is still hot. If the mixture is too hot, the buttercream deflates into an oozing mess, instead of turning into a lighter, fluffier buttercream. I think we almost nailed it.

The inside looks like this:

We cut the cake into 3 rounds, dipped each round into a coffee liqueur and simple syrup mixture, and then smeared each round with the coffee-buttercream mixture. There’s no sugar or butter in this cake at all 😉  The cake is going to the gym with me tonight. They will either curse my name or be happy to be eating something so decadent. Not sure which.

Although I’m all sweeted-out, I do love the puff pastry/creme anglaise/fruit tart we each made.  Mark, we did it!  After 3 tries, we made a puff pastry that worked. Puff pastry should not be that complicated, but apparently we made it so.  At any rate, this is my finished tart:

I can’t wait for Monday’s nutrition lesson. Hopefully, my stomach will get a chance to rest for at least one day from all the saturated fat and sugar!