Joconde Sponge Cake, Ribbon Sponge

This is a very light and spongy cake with a decorative element to it. The cake, a Joconde sponge cake, is laid on top of a stencil paste making a Ribbon Sponge. The stencil paste is a just a thin cake layer of a decorative colour or design. Other names for a stencil paste include: tuile paste, hippen masse, tulipe paste, cigarette paste, etc.

Formula: yields enough to fill a half sheet pan
Joconde Sponge: yields 1# 1 oz.
    3.5 oz. (340%)  Powdered almonds
    3 oz. (300%)  Confectioners' sugar
    1 oz. (100%)  Cake flour
    4.75 oz. (480%)  Whole eggs
    3.25 oz. (320%)  Egg whites
    0.4 oz. (2.5t) (40%)  Sugar
    1.25 oz. (120%)  Butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
Stencil Paste:
    3.5 oz. Butter, melted
    3.5 oz. Confectioners' sugar
    3.5 oz. Egg whites
    3.8 oz.  Cake flour
    Food Colouring, as needed


Tools: Silpat, offset spatula, heat resistant spatula, level or flat half sheet pan, pastry comb
*These formulas are adapted from Gisslen, Professional Baking, Ed. 5, pg. 410-411


MOP:
The stencil paste takes at least 15 minutes to scale, so its a good idea to just scale out your ingredients for your stencil paste, and make your stencil paste first. Melt your butter and place in mixing bowl. Add sifted flour and powdered sugar into the bowl. Mix on low speed at first then increase to medium and fully incorporate (this is just like the one-stage cookie method). When incorporated, drizzle your egg whites in making sure to scrape down the bowl as it mixes. Using gloves, if your food colouring is messy, add colouring into the batter. Do not use yellow since the Joconde sponge is a pale yellow but since this is going to be on the outside of your cake do use a complimenting colour to the flavour of your cake filling.


Place your silpat on top of your half sheet pan. If you do not have a silpat you can use a heavily sprayed parchment paper. Spread the batter thinly on the silpat, you'll end up using maybe half of the batter. Smooth out the batter. Use either your finger, pastry comb, offset spatula and scrape off the batter with the tool you picked. Make sure you are scraping away all the way down to the silpat. Freeze until set, when the batter is set you should not be able to move the batter at all when touched.

Other techniques, from Gisslen, that you can use to decorate it:

• Comb with a plastic pastry comb to make stripes, zigzags, wavy lines (as pictured above), or other patterns
• Place a stencil on top of the silpat, spread with a thin layer of the paste, and remove the stencil
• Make an abstract finger-painted design by applying dabs of coloured stencil paste
• Use a palette knife to combine two colours, be careful you do not over-mix because you will just end up with one colour.

Start scaling your ingredients for you Joconde sponge.

Melt butter and let it cool to room temperature. Place sifted almonds, confectioners' sugar, and flour into a your mixer. On low speed add whole eggs in stages using your paddle attachment. Increase speed to high and continue mixing until the batter turns into a pale yellow colour. Transfer to a stainless steel bowl.

Clean mixing bowl throughly and whisk egg whites until foamy. Add sugar and continue whisking on high to a medium-firm peak.

Fold egg whites into egg yolks, fully incorporate both batters. Drizzle butter slowly along the sides of the bowl and fold in the mixture. If you can assist someone else then have them drizzle in the butter while you whisk (like with mayonnaise).

Make sure your stencil paste is set before pouring Joconde over the paste. Use your offset spatula to even out the batter. Use your fingers to clean the sides of the pan before baking.

Bake at 375°F in a convection oven, bake until it is slightly golden in colour. About 7-15 minutes.
In a deck oven bake at 400°F without a rack (10t-10s-6b)

Banana Mousse

This is a pretty sweet and healthful mousse, if you want to consider a mousse to be healthful. The important thing to remember when using a fruit like banana in a mousse is that you want to food process the banana's even if they are over ripe. You want the texture of the fruit to be the most puree like possible for a uniform creamy texture. A mousse is a very similar technique to the technique used for a curd (lemon-curd-fruit-curd).

Formula*: yields 1# 15 oz pulp (enough to fill one 8" cake)
8g  Gelatin
310g  Banana pulp, fresh or frozen
25g  Lemon juice
35g  Sugar
420g  Heavy cream
*This formula is adapted from Gisslen, Professional Baking, Ed. 5, pg. 543


MOP:
Add lemon juice to banana pulp to preserve colour of bananas. If you do not do this your mousse will form a unappealing brownish colour.

Whip heavy cream to a soft peak, milkshake consistency. Refrigerate to help set up.
Bloom, or soften, gelatin in cold water. Set aside until you are ready to use.

Heat one-third of the banana pulp to 140°F in a sauce pan**. When the pulp reaches temperature turn off heat and add gelatin to pulp, before use squeeze water out of sheet gelatin. Stir in gelatin until it fully dissolves. Add sugar and stir in until it dissolves.

Add the heated mixture to the remaining cooled banana pulp. You can use a white rum in this recipe as well (25g), if you have this addition you would add it now as well. Continue to stir the mixture to cool to 75°F, you can also cool it by stirring it over an ice bath. This mixture will not thicken that much.

Fold whipped cream into banana mixture. Fully incorporate and fill molds. Chill to set.


**Banana's are acidic and when you heat them up they loose some of their taste due to the acid. You can omit this stage and do a cold infusion for this recipe if you desire. If you omit this step you will still need to heat up the gelatin before adding it to the mousse.

Crème Anglaise

Crème anglaise is a light vanilla flavored custard. It was the base for the Bavarian cream used in the strawberry cake, because it is essentially just an eggs, milk, and sugar custard. This is also going to be the same custard that is used for our bread pudding and the crème caramel recipe.

This formula, like most custards can be made by either doing a cold infusion method or a hot infusion method. This method of preparation describes how to do a hot infusion. To see the technique for a cold infusion see Crème Brûlée recipe. Reasons for using one method over another depends on speed and if you are using an acidic flavour or infusion for your custard. The acid, like lemon, will curdle the milk if it is heated up so for that kind of baked custard you would use a cold infusion.

Formula*: yields 12 portions, 5 oz each
16 oz. Eggs
8 oz. Sugar
0.08 oz. Salt (1/2 t)
0.5 oz. Vanilla Extract
2 lb 8 oz. Milk

Tools: saucepan, wooden spoon, whisk, stainless steel bowl, plastic wrap
*This formula is from Gisslen, Professional Baking Ed. 5, pg. 523

MOP: hot infusion
In a saucepan scald, or heat your milk.
In a separate bowl add your eggs, half of your sugar (4oz.), and salt. Whisk to combine.
When the milk starts to heat up add the other half of sugar to the milk. Stir to dissolve the sugar granules. When the sugar is dissolved temper the milk into the sugar (in approximately 3rds for this amount).
Cover the mixture with plastic, make sure the plastic is touching the custard. This step will help the air bubbles settle from the custard as it sets up. If you are using the custard for bread pudding you do not need to cover it before baking.

Fats: A note about butter and shortenings

I was asked to explain what emulsified shortening and liquid shortening are and if you can substitute it. After doing some reading this is what I found:

"Emulsified shortening is also known as cake, icing or high ratio shortening. It can absorb more sugar and liquid than regular vegetable shortening and gives a finer/smoother texture to cakes while helping to keep them moist, as well as keeping icings more stable. It's mostly used in icings and cakes where the recipe contains a large percentage of sugar. Alpine Hi-Ratio Shortening and Sweetex are the most common brands."
I found that from a blog called: Cheftalk.com
http://www.cheftalk.com/forum/thread/37802/emulsified-shortening

And from ask.com I could gather that: "Animal-based shortenings are all solid at room temperature, but vegetable shortenings can be either. Solid and liquid also behave differently depending upon the application and the working temperature. Generally speaking, solid shortenings are used to create 'flakes' inside doughs or batters."
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_liquid_shortening_the_same_as_solid_shortening



If you want to substitute regular shortening for all or part of the butter in a formula:
Multiply the weight of the butter to be eliminated by 0.8. This will give you the amount of regular shortening to use. Then multiply the weight of the eliminated butter by 0.15 to get the weight of additional water or milk you need to add (butter contains natural liquids that shortening doesnt contain).

To substitute butter for all or part of the regular amount of shortening in a formula:
Multiply the weight of shortening to be eliminated by 1.25. This gives your the weight of butter to use. Then multiply the weight of butter by 0.15 to find out the amount of water or milk to be subtracted from the formula (Gisslen, 384)


Because of the properties, liquid shortening can not be substituted for butter or regular shortening. The vegetable oil has moistening qualities that wont be replicated with butter or regular shortening. Emulsified shortening can be substituted with the above equation.