Week 13, Day 2: Bavarian Cream

The topic of today’s class was totally new ground for me…I had no idea what a bavarian cream dessert was before Wednesday. Now that I know, I can tell you that it is similar to jello, except much more upscale. Like jello, bavarian creams are desserts that employ the use of gelatin in order to achieve a, well, gelatinous consistency and smooth texture, hence the comparison to jello. But to refer to a bavarian cream as ‘jello-like’ doesn’t really seem to do it any justice. There will be no freakishly unnaturally colored bavarian cream molds, nor will there be any bavarian cream molds containing large fruit chunks in suspended animation, and there certainly won’t be any ’bavarian cream shots’ served at the next house party I attend. Traditionally, this dessert is made with a creme anglaise base that has been stabilized with gelatin and lightened with whipped cream. This mixture is poured into a lightly oiled mold and allowed to set-up in the refrigerator. Once it has set-up and is firm, it is unmolded and served, sometimes accompanied by a sauce. I take back everything I said about meringue in my last post…bavarian cream is easily the ‘fussiest’ thing I’ve had to make in class so far and I pray that I will never again have to make anything like this.

We’ve encountered gelatin before…when collagen (a type of connective tissue) breaks down during cooking, it is transformed into gelatin. It is this gelatin that gives body and a pleasant mouth-feel things like stock and braised short ribs (on its own, gelatin has no flavor, color, or odor). When stock gets cold, it will often partially solidify…this is due the transformative power of gelatin, which when cooled, can take a liquid and turn it into a solid by trapping the liquid molecules in something resembling a constricting chain-link fence. When gelatin is heated, this chain-link fence expands to release the trapped moisture. As we all experienced when making our bavarian creams, there are a few things that will affect the gelling process…temperature, time and gelatin concentration in the bavarian cream itself.

Here’s the process that I used in order to make this Chocolate Bavarian Cream w/ Orange Sauce: 

I’ll start off by saying that this was not a great week for me in the baking kitchen. I had a few issues while making my meringue on Monday and couldn’t seem to shake off the gremlins prior to today’s class. First off, I had to cook sugar and water together to make caramel. I walked away from the cooking sugar and water solution to gather my other ingredients and in the process, I burned the caramel and had to start over. The recipe called for the addition of cocoa powder to the caramel…1 cup of it for only 1/4 cup of sugar and a drop of water. I started to add the cocoa slowly, whisking constantly, but as I added more of it, the caramel eventually began to recrystallize. I tried to heat it up again but it just wouldn’t re-melt, so I discarded it and started over…the idea of using this hardened mess in my smooth bavarian cream didn’t make much sense to me. So I made the caramel again and omitted the cocoa powder. In the meantime, I melted chocolate over a bain marie and in another pot, I warmed milk to use for a creme anglaise. While this was all going, I whisked eggs and sugar, then slowly poured in the warmed milk, returned this mixture to the pot and cooked it until the mixture coated the back of a spoon and had reached a temperature of 180 degrees. This mixture was strained, then I added the caramel and the melted chocolate (which got grainy the second it hit the creme anglaise), and allowed the mixture to cool in an ice bath…the proteins in gelatin denature at temperatures greater than 150 degrees so I couldn’t add them to the creme anglaise mixture until it had cooled off a bit. While this was cooling, I beat heavy cream to what’s referred to as the ‘soft plop’ stage and set it aside. I’d have to work quickly so that the whipped cream didn’t deflate before I had the chance to use it. When the creme anglaise/caramel/chocolate mixture had cooled sufficiently, I added in some gelatin (I used dried sheet gelatin, which was placed in a bowl with cold water and allowed to hydrate) and using a rubber spatula, I stirred the mixture (over the ice bath) to allow it to begin to set up. Once it had begun to thicken, I folded in the whipped cream and immediately poured it into a greased mold, then placed it into the refrigerator for a few hours to allow it to set.  

Just before service, in order to extract the bavarian cream from the mold, I dipped it into a warm water bath. Of course, my stubborn cream stuck to the mold so I had to leave it in the warm water bath a little longer than I would’ve liked, so it began to melt, but it eventually came out of the mold. I then turned my attention to the orange sauce (which in hindsight I should’ve made before I unmolded the bavarian cream). The orange sauce began with caramel (again) and also contained orange juice, orange zest, orange marmalade and orange liquer and it had to be cooked longer than the recipe indicated because it was way too liquidy. Aside from the grainy chocolate and the somewhat melted appearance, I think the dish turned out ok, although I don’t think I will be replicating it at home anytime soon.

Temperature and time are the real enemies when dealing with gelatin…we’d all have to work quickly and efficiently in order to incorporate all of our ingredients together before the gelatin began to set too much. The gelatin would have to be worked-in quickly in order to prevent it from ‘roping’, which can happen when some of the gelatin sets before it is fully incorporated into the other ingredients. We’d also have to time the whipped cream addition correctly, which should be made after the bavarian has begun to set-up, but before it sets up too much, or else it would become impossible to fold in the cream without reheating the entire mixture, which could cause the whipped cream to deflate. 

Here are the much more attractive bavarian creams produced by my classmates, beginning with…hmmm, I don’t remember which one this is. Maybe it’s the Tangerine and Vanilla Bavarian:

Coffee mousse in a walnut/praline shell:

A mousse by definition doesn’t contain gelatin, but that doesn’t mean mousses won’t always be gelatin-free. Some mousses may contain gelatin, but typically it will be in a less concentrated amount when compared to the amount of gelatin contained in a bavarian cream.

Blanc Mange:

Don’t ask me what this means…it is a white bavarian cream served with a raspberry coulis.

Bavaroise Rubane:

Don’t ask me what that means either…let’s just call it a layered bavarian cream served with a banana flavored creme anglaise sauce.

Hazelnut Chocolate Mocha Torte:

This one might have been my favorite of the group, maybe because it had so many other things going on in addition to the bavarian cream. At the bottom of this torte was a layer of hazelnut meringue. This was covered by a mocha bavarian cream and a chocolate genoise layer and iced with chocolate frosting.

Since we all had to make whipped cream, here are few things to note. When making whipped cream, steer clear from whipping cream and use heavy cream. Whipping cream contains 30-35.9% milk fat, while heavy cream contains at least 36% milk fat…more fat means better whipping. When whipping heavy cream, you want to make sure that the cream is cold, as well as the beater and the bowl that you plan on using, in order to whip as quickly as possible. Your mixture will at least double in volume, so make sure that you use a big enough bowl. It’s best to wait until the mixture starts to whip a bit before adding and flavorings or sugar to the cream. If you are adding sugar, you’ll want to go with 1 tbsp of powdered sugar for every 1 cup of heavy cream. It is also possible to overwhip cream; that is basically how you’d make butter, so don’t just keep on whipping the cream indefinitely. And whipped cream is unstable and will eventually return to a liquid state, so it’s not a good idea to whip the cream until just before you actually plan on using it.

Overall, the bavarian creams were pretty tasty. They all had a pretty good balance between richness and lightness, which is to be expected when you combine a creme anglaise base with the airy whipped cream, but I can’t say that a bavarian cream poses any real challenge to the warm, flourless, molten chocolate cake’s standing as my all-time favorite dessert. I also can’t remember the last time that I’ve actually seen a bavarian cream on any menu and now that I’ve gone through the process of making one, I can totally understand why.