The Final Exam (and yes, it deserves those capital letters) encompassed the last four days of our coursework. In these four days, we had to produce four items chosen in a random lottery and a showpiece to put them on. Every student's list was different, but each included one chocolate item, one cake or tart, one petit four, and one viennoiserie/bread item. The theme for our class chose for the showpiece was "My Favorite Place," and it had to include stands for three of our items. The showpieces were limited in footprint, but could be as tall as we liked.
The final exam lottery was a nerve-wracking experience - each student drew a piece of paper out of a Kitchen Aid bowl with four items, one from each category. All the items were taken from lessons in Level 1, 2, or 3, so nothing was brand new, but some assignments definitely sounded more fun than others. I drew a fresh fruit bar tart, made with creme legere and puff pastry, fruit danish, langues des chats (little "cats' tongues" petit four cookies), and caramel ganache bon-bons. I like making laminated doughs, so I was excited about the puff pastry and the danish.
Once we had our assignments, the next task was coming up with a beautiful showpiece to hold these items. My design was inspired by our cabin on North Long Lake, Minnesota and composed primarily of poured sugar, nougatine, and pastillage sugar paste. I wanted my stands to be composed of elements central to the cabin experience - a nougatine "dock" for the fruit tart, a pastillage "firewood stand" for my petit four cookies, and a gum paste "hammock" for my chocolate bon bons. I also planned a cute little pulled sugar bonfire with nougatine "logs" and a chocolate "tent" memorializing the nights we slept outside while the cabin was under construction. The backdrop, more poured sugar, would have pastillage northern pines silhouetted against an airbrushed sunset.
Four days may sound like a lot, but the wedding cake experience showed us just how fast time could fly when working on these projects. So again, a tightly plotted itinerary was mandatory for success. I planned to finish many of my showpiece elements in the first few days, leaving the doughs and items that needed to be baked freshly for the end of the timeline. All in all, the schedule held up relatively well. Sticky, humid weather threw a small wrench in my plans, forcing me to repour my "lakeshore" base at the end of the second day, but excitement over my surprisingly realistic gum-paste "hammock" made up for it.
One of the most exciting and stressful things about the final exam at the FCI is that your judges are not the chef-instructors who have been teaching and guiding you for the last six months. They are industry professionals - in our case, successful pastry chefs - who will be judging the projects and products on real world standards. Our assignment for Day 4 was to move our showpieces down the hall to the judging room, and prepare a tasting plate for the judges with each item that we prepared.
The last two days were busy, but I managed to finish my food and my showpiece just before the noon deadline. The walk from the kitchen down the hall to the judging room was maybe 20 yards, but it felt much, much longer. Setting my showpiece into its numbered slot, I breathed a sigh of relief. Too soon, as it turned out. Less than a minute later, while trying to remove the wooden board that we had used to transport it, the backdrop of my sugar showpiece fell forward into the rest of the stand, smashing my hammock to smithereens and breaking my beautiful airbrushed sunset backdrop into pieces.
I was so shocked I couldn't move for a minute. But my classmates and chefs rallied around me to glue the pieces back together as best we could - the hammock was toast, but classmates donated spare pieces of pastillage and sugar, making it possible for me to assemble a last-minute third stand. Without their help, it wouldn't have come back together. The only thing I really regret is that I didn't get a picture of the finished product before the accident - so here's the picture I have for you. It's a bit Picasso in his Cubism phase-esque due to the fractured pieces, but hopefully it gives you a sense of what I was going for.
The whole afternoon is a little fuzzy, but I do remember asking my chef, "I'm not going to fail, am I?" I was very relieved when the answer was no. Having passed the final exam, the only thing left to do was breathe a deep sigh of relief, and prepare for graduation the next day.
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