Diligentia Potluck Party | When Traditional Eastern Gourmet Met Western Pastry

Professional pastry masters were invited to CIDE to teach students how to make cream cakes.

They were engaged in preparations before the party. Rotating plates with double chiffon cakes on, bowls of cleaned and peeled fruits, plates of fresh cream, pastry bags and all kinds of knives were placed carefully on the table. Students arriving were full of expectation and ready to have a try.

While waiting, several other masters were there to teach how to make Shaanxi Bread. Mix flour with water and let it ferment naturally after fully kneading the dough. While fermenting, pastry masters were ready as well. And now students were able to make Chinese bread and Western cake together!

The first step was to dice various kinds of fresh fruits. After dicing, spread cream on the first layer of the cake. But what if the cream failed to be flattened? That's OK, the masters were always ready to help! Slowly rotate the base plate and flexibly control your spatula along its surface. With an increasingly smooth rotation, a delicate shape of the cake was ready to come out.

After covering the cake with cream, sprinkle fruit dices on it. Here you can see the first layer of filling.

Put on the second layer of the cake and repeat procedures above if you want a third. Now seal the cake with cream and start to decorate. Flatten the surface and sides of the cake with large amounts of cream. Take out the fruits left and cut them into shapes according to personal favor. Some students decorated their cakes with kiwi fruit slices, while some with strawberries. Done with the fruits and then came the most interesting moment of cake decorations. We carefully picked up the pastry bag full of cream and pinched into lovely cream flowers beside the fruits. We leveraged our imaginations to create all sorts of interesting shapes.

The master then showed up to make net-like decorations with thin cream on the side of the cake. “How beautiful!” Done with a tempting fruit cream cake!

On the other side...

It's time to make Shaanxi bread!! The chefs, with great proficiency and experience, quickly rolled the dough and fried the bread. Crispy skin and fillings in different layers enriched the flavor and brought us with great satisfaction. We just couldn't stop eating!

Doughball soup was also made from the left dough. It is a prevalent traditional pastry in Northern China, especially in Henan Province. Dried tofu, tomatoes and potatoes were also added to the soup. The doughballs were tasty, refreshing and chewy. Tasty soup with the bread couldn’t have stuffed us more.

Comments

Jiawei Zhang, 2016 undergraduate from SSE

This is my third time of the Potluck Party! The party, starting from eating hotpots, has now turned to a DIY activity. I think I have made a successful cake! When I brought the cake to my roommates they spoke highly of my skills. Doughballs were also particularly delicious and I have become a fan of it ~ Hope that we can organize more activities like this!

Ze Zhang, 2016 postgraduate from SSE

I am delighted to join the Potluck Party. I made myself a cake for the first time. I love eating cakes but had no idea how they were made. After my first attempt, I found it actually complicated and needed skills. Especially when it comes to spreading the cream, I tried hard but still failed to spread evenly. But I managed to do it with the help of the master. Thanks to the master for helping me make an entire cake at last!

Yang Guan, 2016 undergraduate from SME

One minute on stage requires ten years of hard work. Easy as they seemed, I found spreading cream and decorating so difficult to do by myself. I think the masters all have magic hands and they have prevented our cakes from being ruined by ourselves. They seemed to have created pieces of art! The cake was sweet, so was the whole experience and sharing it with my friends! I would like to extend my support to future events held by Diligentia College.

Xinyu Wang, 2016 undergraduate from SSE

We were taught to make cakes this time. Although spreading cream and placing fruits seemed to be simple, I still failed to do them well. Thanks to the masters! As for the final cake, it may not seem well, yet it tastes pretty good! I have learnt a lot from this experience. Hope that the Potluck Party can be better and better.

Yueming Zhao, 2016 undergraduate from HSS

I'm so happy to attend the cake-making event, which has cultivated my hands-on skills during my busy study. From dicing fruits, spreading cream to decorating and packaging, pastry masters were always by our side to set examples and teach us hand by hand. A cake on their hands could be endowed with infinite imaginations like a piece of art. We made our unique cakes according to our preference. We have enriched ourselves with such a creating experience with joy and laughter.