How To – Portioning Instructions
Pastry chefs love the freezer. Cutting a frozen gâteau gives a clean, sharp cut that reveals the components and layers you worked so hard on. A large knife with a warm blade also helps. Either go the unnecessary, but very badass, route of warming the blade of your knife with a blowtorch each time you make a cut, or simply dunk the blade of your knife into boiling water. Make sure to dry the blade before making each cut. You always want to wipe the blade with a cloth or paper towel between each slice, as this will help you get the perfect side profile and keep the layers nice and clean. Pastry chefs tend to have rubbish knives. If you’re looking for a nice big portioning knife, a supermarket one will do the trick. Please, please, please, do not blowtorch an expensive handmade Japanese knife — it will ruin the blade!
Give your gâteau up to 5 minutes on the bench before starting to portion it, especially if it’s been frozen overnight, just to make it slightly easier to cut. You should start by trimming the edge so you have a nice, clean cut to start with (figure 1, above). Then follow the measurements on each recipe to create the desired shape. These measurements are simply a guide, and you can cut your gâteau into any shapes you like. Generally, the measurements provided will result in between 16 and 24 petits gâteaux. (Remember, the majority of the recipes can and should be frozen, meaning you won’t have to eat 24 petits gâteaux all at once. But if you want to try, who am I to stop you!)
I like to start by cutting my gâteau into sections that are all the length suggested in the recipe (figures 2 and 3, above).
Cut them into the correlating width to get individual portions (figure 4, above).
This section of the recipe will also tell you if your gâteau needs to stay frozen in order to be finished. This is usually when it needs to be glazed or dipped in chablon once portioned, or if you can store it in the fridge until finishing.
I always get asked what happens to offcuts. People tend to assume they get thrown away, but nothing in a kitchen ever goes to waste! In a professional kitchen they’ll be put out on a bench for the chefs to nibble on as they walk past, and I do exactly the same thing at home.
Follow these instructions for portioning for Sticky Toffee Pudding, Hot Cross Buns and Passionfruit Strawberry.
This recipe extract is from Patisserie Made Simple: The Art of Petits Gâteaux by Maxine Sheckter, available April in NZ and AUS. Photography by Amber-Jayne Bain.
