Review of Lavonne Academy of Baking Science

Hi There!

Being in India, it is very difficult to find the right baking equipments and quality ingredients. So when I was browsing to buy few things online, I found this place http://lavonne.in/ . It is India's first International baking institute. This is a destination for those looking to pursue Baking and Pastry Arts as a passion or as a profession being in India. Sounds delightful, right!

Out of curiosity I browsed through the Lavonne website and found that it has a Patisserie, a store where you can buy almost anything related to baking. Also I found that they conduct foundation and advanced courses Patisserie. A dream come true for home bakers.

Though I have baked several cakes in the past, I enrolled for their weekend Cupcake and butter-cream class. The fees for the cupcake and butter-cream class is Rs 2,500. My expectation from this class was to be able to create bakery style cupcakes at home. So I went ahead and explored the place. The place is located in Domlur amidst residential colony and is in fact a home turned into a baking institute. The entrance is beautiful and the first sight is that of French patisserie and a cafe. All the items on display were mouth watering. They had several flavors of Macarons, tarts, cheesecakes and French breads.

The class was conducted on a Sunday by Chef Joonie Tan, who exclusively flies down from Malaysia. After waiting for almost 20 min, we were asked to go upstairs where we had hands-on experience of baking. The kitchen is clean and hygienic. The chef said that all the cupcakes use the creaming method i.e. to cream the butter and sugar till pale white and fluffy. I have creamed mostly using a hand blender, but the chef taught us how to do the same with our palms. This was something new and interesting. We had hands on experience baking vanilla, chocolate and red-velvet cupcake and Italian-meringue butter cream.The butter cream was the best tasting which was not too sweet and had a satiny texture.

I was not at all happy with the recipes they shared with us. The vanilla cupcake was not sufficiently moist and was tasting more like eggs than vanilla. The chocolate cupcake was not at all sweet and the texture was not smooth. The red velvet was the most pathetic. I felt like I wasted a lot of money on this.

Some of my observations below:

Pros

• You will get hands on creaming method, (both hand creaming and using blender)
• The Italian-meringue butter cream was the best.  
• You will get a certificate of course completion at the end of the day.

Cons:

• The classes are over priced. 
• The recipes they share in the class are the not of the same which they serve in their shop. The red velvet cupcake which they serve in their patisserie is the best. But the one we made in our class was next to hopeless.
• The cupcakes dried out the next day, even after keeping in an air tight container.  

All suggestions and comments are welcome.