The Rise of nom

The Blog of the Future (dodoododoodooooo)

2010-08-20T06:21:00.000-07:00

Some of you may be wondering what will happen to this blog now that I am done with the program at OCI. Well, I intend to keep it, though the content will change a bit over time.

I still have the 2-month externship at the Brasserie Montmartre (more on that in a few) and I fully intend to keep you all updated with that! After that, I am planning a trip to Europe and then back home to VA for a bit before coming back here (right now the plan is to be back around the first of the year) and starting *nom*. Now, while I originally created this site so that my friends and family could follow my journey through OCI, I named it The Rise of *nom* for a reason. I am pretty much considering everything from the day I started school as contributing to starting this restaurant, so I intend to keep the blog going throughout. There probably won't be as many pictures but I will post as often as I can.

So...my externship. I met with Sarah, the kitchen manager/sous chef at the Brasserie today. She gave me a run down of what they need and what I will be doing, etc. I have to say, I am exceedingly excited and more than a little intimidated. They just lost their pastry chef and they don't have any other dedicated pastry people which leaves...me. They want me to help them re-vamp their dessert menu and come up with new items and platings. OMG! Saturday will be my first official day and they want me to come in and just make stuff, try out recipes, etc. While I am confident I can do it, I am definitely a little nervous about it. This is an amazing opportunity to prove myself and improve my talents and it's HUGE! *SQUEE*

Day 80--Last Day

2010-08-20T06:06:00.000-07:00

(Actually Tuesday, August 17)

Well, today was the last day of the school part of school! We had a luncheon to celebrate, give out scholarships, etc.

Most of the school turned out to say goodbye

The other half of the room

People from my class, L to R Mary, Adam, Dana

Nicole, Erica, Celeste

Our 3 chefs in the back ground, Chef Wild, Chef Hammer and Chef Hall

The man in charge of all things sharp, edible and orderable, Woody

One of the school's founders, the esteemed Chef Wilkie

Celeste and Jessica being adorable

Most of our class L to R, Back to Front

Jennifer, Jessica, Erica, Me, Adam, Dana, Mary

Nicole, Celeste; Not pictured, Amber & Ellen

(sorry the picture is dark)

When it was over, we gave our chefs a gift from the class

It's our own motivational poster about Time Management featuring the blackest carre EVER (courtesy of Jennifer)

Love blossoms at OCI between culinary and baking & pastry

Good luck Erica and Cassidy! :-)

Jessica made us all these wonderful key chains featuring the class motto, Celeste's "Oh Dear" <3

I had a wonderful time working with everyone and I wish you all luck in future endeavors. Keep in touch!

Check out the next post for my plans for the future of this blog and everything else!

Day 79

2010-08-17T02:09:00.000-07:00

Today wasn't terribly exciting. I made olive rolls and cheese rolls for tomorrow's luncheon with the other classes that are leaving and we cleaned. Yay. Also, it was like 8000millionbajillion degrees in the kitchen. Yeah, no big deal, just died from heat stroke.

Anyway, I go back tomorrow to bake off the rolls in the morning and have lunch. Then I'm done! YAY! I can't believe I made it through. It was hard and exhausting but fun and wonderful.

Thank you, again, to Vince, who was there for me every night that I came home frustrated or upset and let me vent at him or just hugged me when I needed it. I don't know if I would have made it without your support and friendship. <3

Day 78--Buffet Day

2010-08-14T04:59:00.000-07:00

Well, today was it. It was the last real day of class and I am so very done!!! I finished most everything in time and I'm happy with the score I got (140 out of 150). Monday we clean and get ready for Tuesday and then Tuesday is the luncheon and it's over by 2pm. I am looking forward to a few days off!

Anyway, to the good stuff. There were some really excellent displays today

This was Amber's. Unfortunately I got a picture before her set up was complete. Sorry Amber!

Ellen chose to honor Portland with a bike theme

Erica duplicated her furniture in chocolate :-)

Dana's Italian theme was awesome!

Viva Las Vegas from Jennifer

(yeah, unfortunately I didn't get a shot of the side of the house of cards. She hand-painted them and they looked wonderful!)

Jessica danced through her buffet, just as she does with everything else. :-)

Mary went all-out and brought real china from home!

Adam honored the love of his life, Dolly Parton

Nicole showed her passion for baking

Celeste's Disney theme was great, right down to the Mickey Mouse cookies and the Pate a Choux mice! Love it!

I started off the day by going in a couple of hours early to try and get my sugar showpiece done. If you remember, it has three components; cast, pulled and blown. They all had to be put together to make one piece so I was going to do a ? cube from Super Mario with a mushroom coming out of it.

I did 3 cast pieces to make the shell of the cube since I didn't have time for the full thing

I started with a nice lump of melted sugar for the pulled and blown piece

Managed to make it into this (the pulled piece)...

...and this (the top of the mushroom and blown piece)

Now, unfortunately, sugar hates me apparently and decided to break two of my cast pieces...so there went the cube. But it was alright. Through the burned fingers (melted sugar is HOT...also, when your latex gloves catch fire and melt...that's bad) and the dropping stuff, I still had enough to get everything checked off, all I had to do was put it together....then I reached for something, brushed the ball you see above and it shattered. Yep. I was out of time for the sugar piece, I needed to get my actual buffet together...so I finished what I was doing with the cast and pulled and gave up on it. It means my sugar piece didn't get checked off but...it's one point. Oh well. Onto the food.

Here we have Key Lime-Tequila Parfait, raspberry rum truffles, puff dough cups with Irish Cream creme Chantilly and mini bourbon-pecan pies

Below the pies are apple turnovers (apples caramelized in Apple Jack Brandy) and next to them are chocolate covered brandied cherries

Candied orange slices (in the brandied cherry juice), chocolate fudge cookies with creme de menthe icing and coconut rum macaroons top it off.

After it was all graded I was able to put all of my pieces together (we were only allowed to have one of our showpieces up for grading) and here's how it all came together...

TADA!

Well, that's it for projects! Thank goodness it's all over and I can relax this weekend! I plan to have fun. Yes. Me. Fun. Wow. ;-P

Day 77

2010-08-13T00:24:00.000-07:00

I made good progress today and I feel like I'm pretty prepared for tomorrow. The only thing is really that I haven't done my sugar piece yet. The plan is to get up early tomorrow morning, run a couple of errands and go into school to finish it. Ideally, when class officially starts, I will be putting the finishing touches on everything and be DONE.

Today I finished up my cookies and pecan pies, made my puff dough cups, made my Key-Lime Tequila Cream, and just generally did better than usual. YAY!

Chocolate Fudge Sour Cream Cookies with Creme De Menthe icing

Mini pecan pies (made with bourbon, of course)

My puff cups pre-baking

I also used puff dough to make apple turnover things which came out really well. I have some finishing touches to put on them so I'll post pictures tomorrow.

I stayed a little while after class and finished my pastillage piece. Here's the back of it...

When the royal icing holding the pieces together is dry tomorrow, I will stand it up and see how it does. Cross your fingers!

I got an email from Emilee over at the Brasserie and they decided that they'd rather I start next week since some things are changing there, so that's cool. Just means I get more sleep. YAY!

Day 76

2010-08-12T00:43:00.000-07:00

I am pretty well on track with the food aspect of the buffet, I made the shells for my mini pecan pies and I finished my cookies. I didn't get either of my creamy custardy stuff done but it's ok, we have more time tomorrow than we originally thought we would. I still have to put my pastillage piece together, probably tomorrow and I have yet to do my sugar piece so we'll see how that goes. ...yay!

I do have some awesome news. I got an externship at Brasserie Montmartre (brasserieportland.com) which is totally exciting! I start this Friday and Saturday to train with their pastry chef, who is leaving...so that should be interesting. I'm really stoked about it and I can't wait to start, but it will be a LONG couple of days. After class tomorrow I will go home, hang out for a couple of hours, go to bed, be at the Brasserie at 7a, class at 2p, work at 11p then back at the Brasserie at 8a on Saturday. In any case, it's exciting and I am really happy that it's working out!

Day 75

2010-08-11T04:59:00.000-07:00

I again got everything on my checklist done for today...but I'm starting to think that my list for tomorrow might be a little over-ambitious...we'll see. Maybe with a little more sleep I'll be ok.

Sorry for the blurry picture but here's what I did today

I made coconut macaroons (with coconut rum, of course) and raspberry-rum truffles and then dipped those and the last of my brandied cherries in tempered chocolate

My chocolate didn't temper as well as I was hoping, it bloomed :-/ (a layer of fat shows up as light brown streaks on the chocolate) Oh well. They were tasty anyway.

Day 74

2010-08-11T04:52:00.000-07:00

I finished my goomba today and started on the food for my buffet. I got everything on my checklist for the day done, which is nice. I am feeling very time-pressured and lack the energy to meet it. While I'm excited about the buffet project (I LOVE projects!), I think the whole menu project just took too much out of me. I need a break and to recharge. It's almost over though, this is our last week of class....

I started by candying fruit today. Just a note, it's WAY better to candy whole slices and cut them into the size and shape you need them afterward than to cut them first....

It's a long process involving 4 pots...3 of boiling water for blanching and the last one on the right is full of simple syrup to simmer the fruit at the end

I candied the oranges in the cherry-brandy liquid that I made. Hope they turn out!

They turned out pretty, anyway. The one on the bottom I've already rolled in sugar

I still have to put my pastillage hills together and make my sugar piece but here's my goomba...

This is right out of the mold. I could leave him like this and it would be fine....

But I felt cutting him out into his true pixelated form was more fun :-)

Day 73

2010-08-07T03:27:00.000-07:00

I was able to finish my chocolate piece today and Mr. Goomba is drying nicely. I'll take him out on Monday and see what he looks like!

In the mean time, I started on my sugar piece but that didn't work out so well (I tried twice before feeling like I was wasting my time and deciding to come back to it later). Just to get something done, I decided to paint my pastillage with food coloring...

I will put them all together at the end of next week.

One of the pieces broke as I was sanding down the rough edges but I think I can get it back together without too much trouble. Cross your fingers!

Day 72

2010-08-07T03:21:00.000-07:00

Now that my pastillage is drying, it was time to start my next project....Chocolate!

Since my theme is Super Mario, I chose to do a goomba for my chocolate piece.

Here he is before chocolating (my printer is running out of ink). He's all reversed and taped down

I ran out of time before I could finish the white bit but here's most of it traced in chocolate.

Keep in mind that what you're seeing will be covered up by a block of chocolate and the part that's actually facing the plastic will be the end result.

It's going to be a fun piece I think. I am excited to see it done. :-)

Day 71

2010-08-05T05:21:00.000-07:00

I got my pastillage done today! Well, at least as done as I could today. I have to wait on it to dry (possibly done by tomorrow) and then I have to paint it and put it all together but that's the easy part!

Here's what I've got so far:

These will be the background for my display, they're the hills from Super Mario!!

The only thing is, I did run out of pastillage before I made the brace to make it stand up, so I will either have to make some more or use some of someone else's if they have extra. In the mean time, I am going to do my chocolate piece tomorrow and hopefully start my sugar piece. I would like to have all of my showpieces done this week so that I can spend all of next week making the food for the buffet.

Day 70

2010-08-04T04:20:00.000-07:00

OMG I was completely useless today. My brain is just fried after last night and the lack of sleep certainly hasn't helped! I was supposed to start on my showpieces for my next project, the buffet project, which is due next Friday (the 13th) but since I really didn't have any idea what I wanted to do, I spent all day in the computer lab trying to plan out what exactly the food on the buffet would be.

The term "buffet" is a little misleading in this instance since it's really just a tray full of small items and 3 show pieces. So here are the Terms and Conditions:

I have to have a minimum of 27 pieces of food on the buffet. 3 categories, 3 items from each and 3 pieces of each item. Confused yet? So the first category is pastries, which encompasses a lot but the most important factor is that each item must be 3-6 bites. This includes tartlets, cream puffs, puff pastry, etc. The second is petit fours which need to be 2-3 bites and is also pretty well anything; cookies, small cakes, etc. The last category should be 1-2 bites and is candies and accessories; filled chocolates, truffles, jellies, I could go on... I've pretty well designed my menu for it and, once again, it has a theme. Liquor! Because who doesn't like BOOZE??

The showpieces will be a bit more difficult. There have to be 3 of them, one a minimum of 6"w x 10"t and the other two have to be at least 3"w x 5"t. I have to make one of them out of pastillage, kind of like a clay that will dry hard, one out of chocolate and one out of sugar. The sugar piece itself has to have 3 elements, a cast piece (pouring liquid sugar into a mold to set), a pulled sugar piece and a blown piece (kind of like blown glass). I was becoming very frustrated because everything I came up with kept getting shot down by finding out more about the requirements for the pieces so tonight, when I got home, Vince helped me come up with a new plan. MARIO! YAYYYY! I am excited about it and will start on it tomorrow. :-D

Oh! In all the excitement yesterday, I forgot to mention that I got a call from Pix and they offered me the position as an extern. I haven't called back (I just haven't had time) but I am going to let her know that I appreciate it and I am definitely considering it but that I'd like to keep my options open for a little while longer. I am still not a big fan of the idea of doing everything in the microwave. I'm going to spend some time this weekend exploring other places and see what I can find.

Day 69--Menu Project Day!

2010-08-04T03:15:00.000-07:00

Today was Cuh-raaaaaay-zeee. I cannot tell you how glad I am that it's over! I'm super exhausted and I've only had a few hours of sleep in the last few days. That being said, things went very well.

We basically had 3 hours to prep in the kitchen today, an hour to get everything we needed together/finish things and then it was go time. We had 15 minutes to plate 2 desserts (I know it doesn't sound like much but when you're super nervous and shaky and forgot to draw your stupid diagrams, the time goes FAST). So at 6:45pm we started plating the plate going out for service (which was my pastry) and one of the other 3 of our choosing. At 7:00pm, while Chef was evaluating the ones we'd finished, we started plating another of the service plates for our classmates to evaluate and one of the remaining two. At 7:15pm, we plated the last dessert. It was a nerve-wracking but somewhat enjoyable process and I feel pretty proud of what I did.

If you remember, my connecting element was ginger between all the plates but I challenged myself to introduce it in new ways each time. First up was my custard.

Dream A Little Dream

Orange dreamsicle cheesecake topped with vanilla buttercream and a candied orange slice dipped in ginger sugar, garnished with ginger creme anglaise.

Next was my chocolate piece:

The Number 42

(because chocolate is the answer)

A layer of Devil's Food Cake, topped with ginger chocolate mousse, wrapped in a tempered chocolate band and garnished with white chocolate, chocolate sauce and raspberry coulis.

My fruit dish:

Princess Peach

White peach slices coated in ginger sugar lining a caramel batter bowl and filled with raspberry curd. Garnished with ginger creme anglaise and raspberry coulis.

And last but certainly not least, my service plate and what I hope will be one of the signature dishes of *nom*:

The iTart

A triple ginger cookie crust filled with thinly-sliced apples and brandied cherries, topped with crumble topping and served with vanilla bean ice cream in a caramel bowl, garnished with caramel sauce and the cherry brandy juice cooked down into a sauce.

It was definitely a learning experience and there are a few things I would change but over all I am happy. And glad it's done. So very glad. My scores on my plates were decent two 17's and two 18's out of 20. I won't know my full project scores until Thursday since there are two more groups yet to go.

The best part? I have fabulous friends! I had 8 people come out to support me and it was wonderful! I could feel the love all the way in the kitchen.

Up front is Liza, I've known her since we were little and it was her birthday! <3

From the back left, Brandon (who I had not met in person, he's another hotel vampire like me), Chanelle in the back right, Victoria next to her, then Roy, then Gloria and Matt. And of course, front left, my lovely friend Vincent, who I could not have done this without (at least not as sanely as I did).

Thank you again to everyone who came, it means so much to me and I am really happy I got to share this with all of you. <3 <3 <3!!!

Sunday-Prep Day

2010-08-04T02:42:00.000-07:00

I have now basically spent every waking moment (that I'm not at work) at school since Thursday. I did run some errands on Friday and Saturday morning but I'll say more about that later.

I got a couple of pictures of my prep work today as I spent 10 hours in the kitchen trying to get ready for tomorrow. I still am not where I'd like to be but I feel much better. Poor Vince has had to bring me down a couple of times in the past couple of days when I got too agitated. I pretty much had a panic attack last night before work. <3's to him!

I made candied oranges dipped in ginger sugar....SO TASTY! These are for my custard dessert

These are for my service plate. :-D

So here's some interesting news! Friday I went to an interview at a restaurant for my externship, only to discover when I got there that the pastry chef that I talked to Wednesday to set up the interview had either been fired or quit the day before...so...yay. I called the coordinator at school and left a message but I don't know what will happen with it. Saturday, after getting up far too early to drive out to BFE to run an errand, I went to a working interview at Pix Patisserie. They had me make caramel ganache and I think it came out ok. I feel pretty good about it. I had fun but I'm not sure it's the place for me. They don't really have a real kitchen. There's no stove, just a microwave and basically a two-burner hotplate. Also, they listen to NPR all day and I'm not sure I could take it (sorry Mom). Anyway, we'll see. Trying to keep my options open until I HAVE to make a decision. I don't want to get stuck somewhere I won't be happy with.

Wish me luck tomorrow.

Day 68

2010-08-04T02:27:00.000-07:00

Ok, so everything is scaled out and ready to be made. The production isn't very interesting so far so I didn't take any pictures. I did get my ice cream made today for my service plate. I am definitely not where I need to be and have a feeling I will be at school all weekend to make up for it. I only have 3 hours on Monday to prep everything and I am such a perfectionist (and insist on making everything complicated and fancy) that it's going to take me some time.

I've already had one nervous break down on this project, we'll see how the weekend goes.

Chef has been demo-ing things and talking about the requirements for our next big project but I can't think about that right now. I am having a hard enough time keeping myself together as it is. I will worry about it Tuesday.

Day 67

2010-08-04T02:20:00.000-07:00

I managed to get all of my plates done today, which is good since tomorrow is my prep day for my menu project. I have been making lists and lists and more lists of things I need, recipes, scaling information, etc while I'm at work but I am not feeling confident that I will get everything I need to do done. I already know I have to come in this weekend since my stuff won't last the weekend, but...ugh.

Anyway, here are my final four check-off plates before our two big projects and the end of term.

This was a pear poached in spiced red wine and placed on top of a ball of vanilla ice cream. I wanted to put more on the plate but couldn't decide what, nothing looked right

This is more of the vanilla ice cream but I mixed some brandied cherries that I made a week ago into it with a cold stone (that was fun!) and made a little caramel bowl for it. The smudges on the plate were caramel sauce cherries but I forgot to take a picture before Chef Hall checked it off. Oh well. He loved the ice cream!

This was strawberry sorbet in a tempered chocolate cup with a tuile garnish. Tuiles are paper thin little cookies that can be shaped when they're hot, kind of like the fortune cookies.

Finally, my chocolate marquis. It's a frozen mousse that's quite tasty. I was attempting to make it into a Mayan temple with a road leading to...well, somewhere that has a giant strawberry rose but Chef didn't get it and had to ask what I was going for. Oh well, true genius is never appreciated. ;-P

Tomorrow should be interesting, we'll see how much I actually get done.

Day 66

2010-08-04T01:52:00.000-07:00

Well today was a complete waste of emotion. Absolutely nothing went right today and I got nothing done...it was just not my day.

WHAT? It's not Monday???

Aw, Crap.

Day 65

2010-07-28T00:30:00.000-07:00

Wow, I can't believe there are only 15 days of class left! I got an interview today for Ten01, a trendy restaurant near Powell's Books. I need to call them tomorrow and set it up.

In the mean time I will eat, breathe and sleep this menu project! I did get some things plated up today for check off and got some better scores than I had before.

I re-plated my Panna Cotta since my other one didn't do so well. Definitely like this one better.

This was the chocolate honey mousse in a caramel batter cup. For only having 5 minutes to put this together, it's not horrible. (sorry for the off-centeredness of the photo, I snapped it in a hurry)

We also got our chocolate souffles done today and they were tasty! I filled it with raspberry coulis and chocolate sauce.

Say hello to Professor Souffle.

Since our souffles rose weird, Celeste decided to give one of them a bow tie and a face. <3

There is so much left to do on my menu project and will probably spend most of the weekend at school! Tomorrow we only have a few plates to do and we aren't really baking anything, so hopefully I'll have some time to prep a bit.

Day 64

2010-07-27T01:20:00.000-07:00

Didn't get a whole lot done today, I spent the first hour and a half of class trying to make chocolate designs out of tempered chocolate that wouldn't set up because it was a millionbajillion degrees in the kitchen. We were dipping balloons in the chocolate to make little cups and 2 of them popped from the heat! Pretty sure we were all dying of heat stroke.

Anyway, what I did get done was my flourless souffle. It's basically just eggs, sugar and vanilla and you can charge exorbitant prices for it because it's a difficult dessert. AWESOME.

It doesn't look like much prior to baking....

The hole in the middle has creme anglaise inside and powdered sugar on top. Tasty!

Tomorrow will be a big plating day, I think. Hopefully it will be a bit cooler so that I can get some chocolate done....

Gearing up for the menu project. I've finished my ingredients list and my prep timetable. SO MUCH TO DO!!

Day 63

2010-07-23T23:39:00.000-07:00

Thank god it's Friday! It's been a very long week with not more than 5 hours of sleep at a time since last Saturday (then I got 6). I am completely exhausted and it shows. I feel I must apologize to those around me (especially you, Vincent <3) for my behavior and short temper as of late.

With the weekend (at least from school) here, I will be baking anyway, trying to tweak and perfect recipes for my menu project. It's a good thing I have boy roommates who love my food!

Today we made some chocolate mousse that we'll use Monday and plated up the things we made yesterday.

My group (Jennifer, Celeste and I) made coulis (fruit sauce) out of these different purees

*Just a side note, Key Lime Concentrate does not a coulis make (it just turns an icky brown color)*

Celeste is over there working hard to make sure everything tastes right. LOVE her rainbow pocket of pens!

Here's the panna cotta we made yesterday with some kind of abstract sauce design I wasn't overly happy with. Also, I shouldn't have put the raspberry sauce on top, it looked ridiculous and the condensation made it run....I was just trying to make it not look like a white blob on the plate!

This one I was a bit happier with, though Chef said I should have left off the caramel piece and could have even just gone with either the sauce or the strawberry. *shrug*

I may try re-plating the panna cotta for a better score (I got a 93 but that's still a B+) next week.

OH!!! I have some exciting news that I completely forgot to share! Yesterday, Chef Wilke, one of the founders of the school, walked up to me in the break room and said, "I heard about your blog! Would it be alright for us to link it to our webpage and Facebook?" After a moment of stunned stuttering I told him that of course it was alright! For a while I couldn't figure out how everyone suddenly knew about this since I really haven't advertised it but then the web guy for the school came up to talk to me and said he found it on Google! It's so crazy! I guess I'm going to have to step up my game and be better about posting every night....

The other big news is that on Friday, when we start the prep work for our menu project, we'll have a guy in our kitchen video taping the whole thing. I'm going to be in videos on the interwebs! They will miss some of it since I will be going into school on Sunday, the 1st to prep most things since a lot of it won't last over the weekend. Oh well. Hmm...maybe I should make sure my uniforms get bleached on Thursday....

Day 62

2010-07-23T23:10:00.000-07:00

Today we made more things to plate tomorrow and played with sugar more.

First we made Dalek Bumps of Panna Cotta and froze them

then strawberry mousse that will be topped with a blackberry glacage (glah sahj), a thin layer of jelly

Then we played with caramel batter which is kind of like the fortune cookies. When they come out of the oven they're very hot and flexible

I made them into spiffy shapes and bowls and such

Then I put THIS boiling liquid molten lava sugar

into this lovely giant paper coronet (yeah, OW)

and made THESE!

Then it was time to plate stuff!

Here is the bread pudding with caramel sauce and creme anglaise with a caramel horn full of fruit

and here's the Flan. The sauce you see is the caramel that was in the bottom of the ramekin before it was baked and then I added some blueberries and a sugar spiral.

The plating is fun, I like it, though I feel I could definitely use the practice!

Day 61

2010-07-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

Ugh, sorry, I'm horrible about updating lately!

Anyway, today was the start of the last 20 days of class and we're moving more into plating and presentation. Our big menu project is in the works but I'll talk more about that later.

Since today was the first day, we mostly just prepped things that we'll plate tomorrow. Most of it has to chill overnight anyway. First up was the Flan.

The ramekins get a little bit of caramel on the bottom

and then filled with custard and baked

We also made bread pudding (not my favorite, but this one was pretty good)

Since we're plating things, of course we needed sauce so I made a caramel sauce and creme anglaise (a basic cream/egg sauce used with lots and lots of things). We'll be using those more tomorrow.

This last section contains 2 big projects. First up is the menu project. Each of us will design 4 desserts, one in each category; pastry (has a crust), custard, chocolate and fruit. These 4 will be plated and presented on a particular night (for me, August 2nd) but then I get to choose one to be served in the restaurant that night instead of our regular desserts. There are 3 of us in my group so there will be 3 desserts on the menu for the public. It's VERY exciting! I've been thinking about this for a while and I know what I'm going to do, now it's just a matter of the details. I'm not going to say much about it but I will say that all 4 will have ginger in common. :-D

Day 60

2010-07-21T02:34:00.000-07:00

Today was the end of the first half of Term 2. This means I'm 3/4 of the way through the school part of the program. I'm also whatever 3/4 of 2/3 is through the entire program. :-D In less than a month I will be starting my externship at a bakery/restaurant somewhere in Portland. Speaking of which, I have an interview set for a week from Saturday at Pix Patisserie (pixpatisserie.com) and I'm totally stoked!

Ok, so today everything was due at 5:15p. We had to fill chocolates and make truffles and I had to finish my wedding cake. I'll start with the chocolates.

You start by filling a mold with tempered chocolate and tapping on it to get all the air bubbles out. Then it gets turned over and dumped back into the bowl of chocolate so it leaves cavities.

Each cavity gets filled with filling. We have hand-made fondant (peppermint), caramel that I made and truffle filling (raspberry-rum)

More tempered chocolate gets poured over them and then leveled to form the bottom. After it's set, the temper should cause the chocolate to shrink a little and pull away from the mold. The molds get tapped out onto parchment to remove the pieces

These are candied pecan clusters coated in dark chocolate

Here's everything, ready to be checked off. Sadly, my fondant-filled chocolates didn't get checked off because too many of them broke on their way out of the mold. Chef said I had a nice temper on the chocolate though and that everything came out well. The balls in the middle are the raspberry-rum truffles

I spent the first hour or so of class finishing up my cake. This morning I spent some time when I got home finishing the topper for the cake, the TARDIS light.

I ended up cutting the white bit down, I removed 2 columns from the original design to get to this point. It's all just sugar paste and royal icing!

When I got it on the cake I realized that it was too tall and took off the bottom row so that it fit a little better

and then added one of my 5 flowers to the back of it in a tribute to Rose, my favorite of the companions

Here are some of my other flowers, just tried to do something alien looking

Sorry for the glare, my camera was having trouble focusing

This is one of my favorites, I think

The Dalek bumps on the bottom band came out great! They're made out of the same sugar paste as the band and then painted with gold luster dust

The Time Lord sigil I made broke as I was packing it up...I decided it fit since the Time Lords were destroyed anyway so I used the crack to my advantage (sort of)

Here's the finished product, Adipose and all!

This was definitely a learning experience and there are certainly things I would do differently next time or if I had to do it over, but it was a lot of fun and I feel like I'm walking away with a good understanding of each product, their capabilities and their weak points. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how the cake turned out!

Day 59

2010-07-20T05:33:00.000-07:00

This will be a short post. Two reasons for this 1) I have chores to do here at work and 2) I only took pictures of the flowers I made for my cake.

All I did in class today was make components for the candies we're making tomorrow so I will elaborate then.

Here are the flowers I made.

I wanted them sort of alien looking (Vince's idea) and since they really don't have any business on my cake, I wanted them small so they wouldn't be as obvious. I have one more that I made before, a rose, in tribute to my favorite of the companions.

I will finish the cake tomorrow and post the final pictures. So exciting!

Sunday-Cake Day

2010-07-20T05:28:00.000-07:00

After I got home from work this morning, I went to school and spent the next 6 1/2 hours working on what I now realize is a wholly over-ambitious Doctor Who cake. It still isn't done but it is certainly on its way!

Recognize the letters? I pressed them into the band around the middle layer to make an indentation and then popped them off one by one (one has already come off here)

This is what it looks like in the show (the left is when they're being burned into the piece of metal, the right is the rusted metal several thousand years later)

To replicate that, I painted the inside of each indentation with black gel. I think this is one of my favorite elements of the cake

This is the bottom layer. It's got a bit more to be done to it but I liked this bit. :-D

Here's the middle layer after I got the crack in time and space on there and the drop lace with the bow ties. The drop lace is just royal icing thick enough to be piped and hang down from each post (bow tie) without touching the cake or breaking. The smudgy stuff around the crack is luster dust. It was supposed to make it look like light was shining through the crack but it didn't work quite right.

Here is the beginning of the top. You can see the indentations where I traced the designs to be piped on it (my free-hand piping skills leave a lot to be desired)

and after it's all piped. I kind of wish I had done the bottom band a bit differently but it's too late now!

By the way, for those of you who don't know what a TARDIS is, here you go....

It is the Doctor's time machine that travels through space too. BEST. SHOW. EVAR.

Day 58

2010-07-20T05:01:00.000-07:00

Today was kind of a busy day. We made 3 different things, one of which I neglected to take pictures of since it was a very fast-paced procedure.

The one I don't have pictures of is the Jellies. They're kind of like jello blocks made with fruit puree (so it's WAY better) and rolled in a citric acid/sugar mixture (the stuff they put on Sour Patch Kids!). I made Cherry-Lime and they came out fantastically, even if they did look a bit rough. They only looked rough because the way I had my set up arranged (like Chef told us), it was too hard to adjust the size of it and I couldn't get it all spread out before the jelly solidified.

Anyway, I did make chocolate caramels as well.

Mmm...melting chocolate.....bleh.

So they're basically melted chocolate and caramel (which I don't have a picture of)

poured into a mold of candy bars (that's those silver things) and chilled

Then they get cut into little bits of lovely tastiness. :-D

I also made nougat. Doesn't this big, squishy, slimy mass I'm kneading look appetizing?

How about now? I made cherry-pecan and they were great!!

Nougat is kind of fun. It's essentially just egg whites, sugar and butter (with a few other token ingredients) with internal garnish. It gets all stiff and sticky and squishy...and then it gets chilled and magically tasty!

Day 57

2010-07-20T04:44:00.000-07:00

We started on candies and chocolates today. That's what we'll be doing for the rest of this section.

The first thing I did was Pecan Pralines. To me, these were really gritty and not at all what I think of when I imagine pralines but....oh well.

It's hard to believe that this bubbling mess will become much of anything....but boil it for a while

and add some nuts....

and you get some pecan pralines!

I also made peanut brittle which I promptly broke into little bits as soon as it was cool. :-D

The peanut brittle came out a bit dark. The last ingredient added is the baking soda and it makes the caramel darken by 3 or 4 shades. It's a very strange process. You actually have to take it off the heat before it looks done and then it keeps cooking while you stir in the last couple of ingredients. It was pretty good, but not as tasty as it might have been.

Day 56

2010-07-20T04:21:00.000-07:00

So today was Day 3 of our wedding cake project and the last chance I had dedicated time in class to work on it. It's not due til next Tuesday but any other work is supposed to be done whenever we can find time in class or we can come in on the weekends. I am fudging that a little by doing stuff at work and at home but since I don't get any sleep as it is, I can't see spending any more time at school than I already do. Today did not go as slowly as yesterday, I've learned a lot about working with this particular substance, but I didn't get a whole lot more done.

All 3 layers are now covered with TARDIS blue sugar paste and I'm pretty sure everyone in my class thinks I'm crazy. Almost everyone stuck with white.

I made bow ties at work. Because bow ties are cool. Just ask the 11th Doctor!

There are some requirements we have to meet for the project. We have to have at least 5 molded flowers (they have to be 3-D, not just stuck flat to the cake), a band around the bottom of each layer and drop lace (a technique done with royal icing that I will explain more on later). Other than that, it's up to us. As I'm sure at least some of you have guessed by now, I'm making a cake dedicated to Doctor Who. :-D I probably won't get to work on anything else until this weekend (except at work) but hopefully it will be done by Tuesday!

Day 55

2010-07-20T03:47:00.000-07:00

Omg, I'm so sorry for not keeping up with this this past week! I've been so busy trying to get stuff for my cake done at work (which I'm not technically supposed to do but...shhhhh!) that I haven't had a chance to post anything. I have taken pictures along the way though. I will start back at the beginning.

So my blue sugarpaste is made, right? Right. Now it's just a matter of getting it on the cake dummies...not too difficult, right? Uh, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Turns out that large amounts of gel coloring changes the structure of sugarpaste enough to make it nearly impossible to work with successfully, so here we go. It took me the entire day to get one dummy covered (and not even covered well) because I kept having to re-roll my sugar paste and it just wouldn't work. We finally put it between two sheets of plastic and that seemed to work pretty well.

I finally got it rolled out and on the cake...maybe I can just leave it like this?

Noooo....I spent, like, forever and a half trying to get this to smooth out (which it never really did)

I made this at work. He's an Adipose (http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Adipose) but not quite done. He'll go on the cake somewhere

These are the letters I piped out in Royal Icing for one of the bands. It's High Gallifreyan for "Hello Sweetie"

Royal icing is neat stuff. It will go from liquid to rock hard in 24 hours and works great for anything that needs to look fragile but still be able to stand up. It's still very breakable but I think it will work for my purposes.

Day 54

2010-07-13T02:02:00.000-07:00

OMGGGGGGGG Vacation makes me want to quit my job. It was so nice to have some time to relax and do things I wanted to do. I got to see a movie and celebrate Vince's birthday and all kinds of things! It was awesome!

So anyway, first I want to show you the ice cream cake I made Vince for his birthday. It was pretty cool. :-)

3 layers of brownie and 2 layers of mint ice cream

Covered in chocolate buttercream

I melted chocolate (the attempted tempering didn't work) and made Spiffy Co. logos

and attached them to the cake with some melted chocolate

The ice cream was fabulous but the brownies need work. And there was just far too much brownie. More ice cream next time.

Today in class we started on our wedding cake projects. I didn't get very far because I ran into some issues with my sugar paste (basically rolled fondant). It's what will cover the cake dummy layers and it was just too dry and kept cracking. I have a possible solution that I will try tomorrow. Cross your fingers! Anyway....

These are the cake dummy layers that I get to cover

I made my sugar paste TARDIS Blue *hint hint*

I will be purple for DAYS! (this is AFTER washing my hands 3 times)

Hopefully tomorrow will go a little better. I have some gum paste (basically edible modeling clay) in my bag here at work tonight that I'm going to play with and make some test figures. :-)

Day 53

2010-07-03T01:48:00.000-07:00

Today was great! I was right, I needed all day to do my cake, but it was worth it. I won't say it was perfect, but it wasn't bad for not having decorated a cake in quite a while.

I started with a 3-layer lemon chiffon cake filled with lemon Italian Meringue Buttercream

Then I piped shells all the way around (the sides are supposed to be textured like that)

Our requirements were 3 roses and 5 leaves. I love doing roses and I did 4 but the last one didn't turn out well (turns out my teacher standing behind me going "Hmmm" makes me very nervous)

I added a few extra vines down the back, just for fun

As per my usual, the chocolate writing was not great (my penmanship sucks when it's NOT in liquid chocolate), but it works

I gave this cake to my coworker, Nakia since lord knows I don't need ANOTHER cake in my house! :-D

Day 52

2010-07-03T01:25:00.000-07:00

OMG today was a busy day! I ended up staying late at school (I was there until 11pm) because I didn't get everything done and I know I'm going to need the entire day for tomorrow's project.

We did two European cakes today. The first is called the Dobos (doe bosh). It's a Hungarian torte that was made famous at the Hungarian State Exhibition in 1885. It is named after the man who invented it. It was one of the first cakes to ever use buttercream and was known for its elegant simplicity. So here's how it works.

You start out with 7 of these thin cake layers

Then stack 6 of them, like so, but with chocolate buttercream in between each layer and all over the outside

The 7th layer gets covered in a caramelized sugar syrup and the sides get covered in toasted almonds

This was a tasty, tasty cake. <3 I am a fan.

The second cake is called an Opera Torte. It's French and named for the Paris Grand Opera. It's made with a thin almond sponge cake dabbed with coffee syrup and layered with chocolate ganache and coffee buttercream.

The layers get cut in half and stacked on top of each other to make a total of 6 cake layers in a log

The log then gets cut on the bias (this was tricky and took 2 people)

I then turned the triangles and ganached them together to make one triangle and glued it to another cake base. Looking at this, all I can says is...thank god for ganache....

After a thin layer of buttercream and warm ganache poured over it, the cake looks much nicer

To finish, L'Opera is written on the side in white chocolate. The other is my attempt at a Treble Clef, which of course I did perfectly on the test sheet and then could not repeat...

Tomorrow is CAKE DECORATING DAY! I'm so excited, I love decorating cakes. I'm a bit rusty but I'm looking forward to it!

Day 51

2010-07-01T00:59:00.000-07:00

Who knew there were so many uses for meringue???

Pretty much everything we've made since starting T2 has contained at least one meringue component. Most of the cakes have it in them, as do some of the icings we use. Today was no different. We made something called a Kirsch (cherry brandy) torte.

It started with 2 dried meringue disks

I had to trim them down to the right size and they're very delicate. I'm quite proud of myself for not breaking them into little bits!

The bottom disk gets topped with French Meringue Buttercream

Then a genoise (jen wah) cake layer that's dabbed with Kirsch syrup, more buttercream and the second disk

The sides are then covered in buttercream and masked with toasted slivered almonds

Last, the top gets covered in powdered sugar and scored with a diamond pattern

Sadly, this cake has to sit for 2-3 days before eating it so that the moisture can soak into the meringue disks...but like Vince said, it's not like we have a shortage of cake in the house.... :-D

Day 50

2010-06-30T03:53:00.000-07:00

We're doing traditional European cakes now. Today we did the Sacher (soccer) Torte. Actually, it's not a real Sacher Torte because, unless you work at the Sacher hotel in Vienna, Austria, you're not allowed to make it. The real thing says Sacher Torte across it. If it just says Sacher or Sachertorte, it's a facsimile.

In short....

It's a dense chocolate cake with apricot jam in the middle and Kirsch syrup dabbed all over it

Then it's covered in ganache

and decorated with white chocolate filigree

I also got to make ice cream for service today in this big, spiffy machine

I will get to use this a bit more coming up!

and my station in service was Creme Brulee so I got to play with the blow torch!

*The fact that the fire alarms went off and we all had to evacuate the building was in no way my fault*

Day 49

2010-06-30T02:10:00.000-07:00

Since we're getting into more complicated desserts and cakes with more components, I won't be finishing as many projects each night and instead working on the cake over a couple of days.

That said, I completely finished my chocolate chiffon cake from yesterday so here are the latest pictures.

It looks a bit messier from this angle since I had to smooth out the top chocolate and redo it because I scored it wrong.

The white chocolate band tempered well which I am pretty excited about!

Day 48

2010-06-28T01:30:00.000-07:00

Cakes and chocolate...does it get any better?

Today we made a Chocolate Honey Mousse Torte and it was amazing! We started off by using a 6" round of the roll cake we made the other day for the Charlotte and a strip of Jaconde and stencil paste. Jaconde is an almond roll cake that bakes up thin and flexible. The stencil paste is chocolate mixed with some other stuff, spread over a silpat then most of it gets scraped off with a comb so it leaves a squiggly design. The cake gets poured over it and the whole thing bakes. When it's done, you can cut it into strips and use it to line things like this:

The acetate will help hold everything together

The mousse gets poured into the mold

and when it's chilled, the acetate comes off and the whole thing is set

It was SOOOOO good!

Yesterday we made a chocolate chiffon cake and put the base for our whipped dark chocolate ganache in the fridge to chill overnight. Today we whipped it into icing and frosted the cake with it.

Mmm, chocolate

Since we're working with chocolate right now we tried tempering both white and dark chocolate for this cake.

First we used the dark chocolate to draw designs on acetate tape.

Then the white chocolate got spread over it

(if you look closely you can see some of my design underneath it)

Here's what my cake looked like after I got the band around it. Pretty cool, huh?

I'm planning to use this same technique (although, I think I'll reverse the colors) on the chocolate item for my menu project. I really like it, it's nice and complicated. :-D

Day 47

2010-06-24T23:16:00.000-07:00

So here's the finished Tiramisu that gave me so many problems yesterday...

The best part? It wasn't even that good. Mine is SOOO much better.

Today I made a Charlotte Royale. It starts as a roll cake that's lined with jam (in this case, apricot) and sliced

Then you line a bowl with the slices of cake

It gets filled with bavarian cream (with gelatin)

Then the cream gets covered with more cake (usually plain cake)

Once it sets, it gets turned out and glazed to keep the cake fresh

The finished product can be sliced and will hold its shape because of the gelatin

I have to say, I understand the reasoning for the gelatin, you want it to be able to stand up on its own...but it makes have a weird texture and the bavarian cream had almost no flavor. Sad days!

By the way, the cheesecake was very good. The only thing is, it needed way more ginger and less orange...next time.

Day 46

2010-06-24T03:42:00.000-07:00

Today was one of the more frustrating days I have had since I started school. Not because, as is usually the case, I didn't get anything done, but because one of the projects I was working on just would NOT work.

I was making Tiramisu and we had to do it the hard way (of course) by standing ladyfingers up inside a ring of acetate and getting them to stay. The problem is that they don't stand up by themselves and topple over every few seconds. I worked on it for nearly an hour and a half. Chef Hall finally had to come over and pretty much do it for me because after starting over 20 or so times I was shaking and nearly in tears. I felt a little justified, though, when it took him a good long time to do it too.

This is what the stupid thing looks like when it's together

The filling goes in there...well...yeah...duh....ok, moving on

I also finished my cheesecake today. We had to make marbled cheesecake (i.e. regular cheesecake swirled with flavored filling) so I chose to make mine Orange Ginger.

You can hardly see the swirl but you can definitely see the orange zest!

It came out nicely, with just one little bubble on it

I haven't cut into it yet or tasted it...I'll let you know how it comes out!

Day 45

2010-06-23T00:05:00.000-07:00

Sadly, I have no pictures for you today. Tomorrow I will though. It was another one of those nights where I basically just got things prepped for the next day. I was so tired and couldn't seem to make myself move very fast.

We got the requirements for our wedding cake project, which I'm pretty excited about. It's a 3 tiered cake that we can make in any style we want as long as we

Use sugar paste (rolled fondant) to cover each layer
Put a band of some sort around the bottom of each layer
Have 5 molded flowers (out of gum paste or rolled fondant or marzipan)
One layer has drop lace along the top edge

Other than that, it's up to us! I have some awesome ideas (I've known about this for a while and have been planning it out) that Vincent and I are going to sit down and sketch out one day soon. I can't tell you what it's going to be but it's exciting!! :-D

Day 44

2010-06-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

Mmmm...cake.

Today I started out by making Lemon Curd which, I realize, sounds real appetizing. It is surprisingly tasty. Very tart and smooth. It's kind of like a lemon pudding...but better.

It starts out looking like melted butter in a pan and gets stirred until it's thick...but wait! There's more!

THEN it gets poured through a chinois (shin-wah) over the butter

While that was chilling, I made a thin cake and sprinkled powdered sugar on it

Then I spread the lemon curd onto the cake

And rolled it up (the stuff on top is buttercream, I'll get to that next)

After the buttercream gets spread over the rolled-up cake, it gets cut into three pieces and made into....

A SUGARY YULE LOG OF DOOOOOOOM

(seriously, it's supposed to be a Bucche de Noel, a yule log cake. It's usually brown and has meringue mushrooms)

This is the beginning of a Pineapple Upside-Down Cake...mmmm.

And when it's done, it looks even tastier. It was SOOO good.

Day 43

2010-06-20T02:43:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm in Term 2, every few days I will be staying late to work the dessert service in the restaurant that the school runs. Everyday, though, whether I'm actually working service or not, each group has to prepare something for that night. Since it's a set menu in the restaurant, there are a limited number of things we have to do but tonight it was my group's turn to finish the OCI Dream Tortes that were in the freezer and get them ready to be served. We did this by removing them from their pans, covering them with ganache and slicing them...

Mmm, chocolate on chocolate, covering chocolate

We also had our own projects to do liiiiiike...

Angel Food Cake! Mmm, so light and fluffy!

We also made Carrot Cake with cream cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream and decorated with little marzipan carrots. Teehee!

Next week, things get a bit more complicated...This is the part I'm looking forward to. :-D

Day 42

2010-06-20T02:28:00.000-07:00

If 42 is the Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything and today we worked on cakes, does that mean that cake is the Answer? ...I think it might.

We continued our cake from yesterday by making the buttercream icing. Since we made Swiss Meringue Buttercream, a meringue had to be made first.

There are 3 types of meringue. There is French Meringue, or Common Meringue, that is simply made by whisking egg whites and sugar together. This is the meringue most of us think of but it is the least stable. The second, and slightly more stable, meringue is Swiss Meringue. The egg whites and sugar are heated to 110 degrees to dissolve the sugar and warm the egg whites for more volume. The third and most stable is Italian Merinuge. This is begun by whipping the egg whites to a soft foam and then adding a heated simple syrup solution (sugar and water) as the whites are being whisked. While the finished product is the most stable of the three, Italian Meringue is also the most temperamental to make.

Since we made Swiss Meringue, the eggwhites and sugar start by getting heated over a bain marie until the sugar dissolves

The eggwhites then get whipped to a stiff consistency

Since we were making buttercream, the next step was to add the soft butter....in this case, 3 pounds of it, in pieces, to the meringue while it was being whipped

Finally, it looks like this (it's actually pure white but my flash was being funny)

When that was done, it was time to start putting the cake together.

First, I cut it in half and tamped simple syrup on each half to keep it moist. I didn't do very well getting it out of the pan, you can see it's a bit torn up....thank goodness for buttercream!

In goes the filling, the top gets put on and the rest of the cake gets iced

Here's the finished product. It got scored into 14 pieces (mine's a bit off...damn geometry) and a rosette piped onto each piece

It came out nicely, though the icing was about twice as thick as it should have been

At least it's all pretty level! Not bad for my first cake in a while

Tomorrow we continue our Fun With Cakes and Buttercream...same Bat Time, same Bat Channel. :-)

Day 41 and The Beginning of Term 2

2010-06-20T01:58:00.001-07:00

Today was the beginning of my second term of school and working with Chef Hall. He is an interesting character. He can be quite intimidating but is obviously very passionate about what he does. It will be very good to work with him, if frustrating at times.

We started out full force by making a cake. We didn't get it finished tonight but we did have 3 or 4 demos and got the cake baked off.

It's a plain chiffon cake. Very light and fluffy since it's made with meringue

Chef Hall demo-ing how to fix your buttercream with a blowtorch if it breaks....Awesome

Tomorrow we'll continue with our chiffon cake and, I'm sure, get several other assignments. YAY CAKES!

Day 40 and The End of Term 1!

2010-06-19T07:52:00.000-07:00

Today was our last day with Chef Wild. On Wednesday, we move on to Term 2 and start with Chef Hall. Being the last day of the term, it was our make-up day. A chance to catch up on things we either missed or needed to redo from the last 20 days. If we had extra time or if we didn't have anything to make up, we could use the time to experiment or just make something tasty.

I had a few things to get done.

First off, I redid my Bouchees. They passed this time!

Also with puff dough, I finished my palmiers (palm-ee-ays) which are just puff dough wrapped up with sugar in it and baked between two sheet pans to make them flat

Amber and I finished our chessboard cookies which, in my opinion, are bland and really only aesthetic

I did have a little extra time so I made something I'd been wanting to since the beginning of this 20 day period...

Olive Bread!

I made this with Pain au Levain, the French Sourdough and it came out very tasty. Nice texture and light. Next time I think I will reduce the salt due to the kalmata olives adding their own (I really should have thought of that).

Day 39

2010-06-19T07:40:00.000-07:00

Meringue is an interesting substance...it starts out as liquid egg whites, kinda gloopy, not much to look at...then you start incorporating air and it gets all foamy and icky looking....then you add sugar and keep whipping. Eventually you end up with this pure white, sticky, wonderfully tasty, light-as-a-cloud...stuff. That is, of course, as long as all your equipment was completely clean and there were no traces of yolk in your whites and you didn't look at it funny and it was just the right temperature and humidity. When it works, there are about a bajillion things you can do with meringue, depending on the stiffness.

Today, we did one of them. We made Meringue Fingers, little piped strips of meringue that get topped with nuts and baked until they're crispy on the outside and just slightly chewy on the inside.

The ones on the left have Hazelnuts on them while I sprinkled cocoa powder on the others (these turned out to be my favorite)

I also finished my petit fours glace today. They are little pieces of almond pound cake, topped with apricot jam, then topped with marzipan, coated in liquid fondant a few times and decorated with chocolate.

They were tasty...but not enough for the amount of work that went into them

Tomorrow is the last day of Term 1! I have a few things to finish but I feel pretty confident I can get it done. This section of the term has gone much better than the last.

Day 38

2010-06-19T05:20:00.000-07:00

Most of today was spent working on things that didn't get done but I did finish my Birdsnests. They're an adorable little cookie with pate sucree (sweet dough) on the bottom and an almond paste mixture on the top. They look kind of like Jammy Dodgers.

Yeah, Jammy Dodgers. Nobody knew what they were!! The infuriating thing is that everybody knows what a jammy dodger is, they just might not know it by that name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jammie_Dodgers We see them here in the states with a slightly different look and usually different kinds of jam. They're just shortbread with jam. So tasty.

ANYWAY, moving on.

This is what they look like before they're filled

I filled some with apricot and some with raspberry jam

They were delicious and went quickly. Vincent loved them...but then, he's a sucker for English stuff just like me. :-)

As you can see, I'm slowly updating the blog with posts from the last couple of weeks. Bear with me, I'll get there.

Day 37

2010-06-17T05:13:00.000-07:00

Today was our first foray into tempering chocolate (making it shiny and snappy) and I have to say that I think I'm going to enjoy it. It's complicated and tricky, which is the best part!

The chocolate has to be brought up to temperature between 115 and 120 (but not over 120) degrees and then it gets cooled back down to 88 to 90 by adding more chocolate into it after removing it from the heat. If the temperature isn't exactly right, the chocolate won't come out right. You might get a partial temper but it won't be perfect. I was able to get it partially tempered and I was pretty happy with it. It wasn't as shiny as it should have been but it did snap nicely and it had a great texture. I am looking forward to practicing it more (which I hear we will do a LOT of in the next term).

Before we could temper the chocolate, we had to have something to put it on, so we made Toscaners and Florentines.

The Toscaners are these lovely little cakes with a caramel almond mixture on top...

This is before it's baked

and after it's baked. :-)

After it cools, it gets cut up into rectangles and dipped in the tempered chocolate...

They were soooo tasty!

The florentines were quick and easy(ish) to make. The dough takes about 2 minutes to make and then it's baked. As soon as they come out of the oven and while they're still completely hot, you round them with a round cutter dipped in oil.

They're basically nuts and candied orange peel, pretty tasty

The bottoms get covered in the tempered chocolate and then I used an icing comb to make the design

In Term 2 we'll be tempering chocolate a ton for candies and stuff and that will be exciting. I am thinking about practicing at home.... ;-)

Day 36

2010-06-17T04:04:00.000-07:00

Today was a fun day!

First up were French Almond Macaroons. These are lovely, light little tasties made from a meringue mixture, baked and filled with jam to make a sandwich. Since we use baker's jam (some silly mixture made to withstand high temperatures), they are exceedingly sweet. I think I'd probably make my own jam in the future.

I filled mine with raspberry jam... They were a big hit at home!

We also made Madelines, a spongy cookie that need chocolate or something...otherwise they're pretty plain.

My favorite though?? Fortune cookies! They're exceedingly fun to make in a pain-in-the-ass sort of way. :-)

You start by spreading the batter onto a Sil-Pat (a silicone mat) using a round stencil

Unfortunately I have to work with them too quickly once they're baked to take a picture, but this is what they look like, only darker

Once they're baked, they get folded while they're still VERY hot (if they cool for more than 30 seconds, they're impossible to fold) and put in these little cups to cool completely

This was before I'd gotten the hang of folding them, lol.

These were an amazingly tasty little cookie with ginger and lemon. They don't taste like a typical fortune cookie. This is DEFINITELY something I will make again!

Day 35

2010-06-17T03:12:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it's been forever since I posted and I'm sorry! For a while there it was hard to post since I didn't have a computer and then I was so far behind I didn't want to spend the time to catch up. UGGGGGH! Anywho, here we go!

So for the last week of Term 1, we did lots of fun stuff. On Monday, we did fun things with pate a choux (pot a shoe). What, you ask, is pate a choux? It is a dough made from flour and water and eggs which has nearly no flavor on its own, so it's great for making little tasty things that have some kind of cream or flavoring that you want to highlight. It's kind of funny to make since you boil the liquids (butter, sugar and water), then add the flour and stir it until it forms a ball and leaves a film on the bottom of the pan then take it off and put it in a mixer and add the eggs until it's loose enough to put in a pastry bag and pipe out. From there you can do all kinds of shapes and when it is baked it gets hard and hollow and can be cut all different ways and filled.

First up was one of my favorite treats...

Cream puffs!

They are just little balls of pate a choux cut open and filled with cream chantilly (crem chantee-yee) then sprinkled with powdered sugar.

We also made eclairs, which were fun. Again, just pate a choux piped and baked but then filled with pastry cream and topped with fondant.

Hmm, hopefully I will be getting better at the designs....

The other thing we did with the pate a choux was something called a paris-brest. Now, I've never heard of them, but I have to say that it was tasty. This will also give you an idea of what the pate a choux looks like before it's baked vs. after.

These are piped out with a star-tip and covered in almond slices before baking

When they're done, they get cut open, filled with hazelnut chiboust (pastry cream with Italian Meringue in it) and sprinkled with powdered sugar.

I think that about does it for pate a choux. It's a fun substance and I'm sure something that I will be working with in the future...I mean, what's life without cream puffs and eclairs???

Day 34 and The End of Week 7!

2010-06-07T03:39:00.000-07:00

Today was immensely infuriating since I got nothing completely finished and really just managed to prep things for Monday. I do have some pictures but I will post them on Monday when I have something to show.

Since I don't have much to say baking-wise, I thought I'd alert you of some changes you'll be seeing in the blog and some of the other stuff I'm working on.

I'm going to add ads to the side and bottom of the blog to (hopefully) make some money. It's a pay-per-click thing so I don't expect to make much, but I am planning on having any money I do make from it go into a separate account for any start up money I manage to make for *nom*. On that note, I am looking for investors and help with my business plan, so if you know anyone, let me know! I am also looking into putting up a paypal link for donations. :-)

After much deliberation, I have almost completely decided to stay in Portland after school instead of moving back to VA. There is a lot here going for me and I'm not sure I can bear to leave. I love this place immensely and I just moved into an awesome house and my friend Vincent just moved into the house as well. I keep getting the feeling that *nom* would not be as well-received in VA as it would be here and, while I'm not 100% decided, I am definitely leaning toward staying. I will be updating my other site with more info.

Anyway, I'm off for now, time to get back to work (bleh)...More soon!

Day 33

2010-06-07T03:15:00.000-07:00

I learned to make Blitz Puff today. It's made up a lot like flaky pie dough, cutting the butter into the flour before adding the liquids and all, but then you turn it like other laminated doughs. I wish I had taken pictures of the dough before I did my first turn, it doesn't look like something that's going to turn into...anything. The chunks of butter are 1" cubes and it just looks like a big, lumpy mess.

While the normal puff dough takes a couple of days to make properly, blitz puff can be made in about an hour and a half. It doesn't get the height or the fine quality of the other puff but it's great in an "OMG, I'M OUT OF PUFF DOUGH" pinch.
We mainly made two things with the blitz. The first is an upside-down tart called a Tarte Tatin. First, you make a caramel....

Looks yummy, right? Like the dough, it's hard to believe this will become anything

Then it gets even nastier looking

Until, finally, the sugar melts and it comes together

Halved apples are added to the caramel

The apples get covered in a puff dough circle and it all gets baked just like this (this is already baked, obviously)

Then you turn it out into another pan and this is the finished product

Chef says these are usually served as an individual thing with half an apple, which would be much easier to eat.

I also made Pithivier (pi-ti-vee-ay) which was VERY tasty!

It starts with a well-docked (fork-poked) round of puff

Then that gets covered in frangipane (almond paste mixture) and topped with another round of puff dough

The edges get scalloped and a design is made on the top (mine is a little rough, I went a bit deep on the top lines)

and it bakes into this beautiful, fluffy thing. It's really light and airy and would be great with fruit!

That, sadly, is it for laminated doughs. Tomorrow, though, we start Pate A Choux (pot-a-shoo)!!

Day 32

2010-06-07T02:57:00.000-07:00

Today we continued to work with the puff pastry we made. I have decided that laminated doughs, while a pain in the ass, are some of my favorites to work with. There are just so many things that can be done with them! Between all the sweet and savory options, the possibilities are endless.

I finished my turnovers with peach and raspberry/marionberry filling. I don't like the filling recipes we have in our books, they use the cooked fruit method which has pretty much failed for me every time. I prefer working with the raw fruit so that it doesn't break down as much. The turnovers were good but by the time they had baked, there was almost no filling!

Here's what they look like before baking...nice and flat, right?

Tada!

I also made creamhorns (which certain people went nuts over <3!). They are puff dough, wrapped around a form, coated in sugar, baked and filled with sweetened whipped cream...

They look kinda like cornucopias

and then you fill them with sweet, tasty goodness

Last, but not least, I made Napoleans (named because they came from Napoli, not because the layers are short). To make the puff dough layers, you put a sheet pan on top of the puff dough and bake it so it doesn't rise. You still get all the spectacular layers, but no height.

Mmm...flaky layers!

Pastry cream goes in between each layer

and they get topped with fondant (sorry about the mess)

Well, that's it for the regular puff dough. Tomorrow we make Blitz Puff! YAY!

Day 31

2010-06-02T05:13:00.000-07:00

Since we had a 3-day weekend, everybody was pretty groggy coming back to class. Nobody got a whole lot done but we did have some fun.

We worked with our puff pastry today and I managed to get a couple of things done and some of the other prep work finished.

I decided that I first needed to get my croissants from last week done....

So I cut them out (doesn't that look awesome??)

And rolled them up

And filled some with Almond Paste (mmmm)

And baked them

Oh so tasty and flaky!

With the croissants out of the way, it was time to start on the Puff Pastry stuff. First, I had to roll out my puff dough that I made and laminated last week (not the frozen stuff) and cut it into the correct sizes. Once done, a couple of those pieces got put on a sheet pan, covered in parchment and squished by another sheet pan to be baked. That way, you get all the flaky layers of the puff without the height...more on why we did this tomorrow.

Since we had 4 things to make up with puff and I was running out of time, I decided to go with the two simpler ones for the night. First, the Bouchees (As in, Bobby Bouchee, teehee). These are little cups that you use to fill with either a sweet or savory filling.

First, you cut out a 3" circle and place it on the sheet pan. It gets eggwashed around the rim (but not down the sides!) and then you cut another 3" circle but cut a 2" circle out of it and place the ring that you now have on top of your first disc.

Then they bake up looking like this! You deflate the middle bit and then fill it with tasty pastry cream or chicken salad or something.

Just a note, if you don't eggwash well enough, this happens....

lol

I also made my Carres, which are a similar product but a different shape. This time you start with a square and make it a triangle by folding over one side. While it's folded, you make two cuts from the base toward the point but not enough to sever the dough and then unfold. The square that's now the inside gets eggwashed and the two strips you have get folded over....

Like so

After baking, they can also be filled with just about anything...mmmm, puff cups

Tomorrow I'll be making some more interesting things with the puff dough and we'll be learning Blitz Puff (which, as far as I can tell, is much like flaky pie dough...but more butter). :-)

Day 29 (Cont'd) and Day 30

2010-06-01T05:54:00.000-07:00

As I said, all we did today was laminate our puff pastry dough. Since you've already seen how dough is laminated, I will continue with the danish production pictures. :-)

The third and final piece of danish dough went to String Danish. Now, this is what most people think of when they think danish.

It starts...with a piece of dough.

Rolled out to 20 inches, half of it gets brushed with melted butter

After being sprinkled with liberal amounts of cinnamon and sugar, the dough gets folded in half and chilled

When it's nice and cold, it gets cut into strips

and twisted like breadsticks

Now, since we made small, individual danishes, we got to make whatever shape we wanted instead of just big round ones. Each strip got to do something a little different. Here are some of the ones I did.

A curly S

Cute little swirlys and a little cup

Some kind of twisted knot things that I made up

And a big X thing.....

They all got filled with cream cheese filling and baked...mmm

The finished product gets drizzled with glaze and eaten

*omnomnomnomnom*

Well, that will do it for danishes! We're off school on Monday...so Tuesday we're making things with puff pastry and I'll finish my croissants. :-)

Oh, by the way...

Celeste says *HI* :-)

Day 29

2010-06-01T05:30:00.000-07:00

Because I have a milliongagillion pictures from today and we're not doing anything photo-worthy tomorrow, I am going to divide up the day into 2 parts.

Today we used the danish dough we laminated yesterday to make tasty things.

Because of the yeast, when the dough came out of the fridge, it was very puffy

I flattened it out and divided it into 3 pieces, cutting a 4-inch strip from one side and cutting the remainder in half

The 4-inch strip then acquired a log of almond paste mixture

From there, I folded it over to enclose the filling and cut it into 4-inch pieces

After making some more cuts, *voila* BEARCLAWS!

After being eggwashed, almonded and proofed, they get baked til they're tasty

RAWR!!!!

While those were proofing, I pulled out one of the larger pieces of dough and laid it out on a cutting board.

Mmm, cinnamon and sugar!

This one gets book folded

Then covered with more cinnamon and sugar

Then folded again

Then cut into strips...now the fun part

Each strip is laid out, cut side down....

Then given cute little floppy ears..

Then eggwashed and covered in streusel and baked....

And magically....

BUTTERHORNS! mmmm. (just look at all those layers!)

Sorry for the bad pictures here, folks, I forgot my camera so I took all of these with my phone.

Tune in next time for more tastyness. :-)

Day 28

2010-05-27T04:15:00.000-07:00

Today we started laminated doughs!! We're talking croissant dough, danish dough and puff pastry...mmmm!

Since I don't have any results yet (just making the dough takes 2 days), I thought I'd show you some of the process.

We made the actual dough last night and let it chill in the fridge. When you roll it out, it needs to be between 1/4" and 1/2", in a rectangle (this is harder than it sounds). Then you take your softened, European-style butter and roll it between plastic to get it about 2/3 the size of the dough and lay it on top like so...

Yep, that's 1/2 a pound for the croissant

and a whole pound for the danish dough...

You fold the unbuttered 1/3rd over

and then the buttered side over top of that.

Now you have dough, butter, dough, butter, dough. At this point it gets rolled out...slowly! It gets rolled back down to 1/4-1/2" thick and then you start your first turn (or put the dough in the fridge if it's too warm). A turn is when you fold the dough over again on itself and roll it out.

The two edges get folded into the center

and then it gets folded in half.

This is called a "book fold" and is done twice during the whole process. From here, the dough gets rolled back out to a flat rectangle and put in the fridge for NO MORE than 30 minutes. These doughs are tricky because the dough can't be too warm but the butter can't be too cold or else things will go wrong. When it comes out of the fridge, it's best to let the dough sit for a couple of minutes before trying to work with it. If the butter is too cold it will break or crack and the dough will lose some of its layeriness. After it's rested for a few mintues, you repeat the book fold and roll it out again. At this point it gets put back in the fridge for at least a while (we leave ours overnight). Tomorrow we'll start making pastries out of them!

I also managed to get my doughnuts done tonight which, assuming they pass, means I'll be all caught up! YAY! Things are going a bit better so far than they did in the first half of the term *knock on wood*.

I decided to go simple and just coated them in finely granulated sugar. They are wonderful! Nice and light and moist. WAY better than last time! :-)

Day 27

2010-05-26T05:13:00.000-07:00

Well, I feel a little better. I got my brioche done and checked off, as well as my panettone that was supposed to get done yesterday (truth be told, it actually did get done, just not by 9:15p). I was also able to redo my sweet rolls and get my doughs for tomorrow done. God, no wonder I'm tired!

The brioche is a tricky thing. As I said, it's one of the doughs that has to stay refrigerated, so you can only work with 1-2 little 2 oz balls at a time.

First, it gets shaped. Cute, huh?

Then it gets pressed into the little molds and proofed until it's nice and puffy.

This is what they look like when they come out. From here, you can cut them open and fill them with cream or...something.

They don't have a lot of flavor on their own, but they're nice and buttery so I can see where they'd be good if you dressed them up. I hear that, in loaf form, brioche makes great french toast!

Since my previous sweet rolls melted out from under me, I decided to go with the old stand by and make them cinnamon-raisin with a frangelico glaze and, MAN, did they come out good.

Here they are as they're headed over for proofing. They get a bit fatter when they're ready to be baked.

After they're done baking, they get glazed while they're still warm....mmmm.

The Panettone is an Italian sweet bread with lots of internal garnish. Legend has it that a baker wanted to marry a girl of status but her father would not allow it. The baker invented this bread and it became so popular that he was able to gain enough money and fame that they could be married. It's very sweet. :-)

Mine came out a little dark, they go from being not done to DONE very quickly.

It's filled with raisins, golden raisins, pistachios and candied orange peel.

While it was pretty tasty, I am not a big fan of candied fruit peels so it wasn't my favorite.

Across the table from me, Adam and Erica were having fun temping their milk for their doughs...

Aren't they cute? hehe.

Also, just a little side note...Thanks to Vincent, I now have a webpage name and slogan for my restaurant. Right now it just redirects to my blog, but here it is: www.cogitoergonom.com Cogito Ergo Nom... ;-)

Day 26

2010-05-26T04:52:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I actually got some things done today. Including one of the things I was supposed to do! Imagine that. I've been feeling very frustrated at school, my new partner and I don't jive nearly as well as Celeste and I did and I feel like I'm always behind and always the last one done. Production wise, I'm actually keeping up relatively well. I've only had to do one thing over and it wasn't too complicated. I'm also almost on track as far as getting things done day to day. In any case, I'm not much farther behind than anyone else in class.

Friday we were assigned (for the day) sticky buns plus glaze, sweet rolls plus glaze, brioche and doughnuts as a team. This may not sound like much, but when you have 3 hours to do all of that, things get a little rushed. Now, we'd made our brioche and sweet doughs the night before so they were pretty much ready to assemble, but this is also more complicated than it sounds. All of the dough has to be kept very cold and so there is a lot of running back and forth to the refrigerator.

The brioche I made did not turn out correctly, so I'll worry about that on tomorrow's post. My sweet rolls completely failed...I tried to be clever. I filled them with a brown sugar-butter-frangelico mixture and it just melted out of the buns. It turns out that baking that mixture makes a lovely chewy candy though...I ended up eating some of it and using some of it as a glaze for the empty rolls.

They don't look kind of disgusting, but they tasted good...

So we'll start with the sticky buns. They're pretty much what most people think of as cinnamon rolls, but with a different glaze. The glaze is mostly brown sugar and butter and is put on the bottom of the pan....

Like So. The filling is just cinnamon and sugar.

When they're finished they get flipped onto another pan so that the part with the glaze is now the top and look like this in the end. They were TASTY!

We also made babas tonight. These are interesting little buggers. They're a relatively tasteless dough that you pipe into molds and bake off. From there, you let them stale, then soak them in a simple syrup/rum mixture a few times and cut them open and fill them with creme chantilly. As long as there's enough rum, they're great! ;-P

This is what they look like in the mold when they're proofing. You wait until the dough has almost reached the top before baking them.

Then they look like this. Nothing terribly exciting, I know.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a little better. Supposedly we'll have some time since all we have to do is make dough for the next day. Here's hoping!

Day 25, End of Week 5

2010-05-24T01:50:00.000-07:00

Sadly, I have nothing for you for today. It kind of sucked. We had way too much to do and not enough time to do it and no one got even remotely close to getting everything done. I got about 3/4 done on 3 of 4 projects and I did take a few pictures but I'm going to save them for Monday's post when I can put it all together.

It was a very frustrating day....I need a hug.

Day 24

2010-05-21T01:43:00.000-07:00

We finished up artisan breads today with our autolyse experiments. We made 2 batches of bread, one using the autolyse method and one the regular way.

So what the heck is autolyse? When using this method, you mix your flour and your liquid (water, milk, etc.) until it's all moistened, cover it and set it aside for 30 minutes before mixing in the rest of your ingredients. It's supposed to make mixing faster and make the bread more hydrated, etc. We weren't able to finish our bread in time to compare it to the regular method, but so far, it's just a pain in the ass. The mixing of the rest of the ingredients took FOREVER and I kept finding little balls of yeast that weren't getting incorporated. We'll see what happens tomorrow, but thus far, I am not a fan. Of course, it might have helped also if I weren't completely stupid tonight. We got everything mixed in and set our dough over to ferment...15 minutes later I realized that I had forgotten to put in the starter! Ugh.

So what I DID get done tonight was my Pain au Levain and I got my pugliese and como checked off too.

This is the Pane di Como. It's the Italian version of country white bread. Tasty though!

It's pretty basic and great for sandwiches

Here is the Pain au Levain. It's kind of like sourdough...without the sour.

Got some nice holes going on, some too big for this type of bread. Again, not enough pressure when rounding it.

This one was my favorite, the Pane Pugliese. It's a very nice, light Italian bread.

Lots of lovely holes in this one!! It came out really well. <3

Tomorrow I will have the results of the autolyse vs. regular method for the ciabatta and we'll be starting on rich doughs. Hopefully I will have lots of tastiness to bring home for the weekend!

Day 23

2010-05-20T04:30:00.000-07:00

Today was another bread-filled extravaganza of baking! I finished my rye and my sourdough, which both came out excellent and got my burli checked off.

Nothing I made today got checked off but that's ok! We made Pane Pugliese, Pane di Como and Pain au Levain (that's French for "Pain in my ass"... ;-)).

Here is my Burli from yesterday. See all the nice holes?? It's like ciabatta but softer and (I think) tastier!

My Rye, topped with caraway seeds.

Lots of lovely air pockets with just a few spots Chef said could have used some more mixing...next time.

And my sourdough. It got a bit over-proofed, unfortunately. That's why the color is very light.

Now, unfortunately, those really giant holes aren't supposed to be in this one but part of it is over-proofing and part of it is from not getting all the air pressed out when I was rounding it.

The sourdough tasted quite yummy and I can't wait to make a sandwich out of it tomorrow!

Tomorrow will be a day of experimentation. We're making the same bread (our choice) twice but with different methods and, if I have time, I'm going to make an olive bread...mmmm. <3!

Day 22

2010-05-19T02:43:00.000-07:00

I don't have a lot of pictures for you today since again, half the bread has to sit overnight and I decided to leave my sourdough in the fridge for one more day. I did get to finish my Burli (there are supposed to be oomlauts over that u) but not in time for check off, so we'll get to see the inside tomorrow.

The other bread we made tonight (that's still in the fridge and will be baked tomorrow), was rye.

Every night we make the pre-ferments (similar to a sour-starter but it uses commercial yeast instead of wild yeast) for the next day. They sit overnight and the yeast does its thing so that the bread has more flavor and rises better when it's made.

This is the beginning of rye bread, the pre-ferment...yummy, huh? It was a solid, grainy mass that was really kind of disgustingly grayish. Bleh!

Here is my "oval" Burli. HA!

The Burli is very similar to the ciabatta. It's a very soft dough that gets turned every 30 minutes during fermentation and you have to be very gentle with it. If you handle it too much, it will deflate and then it's sad. You pretty much just have to portion the dough into loaves on the table (or bench, as it's called), pick them up and carefully place them onto the sheet pan, stretching and forming as you do. However it gets set down is how it should stay. Crazy. This is why it's called "rustic"....lol.

Day 21

2010-05-19T02:31:00.000-07:00

We started Artisan Breads today. The term "artisan" is a little loose when it comes to breads since so many bigger stores are now selling products with that name on it. What it comes down to for the most part is, the breads are more hand-made, for the most part, using as little machinery as possible. They are less uniform in the loaf size, shape and color and most of the time you're looking for those larger air pockets that you try and squash out of other breads. I think one of the most important things regarding artisan breads is the lack of chemicals. There should be no preservatives or additives in the bread (other than internal garnish). An artisan bread is usually made with flour, water, yeast and salt. Sometimes milk, eggs or butter will be in there as well, but that's basically it.

Results this week will be slightly delayed as it's hard to get more than one bread DONE per day. We're using a mixture of pre-ferments, starters and instant yeast and so it takes a long time to ferment and proof the bread before baking. But, ON WITH THE BREAD ALREADY!

Ciabatta (and bread's like it) (I just noticed I spelled it wrong on the bowl...way to go!) have to be turned halfway through fermentation so that all the CO2 that builds up and rises to the top gets put back down on the bottom to come up. The dough is very soft and unlike most bread dough.

Mine came out looking like a potato...I told Chef it was Irish Ciabatta. :-)

The crumb came out nicely with nice holes in it and it tasted quite yummy. I may have to pick up some sandwich stuff on the way home in the morning....

We also made Focaccia, which starts out looking like white blobyness in a pan. Again, the dough is very soft and sticky. Lots of olive oil is used to keep it from sticking to both the pan and my hands.

Halfway through baking I sprinkled garlic and parmesan on it...mmmm!

Again, the crumb came out nice and airy. It was really light and fluffy with just a slightly "fried" taste on the edges...delicious!

This is the bottom of it. You poke holes in it with your finger tips from the top just before baking and this is what happens. It's totally SUPPOSED to look like this!

We also made sourdough with our 15-year-old starter but I decided to leave that proofing in the fridge for a couple of days. It will increase the acetic acid (what makes it sour) and the crust will change and become chewier. :-)

Day 20, The End of Week 4!

2010-05-16T02:51:00.000-07:00

Today is also the end of our first 4-week class. Monday, we start Baking 112 (our classes go 111, 112, 211, 212, don't ask me why)!

Well, I finished this half of the term with everything done and all but one thing checked off. That's not too shabby! I got a B+ on our written test yesterday, which is actually a 91 (the grading scale is pretty tough).

Here are the doughnuts before frying.

And after frying...

And after glazing.

I don't think I like this particular doughnut recipe. They were not as light as I feel non-cake doughnuts should be, but maybe that's just me. I like a doughnut that is mostly air. :-)

I got my pitas checked off!

Look, they poofed! They have pockets!

And finally, my apple pie. It got done but not checked off. It didn't get done early enough, sadly.

Pitas are very interesting to bake. You put them in a 500 degree oven (or hotter) for like 3 minutes, flip them over, let them cook another minute and pull them out.

Next week we start on Aritisan breads. ....so much goodness to come!

Day 19

2010-05-16T02:39:00.000-07:00

This week has been really nice in that, because we are doing breads, and mostly with a teammate, we have had quite a bit of time to catch up on other things while we wait for it to rise.

For instance, I was finally able to get my oatmeal raisin cookies done and checked off.

Today was actually pretzel and bagel day. We also made doughnut dough but we'll finish those tomorrow.

My pretzels were HUGE! Chef called them Ginormous (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ginormous) :-)

Here they are after baking. They're brushed with a solution of water and baking soda, salted and baked. They came out pretty tasty, but a bit chewier than I usually like.

Here are my bagels. Again, I like very soft bagels and so these aren't my favorite.

The bagels were made the traditional way, by boiling them before they're baked. Nowadays they steam-inject them to make them softer and larger and speed up the process.

Tomorrow is our make-up day. I have to redo my pitas and my apple pie and finish my doughnuts!

Day 18

2010-05-13T04:17:00.000-07:00

Today was Pita and Pizza day!!

We made pita bread (which does not turn out like the kind you're used to) but I wasn't able to get a picture of mine after baking. It's ok, though, I have to redo them Friday. :-/

This is the pita before baking. They look so innocent on that tray like that, but they're finicky little buggers.

I am pretty sure mine didn't turn out because they proofed too long (sat there after I rolled them out). Only a few can be done in the oven at a time and people kept grabbing it before me. I will post more pictures when I redo them.

I decided to go with a small but thick pizza. It has spinach, mushrooms, garlic and provolone (we didn't have any mozzerella).

Mmm...breakfast!

Tomorrow there are some special things in store...I won't ruin the surprise! :-)

Day 17

2010-05-13T04:07:00.000-07:00

The first thing we did today was finish our butter braids and get them baked off. Now, we did make 3 different types of breads (whole wheat rolls, potato rosemary loafs and a multigrain bread) but I was unfortunately a little bit hurried and didn't get pictures of the last 2. Sorry!

On with the butter braids!

This was my 2-strand braid. I topped it with poppy seeds and fleur de sal (a coarse, tasty salt)...before...

...and after baking...mmmm.

And my 4-strand braid (that's Celeste's in the back). This one had black and white sesame seeds...before...

...and after.

These are the whole wheat rolls. They don't look like much and they kind of scared me since they look like the rolls they used to give us with lunch at school, but they were much tastier.

The nice thing about this week is that because there is so much "sit around and wait" time while the dough for each bread ferments, it was a good time to catch up with what I was behind on. I was able to make my lemon pound cake tonight as well as my crepes...

They finally passed and I took the rest of the batter home...planning to make something tasty on Thursday night!

:-)

Day 16

2010-05-13T03:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry about not posting, my computer is in the hospital (i.e. at Vince's house being taken apart) so I am sans laptop until either he can fix it or I get my new one in a couple of weeks.

Anywho, we delved farther into the realm of basic yeast breads today, making olive rolls and butter braids.

Now, olive bread is one of my favorites so I was looking forward to this one. My mom and I used to get an olive loaf from a shop in Blacksburg and eat the entire thing while we were doing errands....mmmm.

These are kinda fun to roll. You're looking for a smooth top (or as smooth as they'll get with all the olive bits) and a little pucker on the bottom.

Well, I did a "bad" thing and egg-washed these. They were supposed to just get sprayed with water before baking but some signals got crossed (oops) and I egg-washed them...then sprayed them with water. It gave them a nice shiny crust and made it a bit flaky...oh well...very tasty!

I got my butter braids ready to go but didn't have time to bake them. We'll do that tomorrow. Into the fridge they go to retard!

I did get my scones to work FINALLY! They were awesome once I got them right. YAY! Dark Chocolate Cherry Almond....mmmm.

And Adam's Awesome Socks make a comeback for the day....

Mmm...beefy.

Saturday Make-Up Day

2010-05-09T05:08:00.000-07:00

I have so much to redo to catch up that I felt like I had to go in today to try and get some of it done. I was there for almost 8 hours and managed to re-make my crepe batter and my scones which is pretty exciting.

First I made my berry pie.

I also made my apple pie. It's a lot different than the one I normally make so we'll see.

I keep having a problem with the rim of my pie crust wilting. I shape it into a pretty, wavy edge and it melts just enough to let the shape go. It's kind of annoying. I'm going to talk to Chef about it on Monday and see what's going on.

So all I have left to redo is the lemon pound cake and oatmeal raisin cookies. Friday is a make-up day so I'm hoping I can keep up this week and that's all I'll have to do. Wish me luck!

Day 15, The End of Week 3

2010-05-09T04:55:00.000-07:00

Well, I managed to complete the week without being any farther behind than I already am (at least as far as I know, I've got one more check off on Monday).

We started on basic yeast breads today and will be doing them for the rest of the 111 class (the first 4-week term). Now, I still had one more tart to make, but first things first:

My partner, Celeste, and I made the dough for our baguettes and breadsticks

It had to base ferment (rise) for 90 minutes so it was time to finish other stuff

I made my lemon meringue tart. This was the second time I attempted the lemon curd filling. The first time I broke it. This time it broke, too, but Chef Hammer was able to fix it. YAY!

The dough was done fermenting so we rounded it, proofed it and made bread sticks. I filled them with garlic, parmesan and parsley.

Don't they look tasty?? Yeah, they were.

Just before it was time to go home (actually, it was after that, but I stayed til 11), my baguettes came out of the oven. I got to take one home and I sliced it up and made some roasted garlic cream cheese...mmmm. It was slightly overcooked, but good. :-)

Next week we've got all kinds of fun planned. All various types of basic breads and it's very exciting!

Day 14

2010-05-09T04:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, so today went a bit better. I actually got a lot done! We were assigned a total of 4 tarts and after last night, I thought for sure I was going to be behind even more, but not so!!

I started with my nut-caramel tart.

To make caramel, you melt sugar in a pot with a little bit of honey (the honey is a partially inverted sugar and helps to stabilize the process)

It can only be stirred until all the sugar is melted. This is about half melted and it is starting to boil.

OMG it worked!! I put Hazelnuts and Pecans in it and it was tasty tasty. Vincent loved it!

This was my favorite that I made, the fresh fruit tart. It's a layer of pastry cream (pretty standard, kind of like bavarian cream) and then the fruit and a thin layer of apricot glaze to seal it and stop it from oxidizing.

This was my pear frangipane. Frangipane is made with almond paste, which is possibly one of the tastiest substances on the planet. The pear is poached in simple syrup and then baked with the tart. It is also glazed with apricot glaze.

The apricot glaze is a nice, light gel that doesn't impart much flavor into whatever it's on. It does a good job of sealing the tart to keep air from harming it. These tarts were pretty amazing and I love doing them. They've been very popular with everyone. :-)

Day 13 (hmm, maybe THAT'S the problem)

2010-05-06T04:46:00.000-07:00

OMG I got NOTHING done today! I got everything prepped and then burnt my tart crust so I was set back. I had to make more tart crusts (had the dough, just had to bake it), but then they weren't ready in time to put the filling in and have it done before check off. I stayed a few minutes late to make more dough since we're doing tarts again tomorrow. I have a lot to catch up on, I'm hoping to do it this weekend.

This was one of my first tart crusts before I put it in the oven...it looked so hopeful!

I finally got some to come out well!

This is the beginning of the caramel for my nut-caramel tart....it didn't work, I have to start over tomorrow.

Oh yeah, I burned the nuts too. Tonight was just not my night.

On the bright side, the fruit for my fresh fruit tart looks great! I can't wait to make that one tomorrow!

Well, hopefully tomorrow is a better day. Other people were having issues today too...maybe it just wasn't a good day to bake. Oh well. Wish me luck!

Day 12

2010-05-05T01:30:00.000-07:00

I actually got everything done tonight! YAY! I decided to do the lemon chiffon instead of the chocolate cream. Sorry for the lack of pictures, with the lemon chiffon, everything pretty much has to be done at the same time so taking pictures is hard.

The lemon chiffon pie isn't baked so it uses a combination of gelatin and meringue to keep its shape. This is the meringue I made for it.

The finished pie. Passed with flying colors! YAY!! It was quite tasty too. Still need to work on the decorative edge though, the shell didn't hold the fluted edge I did before I made it.

Chef said that if we have time we should scale and mix our tart dough for tomorrow. Now, normally, I am one of the last people finished for the night and I never get everything done. Tonight, however, since we only had to do the one pie, I was able to get my tart dough done as well.

The beginning. Sifting the powdered sugar into the butter to cream them together.

Gah! I broke it. This is what happens when your eggs and your butter aren't the same temperature. Sometimes you can fix it, sometimes you can't. Chef said that adding the flour might help and I should continue but it may be too late. :-/

I fixed it!!! It seems to be ok. I put it in the fridge, we'll find out tomorrow....

By the way, this is what happens when I have a hyper-night in the kitchen.....

Day 11

2010-05-04T02:59:00.000-07:00

I didn't get a whole lot done today since I am behind everyone else, but I did get 2 batches of pie crust dough made and it's ready to go for tomorrow! Friday the class made apple pie and quiche. I knew I wouldn't have time for the apple pie so I made the quiche and there is enough dough left over for at least one more pie. Tonight was berry pie night and I got everything scaled out for it but I'll make it when all my berries are defrosted (it could be a day or two).

I finally got my cannoli checked off and got to take them home. They were good (except for the extra sugar I added by mistake...SHHHH!), but we made them with mascarpone instead of the usual ricotta and I don't like it as much. The texture just doesn't seem right. They also had too much in them for my taste. They were made with pistachios, chocolate and orange zest. Everyone I gave one to liked them though, so that's something.

The finished quiche. It has spinach, mushrooms, garlic and feta.

My frozen berries for my pie. Strawberries, raspberries and blueberries...YUM!

Tomorrow we have a choice: Chocolate cream or Lemon chiffon....I'd like to do the lemon chiffon but it is complicated and if I don't get done, I'm that much farther behind. I don't know. I'll look at the recipe tonight and decide. :-)

Day 9, Continued

2010-05-02T03:40:00.000-07:00

Well, as I said, there was a lot to day 9. We broke into teams of 2 and made cannoli and I have to say, that was a fun experience! You start out with this little ball of dough and then....

It goes through the pasta roller.....DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUH.....

When using a pasta roller, you put your dough through a couple of times on each setting, starting at 1 and working your way up. This is after twice through the first setting.

and a couple of times through 2...

and 3....

aaaand....4....

and finally, now that it's taking up the entire 6ft (7ft?) table, it's thin enough to cut rounds for cannoli shells!

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of what the shells look like when they're on the form before going into the fryer, but here's what they look like when they come out....

After this they get filled (which I didn't get to do yet) and eaten....mmmm...Cannoli!

Like I said, I had to miss school Friday so I could finish moving (which I did successfully thanks to Mom, Linda, Liza, Vince and Ben!), but there is more to come on Monday and I will be playing catch-up next weekend!

Day 9

2010-04-30T01:59:00.000-07:00

Today was a group project day. The way our classroom/kitchen is set up, we're at tables in groups of four, two on each side. Today we made apple strudel in our group and each pair of us made cannoli! I didn't get to bring anything home, unfortunately, none of it was done in time for grading tonight.

I'll start with the strudel since that actually did get done.

We started by stretching the dough out so that it's very thin and pliable on a floured tablecloth (this will make sense in a minute).

When it was fully stretched we sprinkled it with a mixture of panko bread crumbs, cinnamon and sugar.

Then comes the apples and any other fruit and nuts you want to put in it. We chose dried cherries and almonds...mmmm.

When the filling is done, we rolled up the strudel, using the tablecloth to handle the dough (see, I told you).

This is the strudel after it came out of the oven. We topped it with melted butter and decorator's sugar.

One of my teammates, Celeste, modeling the finished strudel. :-)

Since I unfortunately will be missing school tomorrow due to needing to finish moving out of my apartment and I am exhausted, I will post the cannoli pictures tomorrow night.

Before I go,

The Awesome Socks Corner

Tonight the ASC is dedicated to Onyia and Matt....

Yeah, they know why. <3

Day 8

2010-04-29T03:24:00.000-07:00

Today was great! I actually pretty much got everything done (I have to make a few more crepes) and everything came out well. We made crepes, corn muffins and beignets.

The crepe batter was easy but cooking them was a challenge. They are so thin and you have to get the batter in the pan and all even really quickly. Chef wants me to cook off a few more of them tomorrow but mine were ok. They were just a little more brown than she was looking for. We'll see how that goes.

The beignets are little french doughnuts made with a pate a choux dough (the same stuff that eclairs are made of). We rolled ours in cinnamon and sugar and they tasted like fluffy churros...YUM!

The corn muffins were tasty! They haven't been graded yet, hopefully Chef thinks they're good too.

This is the batter for the crepes that Celeste and I made...

Mmm...thin pancakey goodness...good thing Mom got strawberries and whipped cream at the store!

The pate a choux dough is put in a pastry bag to pipe it out. The dough is very basic and there isn't a whole lot of flavor by itself. That's why it's good for doughnuts and other fillings and toppings that have a stronger presence.

The beignets. You can pipe them onto parchment paper and freeze them before cooking or do like we did and drop them directly into the fryer.

Just out of the fryer they look like mozzarella sticks....mmmm.

We rolled them in cinnamon and sugar and they were completely tasty!

And last but not least...

The Awesome Socks Corner

At least he's always prepared for class!

Day 7

2010-04-28T03:39:00.000-07:00

Today was...frustrating. Chef checked the macaroons, brownies and oatmeal raisin cookies I made yesterday and as I suspected, the brownies and macaroons passed with flying colors but I have to redo the oatmeal raisin cookies. She said that the taste and portioning were good but they spread too much on the pan which could be the result of ingredient misporportioning or the dough being too warm. I am pretty sure it's the latter so I should just have to make them again and it should be fine.

Tonight we made scones and lemon pound cake and, unfortunately, I'm redoing both of them. The scones were good but I forgot a couple of minor steps and they just didn't come out as well as they could have. Chef said she would sign off on it, but I would prefer to do it right. I'm not sure what went wrong with the pound cake. It collapsed in on itself and the texture was slightly off. I'm going to have to stay late on the nights I don't work to scale the ingredients and make up these 3 items. Never a failure, always a lesson, right? Ugh.

I put the scones in the oven and realized I'd forgotten to roll them out more so that the dough would form a pocket around the filling and brush the tops with cream and sugar....way to go.

They were ugly but tasty. I made dark chocolate, cherry and almond. I will try again when I have a chance. Scones are something I'd like to get good at. :-)

The lemon pound cake stuck to the pans (greased them but forgot to flour) and did not rise as much as it should have. The flavor was pretty good but the texture was not as smooth and dense as it should be.

The brownies from yesterday...this recipe is not the best but they came out well within those parameters. We have been issued a challenge for a better brownie recipe. If anyone knows a basic brownie recipe that's out of this world, let me know!

While it's very frustrating to feel like I'm falling behind and needing to redo this stuff, at the same time, it will make me a better baker in the long run. It's definitely teaching me about the interaction of ingredients and conditions.

THE AWESOME SOCKS CORNER
(get it? Awesome socks? Awesome sauce? ...Ok, well, I though it was funny)

Adam wore his "Shark Attack" socks today, they were great!

LAND SHARK!

Day 6

2010-04-27T03:17:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of the second week of school! We made brownies as our group project and then coconut macaroons and oatmeal raisin cookies on our own. There is a lot about cookie making that I wasn't aware of and it's been quite informative. For example, unlike for cake batter, you want to barely mix your ingredients, especially the butter and sugar, to avoid incorporating air. If there is too much air, the cookies become dry and tough when they're baked or the dough spreads too much in the oven. It's CRAZY!

As a group we got our ingredients scaled out for our brownies and melted the chocolate and butter on the bain marie (essentially a double boiler but with a pot of boiling water and a bowl on top).

Mmm, Chocolate!

Then I mixed the eggs and the sugar (not too much!)

Jessica tempered in the chocolate (poured it slowly while mixing so as not to cook the eggs) while I held the bowl.

Swirly goodness!

In go the dry ingredients and our walnuts....almost done!

Hey look, a pan of brownie batter! We were so busy after this that I didn't have a chance to take a picture of the finished product but we'll get graded on it tomorrow and I'll let you know how they turned out.

The coconut macaroon recipe is a lot different than the one I used at Christmas...I must admit, these are so much better! This is the batter after it's cooked but before it's baked....

Ooooo, Macaroons!! They were so good!

My oatmeal raisin cookies were good but I think the dough was too warm when I baked them because they spread more than they should have. We will see what Chef Wild says tomorrow.

I'm excited about tomorrow! We're moving into quickbreads so we're making Scones! We get to choose our internal garnish...I'm thinking cranberry...mmmmm.

Today, Adam's socks were especially awesome, featuring Le Chat Noir! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Chat_Noir)

I love these socks!!

Day 5, The End of Week One!

2010-04-24T01:22:00.000-07:00

Tonight we continued our exploration of ingredients and managed to get through the sweeteners! We learned about different sugars and liquid sweeteners, how to make simple syrup and inverted sugar (the sugar, sucrose, is broken down into two parts, dextrose and levulose which is better for certain kinds of baking).

After lecture it was time to do our first official baking! Remember the ingredients we scaled yesterday?

Well, here are the shortbread cookies I made! I'm afraid I overcooked the first batch (oops!) so here's the good batch of them. They are quite tasty!

This is what the biscotti looks like before it's baked.

And after it's baked the first time. From there it gets sliced diagonally and baked again to dry it out (this seems to take FOREVER!)

And here is the finished product. Isn't it pretty?! It came out really well and I'm very happy with it!

For me, I think I might add a bit more sugar and extracts, but I like strong flavors and I don't dip mine in coffee or anything....maybe I will dip a couple of pieces in chocolate and see how they come out. :-)

Well, we made it through the first week! Next week we start on some serious baking and it's all very exciting!!

And tonight in the sock corner we have....

Beer mugs!!

Lol, Adam's socks.