Parties, Cakes and John Larroquette

This past weekend Dave and I had a little pastry party.  This way we got to see some of our friends and I got the chance to practice making all of the fun things I’ve been learning how to bake in class.  It went so well too!  I served blueberry crumb pie, apple turnovers, mini éclairs, napoleon, mini fruit tarts, almond pear tart, Butterfinger cheesecake, chocolate bread pudding, homemade vanilla bean ice cream and langue de chat; There was so much food!  It was really fun getting to have more people try my baked goods and it felt so good hearing that they liked everything.  I did have a minor “Brooke moment” though, as I was taking the bread pudding out of the oven, it slipped out of my hands and overturned on the open oven door.  I managed to save most of it though, so it wasn’t so bad.  Plus, a couple of the mini éclairs were a bit “explosive” when bitten into, but apparently only the ones that Josh and Rachel ate, which is just hilarious fun if you ask me.

Monday we had our first module written exam.  I know that I answered a couple of questions incorrectly, but I definitely got all of the extra credit questions, so I’m fairly confident that I did well.  For example - do you know what the French name for a napoleon is?  And no, the answer is not "le napoleon."  The grade on the test will then be averaged with a couple of other things (the practical, a quiz and a homework assignment) and that will be our grade for beginning pastry.  Wish me luck, we find out our grades at the end of this week. 

Since beginning pastry is now over, we’re starting cakes!  We made a simple butter cream icing, a genoise cake and a sour cream coffee cake yesterday, and yellow butter cupcakes and chiffon cake today.  Julie and I messed up on the coffee cake – we over-creamed the butter and sugar so that our topping wound up sinking down into the bottom of the pan.  It still tastes good, but it’s definitely not right.  I made a passing comment to one of our classmates about how it was messed up and Julie looked at me and was like, “Don’t be so hard on yourself!”  Her tone kind of took me aback; Needless to say I was surprised.  I hope that I don’t come off that way to my classmates, as someone so focused on being perfect that I shirk everything else; But there’s no denying that I want to be good.  I want to do things well and it’s going to bother me when I don’t get something right.  That’s what’s so frustrating about culinary school.  Sure, there are a few things that you make more than once (So far: pastry cream, pate a choux, icings, etc) but for a lot of things you only make it once during class.  Obviously there isn’t a lot of time to dwell on individual recipes, but it’s aggravating that you only get one chance to get something right.  I guess it just means that I have to take the time to get more practice in at home.  At least as far as cakes go, most things will be freezable.  Thank goodness, b/c I’m already starting to feel overwhelmed by the amount of product that we have to take home with us – I’m going to have to start giving all of my stuff away to the culinary students to try!  There is definitely way too much stuff sitting around our apartment.

Some funny side notes from this week so far:

1. While looking for a new soap container at my part-time job, I found a secret stash of condoms.  Who’s getting it on in our tiny office bathroom??
2. I made a comment about John Larroquette during lunch at school today and all but one person looked at me blankly – they had no idea who he was and had never heard of Night Court!!  I feel old.
3. They also didn’t know who Bruce Campbell was, and I felt sorry for them