Chocolate Mousse and Bossy Boots

Today we finished the practical portion of basic pastry.  2 days, 3 recipes.  Everyone had to make a chocolate mousse and then we were each randomly assigned 2 other recipes; I wound up with eclairs and langue de chat (milano cookies).

This practical kicked my ass.  No, seriously.  I don't know if it was the fact that all of the sudden I couldn't ask questions without losing points, or if I was just nervous, but I made a lot of mistakes.  I wound up having to make my chocolate mousse 3 times because the chocolate kept seizing when I added the egg mixture too it, which made it look more like chocolate chip mousse (not good enough).  Luckily, the way the practical works is that you have to make your recipes on your own (no help) and then you can start individually presenting your products to Chef Katie by 11am and you have until 12:30 to present; Any minute after 12:30 and you lose points.  It's just lucky that all I had to do on the 1st day was to make the chocolate mousse and the pastry cream for my eclairs for the next day, but it was so frustrating!  However, by the end of day Wednesday, I was able to present my chocolate mousse to the Chef (with time to spare) and even though it wasn't perfect, I still did really well.

Today I had similar problems with the pate a choux dough for my eclairs, although thankfully I only had to make them twice.  I forgot that the amount of eggs in the recipe was merely a "suggestion" and wound up putting too much in.  But I made them again and they came out pretty well.  Plus, Chef Katie said that my langue de chat were perfect!  Whoo hoo!  All I wanted out of this practical was to have her say that at least one thing that I made was perfect, so at least I succeeded at that.

Our grade for the first module is based on an average of 5 things: a quiz and homework packet that we already completed, our 2 days of practical and then an exam that we have to take on Monday (Guess who's helping me study this weekend? Thanks in advance Dave!)  Then we go immediately into our lecture on cakes before going back into the kitchen for the next module.  I'm excited for cakes, but more so because I just want to experience it and see how I like it.  I think that there are a lot of people who want to be cake decorators, but then realize that it's just not for them.  I didn't go into this program with a strong urge to wind up as a cake decorator, but I really just want to see what I'm best at and what I really enjoy making.

On a slightly unrelated topic, there's a woman in my class that I privately refer to as "bossy boots" or "bb" for short (can stand for so many more appropriate names, if you catch my drift).  In case you hadn't guessed, I'm not overly fond of her.  She has a penchant for taking other people's equipment without asking, and then acting completely nonchalant when you catch her with them.

"Oh, this pastry brush? It was just sitting here on the table...how am I supposed to know that it's yours?  Just because it has your name written on it 5 times, your initials engraved into it and has a microchip inside of it that squeaks out your name...I mean c'mon - I'm not a mind reader!"

As far as I'm concerned, she and mustache lady should run away together and never look back.  But anyway, she was making turnovers today and they completely exploded in the ovens.  Cherry filling was oozing out everywhere, and I'm sorry, but it made me chuckle.  I know, I know...I'm petty and no matter how annoying I find her, I shouldn't take pleasure in her accidents.  Especially since I had my own issues in the kitchen these past couple of days, but I can't help it.  She is a bossy boots and I do not like her.  Harrumph.

This Sunday I'm having some friends over to finally taste all the yummy things I'm learning how to make, so I'll definitely post more about that later.  In the meantime, I will leave you with one of Chef Katie's many pearls of wisdom.  This is one of her many theories regarding the right baking ingredients:

Butter is better

Shortening is good

If you use margarine, you deserve to have poopy diapers thrown at your head

(who is she - Paula Deen?)

MVP of the Day and the Return of the Finger Cot!

The last couple of days have been pretty hectic, but at least the random heavy snow has stopped for now (I don't want my classes to be canceled anymore).

Yesterday we made meringues, paris brest and chocolate mousse and got to sit for the lunch being made by the culinary students, so it was jam-packed.  I love meringues, whenever I have them it always reminds me of the holidays when my Mom makes meringue mushrooms with her buche de noel - yum!  We were allowed to make them a little more interesting by making variations with chocolate or almond, vanilla and lemon flavorings.  I chose chocolate (big surprise) and worked hard on not letting myself get overwhelmed by working alone.  Chef Katie made a joke that by now I've worked on my own as much as I've worked with a partner.  She told me that my meringue batter looked perfect and then, as I was piping it, she announced to the whole class that my meringues made me MVP that morning!  Some of my classmates even came over to watch me piping - needless to say, it was a huge ego boost and I was on cloud 9 for the rest of the day.  After that we made the pate a choux dough for the paris brest and baked our circles.  Chef Katie then taught us a neat trick for using our leftover pate a choux - mix it with a handful of parmesan cheese and any other spices or flavorings you want - I used black pepper and garlic powder, and then pipe into little mounds.  These little cheese puffs are amazing!  Dave loves them and I'm already planning when I can make them again.  We wound up filling the paris brest with our chocolate mousse, which looked beautiful.  Usually they're filled with a praline cream, but we were practicing making the mousse, so there you go!

Today Julie came back!  She's still feeling pretty terrible, but she's no longer contagious so she toughed it out and made it back to class.  It's kind of funny because even though I got my partner back, we were all working individually for most of the day.  We started pies, which meant that today was a day of preparation - making our pie doughs and a cooked apple filling for tomorrow.   I also suffered another stupid cut today.  As Chef Katie would say, my chef's knife jumped up and "bit me" and I got a small cut one one of my fingers, which means I was cursed with the dreaded finger cot/blue condom.  I think everyone cut themselves today - curse of the pie doughs I guess.  Lots of blue finger cots.

Since I didn't have to go to work this afternoon, I brought a lot of my leftover class projects over to my old co-workers.  It was nice getting to see them again, and I always love getting to feed people.  Plus, now my fridge isn't overrun with so much stuff, which is good for my waistline!

I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow of the fabulous apple pie and fruit tart - yum!