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

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?)

I'll Have My Meltdown With a Side of Creme Brulee Please

Hi Friends!

For the last couple of days I have been partner-less at school.  Well, without my original partner anyway.  Julie and her family flew to Vancouver to participate in the last few days of the Olympics (Jealous?  Why yes, I believe I am), and so Thursday I found myself working on my own for the first time.

I was pretty nervous, but a little psyched as I very stupidly convinced myself that not only could I accomplish the days tasks alone, but that if I could, it would prove just how awesome I am.  Let me tell you this: I am not awesome.  I handled the first recipe pretty well - creme brulee.  I even made a "cinnamon" variety that I think came out fairly well.  Any excuse to use a blowtorch in every day life, right?  But then came the creme anglaise *shaking fist at sky* Damn you creme anglaise!  I completely screwed it up.  I cooked it too long and basically wound up with sweet scrambled eggs and had to make it over again.  I tried to console myself with the fact that other people had to remake other things that day (like the pastry cream that we made next), but it all comes down to the fact that I got cocky and made a mistake.  I started to have that feeling when I know that a breakdown is coming on but I was determined to not be that girl, so I took a deep breath and finished out the day.  Amusingly enough, we were pooling all of our creme anglaise together so that Chef Katie could make us ice cream for breakfast the next day, but guess what?  School was canceled on Friday!  People down here really can't handle the snow!  Granted, I certainly didn't want to be out driving in the snow on Friday, but that has to do partly with the fact that they don't know how to plow or salt the roads - it's dangerous times downstate.  In the end, I don't know what happened with the creme anglaise, but we had to throw out all of the pastry cream we'd made because it had all gone bad over the weekend before we could use it for anything.

That brings us to today.  My partner Julie was out again today (and will be tomorrow as well) because she got strep throat on the trip back from Vancouver (dumb planes), so I wound up working with another girl whose partner was also absent today.  Chef Katie asked if anyone wanted to "adopt" her  as their partner for the day (poor choice of words...) and I said that I would, which led to her calling me "Mom" or "Mommy" for most of the morning.  Other than the weird parental connotations, we worked fairly well together, so if her partner is out again tomorrow then I will have no problem being paired up with her again.  We almost screwed up our pastry cream (forgot to add the butter & vanilla at the end) but caught ourselves in time before it was ruined.  We also made pate a choux, which I made before in the 3 week course I took at ICE last summer and chocolate ganache which of course led to chocolate topped eclairs and cream puffs!  Luckily there aren't too many, but our kitchen and refrigerator our incredibly overrun at the moment and it isn't doing my waistline any favors.  I hate to throw things out, but I'm having trouble getting through everything!  I'd love to be mailing out carepackages, but unfortunately the things we've been making lately can't be shipped/need to be refrigerated, etc. and I have like, 2 co-workers now as opposed to 80+.  I'm sure I'll figure something out though.

I'm really looking forward to having some of my local friends over in a couple of weeks for a taste testing so that I can practice what I've been learning.  I already find myself making mental checklists for things to make, and which ones have parts that can be made in advance.  Hooray for feeding people!

I hope that you enjoy reading this blog as much as I enjoy writing it, and I promise to try making things that can be mailed out soon :)