ML vs. The World + Drinking at 2pm + Buttercream Roses = 1 Hilarious Week

I've got you hooked with that title, don't I?  Was it the ML or the drinking?  Oh, it doesn't matter, on with the blog!

I'm going to have to give you a little bit of background info first:  so there's this woman in my class, let's call her mustache lady - ML for short.  First, trust me when I say that there shouldn't be ANY confusion about where she gets this nickname from - I'm not talking about a little peach fuzz like almost all woman have, this is a full on mustache.  Does she not have a mirror? Tweezers? Razor? Wax?  I do not have the answer to these questions, getting her better grooming is not why we're here.  I didn't really have any issues with her during the first couple of weeks - she seemed nice enough and I'm not the type to dislike someone without good reason, but as it turns out, she's really quite mean.  She talks down to her partner all the time, barely lets him do anything and makes him clean up after her.  She's also a hoarder, and that's where this story really begins.  Whenever there's a shortage of equipment in the classroom, she always globs onto it and won't share with anyone else (what is she, 5?).  She's also seemingly obsessed with the plastic wrap.  Now yes, it does take awhile at the end of the day when everyone is trying to wrap up their products but so what?  If you don't get the roll of plastic wrap right away will the world come to an end?  Probably not.   So we're cleaning up at the end of Wednesday and all of the sudden I hear ML yelling, very loudly, at one of the girls who stands at the next table over from her.  I can't really make out what she's saying until I hear quite clearly, "You should have more respect for your elders!!" Really?  ML is definitely one of the oldest people in the class, but who cares?  Age doesn't make any difference in the kitchen, and we're all at the same level, so why make an issue out of it?  It turns out that this other girl went to grab the plastic wrap that apparently ML had "dibs" on.

*shakes head*

Is that really something to start yelling about in the middle of class?  Not really, but alas, I am not ML - who knows what makes her tick...

So when I came into class on Thursday, I found out that apparently Chef Katie had told ML and the other girl that they had to stay away from each other.  ML interpreted this by taking over my and Julie's table and telling us that we had to stand at her table now.  Whatever.  I'll miss standing next to our table partners, but I'll live.

After class we were all supposed to go bowling together (in full chef's regalia to boot), but the bowling alley was going to kick us out at 3pm for a private party so we decided to postpone and a few of us wound up heading over to Dave & Busters to drink and blow off steam.  It's pretty funny going to a Dave & Busters to drink at 2pm when the only other people there are moms with their kids.  Also, it became readily clear to me that when you start drinking that early, no topic becomes off-limits.  I know a LOT more about my classmates now.  We also joked that we should each buy ML her own roll of plastic wrap and stack them up underneath her table at the beginning of class...I still haven't ruled this out completely, we'll see if there are any recurrences of her craziness first.

The rest of Thursday was pretty relaxed.  We each made a carrot cake (yum!) and a variation of buttercream called "rose paste" which is used (surprise!) to make roses and other cake decorations that often need to be made with a stiffer icing.

icing carrots ftw!

We practiced making roses and general piping techniques and before you knew it, the day was pretty much over.

 Julie's and my practice roses

 The cake that I made for the culinary students after they shared their ravioli with us

after only learning how to do them the day before!

manic swiss dots on the sides of the cake

However, my favorite part of Thursday had nothing to do with roses or getting ousted from my work table.  While we were on our lunch break, a few other girls and I decided to run out to get something quick to eat.  We stopped at a shopping center, split-up and then met back up at the car to go back to school.  So, we're all getting back in the car and there are 3 of us trying to squeeze into the backseat.  The other 2 girls are already inside, and I'm halfway in when all of the sudden, the car starts to move!!!  Now I want you to take a moment and imagine the hilarity of this situation: 4 girls sitting in a car, the driver completely unaware that only the left side of my body is currently in her moving vehicle.  I start yelling, "Hey!" repeatedly, all the while my right leg is trying to quickly hop along with the rest of the car.  At the same time, there are a bunch of women working at a nail salon laughing hilarious as this scene unfolds.  Our lovely driver finally noticed I wasn't completely in the car and I'm able to finish getting in.  I looked at her with wide eyes and said, "What the hell!" and then started laughing so hard that I didn't stop until well after we got back to the school.  I thought she did it on purpose, but I could tell she was mortified once I got in the car, she felt so bad.  Obviously, I'm not mad, it was too funny!!  We did tease her a lot for the rest of the afternoon about how she was subconsciously trying to do away with me, but let up by the end of the day.  I really need to start wearing my Brooke Safety helmet everywhere I go!

It's always important to practice Brooke Safety

In other school news, we finally got our cumulative grades for the first section of pastry school: Baking Basics.  I got a 96!  I'm beyond thrilled.  Right now we're in the middle of the cakes module, and after that it's on to breads, advanced pastry and then we're done!  It's hard to believe how fast we're moving through everything, but I'm having a really great time and everyday I feel more convinced that I made the right decision.  As scary as it was (and still is!) to leave my job to start school again, I am infinitely happier and honestly, I can't wait to see what happens next.

Goodnight friends!  Shabbat Shalom.

Swiss Rolls and Rex Manning Day

I don't know if you've ever seen my Mom's buche de noel before - it kind of looks like this, but way more awesome.  I've always wanted to be able to make that cake as well as my Mom does, so you can imagine my excitement when I found out that last Friday we were making swiss rolls, which are the same base.  It's made with a sponge recipe, which is kind of tricky - it's a very thin, flat cake made in a half sheet pan and it's very annoying to roll up!!  We used raspberry jam mixed with whipped cream as the filling, and I'm pretty sure that when my Mom rolls hers up, she rolls it up on the same parchment that it was baked on, but Chef Katie had us invert them onto another sheet of parchment and roll them up from there.  This almost made things more difficult, because the top of the cake kept sticking to this new sheet of parchment, but Julie and I managed to roll it up in the end. 

In an effort to not wind up being 500 lbs by the end of this class, Dave and I both agreed that I wouldn't take home every single thing that I wind up making.  It's so difficult because unlike most of my classmates, I don't have a lot of family nearby, so I can't give perishable items to them.  Plus, I no longer work at a job where I have a plethora of co-workers, so I can't share with them either.  Therefore, the last 2 products I made I wound up donating to the culinary students, which serves 2 purposes - someone gets to eat it and it gets me in good with the culinary students so that when they're doing their menu projects, they'll ask us to taste them :)

Here are some pictures of the swiss roll that I split up and gave to the students in kitchens 2 & 3:

Yummy Goodness!

On Monday we did more prep for the rest of the week and also wound up making a German's Chocolate Cake.  Despite popular belief, this cake didn't originate in Germany.  In fact, the chocolate used to make it was invented by an American named Sam German.  He created it for the Baker's Chocolate Company and they named the chocolate bar after him, hence - German's chocolate.  These cakes look really amazing, but since neither Dave or I are fans of coconut, I had no problem donating this one to the rest of the school as well.  We made a fudgy chocolate cake base, and then the filling is made of butter, eggs and sugar cooked together which is then mixed with vanilla, coconut and chopped pecans.  Then we applied a crumb coat & top border with chocolate buttercream and stuck chopped up nuts, coconut and cake crumbs to the sides and put it in the fridge.  Once it was chilled slightly, we poured a cooled ganache on top and let it pool in the middle of the border we'd piped - it looked so cool!!  Again...too bad I don't like coconut!

Then, Chef Katie showed us how to pipe with white chocolate.  Just like with my genoise cake, I didn't really want to write anything typical, so I wrote the first thing that came to mind:

Happy Rex Manning Day!!

When one of my classmates saw this, she came barreling at me and gave me an attack hug.  Nothing brings two people together like Empire Records :)

On another note, I've started practicing some of the cookies from my last module at home.  So far I've made chocolate chip, double-chocolate macadamia nut and peanut butter cookies and yes - I will be sending out carepackages this week.  Don't be sad if you don't get one because chances are good that if you don't get one of these, that you'll be first to get one of the next ones!  I hope you like cookies!

Also - We haven't gotten our final grades for the first module yet b/c the computer system at school crashed, but Chef Katie did give us the grades for our practical and written exams.  I got a 90.5 on my practical (respectable) and 106 on my written exam (!!!!!) 106?  I guess I really did get all of the extra credit questions right. ;)

I hope that you all have a great day, and that you get your stomachs ready  for cookies!

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?)