The Fall of Napoleon

Did you know that the napoleon pastry has nothing to do with this dashing fellow, but refers to being from Naples, Italy?  Too bad.  I love a little history with my baked goods...

Yesterday we started working with puff pastry, which made me deliriously happy.  I love puff and was definitely excited to make it from scratch for the first time, I actually found it very soothing.  It takes a long time to make, but it's definitely fun and worthwhile to know how to do.  After we finished the dough, Chef Katie showed us how to make twists, turnovers, palmiers and napoleons.  Oh how I love napoleons!  First you have to dock the dough (poke it full of holes) so that it doesn't rise crazy high, like "puff" is meant to do, cut into 3 equal pieces and then bake until golden brown.  Once cooled, you spread poured white fondant onto 1 sheet, drizzle with chocolate ganache and use a toothpick to make the trademark spiderweb patterns.  Then you make pastry cream and fold whipped cream into it to make it lighter and so that it will hold it's shape a little better.  Then layer the lightened pastry cream in between the 3 layers and voila! Napoleon!

So now here is where my story gets sad.  I put Julie's and my napoleons on a tray in the walk-in fridge and went to eat lunch.  I had just finished my sandwich when one of the girls from my class sits down next to me and says, "You're going to hate me..."  Never EVER a good sign.  I guess she was putting her own tray on the rolling rack and didn't realize that there was already a tray on that level and accidentally pushed our tray off.  The napoleons were ruined when they fell on the floor.

Noooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now I know that it's just a dessert, but I was definitely upset.  I didn't really say anything at first, I was just so surprised.  One of the other guys I was sitting with complimented her on coming forward and that's definitely true.  I'd much rather her tell me that she knocked my pastry onto the floor than to go back into the walk-in myself and find it laying there. I was just sad that the one thing I'd been looking forward to making was ruined before I could eat it, let alone take a picture of how pretty it looked!  I manged to take some pictures after the fact though.  Amazingly enough, Julie's still looked pretty much the same, just a little noticeable damage:

Mine however, were another story:

So sad.  Oh well.  The girl who did it felt so bad that she insisted that Julie and I split and take her Napoleon home, which was unnecessary, but really sweet.  I later went up to her and told her I wasn't mad and to thank her for telling me in the first place and for giving us her product.  Eating some of it tonight wasn't the same as eating my own, but I do appreciate the gesture.  On the plus side, most of my palmiers came out well and my apple turnovers were really tasty.  One of the techs at my job told me this afternoon that she doesn't even like turnovers, but that she loved the ones that I brought in to share - definitely a little ego boost.  

Tomorrow my class will start our first practical.  It lasts for 2 days and we have to make 3 things.  Everyone has to make a chocolate mousse tomorrow, and then we each have to make 2 other things that we picked out of a hat; I wound up with eclairs and langues de chat, which are essentially the sandwich cookies used to make milanos.  I'm pretty nervous actually, because even though Chef Katie is a fun teacher, I also know that she's a pretty tough grader and she's already told us that that the likelihood that more than 2 out of the 19 of us would make a perfect mousse is slim to none.  I've also never made the langues de chat cookies before.  They were made on the day when every team made different cookies than everyone else.  I'm sure I'll be able to follow the recipe well, but it still makes me nervous.  Anyway, I should probably go and review my notes on these 3 recipes before class tomorrow.  Goodnight, and I'll let you know how my products turn out over the next couple of days :)

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 :)