back to school, back to school...

well I am officially back in school for fall semester and even though I thoroughly enjoyed the super-long break, I am really excited that classes finally started again.  I am only taking two classes this semester - Restaurant & Production Desserts and Individual & Production Pastries - from now on referred to as RPD and IPP, you are welcome. 

The first, RPD, is with the same Chef I had for my classes over the summer, so I knew a little more of what to expect in our first class.  I think that we will mostly be making plated desserts in that class, and after what we produced in the first class, I am sooo excited to see what else we will be making. 

Our first dish:  Chocolate bread pudding souffle, in a berry and red wine broth, topped with whipped mascarpone, an almond florentine tuile, and a marzipan twig.  So pretty and so yummy!  This was one of those where I thought it was going to look really great and taste just so-so but I was so surprised at how much I liked it.  And I ate the entire thing, even though Trev and I are supposed to be on a strict pre-foodie-vacation diet (more on that later).  When that berry (raspberry, cherry, blueberry, and strawberry) broth soaked in to the bread pudding, it was so delicious.  And the mascarpone really set it all off.  The only thing I would have changed at all would be to serve the sauce a little warmer because it took us so long to arrange all the garnishes that by the time we tasted it, it had cooled off a bit too much.

I took a better picture of a technique that I learned last semester in Contemporary Cakes and that we used again for the marzipan twigs.  Technically it is edible, but it is really just there for looks.  It is a little ball of marzipan, dipped in hot isomalt sugar and then allowed to drip into a long spike as it cools and hardens. 

I was a little nervous about my second class, IPP, mostly because we have a brand new teacher for it.  We met her over the summer, but we didn't really know what to expect once we got into class.  I also didn't know half of the names on the class roster, something that hasn't happened since my first semester.  Today was a little bit of a slow start, and we didn't get much done - just some layers of colored frangipane for petit fours next week that I forgot to take a picture of.  I am hoping that once she gets into the swing of things, we will do some more exciting things. 


Oh yeah, and there is another Alyssa in that class - for what I am pretty sure is the first time in my life.  So not only do I have to start signing my last name to my papers, I actually have to sign my maiden name because the school still hasn't changed it even though I turned in all the paperwork last November.  Talk about a major identity crisis!  Especially since I was just starting to get used to my new name....sigh.  

Ok, so back to our originally-football-based vacation that is turning into a gourmet travel experience.  Trevor is a big Notre Dame football fan, and has always wanted to go to a home game.  We figured we would get around to it later in life, but then my baby bro started his PhD at Purdue.  Well next Saturday, Purdue is playing at South Bend, so we are going to fly up there and meet him to go to the game.  Since we have to fly into Chicago and Trev has to take a full 7 days of vacation at a time, we decided to hang out in Chicago for three days before we trek down to South Bend. 

Now no offense to any Illinoisians (??) out there, but Chicago has never really been on my list - we usually choose vacations to beaches, mountains, somewhere with lots of outdoor activities, etc.  But then we started doing some research and realized that a lot of the famous chefs we have always seen on TV (we watch a lot of Food Network and all of the cooking competition shows, big shocker there, huh?) have restaurants in Chicago.  I also realized that there is quite a microbrewery scene in Chicago.  So we have planned out a full three days of tasting, sipping, and more tasting.  Ok, maybe a little sightseeing in between.  And even though this was originally a trip to make my hubby happy, I couldn't be more excited. 

I will take lots of food pictures for the blog, since I will miss my classes next week.  Side note, you know you're finally in school for the right thing when you are really bummed to miss class instead of figuring out how many classes you can skip without affecting your grade - that may or may not have been me the first time around. 


A few other things I have been making recently:

A cake order for another Sweet Alyssum customer



Chocolate chip cookies with pecans and salted toffee bits

Chocolate mini-cupcakes with white chocolate Italian buttercream and  salted toffee shards

Salted nutella fudge for Trev's work meeting today

it's a girl!

ok, nobody freak out...this cake was for a customer!

actually, this may be the cake order I have been most excited about so far.  I have been seeing these gender reveal baby shower cakes all over pinterest, etc, and I love the idea, but obviously had zero occasions to make one.  If you haven't heard of them yet, the basic idea is that when a pregnant mom finds out the gender of her baby, she "reveals" it to her family, friends, etc, by getting together and having a cake that is gender neutral on the outside, but then pink or blue on the inside to tell whether it is a boy or a girl. 

My hairstylist Mark's wife is pregnant, and they were going to have one of these parties for their family.  When Mark told me he wanted me to make the cake, my mind started racing with ideas.  And the best part was that he didn't even want to know the gender until the party, so not only was I one of the first ones to know, he pretty much let me run wild with picking flavors, etc - best kind of cake order there is.  I love the chance to get creative and come up with ideas that a customer might not even know to ask for.  The only real request he had was that I try to evoke the cake all the way to the right in the picture below, from the movie Meet Joe Black, for the outside design of the cake. 

The decorations were a bit of a challenge for me, but I ended up using gumpaste to make the colored balls that were inspired by the tiny fruits on the movie cake.  Then I added the question mark to continue the gender reveal theme, and just some basic buttercream borders to try to duplicate the feel of the movie cake. 

Finished cake

For the inside of the cake, I decided to try to make ombre pink layers (another pinterest idea, of course).  You can kind of see the ombre in the picture, but I think next time I would try to make the layers more distinguishable with more food coloring.  I was just afraid to have flourescent pink cake and pink cake-eaters' teeth, etc. 

I made a vanilla butter cake and then soaked it in a champagne simple syrup.  Then I used my strawberry pie filling recipe between the layers.  Last, I iced in a white chocolate Italian buttercream.  As usual, I tasted little bits of each component, but Mark told me the finished product was delicious and all the flavors blended well together.  Success!  All in all, I was super pleased with how this cake turned out, and soooo excited to be part of something so special for a family.

Also, a big thank you to Mark if he reads this - not only has he given me the chance to make a cake for him (after only seeing pictures of my work and never tasting it), he talks me up to his other clients and I have already gotten one cake order through him and another lady asked for my card when I dropped off his cake.  Thanks Mark for helping me spread the word!!

during the assembly process

Also this week I made a cupcake pull-apart cake for Trevor's big quarterly work meeting (at the beach this time), plus extra cupcakes.  The pull-apart was lemon cream cupcakes with strawberry pie filling (yes, this was extra from Mark's cake) and American buttercream (not my personal favorite, as you all know by now, but requested by the meeting organizer).  Then for the extra cupcakes I repeated the flavors of Aliana's birthday cake (the Tangled one I blogged about a few weeks ago) - chocolate cake with chocolate chocolate chip mousse filling and cream cheese icing.  It was a big hit at her party and some of the same people were going to be at the meeting. 

Lemon cream cupcakes with strawberry filling and American buttercream

Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate chocolate chip mousse filling and cream cheese icing

I also made red velvet whoopie pies for a co-worker's birthday.  Yes, I know we work in a bakery, but I just will never be able to resist baking treats as a birthday present.  It is just a foolproof way to make someone feel special on their birthday without having to know what to buy them as a gift.  Garth's favorite dessert is red velvet cake, but we sell red velvet cake, cupcakes, etc already, so I decided to switch it up a little and make red velvet whoopie pies with cream cheese icing.  And of course I brought extras for my other co-workers. 

Last but not least, even though I make about a hundred cakes a week at work, every once in a while I have to take a picture of one or two that I really like and want to remember.  I thought this tie-dye cake was really cool and such a breath of fresh air after all the roses, Disney princesses, and superheroes I look at all week.  I took the picture after I finished airbrushing it, but it also got turquoise peace signs and cream cheese borders later.  Such a cool technique, and I definitely wanted to remember it.

august break

well I haven't blogged much lately, mostly because I have a break from school for most of August, so I haven't been doing nearly as much baking.  Oh, and add the 100 degree Florida temperatures to that and it is just hard to get motivated to turn on my oven.  But I have made a few things in the past couple of weeks, and I also have some pictures to post from my Wilton classes (better than late than never, right?).  Oh yeah, and good news - I got all A's for the summer semester!! 

So here is a little catch up on what I made in the second and third classes of the Wilton Course #2 I was taking.  I may have skipped the fourth class, because all we were going to do was bake another cake and then ruin it with gross Wilton buttercream, learn how to do a basketweave, and then use all of our flowers from the first few classes to decorate it.  Well, I am embarrassed to even give a cake away with that icing, and I definitely wasn't going to eat it, so that would just be wasteful.  Plus, I know how to do a basketweave from work, and I personally think it is kind of ugly and out-dated (sorry to anyone who loves it!).  Lastly, I decided I would much rather save all of my flowers to use on future cakes.  So, completely out of character, I skipped class and sat on the couch drinking wine and watching bad reality tv (ok, the second part is completely in character).

Anyways, in the second and third classes we used royal icing to make flowers.  I really like this technique because you make the flowers ahead of time and then save them for months.  They also hold their shape better than buttercream. 

Class 2 - clockwise from top left - roses, primroses, apple blossoms, and rosebuds

Class 3 - clockwise from top left - lilies, more roses, violets (yes, I know that violets aren't pink), and daffodils

Like I said, between the heat, and getting some home improvement projects done during my break, I haven't been doing much baking at home.  But my mom came to visit last week, and I got to try out a coffee cake recipe I had been saving for a while (Trevor doesn't like breakfast or raspberries, and I couldn't really justify eating an entire coffee cake by myself). 

It was great, but I loved the raspberry and cream cheese layers way more than the cake layer.  If I were to make it again, I would make the cake layer thinner or perhaps replace it with a different cake. 

Raspberry cream cheese coffee cake

I also made some rosemary parmesan foccaccia one night for dinner while she was here because of a deal I struck recently with Trevor.  Not really sure how it came up, but he made a pork loin on the grill about a month ago and it has pretty much become my new favorite food.  I told him that if he would make it once a week for supper, I would make fresh bread to go with it.  You can't really see the rosemary in the picture, but I used some from my garden so it was so delicious and fragrant.

And then this week I was off work on Thursday, so I made treats for Trev's work meeting again.  It is just too hot for rich desserts, including chocolate.  Well, at least during the day.  So I wanted to make something a little more summery and refreshing, so I modified a recipe I found on Pinterest - Key Lime Swirl Cheesecake Bars.  I changed some of the proportions a little (namely adding more lime curd than it called for, and I am so glad - I even wish I had added more.)  I thought they were great and Trevor said his co-workers did too. 

Lost a little bit of the marble effect by adding so much curd, but still pretty, no?

I had way too much lime curd left over and I love a good curd, so I gather up some other ingredients that needed to be used and made a mini tart.  I made a crust out of pretzels, butter, and condensed milk.  I found a recipe online that just called for pretzels and butter, but when I made it, it was not sticking together at all.  So I used the only thing I could find in the fridge - half a can of condensed milk.  Not the best experiment I ever tried, but not bad either.  The crust had good flavor, but it came out too thick - its quite a trick not to go to thick in a mini tart pan unless you are using a rolled dough.  I also expected it to be a little saltier because of the pretzels - I think next time I will add a little more salt. 

Crushed pretzel crusts

Then I candied some jalapenos from my garden - another recipe that didn't quite turn out how I expected, but I would make this mistake again.  I made a brown sugar caramel that is intended for candied nuts and tossed the jalapenos in it.  The caramel didn't stick to them like I had hoped, but it gave them a great sweetness that went great with the lime curd. All in all, a great taco-night dessert, even if it needs a few tweaks!

Finished Product - Lime Curd Tartlette with Pretzel Crust and Candied Jalapenos

well, I survived both practicals for this semester and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!  Ok, I did better than just survive, and I am so relieved they are over.  I find those exams so stressful and nerve-wracking, I could never be on one of those cooking competition shows.  A lot of times people taste my food and say they can't wait to see me on Top Chef or one of those shows one day, and even though I greatly appreciate the compliment, all I can think is how I would never survive the stress and anxiety that would give me.  I would never sleep! 

So anyways, I made it through my chocolates practical on Wednesday and even though I'm not thrilled with the 92 I got, it's still an A, so I'm happy.  And I got my grade from my cakes practical and I was so excited - 100!!! That is my first perfect score on a practical, and even better, Chef told the whole class he thought my cake was the best :D  a little embarassing but mostly awesome!

For Chocolates, we had to make a truffle, a bonbon, and a molded chocolate utilizing all three chocolates (dark, milk, and white), a fruit, and a nut.  We were allowed to come up with our menus/recipes ahead of time, which I very much prefer.  I chose to do milk chocolate amaretto truffles rolled in toasted almonds, dark chocolate bonbons with white chocolate raspberry filling, and chocolate soft caramels dipped in dark chocolate and finished with sea salt.  I was super happy with all my flavors (I quadrupled the raspberry in the bonbons after tasting it and was finally pleased with the flavor), but my caps were a little thick on my bonbons and my chocolate soft caramels were almost rock hard.  They were delicious, but I cooked them just a little too long and they turned way too hard and chewy.  I still ate all the extras, but since they weren't how I intended, I lost some points there. 

On the left, each of my chocolates, on the right, my final plate

The bonbons were probably the part that made me the most nervous, because Chef is a tough judge on shells (supposed to be thin, shiny, and without air bubbles) and caps, so I decided to invest in a chocolate mold and practice at home (plus I wanted one anyways!).  Well my practice runs didn't turn out great, because I haven't figured out where to buy the high quality chocolate that we use at school yet.  I used Ghirardelli chocolate chips, which is about as good as it gets at Publix.  But it just wasn't the same, the chocolate didn't melt nearly as thin, and it made my shells and caps super thick.  But once I figure out how to get my hands on some couverture, I fully intend to keep making bonbons at home. 

My first practice run at home - white chocolate filled with some extra lemon curd I had in the fridge and raspberry jam - see how much thicker these shells are than my practical??

Second practice run at home - dark chocolate filled with extra caramel ganache from my cakes practical

Now I just have to make it through two more written exams - cost control and chocolates - this week and I will be done for the semester.  I love being in school, but I am still pumped to have almost five weeks off before fall semester starts. 

Oh, and a quick update after my little pity party about work last week - I ended up doing all the cake orders (I think it was 16 in total  including the wedding cake (luckily it wasn't stacked, so all I had to tackle this time was the decorating aspect and the customer was very pleased), but my manager helped me fill all of the other cases in the bakery - thank goodness!

The wedding cakes - she had her own stand, so I didn't have to stack them!.

Another one of my cakes order from Saturday - this sucker took FOREVER with all these details and then I showed up Monday and found out the people hadn't even picked it up :(

a little bit of everything!

well, I have had a very sugar-filled week and I have updates on just about every pastry-related aspect of my life.

first, I finished a cake today for my third (!!) cake order for my business.  This one was for a little girl who wanted a cake based on the movie Tangled.  I'll have to admit I have not actually seen this movie (although now I want to), so I did a little research and found a great coloring page online of the main character, Rapunzel.  A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that I really needed to learn some new techniques for cake decorations, so for this cake, I stepped outside of my royal icing comfort zone and tried a frozen buttercream transfer.  A friend from school had told me about this method (thanks again Maymuna!) and I had been wanting to try it, so this was the perfect opportunity.  I was pretty happy with how Rapunzel turned out, but I definitely learned a few things that I will improve on next time I make a transfer like this.  I also made some gum paste flowers for this cake, a technique I learned this week in the first class of my second Wilton course - more on that later.

Gum paste flowers for Aliana's cake - unfortunately you can't really see the lustre dust (sparkles!) in the picture

This cake was one of my favorite flavor combinations.  They asked for chocolate cake and said I could pick the icing.  I didn't want to go too crazy, since I knew it was for kiddos, but I was really excited to be able to get a little more creative this time.  I made a rich chocolate fudge cake (and didn't overflow my mixer!! again, more on that later :D) I went with a chococolate-chocolate chip mousse for the filling and then frosted it with my trusted and kid-friendly favorite, cream cheese icing. 

One of my favorite fillings - chocolate-chocolate chip mousse

Ok, as promised, a little more info on my second Wilton course.  The first class was all about gum paste flowers.  I was really excited to learn some of these because so far I only know how to make buttercream flowers, which you pretty much have to make and use immediately on a cake.  However, gum paste flowers can be made way ahead of time and they dry hard and last pretty much forever.  We learned button flowers and pansies, and now I can't wait for Course 4 to learn more about gum paste.  The rest of this course, starting next week, is going to be royal icing flowers - another new technique for me that I am very excited to learn.

Button flowers

Pansies

And, I am soooo excited to show off my new mixer!!  After making the first couple of cake orders and either overflowing the mixer bowl or having to split the batter up and use a hand mixer to finish it, Trevor and I decided that it really was time to invest in a bigger mixer if I am going to keep making sheet cakes.  Now don't worry, I still love and plan to cherish and use my beautiful KitchenAid that Trevor got me first, but I am already enjoying my new Cuisinart 7-qt mixer that was delivered this week.  I had been eyeballing it for a while on Amazon, waiting for the price to come down, until I found out I could order it from Bed Bath and Beyond and use one of those awesome 20% off coupons they send out (I was a little shocked it wasn't on the exclusions list, but hey, I'm not complaining!).   Once we decided to pull the trigger and order it, I couldn't wait for it to get here and I think it was the longest week and a half of my life while it shipped.  However, I couldn't ask for better timing, because it was waiting for me on Wednesday night when I got home from my Contemporary Cakes practical exam, which just felt like the biggest reward ever for surviving my toughest practical yet. 

That's right, it's already practical time!  I feel like this semester flew by! Oh wait, that's because it did.   An already short 12-week semester instead of 16, and then we missed a week for July 4.  This past Wednesday was my contemporary cakes practical, and I was more than a little nervous.  We were assigned an inspiration and we had to come up with a crunchy base, a cake layer, an insert, a mousse, and a garnish.  My assignment was a Twix bar, and I went with a sugar cookie base, caramelized jaconde on the outside and another layer of jaconde on the inside, caramel ganache for my insert, and caramel milk chocolate mousse.  Then I used some more ganache on top of my cake and made a garnish with extra sugar cookie and caramel drizzle.  I was really happy with the appearance of my cake as well as the flavor.  The only area where I think I really could have improved was my layers - they didn't have the contrast or colors that Chef is usually looking for, but I guess I did the best I could with a brown, brown, and brown candy bar and the 5 hours I had to make and garnish the cake.  Also, I think the flavor tended more towards caramel and didn't emphasize the chocolate as much.  Delicious all the same (especially for a caramel lover like me), but not as close to my inspiration as some of the other cakes.  All in all, I am pretty satisfied with how it turned out.  Now I just have to wait until next week to find out my grade...more than a little stressful, but I am just glad it is OVER! 

Finished product

Cross-section of my layers

Close-up of my garnish

I have one more practical exam for Chocolates class next week (I have to make truffles, bonbons, and molded chocolates in 5 hours), and then three written finals and I am done for the semester. 

But before I even start to think about that, I have to survive work tomorrow.  I am so nervous because I am working completely by myself - I always work with a full-time decorator since I am still an apprentice.  However, due to scheduling conflicts (more than a little sarcasm and eye-rolling implied here), I am stuck by myself on the busiest day of the week.  That means I have to do all of the cake orders (sometimes up to 20 on a Saturday, I did 16 last week), PLUS fill all of the rest of the items that we stock in the bakery, PLUS there is an order for a wedding cake.  This is a lot even for two full-time decorators, so I can't believe they are sticking one little apprentice with all of it :( and I am just terrified that it will be a complete disaster.  I really hope that my manager will make the wedding cake, since I have not even been trained on that AT ALL, but I have a bad feeling I am going to be left high and dry to do it all on my own.  I just hope I don't let anybody down that has a cake order for tomorrow.  Most of the time it is really rewarding to think about how important the cakes I make at work are for a lot of people - how they are often a huge part of a very special occasion for a complete stranger, and I can help make that day extra special for them.  But it is also a lot of pressure!  Wish me luck....

as soon as I get in the swing of things...

well, I was finally starting to feel more comfortable and confident in Chocolates and Contemporary Cakes, and then I realized the semester is almost over!  I have my practical exam in Contemporary Cakes next week, and then Chocolates the week after.  I'm super nervous about the Chocolates one, especially because I picked a recipe I have never made before.  Don 't worry, I am going to practice that one at home first. 

The practicals this semester are way different than last semester.  Rather than showing up and being given an item to make from memory, we were given certain parameters and get to plan our own menus.  For chocolates, we have to make one truffle, one bonbon, and one molded chocolate, incorporating all three types of chocolate (dark, milk, and white) and a fruit and a nut at some point.  I decided to make milk chocolate and amaretto truffles rolled in toasted almonds, dark chocolate bonbons with white chocolate raspberry filling, and soft caramels dipped in dark chocolate for my molded chocolate.  It's the soft caramel recipe that scares me because I have never tried this specific one, and I have had trouble with other soft caramel recipes at home - I seem to always take them off the heat too soon and they turn to mush.  That would be a major problem for my exam because they have to be firm enough to cut in perfect squares and dip in chocolate - part of the grade is based on appearance.  But I went through all of the other molded chocolate recipes and just couldn't get excited about any of the others, so here goes nothing!

In Contemporary Cakes, we had to draw a card with the "inspiration" for our cake.  About half the class drew classic cookies (chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, etc) and the other half was candy.  I drew Twix, and I'm actually pretty excited with that choice.   We have to have a crunchy base, a sponge cake, an insert, and a mousse, and of course a garnish.  Since a Twix has three very specific components, it makes it kind of easy to choose what my different layers will be.  And I am really excited about my idea for the garnish, I just hope it turns out how I am imagining it in my head!

Anyways, here is a little catch-up of what I made in class since my last post.   In Chocolates, it has been more bonbons and molded chocolates, and then last week we started learning taffy and nougat.  However, cutting the recipes in fourths like usual made them too small and everyone's taffy and nougat turned out rock hard, so we are going to redo them next week. 

My first molded chocolates - Orange butter ganache coated in dark chocolate

My "toucan" bonbons - white chocolate with two layers of ganache inside - passion fruit and mango

My pecan and peanut divinity - too dry, but still tasty!

My hard-as-a-rock molasses taffy

Bonbons with Refresh tea infused ganache - didn't think I would like these but they were DELICIOUS!

In Contemporary Cakes, we have been coming up with our own recipes based on inspirations that Chef assigns us.  For the first one, he just gave us two flavors and we had to have a crunch base, a cake, a fruit insert, and two bavarians (mousses).  My flavors were passion fruit and coconut, so I made a coconut Japonaise (meringue) for the base, passion fruit bavarian, passion fruit gelee, jaconde (sponge cake) soaked with coconut rum, and coconut bavarian.  Then I topped it with more passion fruit gelee and garnished it white chocolate designs and toasted coconut.  I was very pleased with the appearance of this cake, but the flavors weren't my favorite.  I'm not a huge coconut fan anyways, but both bavarians didn't have much flavor, and the gelee had WAY too much gelatin and was super rubbery.

My cake diagram

The next week was all classic cakes and pies - apple pie, German chocolate cake, lemon meringue pie, etc.  We had to take the classic recipe and make it "contemporary."  I drew carrot cake and I couldn't have been more excited.  One of my favorite classic cakes and I have been stuck on the carrot-cream cheese-lemon combo since our wedding (it was the top tier).  My partner and I decided on a graham cracker crust (fancied up with some cinnamon, brown sugar, and walnuts), two layers of carrot cake, a cream cheese mousse, a lemon curd insert, a lemon mousse, and a caramelized jaconde on the outside.  We garnished it with lemon curd, candied pecans, and grated carrot shards (ok, Chef made the carrots for us because we didn't have the equipment at school....).  I loved the way it looked, especially when he cut it open and we could see all the layers an different colors.  I also loved the way it tasted, although the lemon overpowered the cream cheese mousse a little. 

In fact, I loved it so much I just can't seem to get off of my carrot cake kick, and I made carrot cake cupcakes filled with lemon curd and iced with cream cheese icing yesterday for Trev's work meeting.  I think lemon curd might be my favorite thing I have learned in culinary school so far - it is so easy and sooo yummy! 

I also made a berry trifle yesterday for Trev and I for the 4th - angel food cake, strawberries, blueberries, sugar-free vanilla pudding, and whipped cream.  It was so easy (I may have used a few shortcuts) and I think it is a perfect summer dessert - light, refreshing, cool, and of course utilizes some of those berries I can't resist buying when they are on sale.  To me, the 4th is just not a cake holiday - and I never realized it was to other people until I started working at Publix.  I think the only time I really ate cake growing up was at other kids' birthday parties - my mom served fruit in the summer, cookies and pumpkin pie for the holidays, and cheesecake on our birthdays.  I still am not a fan of regular birthday cakes (shh, don't tell my boss, but I can't stand our buttercream at work!), and although I have obviously come to love a lot of other kinds of cake, there are just some holidays when I am astounded by the amount of cakes and cupcakes we sell.  I feel like a broken record every time a holiday rolls around..."I didn't know this was a cake holiday!"

Alright, I've got two practicals coming up and a test in Cost Control next week, so it's time to get back to the planning and studying!  Thanks for reading :)

this is really happening.

some days my life really makes sense, and I know exactly what my plans and goals are, and exactly how I'm going to get there.  And other days, it all still seems really surreal to me.  This time last year, I was sitting in an office on a construction site, going over lines and lines of spreadsheets every day.  And now, I am halfway through culinary school, working in a bakery, and starting my own business.  I still can't believe it's really happening.  Some days it really hits me how much things have changed in the last year.  On top of all the career-related stuff, Trev and I have also gotten engaged, married, and bought our first house in about the last year.  Some of this reflecting is probably brought on by a recent trip to where we got married, but most of it is everything I have been doing lately to try to get my business off the ground.

And I use the word "business" lightly, because it's not at all official, legal, or legitimate in any way.  But I figure I have to start somewhere, so for right now, business cards, stickers and a sparkly new business email address are as far as I have gotten.  I plan to make it official eventually, but I had intended to wait before I even got this far.  But my plan to start getting my name out there by sending treats to Trev's work meetings, etc, has worked better than I ever expected, and I have already been getting some interest, so I figured I better go ahead and make it look like I'm the real thing.  Fake it till you make it, right?

It was very exciting when my business cards and stickers arrived in the mail (yes I designed them!), for about the first five minutes.  Then I started to have a confidence crisis.  Who do I think I am?  I know that no one else will believe in me until I do, but it is really hard to take myself seriously sometimes.  But once I got over feeling like a poser, I decided to just ignore all those doubts and go for it full-force.  What's the worst that can happen?  Well, for one, the stickers turned out way too small to read...so once these run out, I will have to work on a new design.

Oh yeah, and despite the fact that I feel like I already spend all my extra money on kitchen and baking equipment, it turns out I'm still not really equipped to make big cakes, and we may have to start looking for a bigger mixer.  I feel awful about this because when Trev surprised me with my Kitchen-Aid for Christmas a couple years ago, it was pretty much the best present he had ever gotten me and I was super surprised.  And so I feel really guilty and ungrateful telling him it isn't quite big enough any more.  But as he reminds me, when he picked that one out, baking was a hobby and neither one of us had any clue I was going to do this for a career.  This is a good time to mention that I have pretty much the most supportive, encouraging husband who believes in me ten times more than I do and I am sooo grateful for that.  There is no way I could do any of this without him telling me all the time that I can make it, and pushing me to put myself out there.

Okay, enough mushy stuff and back to the real news!!   I have already had two real, paid-for cake orders, and they weren't even from people I already knew.  The first one was from the wife of one of Trev's co-workers, and the second was from a lady I met at the hair salon. 

The first cake, for Mia, was a quarter sheet yellow cake with fudge icing.  She is an exchange student from Germany and I was told she likes Minnie Mouse, the beach, and acting.  I was really happy with how my royal icing Minnie came out. 

The second was a 9" round cake, vanilla with vanilla frosting (this is another big challenge for me...I would love to keep my standards really high and only do exciting gourmet flavors and elegant, artistic decorations, and maybe one day I will have enough of a reputation and client base to be able to do that.  But right now, I feel like I am not at a point where I can turn down any work, and so I may have to make a lot more vanilla cakes than I would like to for a while.  I at least did an Italian buttercream instead of an American one, being the frosting snob I have become lately, but I haven't heard back whether they liked it or not....).  This one was for a seven year old's birthday and the theme was Spongbob.  So I whipped out the royal icing once again (I know, I am really going to have to learn some more techniques for this type of thing) and made a bunch of Songebobs, Patricks, and jellyfish.  Oh, and one more comment on my amazing hubby - I cut my finger really badly when I was assembling this cake, and so he stepped in in a huge way, finished slicing the cake layers, helped me finish making the buttercream, getting it colored and into bags, and cleaning up everything.  I ended up icing the cake with one hand while I held the other one above my head to try to slow down the bleeding....one more reminder I have a long way to go before I am a professional! 

Well, now I guess the only thing is to sit back and hope for more orders!  I want to make more than cakes, but I think that is probably one of the main things people will order for a while.  I am going to keep handing out my business cards at every chance and slapping my stickers on the boxes of treats I send to work with Trevor. 

Meanwhile, in school we have been doing more and more bonbons in Chocolates class, and lots of mousse cakes in Contemporary Cakes.  Two weeks ago, my bonbon flavor was mango, and this past week I made two - praline milk chocolate and honey hazelnut.  We also got to airbrush them last week, which was exciting, but unfortunately I didn't luck out with flavors that have very exciting colors to go with them, so mine were all neutral earth tones.  I did really like the way mine tasted though, especially the honey hazelnut.  I filled them with ganache, but then I also put a whole toasted hazelnut in the center of each.  So yummy! 

Praline on the left, honey hazelnut on the right

In Contemporary Cakes, my group made a Calvados torte two weeks ago.  It was tasty - chocolate cake with brandy poached apples, chocolate mousse, and caramel chocolate mousse, surrounded by caramelized jaconde and finished with caramel glaze - but the best part about it by far was the garnish.  We crumpled some phyllo dough brushed with butter and sprinkled with sugar on top of  a piece of tin foil and baked it to make the big fan.  Then we made mini apples out of marzipan and dipped them in caramel and then hung them from skewers to create spikes on top of them.  I loved this effect.  During this process, we had a lot of leftover caramel, so we used it to make the big piece in the back.  This is my favorite garnish so far. 

Outside and inside of the Calvados

The other groups' cakes - Jamaica on the left and Chocolate Duo on the right

The other groups' cakes - Efendi on the left and Carola on the right

Last week my group made a banana cake, but we haven't garnished it yet so I don't have pictures. And this week we got to design our own cakes based on two flavors we were assigned - more on that soon!