back in the swing of things...

I am finally feeling like I am almost caught up on my school work and getting back into my routine.  This week was curds & financiers in Pastry Techniques.  Loved the curds, super unimpressed by the financiers.  I had only ever heard of this tiny cake on Top Chef and other shows, so I figured it was going to be some exciting new technique.  They were invented so that the people on the floor of the stock exchange could eat them without getting their fingers sticky - semi-interesting fact of the day!  The only one I liked was the carrot cake.  My group made the original recipe (see the super-pale ones with almonds on top), and something went wrong because they were not supposed to be albinos and they had no flavor or sweetness at all.  Bummer. 

But the other recipes were very exciting.  The first curd we made was a basic lemon curd cake filling, which we later used as the filling for the moist golden cake we made the first week of class.  Then we topped the cake with the French buttercream (the one I keep saying I don't like because it tastes like straight butter).  Turns out lemon curd is the antidote.  The combination of the three components was delicious!  I'm not even a big yellow cake fan, but this one was great, and the lemon really cut the richness of the buttercream.  We also made another lemon curd that we used to make lemon bars with the pâte sucrée dough, also from the first week.

The last recipe we made was homemade graham crackers.  I think this was my favorite recipe because it was just so cool to make something like this from scratch.  And I actually think I liked the homemade ones better than the storebought.  We made them round so we could use them to make moonpies with the marshmallow from last week, but I could just as easily make them the traditional rectangle shape. 

In cookies class, we cut out our sugar cookies and used our fondant toppers - so exciting!  These pictures are going to look pretty much the same as the ones of just the toppers, but oh well, I am proud of my art work :)  We even made one cookie into a cookie-pop. 

Then we made some more roll-out cookies.  My group used buttered rum dough and then we topped it with caramel ganache and non-pareils.  But we ran out of the caramel ganache before we ran out of cookies, so we also made some with dulce de leche instead.  Those were my favorite, the flavor went really well with the buttered rum.  I also liked the peanut butter sandwiches that another group made, they tasted almost like Girl Scout cookies. 

Finally, in Cakes class, we made a cream cheese icing (my favorite!) to assemble the carrot cake from last week.  Carrot cake is one of my favorites (if you remember, the top tier of our wedding cake was carrot cake, cream cheese icing, and lemon mousse), and it lived up to my expectations - delicious.  I piped about 6 of the carrots in the pictures (not too bad for my first try, but I will definitely need some practice!).  We also made a chocolate chiffon cake that we are going to use to make Black Forest cake next week.  Can't wait!

I also started looking into some outside cake-decorating classes today.  I had thought about signing up for the ones at Michael's, but when I decided to go to baking school, I thought I would learn all the techniques there.  Well, it turns out they don't really teach them in any of my classes, but they just kind of expect you to know how to do them.  I'm getting by, but I am way behind some of my classmates and I need extra practice, so I downloaded the Michael's schedule today and I think I am going to start the beginning classes in March - and hopefully I can talk a couple people into doing it with me!