so much going on!

I have been so busy this week, I don't even know if I can fit it all into one post!

First, I graduated from Wilton class #1.  I was super happy with my final cake:

We finally learned the ribbon roses in the last class and also practiced handwriting and a few other things.  I signed up for the second class, and then an hour later my work schedule posted and I had been scheduled for some night shifts (I had only worked mornings so far so I thought I would be ok...).  So I had to postpone that, but I still plan on taking course #2 eventually because it covers way more flowers, including lilies, daffodils, violets, and more roses.

Work has been going well but I am just struggling with getting back into the swing of things.  I guess I took too much time off because working 30 hours plus going to school plus keeping up the house is kicking my butt.  I know I should just be grateful for all of these opportunities, and believe me I am, but I am tired!  I can barely find time for homework and housework, much less blogging or anything else fun!  Anyways, I have been decorating cakes and lots of other desserts at work, and this week we got in the Easter egg cakes.  Today I decorated 12 of those, which was fun because I could get a little more creative than with the usual cakes.  My borders and flowers are getting better, but they still need some work.

I did find a little free time this week to bake at home, including one of my favorite cookies, Oatmeal Scotchie Bars.  The neighbors brought us a housewarming bottle of wine, so I wanted to come up with something quick, easy, and yummy to thank them.  And of course I saved some for Trev and I...

I also brought home some of the puff pastry scraps from school last week and attempted my own jalousie (a streudel-ish pastry based on a type of window), based on what we were going to make in class this week.  I used some granny smiths that had been forgotten during strawberry smorgasbord, and some extra homemade caramel sauce I had in the fridge to fill it.  It was wonderful!

In pastry techniques, we baked all the jalousies that we made up last week.  We had a wide array of fillings to choose from (raspberry cream cheese, bluberry, cherry, pear, pear frangipane...), so there was a lot of tasting involved.  We also made some palmiers (aka elephant ears) from the extra puff pastry.  They look so simple and they are so easy to make, but they were amazing straight out of the oven!  I guess any pastry with that much butter would have to be, right?

The other recipe we made in pastry techniques was a fun and completely new-to-me technique.  We baked chocolate roulade in very thin layers and then cut it into even strips.  Then we covered it in French buttercream, and then rolled the strips up together.  When we turned it on its side and iced it, it looked just like any other cake.  But the fun part is that when you cut it open, it has vertical layers instead of horizontal.  I think this is a great idea to change up cake presentations, and would be a fun surprise for any occasion.  The only challenge is that not every texture of cake will roll as well, so only certain recipes would work.  I still plan to try it!

In cookies and tarts, we made an oatmeal-chocolate chip cookie tart with a graham cracker crust, and a rustic apple tart.  Neither was my favorite recipe.  The oatmeal-choc chip was good, but not amazing, and it really needed a scoop of ice cream on top.  I liked the crust on the apple tart, but since the recipe was French, it didn't call for any cinnamon or nutmeg, which I personally think should be a requirement for baking with apples.

In cakes class, we finished our Charlotte Royale.  We had made the outer mold and filled it with the mango mousse last week, so this week we basically had to pull it out of the freezer, cover it in apricot glaze, and eat it.  I loved the mango mousse.

We also made opera cake - layers of jaconde soaked in coffee syrup, coffee buttercream, and ganache.  Yum!  And that meant we got to practice writing in chocolate on top of all the tiny little pieces of cake.


All in all it was a good week, just crazy busy!  Learned a lot and had a lot of fun, but I am wiped out.  So I am off to work on some homework while I can keep my eyes open!

creams, tarts, and mousse

Well this should be a fairly short and sweet (no pun intended) blog post, because all of my classes went fairly smoothly this week. 

In pastry techniques, we were focusing on pastry creams and fillings.  We made a caramel pastry cream to fill our cream puffs and eclairs from a few weeks ago.  Then we made crème Chiboust and made a dessert by lining a mold with ladyfingers, and then filling it with alternating layers of ladyfingers, the Chiboust, and raspberry preserves.  We also made a praline flavored cream to fill our Paris-Brest from a few weeks ago.

Cream puff filled with caramel pastry cream

Ladyfingers filled with Creme Chiboust and Raspberry Preserves

Paris-Brest

In cookies and tarts, we have completely moved into tart world.  We got to taste our Bakewell tart and Pear Frangipane tart from last week, and we also made two more tarts.  The first was a fresh berry tart made with coconut pastry cream.  It was beautiful, but I didn't like the coconut flavor at all.

The second tart was a chocolate and peanut butter mousse tart.  Peanut butter mousse is always a favorite of mine, and then it was topped with a chocolate ganache.  Yum!

Finally, in cakes class we lined a mold for a Charlotte Royale with slices of the jaconde that we rolled up with preserves last week.  Then we made a mango mousse to fill it.  We also used two layers of almond japonaise from a few weeks ago inside the mousse.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to taste it yet, because it has to freeze and then we will glaze it and cut it next week.  I'm pretty excited about it, I love mangos but I have never had mango mousse.

Our mold before we filled it with the mousse

finally some flowers...wilton class #3

Finally a Wilton class where I am more pleased with what I learned than frustrated with the shenanigans!  There were still a couple little things that irked me (my 52-tip master set doesn't contain three of the tips I need for the basic decorating, etc) but all in all, I was really excited about what we learned in class yesterday.  Although when she said last week that we would be learning flowers this week, these weren't exactly what I had in mind.  But they did come out pretty and I can use some of the techniques to get creative and make some other flowers.  And next week is finally roses!

First we worked on drop flowers, which are WAY simpler than they look.  Basically put a star tip straight down, squeeze, and turn your wrist.  Such a pretty effect for hardly any effort!

Next we worked on rosettes...fairly simple but can be used for a lot of things.

Something I really wanted to learn was leaves.  Again, surprisingly simple with the right tip and technique.  I still need to practice these, but I think I will have the hang of them in no time.

And finally shells...although I didn't learn any new tips that helped me any more than the tips from school (these are the ones I have a lot of trouble with at school because we use them all the time in Cakes class and I am way slower than everyone else and they never come out as nice-looking).  I guess I will just have to keep practicing until they get better.

We got to use all of these techniques to decorate cupcakes and then we also learned two larger flowers, a mum and a pom pom flower.  I don't like the pom pom flower all that much but I think the mum is pretty and again, that technique can be used for so many other things.

Oh, and I guess I did kind of learn a rose already, but the Publix way instead of the Wilton way.  I had a great first two days at work, and I learned way more than I expected!  I thought as an apprentice, I would have to do a lot of cleaning, carrying, watching, and practicing on paper for a while.  Nope, they put me right to work and let me try just about everything we had time for!  The first day, I decorated about 48 key lime pies, 12 mango key lime pies, and 6 strawberry kiwi pies.  If you have seen the Publix commercial recently for key lime pies, that's exactly what I was doing!  Except in real life you have to move a lot faster! 

The next day was a little less busy so I got to try a lot of other things.  I did more key lime pies, just because of the sale, but then I also decorated 12 chocolate cream pies and 6 tres leche cakes.  Then I learned how to do balloons, banners, streamers, and confetti, and decorated four cakes with those.  These are the ones that are in the big cooler and people come along and pick one for us to write Happy Birthday on or something.  So that means people might actually pick one of my cakes and buy it!  I find that super exciting. 

And speaking of writing on cakes, the other decorator was on break when a man and his kids came by needing a message written on a cake.  So I went for it, and wrote "Happy 99th Birthday Grandma Mary!" on it.  No pressure with him standing there watching me!  But it actually came out pretty nice. 

I wish I could use my phone at work to take pictures of all the stuff I am learning, but unfortunately you'll just have to use your imagination.  And then at the end of the day I learned how to make the Publix roses.  None of these went on actual cakes because they are a lot harder than I thought and I couldn't get them quite right yet.  They were definitely getting better by about the 20th one but I still need a lot of practice and it was time to go, so hopefully they will get better next week. 

disasters and deliciousness

Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?  Ok, I'll start with the good news.  This week in Cakes class, we made a DELICIOUS modified tiramisu.  We used a ladyfinger sponge, then soaked it in a coffee-brandy syrup.  Then we covered it in mascarpone mousse and rolled it up into a "roulade."  Then we covered it in a coffee-flavored Italian buttercream and finally finished it with a chocolate glaze.  I don't think I will ever eat tiramisu at Olive Garden again!  It was delicious...and none of the components was all that complicated.

Modified Tiramisu

Ok, now for the bad news.  Both pastry techniques and cookies class this week were certified disasters.  First, in pastry techniques, we were supposed to use our puff pastry dough from two weeks ago to make napoleons and several other items.  However, when we got into the kitchen, our dough was still frozen solid.  I mean, these things were like bricks.  You could have wrapped a threatening note around them and threw them through someone's window.  And even after letting them sit out in the sun for over an hour, we had to fight to roll them out.  So we ran out of time and only got to make the napoleon (three layers of puff pastry filled with mousseline cream and topped with fondant glaze and chocolate).  And my group's mousseline wasn't set enough when we went to cut it and we ended up with a huge mess on a plate.  But at least it was delicious!

Classic Napoleon

Then, in cookies class, we were supposed to make three tarts - Linzer, Pear Frangipane, and Bakewell.  When we went to get the doughs out of the freezer, the Linzer doughs were nowhere to be found.  Completely vanished.  So that one was scratched from the list.  We moved on to the Pear Frangipane, which came out beautiful but we haven't tasted yet. 

Pear Frangipane Tart

Then the third one was the Bakewell.  We thought this one was alright until we put it in the oven and it immediately turned to liquid and started pouring over the edges of the tart pan and down into other groups' tarts.  We put a sheet pan under it, hoping we had just overfilled it, and tried to let it bake some more.  But it turns out there was something wrong with it, and we still haven't figured out what.  As made obvious by the pictures below, it was destined for the garbage.  Sigh.... at least we got one good tart out of the class?  All in all, it was a frustrating week.  I think we all got a little TOO much rest over Spring Break...




Bakewell Tart - what it was SUPPOSED to look like...

 


...and what ours looked like :(



strawberry smorgasbord 2012

Oranges, schmoranges.  Florida is strawberry country!!  When we moved here three years ago, all I knew about fruit in Florida was oranges, which, frankly, I'm not that into.  So imagine how excited I was to learn that in fact Florida is one of the top producers of strawberries, has one of the longest (and earliest) strawberry seasons, and that the "Winter Strawberry Capital of the World" is about an hour from here in Plant City.  While I have thoroughly enjoyed the strawberries each year, this year we finally went to the infamous Strawberry Festival (also in Plant City) with some wonderful friends who live down that way.  I was less than impressed with the rides, games, festival part of it, but super excited to eat as many strawberries as I could hold.  At the festival I had chocolate covered strawberries, strawberry lemonade, strawberry cookies and strawberry cobbler.  We skipped the strawberry shortcake (this is the item I kept seeing featured on the news) because the lines were just too long.  Maybe next year.  Besides, I am of the opinion that premade cake and cool whip can't compare to homemade pound cake and fresh made whipped cream.

I also bought some strawberry butter as a souvenir, which I have not opened yet, but looks fantastic.  And no, I don't have any clue what strawberry butter actually is.  I'm guessing kind of like apple butter but with strawberries?  Although it looks suspiciously like strawberry jam.... My plan is to try it on english muffins for breakfast, but not until I can't get fresh strawberries any more.

Speaking of fresh strawberries, one of my favorite memories as a kid (and she won't believe this, because it wasn't my favorite at the time) was going strawberry picking with my mom.  My memory is probably exaggerated, but I remember being out there for hours, filling as many buckets as we could carry, and eating as many as we could sneak when the farmers weren't looking.  We also had so many that the fridge would be full of gallon buckets of strawberries, and eventually they would get past ripe and my mom would use them for different things, my personal favorite being strawberry glaze pie.

There are a lot of pick-your-own citrus farms around our house, but I haven't seen any pick-your-own strawberries, so I bought a flat of strawberries on the way out of the festival.  Yes, a flat.  This is the equivalent of 12 of the containers you buy at the supermarket.  That's too many strawberries for two people to eat, you say.  Yes, yes, it is.  But I couldn't resist.  They were selling the flats for $7!  And actually, if I had held out for 100 more yards, I could have bought them from the boy scouts for $6, which I would have much preferred.  Alas, I definitely didn't need two flats. 

But the moral of the story is that when you have that many strawberries, you can't just cut them up and eat them in your cereal in the morning.  They won't last.  So I spent the last week and a half making every single recipe I could find to use up the strawberries.  Luckily this happened to fall at the perfect time, during my spring break, so I was actually super motivated to bake at home (sometimes when I get home from school I just do not feel like cooking or baking at all).  My two favorites were the strawberry-peach crumble and the strawberry sorbet.  And the best part about the sorbet is that it will last quite a while in the freezer.  And now that I have finally finished the entire flat, I am relieved, but a little sad.  And I will keeping buying strawberries until the season is over.  And probably for a while after.  

Oh, and a quick story to serve as evidence that sometimes too much of a good thing can start to be a bad thing.  One of the nights during the smorgasbord, I woke up in the middle of the night in a panic because I couldn't find my phone or the strawberries I had brought to bed with me.  It took me jumping out of bed, turning on the lights, and pulling all the covers and pillows off the bed for a solid five minutes for my brain to pull itself out a sleep-induced fog and realize that I had, in fact, not brought any strawberries to bed to snuggle.  On a normal day, that might be the obvious answer.  These were not normal days.  These were strawberry days. 

Strawberry Shortcake - Sour cream pound cake, strawberry sauce, and homemade whipped cream

Strawberry Yogurt Smoothie

My take on Strawberry Cobbler - not as good as the one at the festival

Ghirardelli-dipped Strawberries

Strawberry Pie - inspired by my mom's recipe, of course

Strawberry Oreo Milkshake - sounds crazy I know, but if you've never had one, you don't know what you're missing!

Strawberry Muffins

Strawberry Peach Crumble

Strawberry-Chambord Sorbet

Strawberry Shortcake Milkshake (Strawberry milkshake with leftover cake scraps)

Vanilla Ice Cream with Strawberry Sauce

wilton class #2...woooosah

Ok regardless of the title of this post, I was actually a little less frustrated with class this week than last week.  But I still need to vent a little, mostly because I thought I was smart enough to beat Wilton at their own game, but I was a fool.  No one is smart enough to beat them.  It's a freakin' racket. 

As I mentioned last week, I really didn't want to buy the beginners' "kit" of supplies for class.  I have sooo many tools and supplies and piping tips and bags and everything else already, and I just didn't want the duplicates.  And there were only a few things in the kit that I could buy separately.  Or so I thought.  One was the practice board, a piece of cardboard, covered in vinyl, with a piece of plastic on top.  My local Michael's was out of them two weeks in a row, so while I was out and about, I drove all the way to Ocoee (completely across Orlando from me, about 40 minutes away) to check the Michael's over there.  And they had it!!! Yay!! So I showed up to class last night, opened it up, and tried to find the page the teacher was showing us.  Well, I sure didn't have it...because I bought the OLD version (note, this was the only one on the shelf)!!  Why in the heck do they still sell the OLD version????  And where do I have to go to get the new one??  Luckily the girl who sits next to me in class is going to be nice enough to make me copies of the templates.  So frustrating!

Ok one more thing about the racket and then I will move on to the fun stuff (yes, there is some fun stuff, I am still excited about the actual learning part of this...).  One of the other required supplies is parchment triangles to make piping bags.  Wilton sells these, at about a 500% mark-up, precut into the perfect size triangle.  Now I passed elementary school with flying colors, so I decided I could handle cutting some triangles out of my much cheaper roll of parchment paper at home.  What a dummy.  My triangles came out fine, but the Wilton method requires you to tape your bags to hold them together (we don't tape them at school, so I wasn't expecting this).  Well it turns out tape doesn't stick to regular parchment paper.  Because parchment paper is designed NOT TO STICK TO THINGS!  So only the Wilton parchment triangles will work after all.  Why do I try?  I surrender, Wilton, you win....

Alright, enough already.  We did move on to a couple new techniques, still not all that exciting.  Squiggly lines, dots, circles, hearts, and clouds.  We did learn one technique I had not used before - using wax paper and piping gel to transfer a design onto a cake.  And after getting yelled at for practicing my shells (she told us to "get creative and do whatever you want"), I found out we will be starting on shells and flowers next week.  Finally the good stuff!!

Practicing dots, circles, and hearts on my lovely practice board...please ignore the first four dots

Squiggly lines and clouds

And although I refuse to eat it, I am pretty happy with the way my cake turned out appearance-wise...

big big news!

well, it's official!! drumrolllll.... I finally got a job!! That's right, after months of searching, I am finally a contributing member of society again.  And no less, at my first choice - a Publix bakery!!  I am starting as a Cake Decorator Apprentice, and I am soo excited (and nervous).  I filled out my paperwork today and the next step is orientation on Saturday and Sunday, then my first shift is Monday at 6 am! 

Might be the best looking Publix around too...

I started looking for a job in a bakery back in October, and nobody was hiring.  I was running into two main problems - either a bakery was so small that they didn't need any help, or a bakery was so big that I had to fill out an application online which only highlighted my utter lack of experience and didn't allow me to elaborate about how I am in culinary school now, and all my other marketable skills :) I didn't expect to find a job on my first day out looking, but I was starting to get frustrated.  In fact, I was just about to give up and go start applying for jobs waiting tables, something I promised myself and everyone else I would never do again when I graduated from Clemson.  And then Publix called me for an interview out of the blue!  That was a few weeks ago and the interview went great.  Then I had to be patient and wait to get background checks, drug tests, etc out of the way, and I didn't want to jinx myself by spreading the good news until it was really official.  But I got my nametag today so I am feeling pretty darn official!!

The only down side is that I originally applied way back before we moved, so the store I am going to be working at is much closer to the old apartment and farther from the new house.  Oh well, beggars can't be choosers!


On an unrelated note, here is a cake I made while my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew were visiting this past weekend.  High ratio chocolate cake, peanut butter mousse, and a dark chocolate glaze.  Yum!

oh my stars - wilton class #1

I think I may have mentioned how I felt really far behind when it came to decorating cakes in some of my classes this semester.   For some reason, I thought I would learn these techniques at school...but I get more of the feeling that the Chefs just expect us to know the basics already.  Don't get me wrong, they are willing to help, give pointers, etc, but I just felt like I needed a stronger foundation of all the basic techniques, and I could only think of one solution....Wilton classes at Michael's!

I was really excited when I went and signed up on Saturday, but after my first class last night I am really just frustrated.  Well, I am still excited to learn all the techniques that are in our book, but I am frustrated with the way the classes are run.  I guess I should have known better, having been through business school and all, but I didn't really think they could squeeze us this hard!  If you ever sign up for one of these, be prepared to drop some cash.  And even if you think you know the score and show up for the open house and ask what "tuition + supplies" really means and if you can bring your own tools from culinary school and they tell you all you have to buy is a very short list of 2-3 items beyond what you already have, DON'T FALL FOR IT! They are going to wait until you PAY your tuition and show up for your first class and THEN give you the list of all the additional things you have to buy.  Again, I really should have expected this, but I thought all of my questions at the open house had me covered.  And luckily, I actually do have a lot of the things we need.  But every other person in my class said they were just taking this class for fun, for a night out, etc.  And now they have dropped $100 for the kit (that's after the 50% off coupon), $22.50 for tuition, and still have to go out and buy a turntable, cake leveler, icing colors, piping gel, and many more items, plus supplies to make their cake and buttercream every week.  I don't know about you, but I could have a REALLY fun night out with that much moolah.  And if I had to guess, half of them won't ever use these tools again.  Ok, but enough venting.  I should just be glad I already had most of the tools and only have to buy a few things. 

The first class was basically demo of how to make the gross buttercream we have to use (no offense if you like this stuff, but I can't stand it), and then we practiced making stars.  A little boring, but I flipped through the rest of the lesson plans, and it definitely looks like the material is going to get more exciting.  I really want to learn how to make basic flowers, etc. 

my practice stars

So hopefully the next class will leave me with a better outlook on the Wilton way...we'll see!

pate a choux, cheesecake, shortbread, and more egg foams

This week in Pastry Techniques, we worked on pâte à choux and puff pastry.  Pâte à choux is the paste used to make a lot of different pastries, namely eclairs, cream puffs, and many others.  For now we made the pastry part of a bunch of eclairs, cream puffs and a paris-brest, and later we will fill them.  We also made some swans that we filled and assembled with sweetened whipped cream. 

We also worked on puff pastry, which I have no pictures of yet.  We made the dough (detrempe), butter block (beurrage), and did all of our turns (tourage) but the dough is in the freezer until the next class, when we can roll it out and bake it to use for napoleons.  Same as croissants last semester, sooo much work to get to the finished product, but hopefully it will be as amazing as the croissants. 

The last thing we did in pastry techniques was make poured fondant.  This is not what most people think of when they hear fondant (the bright colored cake coverings on Ace of Cakes, etc), rather this is the white glaze that is on top of many pastries (example, on top of a Danish).  Between rolling puff pastry and trying to stir this sticky mess, my arms got their workout for the week.

the lovely Shea mixing our fondant

We also got to cut and sample the cheesecakes!  I have to admit I was counting the days all week for this.  My group made the chocolate chip, but my favorite was the strawberry white chocolate.

1. caramel
2. chocolate chip
3. chocolate peanut butter
4.  strawberry white chocolate
5. vanilla bean

Then in cookies class we made shortbread and wafer cookies.  The shortbreads came out fine (shortbread is one of my favorite things in the world, I get it from my mom.  Some people think it is plain and boring but I love it), but the wafer cookies were another story.  Three of the six batters didn't work at all, and it was sooo frustrating trying to shape the others.  You literally have about 7 seconds from when they come out of the oven to shape them before they harden and break.  So out of about 100 cookies we made, we ended up with a pile of abstract brandysnaps, and one tuile spoon and one tuile bowl.  I can't imagine how pastry chefs make hundreds of these for garnishes on desserts. 




1. butter pecan shortbread (my group's)
2. caramel cinnamon shortbread
3. tweed cakes
4. chocolate chip shortbread
5. chai shortbread
6.  double filled shortbread (my favorite)



I also completely forgot to take pictures in cakes class (whoops!) but we didn't assemble any cakes this week anyways.  We made a coconut japonaise, a roulade, and a jaconde.  All that vocab I had to learn is coming in handy now!  I don't know what we are going to use these for yet, but I will make sure to get pictures of those.

Well now I am off to enjoy this sunny, record-setting Florida weather (high of 87 today!) for my first Spring Break in several years.  Now I really feel like a college kid again!  But don't worry, I'll be hitting the Plant City Strawberry Festival instead of the clubs.