summer school

Well since I last posted, I have started my summer semester at school. This semester I am taking Chocolates & Confections (yay!), Contemporary Cakes & Desserts (yay!), and Food & Beverage Cost Control (blech).

So far Cost Control is pretty much as expected...boring, pointless, and not even close to a challenge.  But, I have to take it to finish the program, so I guess I will just have to grin and bear it.

I really like Chocolates class so far, but that's just obvious.  The first week, each group made a different kind of truffle - my group made Bailey's truffles with toasted coconut.  The other flavors were brandy with cocoa powder, blackberry liqueur with cocoa powder, and coconut rum with toasted pistachios.  Yum!!  I never realized how easy truffles were to make!

Bailey's Truffles with Toasted Coconut

Brandy Truffles with Cocoa Powder

Coconut Rum Truffles with Toasted Pistachios

The second week, each group made another truffle and then one other item.  My group made caramel milk chocolate truffles and candied almonds.  Some of the other recipes were cashew & pistachio fudge, pralines, almond torrone, and mocha truffles.  For the candied almonds, we cooked them with sugar on the stove until they caramelized - this was the easy part.  Then we had to dump them on the table and separate each one by hand while they were still hot (ouch!).  Then, once they cooled, we had to go stand in the cooler with them for what seemed like at least an hour - brrrr! - and toss them in melted chocolate, a cup or two at a time.  We tossed them until they were completely dry and separated before adding more chocolate.  It was quite a process, and by the end my shoulders were sore, my fingertips a little burnt, and my nose was numb, but our chef said he sells these for $2 a nut at his other job.  Two dollars for ONE ALMOND!  I guess that would make it worth it....

Tossing, tossing, tossing...and more tossing

The finished almonds

Almond Torrone

Cashew and Pistachio Fudges

Walnut Pralines

Mocha Truffles

Caramel Milk Chocolate Truffles

In Contemporary Cakes, I am feeling a little overwhelmed.  A lot of people in the class have had other classes that I haven't taken yet, and I was more than a little intimidated on the first day.  He gave us two recipes for our mousse cake (we needed 6 components) and told us we could pick whatever we wanted for the other four.  Well, I didn't bring any of my other recipes to class, so I started to panic immediately.  I ended up choosing recipes from the book, but they are pretty basic and boring flavor-wise.  I just wanted to get the thing made, and we didn't have time to try to come up with any exciting flavors.  We ended up making a pate brisee, a genoise, a Cassis simple syrup, a white chocolate ganache, a vanilla pastry cream, and a white chocolate mousse.  Not very exciting in the flavors or colors.... oh well.


 My group was the last group done (by a while), and our ganache never set and so it didn't make it into our cake.  So I was definitely feeling frustrated and worried about the rest of the semester by the end of that class. 

The second week of cakes went a little better.  When we unmolded our cake from Week 1, it looked a lot better than I expected.  We used some raspberry gelee to decorate it, so that added some much needed color and flavor (although I still didn't like the white chocolate mousse).  And when we cut it open, only one of our layers had moved to the side!  Definitely not as bad as an outcome as I had expected after how much of a disaster the first week felt like.  And garnishing the cakes was really fun because we got to pick from all kinds of different decor items that I have never used before. 

My group's cake

After we cut it

All of the cakes from Week 1

The second cake my group made was a Chocolate Mint Mousse Cake, and I can't wait to taste this one.  It has a chocolate biscuit (sponge cake) layer soaked in mint simple syrup, a mint creme brulee insert, and milk and dark chocolate mousse.  Things went a lot smoother making this one, except that when we made the mousse and poured it into our mold, it wasn't nearly enough, so we had to rush to make another one to add to the first one before it set.  Oh, and apparently there is a picture of me picking mint in the rain in my chef uniform on some facebook page somewhere - a lady came along and started taking pictures of me after I had been out there for about 20 minutes.  Turns out you have to pick a LOT of mint to get 50 grams worth. 

So anyways, I feel a little better about Cakes class now, but I am still feeling a little overwhelmed.  But I can't wait to taste the mint cake next week, along with the recipes the other groups made. 


I know this has been a long blog post already, but I have been slacking off on writing lately and I have a few other things to catch you up on!  Remember that chocolate festival I went to?  Well I entered a drawing and "won" a free wine tasting party at home.  So I invited some friends from school and made a bunch of goodies to go with:  amaretto truffles with toasted almonds, vanilla cupcakes with coffee-flavored Italian buttercream, chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter mousse frosting, and chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing.  Plus I had to throw in some fruit and cheese:

All in all, it was a great time!

Also, Trevor has been asking me to make some goodies for his work meetings on Thursdays.  So far I have made cream puffs and cupcakes (practiced my royal icing skills to make the Waffle House logo and a Notre Dame leprchaun for his birthday cake, see below). 

But this week was a quarterly meeting where they always have a big birthday cake for people whose birthdays were that quarter.  I was a little nervous because I had never made a cake this big (okay, maybe a 1/4 sheet isn't that big, but still, I was nervous to try something for the first time when people were actually depending on me).  I made red velvet cake with cream cheese icing.  They pretty much gave me free rein when it came to decorating, so I had a little fun with it.  Trevor said everybody liked it, except that it was still a little frozen in the middle.  Whoops!  We always freeze our cakes at work and tell people to let them thaw for about an hour, so I figured if I took it out a couple hours ahead of time, it would be fine.  Usually I don't freeze cakes, but I had school 8 am to 8 pm the day before and I did NOT want to wait until the morning of in case something went wrong, so I made it on Tuesday.  Well I didn't think about the fact that this cake was much denser than the cakes we use at work.  But they ate it anyways, and I now I know for next time!  I don't mind learning through trial and error, but I just wish it wasn't in front of other people....oh well.

And last, but certainly not least, I made Trev's birthday cake.   I made carrot cake with lemon curd filling and cream cheese icing (I feel like I have gone through a case of cream cheese in the last couple weeks).  I didn't do a great job icing it because I put too much lemon curd in between the layers and they were sliding all over the place while I was trying to ice the outside, so I had to cut my losses and call it a "rustic" look, ha!  But I was really happy with how it tasted and especially happy with how my royal icing leprechaun turned out.  Even if he was backwards because I forgot to mirror the picture before I printed it...oh well!