the wizard of ounce: 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: