Only the French

So...Second day of wedding cake class and, as were are getting a French style education, we had to learn how to make the traditional French wedding cake. A Croquembouche. This little beauty is comprised of a series of small Pate Choux puffs (the same dough for eclaires) filled with pastry cream and stacked together using caramelized sugar. The best way I can describe it to you is...if you just glanced at it, with no idea of what you were looking at, you'd think it was a big pile of rocks or acorns. This is not really an attractive dessert! In fact, the classmates I was working on this project with had no end of obscenities regarding the ugliness of the cake, the ever increasing leaning angle, and well just the French in general. I am rather hoping this is the only time I will encounter having to make a Croquembouche, but all I can do is hope.

We've also begun learning more decoration techniques. I've spent the last two days pipping rose after rose after rose. I do understand the need for repetition to achieve the necessary skill, but..oh my god, there are only so many times I can make those freaking things before I go cross eyed.
We're going to begin some chocolate molding tomorrow We're also doing some sugar paintings. I'm excited to learn all this stuff and I am having a wonderful time, but I still don't think the wedding cake business is the way for me.

Banana Fritters w/ Burnt Honey Ice Cream and Chocolate Sauce

Okay. Yes. I'm sorry, I haven't written for a while. My last class went by like a shot. Between work, school, and lagging immune systems, it's been a busy month.
My last class topic was plated desserts. This is a big class for me because it's basically what I want to do when I get out into the working world. Our final project was to create and execute a menu of 10 desserts, 2 chocolate, 2 Traditional, 2 Seasonal, 2 Frozen, and 2 Hot. The project actually didn't go as well as I would have liked. My first day went well, but as time went on... I started getting frustrated. And my chef and I seem to differ a little on proper textures.
But! Here are some lovely pictures of a few of my final platings.

Clove Wine Sorbet w/ Candied Cherries

Honey Goat Cheesecake w/ Roasted Dates and a Lemon Raspberry Sauce
(although, this was suppose to have roasted FIGS, but none were available.)

Mexican Hot Chocolate w/ Churos
(The kick to this chocolate was not for a faint of heart)

Those are the one's that turned out the best. After that...I stopped taking pictures. Over all it was still good! I did enjoy the entire class and we were allowed to develop more creative desserts and such.
The class we have now is commonly referred to as the wedding cake class. The final being....yes, make a wedding cake. We get to choose if it will be a dummie cake (Styrofoam) or a real cake. Most people opt for the styrofoam because then it can be displayed for a while, possibly years, in the school. So that's exciting. I'm going to be using it as the practice round for Maria's wedding cake which a friend and I are going to be making in June. I'm very excited to design my sisters wedding cake! Ah! Fabulous!
Okay. Promise I will actually be a little more on the ball about blogging this time around. Sorry!

Okay. Okay. No more excuses! I've been terrible about writing on my blog. Sad Sad.
I've been on vacation for two weeks and this past week was the start of a new class. We are now in the home stretch people! This is the first of 3 final classes and I'm done. Yay! I'm having an awesome time though. We are working on plating in this class, so this is where are the finite details come into play. We've spent all this week making sauces and cookies and such to go along with desserts that we then make as something of an after thought. It's been really good and it has allowed for maximum creativity, which is really nice. The pictures are just two platings of the same dessert. It's a Creme Caramel flavored with orange water (which is my new favorite thing) and a blackberry sauce with cardamom tuiles.
We'll have more platings tomorrow, but the finish products for this class are slow going. I probably won't have as many pictures as usual. Our final is to create a menu of 10 desserts, make them, and plate them over the coarse of one week. That'll be fun and hurty.

Seasons Greetings from Yoda!

The holiday season is upon us and what better way to celebrate than making a birthday cake for an imaginary 13 year old boy who enjoys, among other things, STAR WARS! The assignment was pretty entertaining. We had to make a cake geared towards a 13 year old boy and had a bunch of other instructors come and vote. Perhaps I was a special child, but I remember loving the epic story of star wars at the tender age of 13, as did all my male and female friends as well as the few early teenage terrors I know now. It seemed perfect, but guess what! I took 3rd. 3rd! What is the world coming to.

As if this didn't off set my sense of reality enough, we recently made a Boston Cream pie which, it turns out, is not a pie. It is however, one of the most deliciously wonderful, artery clogging, melt in you mouth while distilling pounds of fat into your thighs cakesI've ever had!
I've said it before and I'll say it again. You have not lived until you've doused an entire cake with ganache. Directions: Sandwich 2 white cakes with rich pastry cream and bathe in ganache. Hahaha. AAAhhahahah!

And also, I may have found the secret to the most awesome chocolate cake ever. We recently made a tarragon chocolate cake, which may be the best chocolate cake I've ever had. It's a really subtle flavor that is just awesome. Even one of the most locked an bolted minds I know from my class enjoyed this. Time to get experimental! My plan of action is to now incorporate one of my most favorite spices into a chocolate cake. Curry! Woo! (I'm sure this is no surprise to those who know me.)

Cake Class

Okay, I have to admit I haven't been pouring a ton of time into the blog recently. I do apologize about that, but in my defense we've done nothing but genois cake these first 2 weeks of class. Genois is a low-fat cake that takes 4 years of whipping egg yolks and sugar over a double boiler until really foamy and then folded with cake flour. That's it and that's all. There is nothing in this cake. Not surprising, it's a tad try and doesn't so much thrill the taste buds. It is, however good as a practice cake for frosting correctly. Some of you may not know that there is a right way and a wrong way to frost a cake. Example:
Right way

Wrong way
(actually I just made an error and added a half batch amount of butter to a full batch of butter cream oops, but it gets the point across.)

Edges like shoulders. Sides and top smooth as a baby's butt! This is what I've been doing for the past two weeks. I can show you different pictures, but you'll swear they're all the same cake, so I'm not going to. I have been improving on my smoothing skills. And, as my sister reminded me, this is where all those years of meticulously spreading of the cream cheese onto the bagel until it's perfectly even come in handy. THE CHEESE HAS TO BE EVEN! I WON'T EAT THE BAGEL UNTIL IT'S EVEN! (everybody has there weird food thing)
So, things aren't so exciting right now, but I'll try to keep an update. We may get a lesson on boarders tomorrow, perhaps I'll have more pidazzle then.

Another Ending

We finished with our Custards class last Friday. I have to say, I'm pretty excited to be done with it. Some of you may remember my previous rant on hating eggs with a passion few people even know they have. Well, had I still felt that way when I entered this class....well, lets just say dimensions would have imploded. I can't even begin to explain the number of cases of eggs we went through over the past weeks. The amount of poultry in general this school goes through must keep at least five chicken farms in business. It boggles the mind.
So! We had our final practical on Friday and I'm happy to say, despite some annoying classmates, it turned out well! I did a parody of the famous Black and White New York Cookie. I don't know where this idea came from, but it's done well. It's a fairly simple Chocolate and Vanilla Bavarian Cream Charlotte. The sponge was adjusted to have more of a shortbread flavor, as the cookie does. I used brown sugar for part of the recipe and folded in 2 ounces of butter to give it an additional creaminess. It turned out really nicely. The presentation was fun as well. I just made a chocolate sauce for the bottom and spread the top with white and dark melted chocolate. I was very pleased with the end product. My instructor was as well, because I got 100%! Woo! A good ending to a slightly discomforting lesson involving being elbow deep in egg yolks every morning!

Strange Cake

L'Exotique.This cake here. She may look impressive and she may act impressive, but her taste. Her taste is totally something I've never experienced before and not particularly in a good way. This is basically an example of Hawaiian frilly drink in cake form. The colorful outer layer is a sponge that has been dyed. Those crazy designs you see are my fingers meandering through the batter. It's filled with a mousse consisting of tropical flavors including passion fruit, mango, and coconut. While this may sound exciting and wonderful to some of you, I must confess that my taste buds fulling rejected this as something of a dessert with a personality crisis.
There are just too many flavors packed into this thing. Did I mention the top is smooth because it's been covered in passion fruit flavored ganache. Two great tastes that taste great together!? No. No no no no. No no. You don't understand how contrary the tartness of the fruit is with the creaminess of the chocolate. The moment this cake hit my tongue, my taste buds message to the brain was (and I quote) " Ummm. Well gosh. I, uhh. I, uhh.... You know what I quit. This just isn't working out for me." And off they went to find some Coffee and a sugar cookie.
This cake is, out of this world, strange.
That's all I have to say about that.