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.

A friend of mine called me yesterday. She was having a relatively strenuous evening and I felt pretty helpless to comfort her. I'm not sure how others deal with stress, but as a pastry chef, I feel sugar is a good start. While I was unable to run over and make my friend a batch of chocolate brownies, I was thinking of her this morning when we had to make a batch of Tuile's. These thin little cookies are usually used more as an accent to a dessert rather than a desert themselves, but they're still pretty tasty. It's also a simple recipe:
4oz butter
4oz powdered sugar
4oz eggs (+ a little vanilla)
4oz cake flour
And you just spread the batter paper thin in your mold and bake for 10 minutes!
These little guys are fun to make because you can make any shape you like. Class was fairly light hearted today. We spent a long time making molds for these cookies. Many Halloween and Christmas themes were brought in. I decided to make Teddy bear faces for my bummed out buddy in hopes that it would put a smile on her face. Well, I hope the picture will do it because I dropped the plate on my way out and smashed them across the hallway. Heh Heh. It's the thought that counts? I kept the molds, so I may try again! Ha!
Just for clarification, I did not make Teddy Bear faces all morning. We've been working with a lot of Bavarian Cream. Today we actually completed two types of Charlotte's. They're both really tasty, but I have to say that I'm not overly impressed with them. Sponge and cream, doesn't have all that much flavor. To each there own.

Lettering

The last few weeks have been very insane, as everyone probably knows. It's been very exciting and exhausting at the same time. We've started a new class basically on custards. We've been doing bunches of Creme Caramels & Bread Pudding. My friends and neighbors seem to be the most ecstatic for this new chapter of Baking and Pastry. And, as I continue to state, these recipes are pretty simple. Many of them I have fond memories of making with my mom or grandma. What's fun is taking the basic recipe as given and adding to it. Making new flavors that scare most people! Everyone in my class is a little wary of me because I put weird flavors like ginger and curry into sweet creams. I think it's fabulous and I suggest everyone at least try it ONCE!
I'm sure once we get into more complicated custards I'll have more interesting things to say, but for now... you'll just have to deal with me rambling.

Butter Butter Butter Butter

Yesh. This has been an awesome yet terrible week. As the wedding grows ever nearer (T-10 days), I've spent a large majority of my free time tying up loose ends, meeting with people, trying to keep things under control... All of that, coupled with school and work, has been a little stressful. Unfortunately, I've found that I have some what of a nervous eating habit. Habits like this just are not good, especially when you're wearing a rather tight fitting dress in a few days AND you're surrounded by butter stuffed pastries every day!!! AAAAHHHHH!!!!!! NO.NO.NO!
The batch of croissants you see above are made with one entire pound of butter. Not only that, but it is then filled with banana/chocolate, honey/banana, chocolate/peanut butter, cheese/basil. Arteries clogged yet? These things are so unbelievably tasty, but I need to not be surrounded by them for 3 weeks!!! Eesh. I'm getting lots of practice on them though!
Almost there. Almost there. Almost there.