Marriage proposal

No, I'm not getting married. But here's a dessert I sent out last week. I hope you can see it; I didn't have my camera, so I had to use my phone to get the pic. It's a chocolate truffle cake with "Will you marry me?" piped in chocolate at the top.

I was a little concerned that I might be committing myself to something I'm not ready for, but our GM wouldn't let me pipe a tiny chocolate disclaimer at the bottom of the plate.

Merry Chrieaster!

That's what we are calling the holiday that is being celebrated in this holiday display.

Oh sure, we have stockings...

and Santa in his sleigh...

but then we have bunnies dressed like Santa...(I made the reindeer!)

Easter eggs pretending to be some sort of Christmas egg...Do you see the white Liberty Bell with the red bow? Merry Independence Day! Look below that. It's the Eiffel Tower! Joyeux Noël!!

I love the gingerbread barn, but what the hell is that rooster about?

Merry Christmas!

Chocolate, chocolate everywhere

Our chocolate class has been working on a big Christmas display for our school. Unfortunately, our program doesn't have a lot of money, and the only molds we have are Easter-related--lots of bunnies and chickens. So we're making what our teacher refers to as a Barnyard Christmas display. I prefer to think of it as a Great Big Hoopty Barnyard Easter Christmas.

Oh, I can't wait to get pictures of this holiday pile-o-crap. We have a couple of big choc bunnies that will be painted, so they look like they are Santa & Mrs. Claus. There will be a gingerbread barn, and a cut-out rooster that is taller than the barn. There is a tabletop Christmas tree which we have made ornaments and packages for and which will, inexplicably, sit in the barnyard.

But my absolute favorite thing is a mold of the Eiffel tower. It's too big to be an ornament, but our teacher insists that we use it somewhere. Hmmm....where does an Eiffel tower fit into a Barnyard Christmas?

I think the monstrosity will be assembled later this week. I promise pictures the moment I can get them!

Last class of candies

Last night in our chocolate class, we did our last candies. We used caramel and ganache that were poured into frames and then cut into squares. We dipped them in chocolate and decorated the tops.

I enjoyed making acetate transfer sheets for my chocolates, but they are tricky. Maybe with some practice I could get them right. In the picture, you can see that I didn't get the transfer sheet with the L on it pressed down enough, so the top looks funny.

And as always, our teacher kept the best candies to show off to the the other faculty, so these aren't quite right. Some of them have "feet" sticking out, and other imperfections. But overall, I'm extremely proud of them!

Clockwise from the top left, there is a caramel decorated with a dipping fork, a ganache center with a handpainted transfer sheet decoration, another caramel with a sprinkle of Fleur de Sel (a sea salt that is also in the caramels) and another ganache decorated with a transfer sheet.

More filled candies

We did candy molds again this week. A few of my classmates had some trouble last week, so we worked on it some more. We had some delicious ganache fillings. My favorite was a star anise/pink peppercorn ganache. Mmmm!

I did some with mint ganache filling (the one with the dots), some with lavender/vanilla ganache (the stripes that look green, but are actually ivory), and some with the anise/peppercorn (with the gold sparkly dust.)

These are so much fun to make! And I could eat my weight in them, unfortunately.

Molded candies

Molds are fun! Tonight, each person in our class made a different ganache filling for our candies. We had ginger, Indian spice, bourbon, mocha, tarragon & grapefruit, orange & tangerine, lavender, plain dark chocolate with vanilla, and some caramel from a previous class. Once the ganache is made, you are ready to make candy.

First, you temper your chocolate, then brush the mold with chocolate. Once that has hardened, you pour the mold full of chocolate, and tap it on the table to release any air bubbles. Then immediately turn it back over & empty the chocolate back into your bowl. Leave it turned over until it starts to harden, and then scrape all the excess chocolate off.

Once the shell is completely hardened, pipe in your filling. Let it harden, then pour chocolate over the whole thing to seal the bottom. Once it starts to harden, scrape it off. Now you just wait until the candies are ready to pop out of the mold. Easy, huh?

Aren't these beautiful?

Look at the shine this chocolate has. I am proud of how well-tempered it is!

Truffles are trufflicious

We made the most beeeeautiful truffles tonight! We made several flavors: dark chocolate with cognac, dark choc & orange, milk choc with vanilla, dark choc & cherry...there may have been more.

First, you make a ganache with chocolate and cream. You form this into the round truffle center. Then you dip the truffle twice into chocolate, and roll it in some sort of topping. We used toasted coconut, chopped pecans, powdered sugar, cocoa, shaved chocolate. Or, you could leave them plain. We don't like plain.

Some of the truffles in the big box were made by my classmates.

I made all of the ones in the small box.

These are incredibly silky and creamy. They're every bit as delicious as they look! I want to make truffles every day.

1st chocolate candies

So far in my chocolate class we have been practicing tempering chocolate. Tempering is kind of tricky, and extremely important. It is what gives chocolate a pretty shine and a snap when you break it.

Tonight we made our first candies. We made rochers (sugared almonds covered in chocolate), knackerli (chocolate patties with nuts and dried fruit), pecan clusters, turtles (I made the caramel for these), chocolate-dipped candied citrus peel, and chocolate almonds. Oh, they are so tasty! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera at school, and our teacher kept the best of the candies, so I got some pix of the candies she let me keep once I got home.


These are some of the knackerli.




Another shape of knackerli.



Here are some of my rochers, and some almonds in the foreground. You can also see some of my turtles in the background.

Lotsa cakes

At the end of our Cake Design class, we had lots of cakes in the freezer. The school will serve some of them at luncheons and other events, but we had way more than they could use, so our chef arranged for us to take some of the cakes to an assisted living facility. We talked to the residents about our program, about cakes and baking, and about what we have been doing in the class. Then we served our cakes. I have to say, I was amazed at those crazy cake-eating ladies! Everybody had at least one piece, some had 2 or 3, and at least one of the ladies tried all 6 cakes that we brought!

So, here are the cakes, starting with a Black Forest Torte:

This is a Kirsch Torte. Usually it would have more confectioner's sugar on top, with a design pressed into it, but we didn't want to choke the ladies with powdered sugar.


We made marzipan carrots to decorate our Carrot Cake:



Our fruit cake is amazing. It's made from a pound cake batter, with dried fruit, not candied fruit.


This is a Chocolate Truffle Cake:



The Buche de Noel didn't fare so well in the freezer. There's a better picture of it on June 21st.

I made a wedding cake!

This was the final project in my Cake Design class. We had 2 class periods to complete the cake. It was so much fun! Mine is covered in rolled fondant, with garrett frills on the top and bottom layers, royal icing string work on the middle layer, and royal icing apple blossoms.

The cake looks ivory-colored in this picture, but it's just the lighting.





I like how this picture makes the cake look enormous!

Confusing

This is a picture of the buttons in the elevator in the building where my school's culinary department is. I hope you can read the labels.



Apparently, the button that says "2" takes you to the fourth floor. The "1" button takes you to the third floor...It makes my brain hurt.

Gum paste flowers

I learned to make gum paste flowers this week. These are the very first flowers I made. There's a rose, a stephanotis with a bud, a jasmine flower, and some leaves. This was fun to do! It's a little tricky to get the gum paste thin enough without tearing it, but once you do, it's amazing to see the flowers take shape. We made them out of white gum paste, then added color once they were dry.


These would be combined with other little sprays of flowers to make a decoration for a wedding cake. The dark shape above and to the left of the rose is another spray that a classmate made.

Rolled fondant

In Cake Design on Tuesday, I learned to cover a cake with rolled fondant. It's really not hard--you just have to be certain to get the fondant thin, but not too thin, and completely smooth.

Then, we mixed up Mexican paste (made from rolled fondant and gum paste) and used it to make swags and bows, watched our chef demo some royal icing techniques, and learned to make frills, ribbon insertion and pearls.

Figure piping

Thursday, we learned figure piping in my cake class. Our chef was out of town, so he left examples for us to follow, and we sort of had to teach ourselves. The animals were way harder than I thought, but I think they would look cute on cupcakes, if I practice them a little more.

I made a goofy-looking cat:


And a drunken alligator:


Does anybody else think this bunny looks demonic?


Poor sad puppy-dog:

I think my bear is gay:

I have the best job EVER!!

Woo-hoo! The head of the culinary program at my school recommended me for an internship position at a local restaurant (let's call it The Restaurant) that is considered to be one of the best in the country. I worked a couple of trial shifts, and they offered me a job! I get to bake stuff in the afternoon, and plate desserts at night, 3 days a week. Yay me! I'm working at a top-notch restaurant for a well-known, widely respected chef, and they're paying me for it. What could be better?

It's Christmas!

Isn't it? I'm pretty sure it is, because I made a beautiful Buche de Noel yesterday, and that's definitely not a summer dessert.

Buche de Noel is the easiest cake I've ever made. It's made from a half sheet of basic genoise, spread with Swiss buttercream, then rolled up. Then you cut off a bit from one end to make a branch, frost the whole thing, decorate, and voila! It's Christmas!


I especially like the meringue mushrooms.



It snowed! Merry Christmas!

Petit fours

Today in my cake class, we made petit fours glace. They're harder than they look, although they don't look very good in the pictures. I had to decorate the lumpy ones, because a classmate and I were washing dishes when everyone started decorating, and by the time someone called us all the good petit fours were gone. Oh well, there's lots more almond cake in the freezer, so I can make more later.

They are made with 3 layers of almond cake sandwiched together with apricot jam. On top of the final layer is a thin layer of marzipan. Then the whole thing is coated with fondant. It's a lot of work for something so tiny.

Also, they are waaaaaaaay too sweet for me. Now, I love sweets, and I could eat sugar right out of the bag with a spoon, but I could only swallow one bite of one of these little gems, much to my surprise. I tried to eat another bite, and just couldn't do it.

Fruit tarts

I made 35 fruit tarts today, for a graduation luncheon. That's an awful lot of tarts to make at home, especially during the week of my final exams. But they looked great!

Practical exams

I had practical exams last week. In Advanced Baking, we had to make 2 identical pulled-sugar roses, 2 identical marzipan strawberries, 2 identical marzipan lemons, a pastillage swan, a tempered-chocolate cup and 2 parchment piping bags. I did ok, except I burned my thumb pulling the sugar AGAIN! The blister was so bad, I couldn't finish my roses. I just couldn't put my hand under that hot lamp again.

But here are my marzipan fruits. I got a good grade on those.



And the leaves for my rose. Yes, they are pink. I'm very proud of the pearly sheen on these. I just wish I could have finished the rose.

In our Plated Dessert practical, we had to make Cappuccino Mousse in Chocolate Coffee Cups with Sambuco Cream. We made those before (see January 19), but this time each person had to make all the components for her dessert herself. I'm very proud of how mine turned out. It was dee-licious, and very pretty, even though I took the picture before I put the chocolate decoration on top.

Plated dessert project

Today we did our final projects for Plated Dessert Design. After the sugar showpiece fiasco from Advanced Baking, I am relieved that my plated dessert was excellent!

I made a Spring Berry Napoleon. It has layers of puff pastry with a whipped cream cheese filling and berries. I used strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. The plate is garnished with berries and raspberry sauce.

Here's the side view.

And a view of the plate from the top.

Mmm...it tasted as good as it looks! The puff pastry was perfectly buttery and flaky, the filling was light and creamy, and the tart fruit and sauce were a perfect contrast.

Too humid for sugar

We made our sugar showpieces last night. Our kitchen was so humid, some of our components never actually dried. My classmates mostly had thicker pieces for their showpieces, so they could still get them put together, even with pieces melting. My showpiece was all flowers, and my beautiful thin petals melted before I could even assemble the flowers. What a huge disappointment!

I don't have a lot of great pictures, but here is one of my showpiece in the process of melting. The green vine-like support was supposed to be going up, not over. We propped it against the stockpot to try to keep it standing up, but it just kept stretching and sagging. I put the red shards to indicate where the flowers would have gone.


Here is a picture of one of my petals melting. Can you see the little puddle at the tip? That used to be a delicate thin spiral. I worked for hours, and made over a hundred petals for three big showy flowers.


Look at how my classmate's coral is melting. What a mess!



I made a beautiful sheet of bubble sugar, which completely melted onto the parchment.



I'm going to try to make the flowers again later. I wanted those flowers so bad! Maybe in the fall I can find a nice dry day.

Frozen desserts/fruit desserts

We made quite an assortment of desserts today. I made some individual chocolate souffles. I had never made a souffle before, but they were perfect! We served them with a sabayon (sort of a foamy custard sauce flavored with white wine.) Here's a picture before we added the sabayon.


This is a chocolate & peanut butter bombe with a homemade marshmallow and a piece of peanut brittle. I wish I had taken a picture after we cut it open, but we all gobbled it up.


Here is a beautiful frozen dessert. The bottom layer is a tequila-orange granita, topped with a blood orange sorbet and garnished with a grenadine sauce. The sorbet was one of the best things I have ever tasted!


Last, we have a lemon-lime meringue pie, with a brown sugar meringue. Again, I wish I had taken a picture after the pie was cut, but the pie was busy being shoveled into our mouths.