Holiday Recap

December is always a busy month and this year was no exception. I've been baking up a storm. Since it wasn't a good canning year, I made a LOT of cookies to give out as gifts. Gingerbread, Linzers, chocolate chip, Nanaimo bars, meringue rochers, damiers, and toffee. I was baking for DAYS. But I was able to bring 4 dozen cookies to my new workplace, drop off cookies for neighbors and friends, and still have plenty left over for the family.

Then it came time for the actual holiday meals. On Christmas Eve we went to visit my parents and cooked lunch for them. I made fettuccine Alfredo and sautéed chicken and shrimp, so that everyone could add their own protein. For dessert we had...cookies!

For Christmas day, the family was greeted with warm cinnamon rolls, fresh out of the oven. I had made the dough the night before and, after its first rise, put it in the fridge. Rolling it out when it was cold was so much easier. I might even make them more often, considering how much easier it was. 

Dinner was chicken or salmon en croute, depending on if one eats fish or not. With curried mashed sweet potatoes on the side, yum! I made puff pastry from scratch, and wrapped each piece of fish or chicken individually. I did pre-cook the chicken because I was worried the puff pastry needed less time to cook than the chicken. They ended up being much larger than I envisioned, and we have plenty of leftovers. For dessert, I made creme brulée!

Chicken

Now I'm very tired and, other that making bread, I think I'll be taking a break. We have plenty of leftovers to eat.

Salmon

School Project

For English, the youngerchild had a project due today. The assignment was to pick a poet from a country other than the US and make a presentation about the poet and their poetry as well as incorporate some of the elements of the culture. Creativity was encouraged. My child chose Hafez, a poet from Persia in the 14th century. So, in addition to the writing parts, we jointly decided that there should be traditional Persian sweets for the class to consume while the presentation was happening.

Last week the youngerchild and I made baklava. It went pretty well, considering the youngerchild hadn't really done anything like it before. My goal was to step back and let my kid do most of the work and we had a lot of fun. This stayed in the fridge, uncut, until yesterday when we were putting everything together.

Yesterday we attempted zoolbia. This was much harder as it required deep frying and then dousing the fritters in saffron and rosewater syrup. First we made the syrup and set it aside. Then we made the batter with corn flour, yogurt and water. On the first attempt to use a squeeze bottle to drizzle the batter into hot oil, the squiggles were too thin and they looked like shredded wheat. I cut off the tip of the squeeze bottle and tried again but the batter sank in the oil and stuck to the bottom of the pot. So I carefully transferred the hot oil to a muffin tin and tried again, getting hot oil EVERYWHERE. Amazingly enough, nobody got burned. In the muffin tins, the batter came together more like a cookie than a squiggle, but at least they didn't stick. I would transfer the zoolbia into the syrup and the youngerchild would take them out when they were sufficiently infused and put them on the cooling rack. We put them in a container and poured more syrup over them to give them more flavor and then this morning before taking them to school drained off the excess syrup. They taste good even if they don't look quite right!

Easter Treats

In the few days leading up to today, I was busy with work but also with baking. First, as a lunch box treat, I made Easter-themed Linzer cookies. In order to do this, I needed to get tiny little cookie cutters. Even with them being so small, the cookies needed to be a fairly large size to accommodate the challenges of asymmetric cut outs. Many of the rabbits broke, but here are some of the ones that made it:

The fillings were blueberry jam and strawberry lavender jam.

Today, in between Easter baskets, video games, an egg hunt and a walk to the grocery store, I made Puits D'amour (wells of love) out of quick puff pastry (butter, flour, salt and water, folded and rolled many times), lemon curd and meringue. Since they ended up being more oval than round, I took that as serendipity. They are egg shaped, after all.

Happy Easter!

Graduation!

Monday night we had our graduation ceremony for school. It was held at a restaurant across the street which has close ties with the school, The Elephant Walk. It's a place I've always liked and don't go to often enough!

We all got our certificates, a chef's hat, and a saccharometer. I'm rather excited about the latter, as I can experiment with sorbets over the summer.

Chef told me he hoped I'd gotten what I wanted out of the course. I most certainly did. I wanted to learn how to scale up and make large quantities of pastries, and how to function in a professional kitchen. Now I'm closer to understanding that, although I'm sure I have a long way to go. Our class learned to work as a team, to move around each other and with each other with the complicated choreography of a busy and not very large kitchen. That was most obvious with our practicum as we were all doing different things and had to not get in each other's way.  My piping skills are better (again, there is still work to be done here) and decorating isn't quite so difficult. The class definitely made me better at the things I wanted to improve. There is always more to learn.

Another big part of this, for me, was that elusive thing known as "work-life balance." It's pretty obvious if you read back in this blog that when I worked in the ER I worked WAY too much. I had started to learn how to say "no" but by the time that happened I was already too far gone. With this class, I spent a few days a week at work, a few days in the kitchen, and it felt right. It made me happy. It still does. The challenge now is to figure out how to fit all this into my life in a way that continues to feel right. Changing jobs was a huge step to achieving this balance, but now I have to connect more of the dots: family, work, baking, beekeeping, canning, being outdoors... There are a lot of dots!

Am I glad I took this course? Absolutely. I am sad it's over. So is everyone who received little white boxes of pastries over the last four months. I think everyone is going through withdrawal a little bit.

Mother's Day Dartois

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there!

Yesterday I thawed the puff pastry I brought home from school and today we went to my parents' house and made a brunch dartois. Sweet Italian sausages were grilled, eggs were scrambled, and the puff pastry rolled out, turned, and rolled again. Ultimately I made two with sausage, eggs, and cheese. After I assembled them they rested in the fridge for half an hour and then were baked. YUM. My mother served them with every fruit she could have possibly bought: blackberries, raspberries, pineapple, blueberries, strawberries, watermelon, apricots, kiwis, oranges, and grapes. We are so incredibly full.

But, not too full that I couldn't make a batch of jam when I got home! Apricots were on special this week; this is one of the only fruits I can't reliably get locally. I bought a whole bunch yesterday and used all but six of them to make jam. Nine jars of apricot jam are currently in the canner.

Oh, and the whole wheat bread turned out great - it fermented faster than expected so last night I set it up to proof. This morning, before anyone else got up, I baked all the loaves and we brought one for our brunch. The elderchild was very happy to have whole wheat bread and I'm glad to have introduced a little variety to the breadmaking ritual.

Days 31 and 32: Final Practicum

Yesterday and today were spent in a stressed out haze. At least until I completed my dessert and turned it in.

This morning was our practicum exam. Each of us were to draw a card and then make what it said. As this was technically the mid term we were given the ingredient list and had to write out the method. Once Chef corrected it, we were to go into the kitchen and make it for presentation to the two tasters. There were eight cards and we knew what they were but we selected our actual card at random. Ahead of time, in addition to studying the methods, I thought about how I would plate each one.

On a whim, I bought stainless steel martini glasses. Just in case I drew the macaron card.

I drew the macaron card.

Yay! The card stated that in addition to making three different flavors of macarons - coffee, lemon, and raspberry - we were to make an ice cream of our choice. Planning ahead again, I decided that a pear cardamom ice cream would go well with each flavor. That had to be made first. I made an ice cream base with pear purée, cardamom, and some pear brandy. While that chilled, I worked on the macarons and sautéed pears in butter, sugar, and more brandy. When it was time to put the ice cream in the maker, at the very end I churned in the cooked pears. It was lovely.

The macarons came out better than they had any right to as we had some oven issues (the opposite problem compared to home, the ovens were too hot. Even though we set them 25˚ lower than usual). The tasters noted they were a little dry. I guess they crumble too quickly. Each one had a matching ganache.

For plating, I chilled the martini glasses and put a scoop of ice cream in each. I had made mini macarons and stuck them on the ice cream. I made sure each macaron was between mini macarons of different colors - pink between yellow and brown, yellow between brown and pink, and so on.

Ultimately, I did well on the kitchen part and I don't have the tasting grade yet but the comments were mostly positive. Now we only have the final written exam left!

Day 30: More Classics

Yesterday we finished the other three classic cakes we'd started the day before. First, however, we trashed all the meringue flowers and mushrooms because the oven was too hot and they didn't look right. I was encouraged to make amanita mushrooms (fly agaric) instead. I made those, but I also had yellow and white meringue and cocoa powder so I made some yellow and brown mushrooms too. I also made white mushrooms, a la Destroying Angels (another amanita).

After that cuteness was in the oven, we started the assembly of the black forest cake. First the vanilla and chocolate mousses were finished and the cake was built upside down. The top layer had the red pâte decor on it so it was soaked from underneath with cherry kirsch syrup and then the vanilla mousse was spread in a thin layer. Then there was a layer of cherries and a layer of chocolate mousse. Lastly, the other layer of cake was put in place and soaked with syrup. This went in the freezer to set up.

By this time, the meringues were ready and we could get the rest of our Buche de Printemps decorated. A thick meringue was applied to the logs and torched. Coffee macarons were made to simulate polypore mushrooms. "Plastic chocolate," aka chocolate for molding, was made in green and leaves were prepared for everyone. After a bit, we had all our decorations in place and we each assembled a log. At this point we were all overwhelmed by whimsy.

Throughout the day we also made things like caramelized hazelnuts and clear glaze and chocolate decorations and fondant into which cherries were dipped and subsequently those cherries were dipped in chocolate. Time flew.

Black Forest Cake

The Alhambra cake was cut into 12 pieces and then each was decorated with piped ganache, caramelized hazelnuts, and chocolate curls. The black forest cake was, by that time, ready to flip. Then came the really hard part, removing the silpat and leaving the red pâte decor in place. I realized after a while that it was a lot like dissecting so I ended up taking over and very slowly doing what I could to keep it neat. It was not easy and didn't come out as pretty as maybe it could have. We were able to cover a lot of it with the clear glaze and decorations.

This is the last of the formal classes. Next week we have a review day and then the practicum. The final written exam is in 10 days. I'm amazed at how quickly the time went by and how natural it feels to be there in the kitchen. I feel very close to my classmates and I'm sad to think I won't be seeing them every week. I have laughed quite a lot in the last four months. Mostly at myself, which is healthy, but also with my new friends, and for the sheer fun and joy of it all.

Day 29: European Classic Cakes

Today and tomorrow are devoted to the European classic cakes. We've already tackled Tiramisu but this week it's the Opera cake, the Sacher Torte, the Alhambra cake, Black Forest Cake and a "Yule Log" of sorts: a spring log.

For most of these cakes we made the cake a long time ago. We only had to make the cake for the Black Forest cake. While my classmates made the red pâte decor and the chocolate almond genoise cake, I made ganache with 10 pounds (yes, TEN) of chocolate. In that crazy huge bowl we almost never use. Other things got made today. Lime mousse and raspberry syrup for the Spring log (Buche de Printemps). Chocolate glaze. Coffee syrup and coffee buttercream for the Opera cake.

We were down a few students today so we had to stop a lot more often to clean up since there was the same level of mess and fewer hands to clean it. But ultimately we assembled the Opera cake and the Sacher Torte. The Alhambra is mostly assembled as well and the Buche de Printemps is rolled and waiting to be cut. Oh, and I made meringue mushrooms.

Meringue was made so we could have flowers for our Buche de Printemps but I also wanted to learn how to make mushrooms. After Chef taught me the basics I went a little crazy and decided to make morels. They're spring mushrooms, so why not? I grabbed a star tip and more meringue and piped taller, twisty peaks. After they dried a bit, I dusted them with cocoa powder and painted the edges with concentrated coffee. Unfortunately the oven was a little too warm so they split a little but they are adorable. At least, I think so!

The Opera cake is seven layers: Joconde cake, coffee buttercream, cake, ganache, cake, buttercream and a chocolate glaze. It's the size of a sheet pan and then we each got a rectangle (nine cakes in total). Decorating is always a challenge for me and today was no exception.

The Sacher Torte has ganache on the sides of the rings and then two layers of Sacher chocolate cake separated by apricot jam and ganache. It is topped with ganache and then with the chocolate glaze and finished with chocolate slivers.

The rest of the ganache went to assemble the Alhambra cake which we will finish tomorrow.

Day 28: Return of the Croissants

On Tuesday we made a whole lot of croissants. An insane number. We made two batches each of plain and chocolate and one batch of almond. And we had three other batches of croissant dough to play with. Three of us made cherry croissants, orange-apricot braids, and apple-brown sugar pinwheels. (I made the pinwheels which involved cooking apples in butter and cinnamon, piping some remonce mixed with pastry cream on the dough and topping with the apples.)

From the brioche dough we made purple spiral buns. The purple filling was almond cream mixed with black currant purée and they were divine! We also made peaches. This is a specialty of one of the Chefs and involves brioche buns, peach pastry cream, and sugar. The buns are made to look like fuzzy peaches and they are adorable and taste terrific, too.

Dartois

Lastly, we tackled the puff pastry. Here we were allowed to experiment even further. I played it a little safe by making palmiers (elephant ears) again but I put cardamom in the sugar for rolling and folding and, for some, sprinkled almond flour in between the layers of the final shape. I wanted to see if I could approximate baklava. Not really, but the palmiers were fragrant and lovely nonetheless.

Chicken salad vols-au-vent

Others used the puff pastry to make dartois, mostly with savory fillings, and vols-au-vent, which were baked empty and then some were filled with lemon curd and others left empty. (I used some of the empty ones to send the elderchild to school with chicken salad and arugula puffs for lunch.)

There was a daring experiment with pistachios and a large twist of puff pastry that I suppose was meant to look more like a birdcage or something but didn't rise so much as spread. Lastly, some of the scraps of puff pastry were used by one of our classmates to make these beauties:

We each got some puff pastry dough to take home. Mine is in the freezer and hopefully I can play with it soon. 

Day 27: More Viennoiserie

Last week when we each made a batch of croissant dough, we saved half of each batch for today. Danishes!

But first, we had to make more dough for tomorrow: four batches of croissant dough to make eight patons, and eight batches of puff pastry dough, and a single batch of brioche dough. So, in between making various danishes, we made all the turns for all our doughs and got them ready. Tomorrow there will be more croissants and some other fun things as well.

Then we got to work on the fillings for the danishes. We needed pastry cream, which was the base for the cheese danishes and the apricot ones, and a component of the pecan rolls (part remonce, part pastry cream). We also made a lemon filling.

Each danish was a different shape. The cheese ones were squares with the corners tucked in. The apricot danishes were pinwheels. The raspberry ones were bear claws and the lemon ones were little baskets. Some of the lemon ones had raspberries on them and others did not. The pecan rolls involved strips of dough with the filling, twisted and then rolled into snails. Everything was proofed, washed with egg wash, baked and then glazed or dusted with powdered sugar or both.

This week we didn't forget and with the scraps we made monkey bread.

Days 25 and 26: Viennoiserie

Apple turnovers

This week we started on Viennoisserie - croissants, puff pastries, brioche. Mmm. Lots and lots of butter.

Monday was spent making the doughs - as they need to rest overnight, there was no baking that day. Croissant dough has yeast and puff pastry does not, but both need to have butter incorporated within them and then they go through a series of "turns" to make all those layers. First we had to start the croissant dough and let it ferment. After that we divided each batch in half so we will have some to make croissants with next week as well. For the batch we were using, we started to incorporate the butter. We took the dough (detrempe) and rolled it out and then folded it over the butter, creating the paton. Then we rolled it out and folded it into thirds. One turn. Wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour. The croissant dough was turned 3 times over the course of the day.

The puff pastry dough was similar except did not require fermentation. We did let the dough rest and then did the same thing. Roll. Fold over the butter and seal. Roll and fold. Puff pastry needs six turns; we did five on Monday. Then it was wrapped and chilled overnight. Lastly, we made brioche dough, one batch was enough for all of us. Instead of letting that dough ferment at room temperature it went right into the refrigerator and fermented slowly there. We also made pastry cream and almond cream so we would have that ready for the croissants.

Raisin Croissant

Yesterday was baking day. First we took out our eight patons of croissant dough, in stages. We made plain croissants out of three patons. Chocolate croissants with two patons, almond croissants (almond cream as the filling) with two patons, and cinnamon raisin croissants with the last paton. That last one was mine, it'd broken while I was rolling it on Monday and since it didn't need to be as pretty it was used for the raisin croissants. We took the scraps from making the croissants so I could make some mini plain ones for my project presentation last night; I set aside eight or nine and let everyone eat the rest. We saved more scraps to make monkey bread but completely forgot about it until the end of the day. There were plenty of baked goods to go around without adding anything else!

The brioches were made into brioche a tête, in the little fluted molds. I'd tried this at home and didn't realize the little ball on top (the tête) was still attached. Now I know. They're adorable.

Pithivier

For the puff pastry, we used three patons to make pithiviers, which are rounds of puff pastry with almond cream inside and the top scored so the whole thing looks like a cake. Two patons became apple turnovers with a filling of apples sautéed with sugar and calvados. Lastly, the last three patons became palmiers, or elephant ears. For those, the last turn was in sugar instead of flour, which incorporates sugar between the layers and it's really wonderful.

So, after coming home empty handed on Monday, I now have baked goods all over the house!

Lastly, after our presentations at seminar last night, Chef taught us a bit about champagne and sparkling wine and showed us how to open a champagne bottle with a sword. "The dramatic way," he said. So true! My name was pulled out of a bowl so I got to open the second bottle with a really old German sword. Crazy fun!

Day 24: Petits Fours Frais

Yesterday's class involved making something we've made before, pâte à choux. However, we were making it in the context of petits fours frais, or fresh. Some of us had already done this when we volunteered to do the prep for that party back in the beginning of March. So when it came time to make the little tartlets, we were familiar with the process. Pate sucrée, almond cream, fresh fruits with apricot glaze and lemon curd with Italian meringue. I got to work the torch again, which always makes me happy.

The best part of yesterday was getting a sense of how far we'd come. We made pâte à choux in week 3. It's now week 12 and it was a whole lot easier. Not perfect, mind you, but easier.

Today I made a batch of lemon sablée cookies, which are being set aside to be sent to Vancouver. My great aunt, a woman very special to me, passed away a few weeks ago and, while I can't go to the memorial service, I can be there in spirit in the form of cookies. After all, food is love. I have one more batch of cookies to make (tomorrow) and then I'll send them up to my cousin.

Also, I finally got to that bag of Meyer lemons in the fridge, and currently have 5.5 cups of lemon curd in the canner.

Day 23: Cake Decorating

I think this is one of the classes I was most looking forward to; my home cake decorating up until now has been haphazard at best. Probably because I never really piped anything at home and today was all about piping frosting and royal icing. However, before you get any notions that making frosting roses is easy let me assure you, it is NOT.

We started the day by making yellow cake and cookies, basic recipes, so we could practice our decorations. Then we made royal icing and we each got to choose a color and then make roses. Granted, the icing wasn't stiff enough, even with adding more sugar, and it was a rainy day which likely made it more finicky. But my roses were UG-LEE! I did a little better with the apple blossoms and, because I had purple frosting, I made violets.

After everyone was good and frustrated, we moved on to icing the cookies. This went a lot better; again we each made a color and then we passed them around to make our cookies and play with techniques. We made piping icing for the outlines and flooding icing to fill in between the lines. One of my classmates taught me how to make really pretty roses in the icing. (Unfortunately, that cookie smudged on the way home and so I just had to eat it.)

Then it was time to work on the buttercream frosting for the cakes. We made a Swiss buttercream, as we started the egg whites and sugar in a double boiler and then transferred that to a mixer; from there the technique is the same in that you beat it until it's cool and then add the butter. As we made a lot of buttercream we were in serious danger of overflowing the larger mixer. Ultimately we had to split the batch for it to beat properly. The buttercream was left white so we could work on the cakes.

First we assembled the cake - trimmed layers with about half an inch of buttercream between the layers. Next was a crumb coat and then back in the freezer to chill briefly. After that, the cakes were frosted and the sides were smoothed. Chef showed us how to do a basketweave on the sides and we got to pick how we wanted to finish the top edge. I chose a braid. The basketweave comes out so beautiful and I really enjoyed working on it; I took my time and I'm pleased with the result. Finally we added our flowers and had the option of writing on the cake if we wished.

The flip side to all this work is that it was a significant mess and clean up took longer than anyone really wanted it to. But we still managed to get out of there before the next class started!

Days 21 and 22: Cake and Ice Cream

Mimosa Cake

Yesterday we assembled three cakes that had a more Italian flair to them: Tiramisu, a Mimosa cake, and a "Mara" cake (so named, per chef, because Mara is a brand of strawberries). For all of these, we had to make the creams and syrups but the actual cake parts were already made. The tiramisu and mimosa cakes were made in bowls that were placed in the freezer so the creams would cling to the sides. Each bowl then had three layers of cake in them. For the tiramisu, we'd made coffee biscuits (a kind of sponge cake) and these were soaked in a coffee syrup and layered with a mascarpone cream. It was finished with cocoa powder and pieces of chocolate (which we also made, marbled white and dark chocolate). The mimosa cake was a lemon-ginger cake, soaked in a ginger-citrus syrup and layered with a citrus mousseline. That one was topped with lemon-ginger cake cubes and fresh fruit. For the Mara cake we used rings and there was a Grand Marnier cream that was used for the outside and the layers; the rest was a layer of meringue and a layer of almond cake soaked in strawberry syrup. We made a strawberry glaze from scratch, which was a lot like making jam. Ultimately, the Mara cake became one of the prettiest things I've done so far. See if you agree:

Black Currant Sorbet

Today's class was all about ice cream and sorbet. For the sorbets, we each had to make one; I chose black currant. It was an opportunity to use a saccharometer, which measures density of a liquid using the Baume scale. This device works exactly like the one we use to measure the specific gravity of beer. Because black currant purée is so thick, I ended up adding a lot of sorbet syrup and even a little water to get the density correct so I ended up with a LOT of sorbet. I thought ahead for the first time, oh, ever, and brought containers. So I packed up a quart for myself and left even more for tasting.

For the ice cream, we could each choose a flavor. I made an ice cream that I always ask for at the local ice cream shop and they never make. See, they make Earl Grey ice cream and Vienna Finger Cookie ice cream. All I ask is that they combine them. And they don't. For me, one of my comfort foods at work was to dip Vienna Finger cookies in Earl Grey tea. I think they go great together. So today I made it. I even had to run to the grocery store to get the cookies! Anyway, I steeped milk and cream with nine tea bags and got a nice flavor, then finished making the base and chilled it. After it was in the ice cream maker and the texture was right I added crumbled up cookies and put it in the freezer.

The next task was to come up with a way of presenting it. I immediately wanted to serve it in a teacup. But it needed to be more than that. One of the other students and I made tuile cookies and, after a few tries, I got what I wanted - a little teacup and saucer made out of a cookie. Here is the plated ice cream:

Ultimately, we set out all 14 of our ice cream and sorbet flavors for the savory students to sample, and they brought us lovely shellfish and salmon for dinner: ceviche, mussels, calamari paella, salmon baked in a puff pastry, pasta with clams. Mmm.

Back row: Black currant, Pineapple-apple, Vanilla, Strawberry, Macadamia
Middle row: Cinnamon Graham Cracker, Chocolate Coconut, Passion Fruit, Cherry
Front row: Caramel, Apricot, Blackberry, Earl Grey-VFC, Pine Nut

Day 20: More Cakes, and Gravity Returns to Normal

Spring Passion Cake

Meaning, I didn't drop anything important today.

We had three more cakes to finish today and spent the bulk of the day making garnishes. We made caramel-dipped hazelnuts. And chocolate curls. And bubble sugar and eruption sugar. That was pretty fun!

Charlotte Helena

First off, we made the lime mousse for the Spring Passion cake, which was the red and green themed cake we started yesterday. Once the layers were arranged for that one, it went back into the freezer and then the chocolate praline mousseline for the Success cake was prepared. This was pralines, pastry cream, butter cream, and chocolate. It's like Nutella but much lighter (and better). Then that cake was assembled, using a joconde with pâte decor, the mousseline, and the success meringues. We had tons of these so made 12 regular sized cakes and a bunch of tiny ones. These all went into the freezer as well.

Success Cake

Next we garnished the Charlotte Helena cake we mostly completed yesterday. This is the one with the ladyfingers around the outside and the chocolate mousse and pears. Pears were placed on the center of the cake and glazed and then the chocolate curls were used to cover all the mousse. It was finished with cocoa powder and powdered sugar. Back in the freezer after being photographed and boxed.

The Success cake required cocoa powder and powdered sugar as well, and we had those caramel-dipped hazelnuts for garnish. Again, stored in the freezer until it was time to go.

Eruption Sugar

Then we played with the sugar. Both bubble sugar and eruption sugar require the same ratio of sugar, water, and glucose syrup, boiled to 160˚C. At that point the preparation differs. The bubble sugar is poured out over a hot sheet pan, which creates the bubbles (food coloring added after pouring), while the eruption sugar was colored with red and green food coloring and poured into number 10 cans filled with ice. The cans have no tops or bottoms and the sugar hardens and melts the ice. The sugar takes on really neat shapes this way.

Lastly, we decorated the Spring Passion cake by glazing it with lime and strawberry glazes to create a smeared effect and then adding pieces of the sugar, strawberries and candied limes.

Spring Passion Cake

Tonight we ate some of the Spring Passion cake. It's a terrific combination, lime and strawberry. Tomorrow we'll try something else. So many choices!

Day 19: French Cakes, Pi Day, and an Excess of Gravity

Citron Cake

Today and tomorrow are focusing on French cakes, particularly cake construction. We had almost all the cakes made already but to assemble them into beautiful creations we have to make all the other components. Between the two days there are five cakes to assemble. Today we completed the Citron cake, which is lemon based and incorporates a white genoise and an almond meringue layer, and the Triomphe cake, which is a walnut cake with caramel based cream and mousse layers. Each has a glaze on the top as well. We needed to make a lot of things:  a triple batch of buttercream, pastry cream, lemon curd, caramel extract, lime mousse base, chocolate mousse, a batch of ladyfinger batter but baked flat with red and green batter designs, strawberry syrup, Italian meringue, whipped cream, cake crumbs for the outside of the Citron cake, candied lemons, and I lost track of all the rest.

I will admit that today was a day of challenges for me. I added the cream to the caramelizing sugar too soon and then, in an effort to fix it, the caramel kind of exploded. All over the stove. And a bit on me. Fortunately, I only got a tiny burn, not enough to do anything but annoy me for the rest of the day. The stove was easier to clean than I imagined. While I was dealing with that I missed out on a few of the things my classmates were doing although I was able to catch up.

Triomphe Cake

The worse challenge was that I dropped an entire tray of 6 cakes. Yes. I did that. I felt terrible. I still do feel terrible. They were coming out of the freezer to finish getting glazed and then decorated and the tray hit the edge of the door. Chef was able to resurrect them and we were ultimately able to decorate them and take them home however I'm quite unhappy with myself. Tomorrow, I resolve to be more focused and do better.

Even with all these lovely cakes, we already had a pie made for today, Pi Day, so the cakes are going to hang out in my freezer for a few days until we can eat them. The pie, too, was lovely.

Day 18: Butter Cakes

This was another day in which we got to experiment, which was fun!

We started the day by having cheesecake for breakfast. Now, I'd already had cheesecake for breakfast as I had all those mini-cheesecakes from Monday and wanted to make sure I'd tasted all of them, so I cut two of them into quarters and had my share of each. However, once we got to school we took out those two NY Cheesecakes and cut one up for Second Breakfast. It was creamy and wonderful, even if it was cracked on top! I believe Chef took the other one home.

Sadly, there was no time for Elevensies or Luncheon, or even Afternoon Tea, as we spent the rest of the day making cakes based in butter. First we made a large rectangular cake with rum soaked raisins and maraschino cherries. Later in the day it was cut into six large squares and each square was spackled with marzipan and washed with egg yolk. After Chef decorated a few with a fork, I took over and made a fun basket-weave on the remaining three. These were left to dry out for a few hours and then briefly baked to brown the marzipan. I can't wait to try it!

Next, each team made a batch of Pain de Genes, as we need these for a future project. Ultimately we had eight cakes which we froze. Then each team made an additional butter based cake before we started on our individual experiments. There was pound cake and Sacher cake and Quatre Quarts. My partner picked the Gateau Basque. We'd been warned ahead of time that it was a "pain in the Basque" and I'm here to tell you that is SO true. I may never make this cake again. Even though it tasted amazing. Why? It was the fiddliest dough I've ever seen. It's butter, flour, almond flour and sugar, with a little rum. You're supposed to roll it out and then line rings with it. Well, we rolled it out between parchment sheets in four batches because it was so sticky and soft. The texture was more like a very soft cookie batter. We stuck those in the freezer to harden while my partner made a double batch of almond cream for the filling.

When the dough had set up a bit, we tried to get it into the rings. Ultimately we peeled the parchment off the top, set the rings on the dough and used a knife to cut out perfectly fitting rounds and transferred them with the bottom parchment still attached. We then had to use spatulas to smear the dough on the sides of the rings which took ever so long. Every once in a while Chef would walk by and say, "Aren't you done yet?" with a knowing smile. Finally all the rings were ready and filled with almond cream. It rises a lot so we didn't put very much in although some clearly had too much as the cream oozed out during baking. I then had to cut more rings of dough with the parchment paper for the tops and then we were able to peel the parchment off once we had the tops on. It helped to dip our fingers in ice water to seal up the crusts. These were then washed with an egg wash, decorated with fork lines, and baked. As I said, incredibly tasty.

Gateau Basque, Pound Cake and Quatre Quarts

Back: honey lemon, rosewater, apple walnut
Front:Blueberry lemon, honey quince, lemon pistachio

Lastly, we were given a set of parameters for ratios of sugar to flour, eggs to fat, and so on, and tasked with coming up with our own recipe. Our only initial guidance was to start with four ounces of butter. From there, we could play around however we wanted. Each of us was to make eight cupcakes so we could share them. I chose honey, lemon zest, and almond flour and made a dense, sweet little cake. The others used lemon and blueberries, lemon and pistachio, honey and quince, apples and walnuts, and rosewater. All of them were yummy, there were no failures. (We were told sometimes there were failures.)

As we had lots of cakes left over we gave them to the savory students and got a nice dinner of roast lamb and other lamb and grain dishes. I am so spoiled.

Day 17: Cheesecakes

Today, after our quiz, we got to work on cheesecakes. They should be smooth and not rise too high, and they should not crack or fall. I must say that neither of the cheesecakes I made today came out perfect to the eye, even if they did taste good.

Each of us made at least one cheesecake recipe each. First I made two New York Cheesecakes. I even pushed the batter through a sieve to remove the lumps. And dragged a knife through it, and removed all the air bubbles from the top with a fork. They both still cracked. Either they were beaten too much or the oven was too warm or they were overbaked or a combination of all three. They are being chilled overnight and will be finished tomorrow, and then we'll see what they look like at the end.

Since I had time, I could make another cheesecake. I decided to try a s'mores cheesecake. However, since all the marshmallows we could find were old and stale, I had to make marshmallows first. I've never done that before. It's not hard, but it does take time. The ingredients are simple: gelatin, sugar boiled to the soft crack stage with water and glucose, and egg whites. Once the mixture was cool enough it was piped into tubes (and a few kisses) onto parchment, dusted with cornstarch and powdered sugar, and refrigerated for several hours. When they were ready, they were cut into pieces and tossed in the sugar/cornstarch. Even with cutting the recipe in half, there were TONS of marshmallows. I took some home and, now that the 10 year old knows I can make them, I will likely never hear the end of it. They taste so much better than any marshmallow I've ever had before.

Anyway, back to the cheesecake. I made a chocolate cheesecake with a graham cracker crust. The crust didn't get pushed into the bases of the rings tightly enough, I don't think, as it didn't hold together well when it was time to get them out of the rings. Next time, I will just use my fingers to really get the crust into the edges. The cheesecake was a little lumpy and I probably should have strained it but didn't. It baked better than the NY Cheesecake did, though. Minimal cracking!

To finish them, I drizzled them with chocolate and then stuck marshmallows on them. I then used the torch to toast the marshmallows and then finished by adding a piece of chocolate and sprinkling them with more of the graham cracker crust mixture. They're very pretty. Having now eaten them, I think there isn't enough graham cracker flavor to offset the dense chocolate flavor.

My classmates made some amazingly beautiful cheesecakes as well, and I can't wait to try them!