Thoughtful Thursday

Just a some lyrics for today :) 

"Be your best friend, tell the truth, and overuse I love you

Go to work, do your best, don't outsmart your common sense

Never let your prayin' knees get lazy

And love like crazy"

It's A Good Day :)

Wow its been a while since I have had time to write but I'll try to sum up the past week of my life. Lets see monday we practiced our 5th term practical mousse cakes, thursday was grand buffet, and friday we finished up our individual entremets and took our class final. Here are a few pictures:

Fruit Tart
Sable cookie base with pastry cream, fresh cut fruit, and  a frangipan center

Pandan Panna Cotta
Pandan panna cotta, with a disc of brioche, piped whipped cream, and cooked tappioca pearls

5th term Practical Cake
Raspberry mousse with layers of chiffon cake, finished with a raspberry mirror glaze

Milk Chocolate & Chestnut
Chestnut cake, milk chocolate mousse and dark chocolate glaze,
finished with piped chestnut paste, vanilla cremeux and chocolate sticks

Apple Charlote
Layers of frangipan on the outside with a disc of brioche, a cooked apple filling,
and an apple cider mousse dome finished with streusel and white chocolate garnishes

Bread Display at Grand Buffet

My Individual Entremet

From bottom to top:
Rolled chocolate flourless cake with white choc pate a glace, a layer of white chocolate covered oreos,
another layer of chocolate cake, a small layer of salted nuts, chocolate mousse,
peanut butter mousse and finished with a chocolate shiny glaze

My Class with the Chef

 Although I have many more pictures these are some of the main products I worked on. After a very enjoyable long weekend at home, I am back at school. Today I started Chocolates and Confections Class, and so far it is a very nice pace compared to the chaos of last block. The morning starts off with lecture, then we get a 10-15 minutes break to get coffee or a quick breakfast. Then typically there is another session of lecture with chefs demo of what we are producing that day, and then production, lunch and another brief lecture after we are finished with production for the day. The chef seems a lot more relaxed and not as easily tempered as the last class was. A really neat thing about this class is our chef actually wrote the book we use in class and is incredibly experienced in creating chocolates and confections, along with all the science behind it. Well thats about all for today, I am off to do a little studying and hopefully enjoy this beautiful weather :)

Its Sunday Already...

Once again its sunday night and I find myself restless and scrambling around to get everything ready for class in the morning. This will be short but overall its been a pretty good weekend with the girls. Today we went to Kennedy's Fried Chicken..I had never heard of it but I guess its a pretty well known chicken shack you could say. I finally got some delicious fried chicken wings and some corn nuggets :) Not exactly a home cooked sunday meal, but it was delicious! Since the weather was absolutely beautiful, we also went to a state park down the road from school and took a nice relaxing hike on the trails. Well I'm off for the night but heres a few pictures from the weekend: 

beautiful sun on the hudson

i love sail boats!! 

Me and my girls :) 

Day 2

Today was pretty hectic in the bakeshop because we didn't have our usual game plan. Instead of normal production we each had 5-6 individual projects to work on for chef. As a class we are responsible for preparing all the components for three plated desserts for 100-150 portions each, along with starting to prepare things for grand buffet next week. Today I personally made mini frangipan molds, apple cider mousse, an apple caramel cooking liquid and then cooked about 12 pounds of apples. I also helped prepare a butternut squash dish and a milk chocolate glaze. 

 

Heres a few of the finished items I have made so far in this class:

Fig Newton Petit Gateau 
Mascarpone Mousse with an Oatmeal Cookie Base
with a Fig Spread and Almond Dacquoise insert  

Fig Newton Entremet

Chocolate Praline Entremet
Flourless Chocolate Cake coated with dark chocolate pate a glacer
and a crispy hazelnut base, with a chocolate mousse insert
finished with chocolate spray

and the inside...

Lemon Basil and Blueberry Petit Gateau
Cookie base with raspberry jam and a citrus chiffon cake,
wild blueberry compote with a basil cremeux,
finished with a lemon mousse and basil glaze

Take Five Entremet
Chocolate Flourless Cake, with a peanut butter pretzel crunch layer,
caramel cremeux, another layer of cake
finished with peanut butter mousse and a caramel glaze 

a finished slice :)
 Mmm decoredthis is my favorite!!

Carrot Cake Petit Gateaux
Carrot Cake with a strawberry gelee finished
with a Cream Cheese Mousse

also pretty delicious :)

Day One!

So today I decided to create a blog for family and friends to read. I haven't written in one since middle school, however I thought it would be a good way to share different things I am making or learning in class with those that I may not have time to talk to everyday.  Today was day six of this block, "Contemporary Cakes and Desserts." In this class we make entremets and petits gateaux.  For those who have never heard of these terms, it essentially is a french dessert that is served between meals.  Entremets are meant to serve 6-8 people and petit gateaux are individual portion sized.

Although I am learning and somewhat enjoying this class, it is very intense and stressful. My schedule is fairly rough and I tend to just toss and turn rather than sleeping all night. I have yet to fully understand how I can sleep so well on the weekends but during the week, I feel like I wake up every hour!  And for this class especially being tired just isn't an option. Class goes from 6:30am - 1:30pm everyday and we are required to be super prepared, scheduled, make daily game plans, meet with our partners and study every night for potential pop "queezes" as my French Chef pronounces it.

Once I look beyond the stress and chaos and really look at the products however they do look amazing, interesting, contemporary, and overall quite unique. Every day we follow a similar pattern for preparing these desserts.  All the bases (cakes, dacquoise, and cookie doughs) were prepared on Day 1 of the class by various teams. If the entremet has a cookie base, it needs to be rolled out, cut, and baked that day..and if the base is a cake, there is the option to roll it a little thinner or keep it thick ( depending on our interpretation of the dessert and individual preference), a thin coat of pate a glace is then applied ( to make the cake stick to the cake board) and finally it is cut to the correct size of the mold we are using that day.

The next step of the day is to prepare the various mousses. Typically all the desserts have two types of mousse, or a mousse and a cremeux.  The insert has to be frozen rock solid before the outer mousse can be made. Since we're using gelatin, it is imperative that once the mousse is made, whatever it is going into is ready. There is a lot of assembling obstacles to overcome sometimes, and a lot of components to gather and have ready.

In addition to all of this, we have to work CLEAN!  A lot of times it is necessary to stick dirty dishes under our station and clean them once we get a chance. The chef likes the tables to constantly get wiped down and scrubbed (about 20 times a day- no joke!) Most of our tools are kept on a sheet tray on a slider under our station, however a few must be kept in a bain marie on top of the table, this water must stay clean and hot, and therefore needs to be changed periodically throughout the day also. This all seems tedious and unnecessary now, however I'm sure it will come in handy in the future.