As I get older I realize more and more how fast time goes by - even as I counted down the slowly passing minutes of my final Saturday pastry class last week. And the final hours of my desk job this week. It's crazy how a year can seem like a lifetime or a blur depending on your point of view. Spending all day Saturday in a kitchen with other students for the last twenty months has been fun, fascinating, exhausting,
overwhelming and many other adjectives that I could take up space with here. But more than anything it has allowed me to learn a lot about myself and what I can accomplish if I put my mind to it. And now I get to put those skills to use in my new bakery job. Bonus: I won't have to adjust to working long Saturdays since I've been doing it for so long already. My learning and fascination won't stop either, so I'll still blog often with updates on my internship/job.
The last Saturday of class was sort of underwhelming as we were all itching to get out of there, but my partner and I managed to put together a pretty nice ice cream cake. Or an ice cream brownie in our case. We made a fairly flat brownie, churned up some vanilla ice cream with Andes mint chunks, and baked some fancy pirouette cookies to place on top with the whipped cream. In the end, the whipped cream's job was to keep the fast-melting ice cream in between the brownies. This dessert works best when everything has time to chill sufficiently, which we've never had the time for on Saturdays. In any case, here is the final course I will produce in the school kitchen.
While it wasn't my prettiest or tastiest work, Greg and I still enjoyed eating it last week. And I will really enjoy not having to set a clogged foot in the school kitchen anymore. I do have ten more weeks of book class (Business Entrepreneurship), but then all I have to worry about is completing my internship paperwork until it's all over in October.
This weekend Greg and I are off on a mini-vacation to West Virginia to visit Greg's grandparents. We are looking forward to a very fun visit and I made a special cake just for the occasion. I hope everyone enjoys this lemon cake as much as I enjoyed making it!
So many things to celebrate, so many things to eat in celebration. What better way to celebrate Mother's Day and Greg's graduation than with a selection of bread, croissants, pies, cookies, creme brûlée and ice cream. We'd better throw a few Tums on the list for good measure.
On weeknights last week, I made my special desserts of creme brûlée (for Greg's dad), toasted coconut chocolate chip ice cream (for Greg's mom) and chocolate drop cookies aka Mama Chokers (for my parents). I considered making Greg a pie for graduation as well, but I was glad I decided to wait on that one after I found out what we were making in class on Saturday.
We started the day with pies. Believe it or not, I'd never made an apple pie before last Saturday. We used the old-fashioned method of not cooking our apples before we baked the pies and we added a variety of spices and chopped up pecans to the filling. I also monogrammed the top with a very versatile letter.
"M" is for Majewski. It's also for Mother's Day. And if you're Greg's dad then it really stands for "Mike's Pie." No matter how you look at it though, this was one delicious pie. I will be making apple pie again this year for sure. I probably won't be making a strawberry chiffon pie again though. This pie has a very light and fluffy texture, but it really wasn't worth all of the hard work. The graham cracker crust was my favorite part.
After the pies were done we started our quick breads. We made simple spice muffins with pecans and biscuits with cheddar cheese, garlic and oregano. Both items were delicious and enjoyed for breakfast several days.
We also made challah bread and croissants and these were baked off after much rising and folding throughout the day. I was very proud of my challah loaf and would go so far as to say that I had the best looking one in the class. The three braid style was a breeze compared to the six braid loaves that we make at the bakery.
My croissants turned out very buttery and flaky and the chocolat au pains were to die for as well. Especially fresh and still warm from the oven right after I came home from class.
But I've saved the best for last. Greg graduated on Mother's Day Sunday, so we had multiple things to celebrate with our parents. After the graduation ceremony and a buffet lunch at one of our favorite local restaurants (where we all sampled the dessert buffet), we came back to our house to continue the sweet celebration. I caramelized sugar on the tops of the creme brûlée and scooped ice cream into teacups.
And I served my mother one giant Mama Choker cookie. Here's her place setting.
There was basically a second dessert buffet in our dining room. Needless to say, the apple pie didn't get eaten until Sunday. But all of my special desserts turned out well and we enjoyed a really great weekend with family. Congratulations to Greg on his new Master's degree - a specialty pie will be in the oven for you very soon!
While I can happily eat bread anytime of the day, our bread specialties in class last Saturday focused on the breakfast variety. The sweet and sugary breakfast variety. We used our Danish dough from last week to make various types of Danishes, including the snail variety that I made awhile back. Let me refresh your memory.
We also mixed together a batch of brioche and sweet dough. These led to a variety of traditional brioche rolls and fancy items, along with some good ol' boy favorites. Like sticky buns for instance.
And cinnamon rolls.
The whole pan of cinnamon rolls above were enjoyed for breakfast on Sunday morning (along with a few of the sticky buns). Sorry Mom, but these babies beat out the Pillsbury cinnamon rolls in the can that I grew up eating my whole life. In a time-crunch-cinnamon-roll-craving situation though, I would gladly go back to my childhood rolls in a can. (Let's just keep that our happy little secret.)
Also, I can't believe I forgot to share my favorite picture from last week. I think these are still the tastiest items I've made all term. These palmiers will definitely be made again soon in my home kitchen.
This week though, I am putting together some very special desserts for some very special people. Greg's parents are coming into town this weekend to visit us and celebrate Greg's graduation and Mother's Day, and my parents are visiting on Sunday as well. It's my duty (and pleasure) to make sure that everyone has a dessert to swoon over. Mission accepted. Photos of accomplishments forthcoming.
As it turns out, small cakes are no more fun for me to make than normal sized ones. In fact, I may now have an even stronger dislike for them because of how time consuming and detail oriented the process of making them was last Saturday. But in the end, these petit fours made my heart swell with pride and my taste buds prickle with delight. They gave me the same feeling that beautiful high priced designer shoes used to in my former life (before Dansko clogs snuck into my closet). Petit fours are the Christian Louboutin's of pastry. And for once, I owned it.
The first half of my grade in our final kitchen class was based on these petit fours. We had to produce and display twelve each of the five varieties of petit fours, three glace (with icing) and two sec (sans icing), all with various fillings, toppings and decorations. The palmiers made with our puff pastry dough turned out to be rather grand instead of petit, but they tasted so good that Chef didn't mind. A side note of happiness: Greg and I also didn't mind and we managed to eat all twelve of them in less than 24 hours.
Without further ado, I would like to present to you my high class pastry display.
This labor of love included many precise cuts with a knife, much drizzling of fondant, careful dotting with melted chocolate and raspberry preserves and fun coloring of marzipan (just to name a few things that gave me an A).
The variety above is an almond cake with mocha buttercream filling, topped with a layer of chocolate ganache and a coating of chocolate glacage. We added a touch of buttercream and a chocolate covered coffee bean for the final touch.
Behind those are the fondant topped almond cakes with raspberry filling that I must say look much better than the last time I made them. Getting the fondant the correct consistency to drizzle over the cakes was still a bit tough, but they definitely turned out better than my previous attempt.
The blue beauties in the middle are made of a Swiss sponge cake filled with diplomat cream (a marriage of pastry cream and whipped cream), topped with colored marzipan. They weren't as sweet or quite as tasty as the others, but they add a nice splash of color to the display.
The almond spritz cookies in the front are delicious and were quite easy to make in comparison to the others. Plus I've had success with these in the past, so I could breathe a little easier while making this batch of petit four secs.
The palmiers were the other petit four sec and my favorite item on display. To make these treats, we folded lots of sugar into our puff pastry dough from last week and rolled it out until thin. Then we rolled the long edges up towards the middle and sliced it all up for baking. The caramelized sugar is what really gives this dessert it's high class appeal - and crunchy delicious taste.
Over the next three weeks, we'll be focusing on bread, pie and dessert presentation. Once that's all over I get to focus on bread full-time at the bakery...Jaime's got a brand new job! No Christian Louboutin's needed.
Say hello to my pretty loaf of cinnamon raisin bread. This loaf is one of several loaves that I personally made at the bakery last week and was so proud to bring home and paparazzi for you. It's nice eye candy, yes? Just wait until you see what's waiting inside.
It's impossible to eat just one slice, so I cut three to save some time. Don't you wish it was scratch and sniff?
This cinnamon raisin bread is great as is, but in case you're wondering what it might look like as French toast on lazy Sunday morning...
Syrup is optional. Scrabble is not. It's a Sunday tradition at our house.
Last Saturday's class was insanely busy, but I was really happy with how our cakes turned out. We baked two large sheet pan cakes, whipped up three different fillings to spread on them and rolled together a batch of puff pastry dough to slice up and bake off this coming weekend. The downside to this story is that all of said items are in the freezer until this weekend when we'll finish them up for presentation. Aka, I don't have much in the way of pictures. But I did snap one of our work chilling in the freezer before the door shut.
I promise there will be many pictures of my finished petit fours next week. Sorry to hold you in suspense. I recommend getting to know cinnamon and raisin in the meantime.
The bad news: cake was on the syllabus yet again in class on Saturday. The good news: this cake had a new twist. We made a European torte called a havana cake and it was very different from the wedding and seasonal cakes we've made over the last few weeks. It started with hazelnut and chocolate hazelnut batters that were piped in alternate layers into cake pans before baking. After they cooled, I made a mocha buttercream to spread in between and on top of the cake. Chocolate glacage covered the entire cake and ground hazelnuts were placed around the bottom edge. As a fan of hazelnuts, chocolate and mocha, the end results were delicious.
We also tempered a bit of chocolate for some final decorations. Here is the final product that Greg and I easily devoured most of during the week.
Can you really blame us? Look at this.
I also helped Chef Pierre fill and decorate some mini fruit tarts for a party he was working at on Saturday evening. It was quite fun chopping up the fruit and making little pieces of art on pastry cream. The goal is to make it seem like there is a ton of fruit on top, even if there is not. Are you fooled?
For another twist on the weekend, I decided to make soft pretzels Sunday for dinner. The recipe I have produces twelve pretzels, so I split it in half. This turned out to be a good decision because we most likely would have eaten all twelve of them. These pretzels give Auntie Anne's and Wetzel's Pretzels a run for their money. Or cheese dip. And they were fun to make. The dough only has to sit for 30 minutes and then you get to roll them out, twist them up, douse them in boiling water with baking soda, sprinkle them with salt and bake them for eight minutes. Easy, right?
Greg helped me twist them into shape so we ended up with a few different twist variations. All were delicious.
The pretzels were gone within fifteen minutes. I have a feeling pretzels are going to become a new staple on my baking list.
This Saturday begins my last five weeks in the school kitchen. We are reminiscing days past by baking items we've learned about over the last year and a half. Iced petit fours are up first and I'm up to the challenge.
This week, in between rolling out baguettes at the bakery, I literally took cake with me everywhere I went. Some might say that my cakes "took the cake" as well, but that's not for me to say. We made seasonal cakes in class on Saturday and I used rolled fondant for the first time. The cake says it all.
Using the fondant wasn't as hard as I thought it would be and while I'll admit that it looks nice, I still think it tastes gross and prefer buttercream icing. But I didn't almost lose my mind smoothing this out like I did with the buttercream icing last week. Just look at how nice and smooth this is.
This cake was taken to Fort Wayne for Easter on Sunday. Guess what was also taken along as a surprise anniversary treat?
This cake. It was wrapped up tight in our fridge for a week and then packed in the car ever so carefully to make the two hour car ride. The surprise was a success, plus the cake still tasted good, so it was a win-win. Happy Anniversary, Aunt Linda and Uncle Jack! The Easter cake was delicious as well and some of my family even enjoyed the chewy fondant. The Easter cake was chocolate with vanilla buttercream and some white chocolate shavings in the middle.
Speaking of variety, there was not much of this in my Aunt Patty and Uncle Jim's refrigerator. If you thought stocking up on cream cheese was wild, wait until you see what I found in the refrigerator on Easter.
You're looking at no less than 38 tubs of Cool Whip. This may be necessary if I was bringing one giant pumpkin pie for dessert and everyone would need their own tub. I did not, however, bring pumpkin pie for dessert. My Uncle Jim just really, really likes Cool Whip. And apparently they got a good deal for them at the store last week. Even better news - I got an awesome blog post out of it and now feel the need to start a competition of who can store the most of one item in their fridge at a time. Please call me if you have more than 38 of something in your refrigerator. Let's take pictures.
And now back to cake week. I had cupcake baking to do on Monday evening. I decided to make two varieties of cupcakes for my friend/co-worker's baby shower on Tuesday. She requested a fruit flavor, so I found a great recipe for a vanilla cupcake filled with strawberry jam and topped with strawberry buttercream icing. These were to die for and I managed to eat three of them in 24 hours. To put this in perspective, there were only 12 total. Right. I also made a chocolate chip cupcake with chocolate buttercream because I knew chocolate would be in demand at the shower. And I was correct. Both cupcakes were a hit and I enjoyed making them way more than the cakes.
Also, I thought about making fondant shaped babies for toppers, but figured sprinkles were more appetizing. Plus I had this impressive new cupcake holder to show off and the fondant babies would have stolen all of the attention away. Here it is stacked up and ready to take to work.
Thanks go out to my parents for the nifty cupcake holder. I guarantee it will see a lot of use in the future. Just not in the near future because I am tired of cakes for now. Let me rephrase that - I am tired of making cakes for now. But eating them really takes the cake.
