Week 3

I've really got to start being more creative with the titles of these posts. But anyway, week 3 is over and it was quite busy. 

We started off the week by making succes cookies, which just happen to be some of my family's favorite french treats. The first step was to make an ordinary (or french) meringue just like we'd been practicing in week 2, except that we added chopped nuts. Then we made a swiss meringue, which is different in that you whip the egg whites and sugar in a bowl over a bain marie (a hot water bath) until the sugar is dissolved before it goes in the mixer.  We then turned the swiss meringue into a buttercream by simply adding butter and a flavoring (me and my partner decided on hazelnut) and continuing to beat until it was smooth. The next step was to pipe the ordinary meringue into swirls and put it in the oven to bake. Then for the final step we piped the hazelnut buttercream in rosettes on the swiss meringue "cookies" and sifted confectioners sugar and cocoa powder on top for decoration. 

After that, we had soufflé day! Or rather, quite a few soufflé days! The first day, we made flourless chocolate soufflés which are so light that they just taste like flavored air. Since there's no flour and really nothing to hold them up, they start falling as soon as you take them out of the oven and will be really flat after about 5-10 minutes. So they're pretty much pointless in an actual situation unless you're going to serve them within 5 minutes. But it was our first taste (literally) of soufflés and I loved learning how to make them. The next few days we learned to make flour-based soufflés which I much prefer. We made all different kinds--chocolate, orange, coffee, praline, strawberry and coconut, just to name a few. 

Later on in the week, we started to learn about gelatin and how helpful it is in baking. We then used our newfound gelatin knowledge and made milk chocolate panna cotta, which is a consistency of a custard or pudding. Next we actually got to make marshmallows which was really fun--my group made ours coffee flavored and they turned out great! After that it was onto making a delicious chocolate mousse. We combined a lot of the things we'd learned into one chocolate mousse--we started by making an ordinary meringue, adding melted chocolate and finally making sabayon and mixing it all together. 

On Friday of last week we got to take a field trip to Chelsea Market where we got tours of the kitchens at  Sarabeth's and Amy's Bread--two of my favorite places there!! I especially loved meeting Sarabeth (of Sarabeth's) she was hilarious and a little bit eccentric which I just adored. She told us it's incredibly important to learn the techniques of baking and practice them, but then to take what you learn and make it your own. She experimented with the recipes she was taught and tweaked them to her liking and that's where her success came from. I found her words incredibly familiar, because that's exactly what I've been told in my dance training (yes yes, another dance/baking comparison--bear with me). Technique is the foundation of both baking and dance and should be taken to heart. But then you've got to work with what you were given and find your own unique rhythm, so to speak. Isn't that what any kind of art is about anyway? Expressing yourself through something the world can see--or see and then taste, in the case of baking. This week, more than the first two, I really see just how much I fit in this new world of baking and I could not be more thrilled. God put this desire in my heart so he knew this is where I needed to be all along, he just waited patiently for me to listen. And as Chef Jeff put it, "you're probably one of the only ones coming from a career that's even harder than the one you're going to be entering." He makes a good point--as long as I'm not asked to stand in pointe shoes while I bake, I think I can pretty much handle anything.

 Succes cookies (and some mini ones made with extra meringue...just because they're adorable)

Flourless chocolate soufflés 

Showing off one of my strawberry soufflés 

Orange flour-based soufflés (you can even tell from the pictures how much better these rise 

than the flourless ones)

My wonderful family from Connecticut came to the city on Sunday and had a birthday lunch for me. We ended the meal with some of my chocolate mousse I brought. This is my adorable cousin Sophia after sampling the chocolate mousse...I think she liked it haha

Some of my attempts at artistic pictures in Chelsea Market