Final weeks of pastry school

Hey everybody! Hope you've been doing well since my last post. I actually graduate from pastry school this coming Friday...can you believe it?! I know I can't! It feels like just yesterday that I was nervously telling my mom I wanted to go to an open house at ICE and check it out. It wasn't that I was nervous what she would think, it's just that it seemed like such a crazy idea at the time, even to me. I still think it's crazy how God led me to this new path, but I know it's what I should be doing because I find so much joy in it. 

Back at the end of our third module, we worked on plated desserts. I love it because you get to decide what would make the dessert most appetizing and then use different components of the dessert to make your idea play out. Below are some of my favorites that we did. Then we started mod 4 which consists of chocolate and cakes. To be honest, I actually hated working with chocolate at first. It's messy, temperamental, and takes a lot of patience. But once I started getting comfortable with the process of tempering chocolate and making it useable, I realized I actually love working with it. There's something artistic about chocolate that makes it so much fun, and when it turns out the way you wanted it to, there's nothing better. 

We're currently in our final week of school (AH) and we're all making the final components of our celebration cakes. Mine is an engagement cake for my brother John Mark and his bride to be, Hannah. They actually don't know that yet--they'll find out when they read this!! She loves sunflowers and chose to use them in her wedding, so I made a huge sunflower out of gumpaste to be the centerpiece of my cake. I also chose bright colors to use because they're having a casual outdoor wedding in July and they both have amazing, fun, and bright personalities. I just wish they could be here to actually see the cake when it's finished! A picture will have to suffice :) love you both!

Now for some pictures...

Chocolate caramel tart served with caramel popcorn, chocolate pudding and salted caramel ice cream. --Nicole Kaplan recipe.

Chesnut parfait with roasted pear, orange, chesnut biscuit and wafers. --Michael Laiskonis recipe.

Gianduja parfait--a semi frozen dessert made in a sphere mold and then sprayed with dark chocolate spray to give it a really cool texture. Served with praline cream, hazelnuts, vanilla ice cream and caramelized banana. --Michael Laiskonis recipe.

Greek yogurt panna cotta with grapefruit, avocado and basil seeds and basil foam. --Michael Laiskonis recipe. ...so honestly this recipe really didn't sound all that great to me, and ends up that it looks a bit like sushi. But it turned out to be one of my favorites that we made!! This chef is a genius.

Callipos tropic--pineapple gelee, coconut gianduja, coconut dacquoise, almond crunch and dried pineapple slice. --Stephane Iten recipe.

Milk chocolate and raspberry mousse on top of vanilla and chocolate sable and garnished with fresh raspberries and chocolate curl with raspberry sauce. --Stephane Iten recipe.

Caramelized banana tart--linzer tart, cooked banana filling, caramelized banana, caramel ice cream and spun sugar garnish with caramel sauce. --Sherry Yard recipe.

Raspberry mille feuille with ice wine granita and litchi sorbet, garnished with fresh raspberries. --Nicole Kaplan recipe.

Assorted molded chocolates--these have either a milk chocolate ganache or orange white chocolate ganache filling.

Molded chocolate candy bar--salted caramel filling. I decided to channel Picasso and "splatter paint" my chocolate with cocoa butter color...I really love the way they turned out!

These are the molded chocolates I made for my practical exam--they have a champagne filling, and I got 100 on them!

Chocolate showpiece--the base and center of the flower are dark chocolate, the flower petals are white chocolate, and the vial of "love potion" is made out of blown and pulled sugar. Sugar is crazy hard to work with! It burns your hands because its 320 degrees when you work with it, takes a TON of patience, but is so much fun when it works out the way you wanted it to!

Assorted molded and dipped chocolates from my class--we got to invite friends to come to a party to view our showpieces and taste all the chocolates that we made.

White cake with apricot filling, covered in a marzipan- rolled fondant combination. The rose is made out of chocolate plastic and the butterfly out of royal icing. 

Sunflower made out of gumpaste. This is going to be the focal point of my final cake. We got to design our own cakes and we've been working on the decorations for the past week. It took me about 3 classes (12 hours) to make all of the petals, let them dry, make the center and put it all together. Hopefully I'll get a little faster haha

I got to assist my chef instructor with a recreational class that she taught on macarons. She co-wrote a book titled "les petits macarons" and we made several different recipes from it. A few of them are pictured above.

  

Picture from our class party with the chocolate showpiece.

~ Thanks so much for continuing to read my blog! ~

Cakes and more cakes

Hey everyone! So it seems that every time I write my blog now, there's about a month or more in between each entry. So very sorry for that, but I'm very excited to show yall what I've been working on. My class is now in our 3rd module, which is cakes and cookies. It really has been the most delicious mod thus far...and the most difficult for me. I had never actually decorated a cake before now--shocking, I know. So this has been an incredible experience for me to try and pick up all of this as fast as I can. As we go along, I've gotten more comfortable with all of the different cake making and decorating techniques, and I've come to really enjoy all of the work you have to put into the final product. Here's some of the projects we've been working on...

Orange meringue cake

Vanilla cake, layers of orange curd, buttercream and marmalade and torched Swiss meringue on the outside. Garnished with torched meringue and candied orange rinds.

My chef's personal carrot cake recipe. Carrot cake with cream cheese icing and garnished with cake crumbs and pecans.

Small almond frangipane tarts with fresh raspberries and blueberries. Topped with chopped almonds.

This is cheesecake I made for my family over Thanksgiving--plated with raspberry and chocolate sauces I made.

Toasted coconut cake. Vanilla cake, layers of whipped cream and toasted coconut. Vanilla buttercream on the outside, garnished with toasted coconut and almonds. Buttercream piping on the edge.

Closeup of the cake.

Chocolate hazelnut cake. Chocolate cake with layers of chocolate ganache. Glazed with a rich chocolate ganache. Garnished with gold dusted hazelnuts, white chocolate shavings and white chocolate piping.

Another view of my piping on the chocolate hazelnut cake.

Petits fours--layers of cake and chocolate ganache, cut into 1.5 inch squares. Glazing fondant poured over them, then chocolate ganache piping details.

Dobochetorte--one of my favorite things we've made. Very thin cake layers, chocolate buttercream inside, spread over the torte and piped along the sides. We then poured a dry caramel over one of the cake layers, allowing it to set and become smooth then cut into 12 pieces to make the pinwheel shape.

Another view of the dobochetorte.

A rich chocolate mousse cake glazed with chocolate ganache. Toasted coconut on the sides and white chocolate piping on the top.

Bouche de Noel--a classic French dessert meant to be served at the holidays. It's a bisquit cake shaped into a yule log with chocolate buttercream meant to look like wood. Then garnished with painted meringue mushrooms and marzipan holly leaves and berries. And I added a little green worm with a Santa hat, just to be festive! 

Mango miroir. Mango mousse surrounding two vanilla cake layers inside. These are put into a blast chiller to allow the mousse to set, then they're un-molded slightly. Then a glaze is poured over the mousse to create the shiny top layer. I garnished with a strawberry on top.

This is one dessert a couple of my classmates made while I worked on another. But I love how these turned out so I decided to include it. Chocolate and orange pastry cream layers alternated with cake layers. Topped with torched meringue.

Symphonie cake--layers of hazelnut cake, hazelnut buttercream and rich chocolate ganache. Glazed with ordinary chocolate ganache and garnished with white chocolate piping and gold leaf.

Tiramisu--alternating layers of rum soaked cake, whipped cream and coffee buttercream. Cut into triangles and sprinkled with cocoa powder.

My favorite thus far--a chocolate ribbon cake. These are a chocolate mousse cake allowed to set in the blast chiller. Then the outside is covered with modeling chocolate which creates the smooth texture on the side and the ruffles on top. Then I painted the edges with gold.

Another view of the chocolate ribbon cake.

Thanks for reading and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Pastry dough

Hello again! I'm oh so sorry to have been MIA for quite some time. Life has gotten the better of me recently, and my very noble intentions of blogging once a week have taken a back seat to everything else. Nevertheless, here I am ready to share with all of you more from my wonderful time in baking school. We've been working on pastry doughs used for tarts, pies, croissants, danish, puff pastry, and lots more.  

Small tartlettes filled with either pastry cream, meringue or chocolate ganache, and then decorated using fresh fruit and chocolate. 

Raspberry and almond tart with a lattice on top.

This is called a Gateau Pithivier. It's puff pastry filled with almond frangipane, which is a filling that is like a moist cake-like texture when baked. 

This was so much fun to make. It's called a Mille Feuille--or more commonly, a Napoleon. It's just layers of puff pastry filled with combined pastry and whipped cream, and then vanilla fondant and chocolate glaze on top.

These are called Danish envelopes. The different fillings are cheese, pineapple, almond and apple. 

Shortcake with whipped cream and fresh berries. 

This has been my favorite thing that we made so far--small tarts with either fresh fruit and pastry cream or lemon curd and meringue.

Apple tart with crumb topping.

Pumpkin pie and peach pie with a crumb topping.

I volunteered at a gala event for Action Against Hunger and got to help plate with a pastry chef from Ilili--a wonderful restaurant in the city. We literally painted chocolate onto the plate with a pastry brush, then added a small amount of coconut, crushed choc meringue cookies, cream, and coconut pastry cream. There is supposed to be a souffle on the plate as well, but I just wanted to show the part that I did. Three of us had to do 360 of these plates...it was a lot of work, but so so much fun!

I hope that everyone enjoys this post, and seriously, thank you so much for continuing to read and follow my blog!
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Bread, bread everywhere!

We started our bread module about two weeks ago, and I just haven't gotten a chance to post a blog about any of the things we've made. Thus, the huge amount of pictures and random items. Bread is seriously amazing to me--it's just flour, water, yeast, and maybe a starter, yet you can do so much with such simple ingredients. Anyone can make bread, but true artisan bread takes very specific methods. It's all about technique, which is what we're being taught right now and is so intriguing to me. I forgot to take pictures of a few things we made like baguettes, pretzels and bagels, but these are a good representation of what we've been working on. Enjoy!

Artisan French bread

Hot cross buns

Focaccia bread--made with fresh rosemary, red peppers, onions, and thinly sliced potatoes.

Homemade pizza--the first is with pepperoni, sausage, cheese and sauce; the second is a white cheese pizza with spinach and red peppers.

Fresh whole grain bread

Sourdough bread--we made sourdough starters and "fed" them over the weekend (which is just taking 1/2 the starter and adding water and high gluten flour) then made the bread in class.

Zeppoles--if you've never had them, it's basically just fried dough with powdered sugar. Amazing!

Doughnuts--lemon doughnut with lemon vanilla icing and sprinkles.

Coffee cinnamon doughnut with chocolate sprinkles and lemon doughnut with lemon-vanilla icing and rainbow sprinkles.

More doughnuts...

Yet more doughnuts...

Boston creme doughnut with chocolate icing...

Brioche--it's a sweet bread, and believe it or not, it's supposed to have the top part...it just shouldn't be crooked. It's called Brioche à Tête.

Pain Aux Raisin--we used currants instead of raisins and there's an almond spread and sugar fondant icing.