It's Monday! Back to the classroom..

Happy Monday!

Today we were back in the classroom. Theory test, theory, Communications and computers. I have figured out today why I chose a career where I am always moving and doing something. I find it so dang hard to sit at a desk all day and be engaged. I want to be...but cripes. Even working on my Blog I have trouble staying focused. I'm bouncing over to other websites while I wait for my brain to remember what I did in the day. It's quite a process..

 I got my Flour test back from last week. I only got one question wrong *pat on the back*
I'm not so confident that my sugar test today went as well. The way I studied was not working with what the outline of the test looked like. When I got that test my face dropped. I filled in every spot but not with the right answers. I hope that I will get a few pity points lol. I'm expecting to see something like "wow. you're a dummy..here are 2 points for effort." haha (chef would never do that, thats just what I picture in my mind). Seriously though, It's on me. Not anyones fault but my own for not doing well. I learned that I really need to know the info inside and out and to not panic! Hopefully the next test I will be a little calmer and pass it. Live and learn - can't win them all.

 This week in Theory we are learning about leavening agents, which is "the process of producing gas in a dough or batter." (no, I didn't know that off the top of my head - I'm reading my notes)
 This isn't as scientific as the sugars were, so I might be able to handle this one.

 Then we had communications! We did a fun little test today where we were put in to groups of 5 and we had to pick a leader - my group picked me. God love em. The "leaders" got brought out in the hallway where we were given a picture of a truck made from shapes. Our job was to sit with our backs to our group and explain to them how to draw this truck without saying the word "truck"and without the use of non-verbals (gestures, etc) . We did well! I made a mistake explaining something so the truck looked mirrored on their paper, but it was a truck none the less! I kept having to bring my hands down to my lap because I was trying to make the shapes with my hands. I'm a very non-verbal person. I can get overwhelmed when I hear to much talking or noise - I love my quiet time. So I have learned to use my non-verbals a lot. And we were taught in college (childcare - College round 1) how powerful non-verbals can be when dealing with children. You don't always have to be talking. I've held on to that lesson. Either way, It was wonderful. Fun activity!
 I tried to pay attention to the rest of the class but I felt like I needed a time out so I doodled a bit.  I hope teachers don't think I'm not paying attention or being rude. I just need to unfocus so I can refocus on whats going on. I can't be the only one who feels the need to do this...

 We were done early and got an hour and half for lunch. Always a bonus! I tried a pumpkin scone today. It was delicious! I have always snubbed pumpkin, I will try to be open and at least try it from now on. I think I decided I hated pumpkin when I used canned pumpkin in a sensory table for my little ones (when I was a nanny) And they had it EVERYWHERE. I was cleaning one of them up and he shoved his little pumpkin covered fist in to my mouth. Yep. That was moment I hated pumpkin lol. But I must say, it tastes completely different when your not eating it off a toddles fist. haha. ah, memories. I miss those kids.

 Computer class was pretty simple, we just had more library information about plagiarizing and research. Pretty straight forward.

 Then it was homeward bound where my friend and I talked about our love for donairs. If she didn't like them I don't the friendship could of lasted. It just couldn't. You think I'm kidding?.... ;)

 I walked in to my husband vacuuming. So sexy. He went and got groceries and cleaned. I'm so lucky. 10 years and he still takes care of me. xoxo. Those are for him. :)

 I don't have pictures of food today but I do have a picture of my projects that I finished today! I knitted my first ruffle scarf and also finished my dish cloth. Yay me!!

 I also wanted a snack while I was writing this so I waddled in to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Hmm, fresh watermelon..or a spoonful of chocolate icing from a can? (its from when I made cake pops months ago! I was in a pinch and didnt have time to make my own! Don't judge me.) Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to pick melon? But I did it. A victory!

Have a wonderful evening dear readers!

...how many of you have icing in a can sitting in your fridge that you are thinking about right now? ;)

More brioche..my poor waist line.

Good evening,

 Guess what we did today? We baked more bread! duuuhhh. Today we made Kaiser rolls, brioche almond, and herb rolls.

 Kaiser rolls and myself are not friends. Its a very sticky dough and just making them in general was a pain in the butt. I'd watch my teammates pushing out beautiful buns and mine look like they were squished by an elephant. In the baking process we got use something we haven't used before, which was neat. Normally everything we baked went in to the convection oven, but today we got to use the deck oven. To make bread with a hard crust you need to use the steam injector! So we put them in the oven and I asked chef why we didn't need to egg wash them like we have done to pretty much everything else - and he explained it...I don't really remember what he said. He said "and this is why..but don't worry about remembering it we will be going over it more in class." Sooooo as soon as he said "..don't worry about remembering it.." my brain went "OKAY!" and replaced the information that I had just taken in with pictures of bunnies.
 So yes, we put the kaisers in the oven and then I pushed the steam button quickly and a little shot of steam came out of the oven. I was told to do it again and hold it for a good 5 seconds. Do you have any idea what happens when you push a button that sprays water in to a 400 degree deck oven? You get a serious steam facial! But we all survived that process and made the damn kaisers.

 Now, Brioche with almond cream. You will all be happy to know that I was 95% successful in rolling a rectangle shape today! hazaa! I was very proud of myself. For the almond cream we mixed pastry cream with a 50/50 mixture of ground almonds and sugar. You combine them until you get an oatmeal consistency then let the cream and brioche dough make sweet love together *insert Barry White music here*
 We had to cut them and roll them in to these what I call "brioche butterflies" - we were all saying how ugly they were before they were cooked. In the end though, they turned out lovely! Again today, this was my lunch.

 When we first started this course I thought "I have no idea how people gain weight..seriously." I'm figuring it out now. You get one of mostly everything you make and these things are not low in calories, fat and sugar. I mean in my delusional mind they are just as healthy as carrots - thats what I tell myself. I went to the gym today to make me feel better. Balance. Got to find a balance.

 Oh! Chef also introduced us to something called none melting icing sugar. With normal icing sugar when you sprinkle it on something like fruit or certain cakes the moisture in the dessert makes the icing sugar melt away. But this none melting icing sugar does exactly as the name indicates - It doesn't melt. So he encouraged us to taste some, I was standing the closest to it so I dove right in. It is the most vile tasting "sugar". You could give me two options, lick the floor or eat a spoon of that icing sugar. I would lick the floor. It tastes like burnt plastic. Chef says he doesn't use it because you should never compromise taste for decor. I would never serve that stuff on a dessert. Nasty Nasty Nasty.
 So If you ever get a dessert take a taste of the icing sugar. If its nice and sweet and melts when it comes in contact with liquid - you're good. Its real. If you taste it and you want to lick a pile of shit to get the taste out of your mouth - Its none melting. Send it back or scrape it off. Don't eat it.

 Today we also made herb rolls. I did the math at home tonight to cut my recipe in thirds so I can make this at home with Davin. I do need to learn my herbs though. Most of them I know..or at least I thought I did. We needed basil, thyme and sage for the bread. I skipped off to the fridge to get some but I could only find two..not three. So I told chef we only had two out of three and he said "well, which ones do you have?" and after staring at him blankly I said "The stick one and the leaf one." - He got a chuckle out of that one. So next time I'm at the grocery store I need to spend some time with the herbs lol.

 We are not in the kitchen tomorrow. We have to spend a day in the classroom doing first Aid. Apparently it's important to know how to save someones life, or stop them from choking, or help them when they burn themselves... This.should.be.fun. I've taken so many of these over the years that this should be easy. Unless they have changed everything. We shall see.

 Here are some more pictures of bread! Don't worry, On wednesday we start in our new rotations which is stuff like puff pastry, upside down cakes, oatcakes and cupcakes!

Almond Brioche "butterflies" ready to proof.

See, not very pretty. 

VERY PRETTY! 

mmmmm

Herb dough balls

Add caption

Herb rolls all baked and ready for sale

Kaiser rolls

No, this is not JUST a cinnamon bun..

Good day!

 Today was day two in bread. We first had to make more white and whole wheat rolls for service. Easy peasy! Then we got to play with the doughs we made yesterday! Yes!
 First we played with our brioche *drool* It was still nice and soft, and because of all the butter it was easy to roll out. I need some serious practise in rolling shapes. I can't roll dough in a circle and I can not make rectangles. I can make a semi circle, a half rectangle half circle and what look like places on a globe...but not a straight out rectangle or circle. It's actually very frustrating. I know exactly how it should be rolled to get said desired shape, but it just doesn't want to work for me. I think It might be in the pressure I use on my rolling pin. I'll get it eventually.
 I EVENTUALLY got a shape I could make work, then we spread pastry cream on it (YUM!) and sprinkled raisins on it. Looking at the picture I took I think I was a little stingy with the raisins, It probably has something to do with the fact that I don't like raisins. So I feel other people probably don't either. I also need to learn to roll my dough a little tighter. If you don't, when they cook the middle of the bun takes off shooting for the sky! They end up looking like something out of the 'Cat in the Hat'.
 When they came out of the oven and we iced them Chef came over and said "Really Beautiful ladies! Perfect Brioche, just like mom use to make!" - man that felt good! Then he ate it. :)
 I brought one of these home for davin and he gobbled it up right away! Loved it! He wouldn't let me take a picture of him enjoying his treat to put on my blog..What a party pooper eh? Picture or not It was nice to see him enjoying it so much. Makes me proud :)

 Next we did our Zimt Brotchen! This one I was going to eat myself. No sharing!
This was much harder to roll out then the brioche. It had a lot more elasticity in it so when I rolled it out attempting to make a shape it would just bounce back. Again I eventually got it..sort of..ish. haha.
 This one we filled with a butter, cinnamon mixture. I rolled this one much tighter but the middle of some of my buns were still trying to make a run for it. So I ate them. Let that be a lesson to my buns in the future! (thats kind of a weird sentence - isn't it?)
 Those were delicious! The lemon zest in the dough was a beautiful fresh addition. I would love to make those again.
 Want to know what's so awesome about being a grown up? You can stand there with a Zimt in one hand and your lunch bag with vegetables in it in the other. And you can make the decision to put your lunch bag away and eat the treat for "lunch" (1030 am break). It's a good day when you can make decisions like this and get away with it! I had a salad yesterday - It all balances out.

 Tomorrow we are making Kaiser rolls so I made the pre-dough. Then we made more brioche dough for tomorrow (almond brioche!! mm) .

 OH! we also had a little treat today. The cook chef kept bringing plates over for Jean-Luc to try, so naturally I hovered around until he said I could try some lol. Dad use to call it "baby bird syndrome." You stand around with your mouth open enough, someone will put food in it. It worked for me as a child and it works for me as an adult - don't fix whats not broken!
 Anyways, let me get back on track here... The food was delicious! The pasta I tried was super yummy. There were so many sea food dishes though, whats the deal with people and seafood? ewies. Chef says that my group will get to go have lunch in the dining room next Wednesday, I'm really looking forward to it! Lets hope there is something on the menu that I will like.

 I stayed around after school to practise some piping. We have a skills test at the end of December and I refuse have things that look like crap! Chef said I was doing really well, but if I want to get the flow down that I practise on paper to just get the feeling for some of the designs, which is a great idea. He won't be picking people for skills until January, so I really want to get myself on the top of his list by then. I want this so bad I can taste it! A few other people stuck around to and we were all chatting in the decor room getting to know each other. People had no idea I was 28. They were guessing 21..22..Yep, that felt good. Bless their little souls.

 Oh haha. A little funny story. This morning chef was doing a demonstration about sponge cake. After he was done he put it in the oven to bake..around 7:45. Then we got in to our groups and got to work. At the end of the day (around 12:15) when our group was going through our cleaning list we got to the part where we had to clean the deck ovens. I lift the door to the bottom oven and see his cake still.sitting.there. haha. I go get Jean-Luc and say "ah, chef? Your cake is still in the oven.." " haha holy shit.." he goes over and takes it out and its just a nice brick of hard hard dark cake. I tapped it and my finger cracked the top of it haha. Chef said he was going to turn it in to a toy for his dog - I don't think he was kidding lol. He said "oh well! *tap tap tap* I completely forgot about that one. ah, fun times!"      - Class is so much fun!

That is my night in a nut shell!
 oh. Please excuse my appearance in the last picture. Sweaty and red is my kitchen look lol

Brioche ready for the oven

Baked Brioche rolls! 

mmmmmm

Zimt. German cinnamon buns.

Nice and toasty warm

It.was.delish!

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

It's Tuesday!

 Hello everyone. Today was my first day in bread. The friggen kitchen was absolutely stifling hot, just standing there you were just sweating buckets. The fans aren't working and the contractors that are working on it are in no real rush to get anything accomplished. If they had to work in that kitchen I can bet you the fans would be working the next day. Chef kept telling us to drink water, some of us were looking tipsy.. I could of passed out today. Hopefully tomorrow things will be a little cooler for us.

 I'm loving the bread rotation so far. I don't eat much bread but It turns out I love making it. I never would of guessed I would like bread..amazing what you learn about yourself!
 So far today we made white rolls, whole wheat rolls, zimt brotchen, and brioche. We had to have the rolls ready for lunch service for the restaurant, the Zimt dough got put in the fridge to relax so we can roll it out tomorrow for German cinnamon rolls. The brioche dough also got put in the fridge for tomorrow just because its such a high fat dough - its a very sticky and loose dough. So that needs time to rest.

 It was my first time rolling little dough balls by hand. I was good at it! It was no where near as hard as I thought it would be. I even did double handers! (one ball in each hand rolling it at the same time)
 The whole wheat was the same process, only we had to cut each ball in half by rolling our hand through it to make 2 little balls - They were so cute!! I was squealing with delight while making these. Some people think I'm weird because I get so dang excited over these things. I can't help myself. It is very exciting to see your little dough babies grow.
 The Zimt Brotchen was such a nice dough. It has some lemon zest in it - The cinnamon buns will be beautiful!

 Now to tell you about my love affair with the brioche dough. OH.MY.GOD. I love this dough to the moon and back. Its a very high fat, high egg dough. So it takes a long time to make. You put all your ingredients except the extra fat (in this recipe it was the bakers margarine) in the mixer. You mix it for 5-7 minutes and its just a gloopy mess. You start adding chunks of the margarine and let it go for another 7-10 minutes until it comes together and starts to pull itself clean from the side of the bowl. When I took the dough out of the bowl - oh my god- the texture. It was so soft and so gooey, but it didn't stick to your hands. I wanted to roll it out and wrap myself in it. I'm seriously not kidding lol. I didn't want to wrap it up to put it away, I just wanted to touch it over and over. Everyone that walked past me I would stop them and say "omg touch this! isn't it beautiful!?" - Weirdo. I know. For some people its cashmere, turns out for me - its brioche dough lol.

 My husband is very excited for us to have a bread making day. I need to buy some fresh yeast from Jean-Luc. I just need to do some serious math so I don't end up making enough bread to feed a family of 100. Our recipes are so big.

 We were both craving something cakey tonight so we stopped in to timmies to grab a donut. DON'T JUDGE ME! we had gift cards..it was free! After I ate my donut I looked at Davin and said "I feel like I just cheated on myself.." I feel so much guilt eating frozen baked goods...I should be making them! But when a girl needs a quick sugar fix it will do..I guess.

 Tomorrow Chef says he wants to talk to everyone who wants to do skills. I'm wondering if hes going to pick people yet? or if hes going to give us some work and see where everyones skills are.

 Well enjoy some pictures of our rolls!

Mixing dough! 

Whtie rolls. Aren't they beautiful! 

And yes, they were al delicious as they look. 

Whole Wheat rolls directly out of the oven. 

It will give you the shits?...

Happy Monday my dear followers!

 Today we were back in the classroom, I'm torn on how I feel about Mondays. I love being in the kitchen but some of the classes we have are super fun. First thing we have is our baking theory class.
 We did our test on what we learned last monday, which was Flour. I did..okay. I think. I was really sick all weekend and didn't do as much studying as I should of (I know, bad ashley!) BUT in my defence its hard to study when your head is spinning and you are so tired you fall asleep face down in your binder and drool on your work pages. I still think I passed though. Just missed a couple questions.
 We got our test back from week 1 (the equipment test) and I got 100% on that one! *high five to myself!* . My friend tried to give me a high five but I still have my cold so I gave her a high elbow. Gotta keep the germs at bay.

 Then it was Chefs turn to teach us about Sugar and sweeteners. mmm Sugar.
We learned where sugar comes from. Sugar beets and sugar cane. Did you know that only 20% of sugar in Canada comes from sugar beets. Now that might not be EXACT - Don't go googling that or anything. Just passing on what I was told. Chef is pretty wise though, So I believe him. He says the sugar from beets is very..tart?..umm..doesn't taste good. Thats why we mostly get our sugar from cane.
 When I went to China we would go to the market when we wanted something sweet and you could get a length of sugar cane cut for you. It was go good. You would bite in to it and chew all the yummy sugary goodness out of it then spit out the...the...chewy bit. It was sort of like chewing on soft wood. I believe I've seen sugar cane in superstore in the produce section. Might have to pick some of that up next time I'm in there.

 We learned what sugars are hydroscopic (attract and retains water to keep the product moist). We learned about invert sugar also known as, Trimoline. We learned about Molasses..We learned about EVERYTHING. I have sugar on the brain.
 But the best part of class was when he started talking to us about Isomalt. Now this is a sugar that is made from Beet, it only has half the calories of regular sugar (SCORE!), Its more resistant to humidity and it has a great shelf life. Bakers don't use Isomalt in regular baking in place of sugar. It's not really made for that. Its more used for sugar pieces and art. THEN he said this "This is not a sugar you want to consume lots of, you know why guys? Because it gives you the shits!" Then he started singing a song about diarrhea. HILARIOUS! So there is your life saving tip for the day. If you are ever out and someone offers you more than 50 grams of Isomalt - just say no. You will regret it.

 Then he gave us a demo of caramel and the stages of crystallization. Where he yet again blew us away and stuck his friggen hands in boiling sugar lava. I think he likes showing off a little. He did at one point end up screaming like a choir boy... A tad slow on the second dunk in to the cold water I'm thinking. I don't ever see me testing out where my sugar is by doing that. But you never know, I might grow bigger balls then Chef and do it before the end of the school year. Thats my goal..I'm going to write that down.

 Speaking of goals! On to communications class!
I love this class. The teacher is just a little bouncy ray of sunshine, it rubs off on ya. Today we were working on and talking about goals. Where we want to be in five years. I actually had a really hard time answering this question. I could write down what I would like to accomplish in five years, but to just say 'in five years I want to own my own business in...cake design..' - I can't do that.
 So I called her over to talk to her about it and she said that it's perfectly fine. In the end she was laughing, she said "your a J, aren't you?" (see post about Myers Briggs personality test) and I laughed and said "sure am!." apparently, my personality traits come in to play here and about why I couldn't answer this question. It was really interesting. The class is so nice because she recognizes that no two people are/can do things the same so everything gets adjusted to suit you and to make you successful. I absolutely love it.

 We were also talking about how failure is a HUGE part of success. This is something I have ALWAYS struggled with, even as a child. Failure was not an option. Feeling bad about myself was not an option. So I would never do things I thought I couldn't do. I quit things before they got to hard which forced me to live in a very small bubble. Not very fun. She put a quote up today that she has carried around with her on a piece of paper for, I think she said, 7 years.

 "It takes as much stress to be a success as it does to be a failure" - Emilo James Trugillo.

This is beyond true. That's why I am so glad that this pastry experience has come at this point in my life. I've grown, I've matured, I've gained confidence in myself and I've learned that failure is just a part of life and it's best to just learn from it and try it again.
...Don't get me wrong. I will cuss and swear when I mess up - I don't like to fail, But its not crippling anymore. It feels good!

 Then we had computers. We are all in the process of challenging out of the course. This course, I'm not a fan of. I know how to use word, email and excel. LET ME OUT!

 I also marked all of my tools with very pretty cupcake duct tape. Everyone in that class has the same tools so things are getting mixed up - no one will sneak out with my stuff now! muahaha!

Anywho, time to call it a night.

See ya's tomorrow.

Last day in the decorating room.

Happy Friday!

 Today was our last day in our Decor rotation. I love being in the chocolate room, its so nice and quiet and air conditioned. On Tuesday we start on our bread rotation.

 We didn't do a whole lot today. We finally used our modelling chocolate that we made. Mine was crap. It was just crumbly and wouldn't come together so I had to use one of my teammates. It was nice that they were willing to share with me. We practiced making chocolate roses with leaves. That took a few hours. Then we attached them to the base of our chocolate chefs and added our french truffles and ganache filled chocolates to make a pretty looking plate. They looked amazing! you would never think we have only been learning chocolate for 3 days!

 Chef also showed us how to use transfer sheets! They are designs made in cocoa butter that are coloured and then they dry them on assatate paper. We temper the chocolate and then spread it thinly on the sheet, wait for it to set a little bit then make a little design (we made triangles today) then peel the paper away and the design ends up on the chocolate. We made yellow polka dot triangles!

...that was pretty well all we did today.

 I had planned to hit the gym and go up to the library to print all my recipes but it seems my lovely school mates have passed on their cold germs to me so I just came right home to rest. I can't rest because my upstairs neighbours little girl is just completely out of control and screaming and stomping and sounding like she going to come through my ceiling. A house...A house...for the love of god someone give me a house. I'm starting to seriously lose my mind. Now, I know there are some people thinking "you were an ECE..how can you get mad at a poor little girl throwing tantrums?"
 I don't blame her. I blame her pot smoking parents that keep her trapped in that little apartment all day and every weekend and don't teach her how to communicate. I just can't handle listening to crying and screaming for 6 hours straight.

 I'm going outside for a walk. Enough is enough.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Plated chef with truffles and chocolates and rose

My rose!

Me tempering chocolate.

Temper it again? CRIPES!

Hello!

 I'm sorry I missed blogging yesterday. I fell asleep (no surprise), then we used my newly obtained gift card to go out for supper after we opened the meat we bought and found out that it was rancid, then we came home to discover that we have a mouse in the walls. Lovely. So the cat played solider and won't leave the kitchen and Davin was pulling out the stove and fridge to check behind them. Its going between our kitchen and our neighbours kitchen in who we share a wall with. I'm very scared Patches is going to grab it in the middle of the night, chuck it against the wall (like she does very violently with her toy mice) and come drop it on the bed to show off her amazing killing skills. If I wake up with a dead mouse in my bed I will lose.my.shit. So pray for me that it never happens.

 I'm trying to remember what we did in class yesterday. The only thing that I can't get out of my head is when chef was giving us a demo of dry caramel and syrup caramel. Now liquid sugar is very dangerous and can very easily cause second or third degree burns. He has a bowl of water beside him and he very quickly dips his fingers in the water, then in to the boiling liquid lava caramel!, then back in to the water. Holy shit! I looked around to see if everyone else just saw what I saw. He rolls it in to a ball and says "see how i can roll it in to a ball? This is soft ball stage so about 140 degrees." Then he does it again!! at 160 degrees! and he's saying "now, don't get this on your skin..you will know it." and here he is dipping his friggen hands in sugar lava like its nothing. I nearly crapped my pants when I saw this and I'm still in awe when I play it back in my mind.

 On our way out sara and I stopped in to the Boulanger lab to admire their newly made mountain of breads. We stuck around long enough that to get rid of us Larry gave us some nice fresh cheese bread. Davin was as giddy as a school girl when I brought that home. It was delicious!

 So that was the major things that happened yesterday.

Now on to today!

 Today was more chocolate. Today we would use the mango ginger caramel ganache that we made yesterday to fill some chocolate moulds. We also had to make a base for our chocolate chefs and stand them up.
 I am getting to be a pro at tempering chocolate though! I know what to look for now and I know what to feel for now which makes things easier when you have to do it and re do it and re do it to the point that you are just walking around swearing at nothing because you are so sick of tempering.
 So we made our bases for our chocolate chefs which was easy, pour and shape in to a circle wait for it to semi set then cut it out and chill. easy. not a problem.

 Next came the chocolate moulds. oh god. Now watching chef fill a mould, tap the air out and dump the excess off and scrape everything clean you think "pssh, i got this. easy!" but you only think that because he makes it look easy. It was not overly easy. I guess I spent to much time trying to tap the air out because when i went to dump out my excess...nothing came out lol. So I started shaking it to get some out and a few globs came out. I didn't have a nice thin shell nor did I have any room for my filling. So I had to chill it, dump it out and start over. crap. we have 5 people in our group and 2 out of 5 had to re-do, myself included. So while we were re melting our chocolate my wonderful team was cleaning up and waiting for us to come back and try it again. Chef stuck around this time to make sure i was able to do it right. You have like 20 seconds max to fill it, tap the air bubbles out and dump it out. So in my haste and panic I start tapping the sides with the back of my off set spatula while the front of it was still dripping with chocolate and sent chocolate flying all over my group lol. holy crap what a mess. I felt so bad hahaha. So needless to say I made some laundry for them, white coats and dark chocolate - I am still pretty clean! hazaa!

  So I finally have my chocolate setting and I'm filling it with my ganache, then we have to cover them. That part wasn't to hard except I put a touch to much filling in them so some of them have bumpy backs where I tried to cover them with extra chocolate.

  I must say I have mad respect for chocolate-tiers. This is not easy work and the art of it and how much time it takes to make one amazing chocolate its just unreal.

 I almost had a heart attack when It came time to stand our chocolate men up and attach it to the base. Luckily I was successful and nothing broke! Lets just see if my two are still standing tomorrow morning. He wouldn't let us use chocolate cooling spray because he wants us to learn how to do it by hand, which is fair. We are in school after all. We we had to dump some chocolate out on our table and work it until it thickened, then we had to dip the feet in and attach it to our base, then attach the backing, then pipe around it all while making sure he doesn't fall over, smash, and make you cry as you look at two days worth of work in pieces. The stress on my poor heart, but they are still standing..as far as i know..

 On the way out of school I stopped in to the Boulanger shop to purchase some amazing bread for 2 bucks a loaf!! seriously!? If anyone wants fresh bread at an amazing price stop by NSCC for some! :)

 Tomorrow is our last day in the decor room for 4 weeks until we rotate back around. On tuesday we start on breads, I'm nervous and excited about this.

 Ashley out. Dinner, errands, studying and tennis are next.

Have a great night! and enjoy some yummy pictures of my painstaking chocolate work today.

My piped and filled chocolate chef!

The three chefs

My beautiful chocolate shells! hell yeah! 

so shiny, perfectly tempered chocolate.

The base with him standing. 

All of our hard work on a tray.

The heart mould had some moisture in it, thats why they are discoloured. 

Fresh bread for 2$! 

Chocolate? yes please!

Today was the day we were starting our rotations and would be put in to our groups. I already knew who would be in my group so I wasn't nervous. I was really looking forward to it. I love my group we work really well together.  I walked down ready to go in to the kitchen and I see them standing in the decor room or the "chocolate room!" - oh.my.god.YES! To me working in the chocolate room is like wining the lottery in pastry school.

 We got our recipes and the first thing we would be doing is making Modelling chocolate. I honestly didn't know you could make it - I thought you just bought it. It wasn't all that difficult and in the end we just put it in a bag and put it in the fridge because it needs to sit over night anyways. We had to use glucose which is fun! And sticky as all hell. First time using that goo. Won't be the last.

 Then we moved on to recipe number two - French Truffles! Now the way I make..well use to make.. truffles at home is obviously very wrong. Making the ganache was easy, then we had to cool it down until it got to an almost fudgie consistency, then we had to pipe it in to little balls. Now mine turned out pretty well, some looked like pieces of poo. Most of ours looked like pieces of poo, delicious, delicious chocolate poo. We all had a good laugh while we were attempting this task.
When Chef came in to see how we were doing he came over to me and said "nice...well that one looks like what my neighbours dog left on my lawn this morning" lol. I wasn't offended - it was true. Now french truffles get rolled in chocolate twice. not dipped, rolled. So what we had to do first was temper our chocolate BY HAND! So we had to melt down 500g of couverture chocolate (higher cocoa butter content so it melts quick and much more runny then normal chocolate) then came the time to temper. We each had a beautiful marble slab that was nice and cool to work on (did I mention the chocolate room is air conditioned? heaven!) . You poured out most of your chocolate, leaving 10% in the bowl and you spread it out with your spatula, then use your putty knife to bring it back in on its self. I think we were told when the chocolate gets to 30 degrees you need to add it back to the bowl of chocolate and mix it in to stop it from cooling more. Chef didn't want us to use our thermometer, he wants us to learn to feel chocolate and temperature with our fingers. And never having done this I didn't  really know what I was feeling for, even after watching his example. So needless to say I had to do it twice lol. I was happily moving my chocolate around on the board and then it started to get hard then before i knew it I had a big hard clump of chocolate. It was easy to fix, back to the double boiler, melt it down again and try to temper it again. Second time was a success. Thank goodness. I really wanted my chocolate tempered properly I wanted a nice snap when you bit in to it.  Then came the fun part! rolling the truffles. We put a little bit of the tempered chocolate in the palm of your hand and just roll it until its covered. We had to do this twice, but on the second time we had to roll them in cocoa powder, then put them in a tamis (drum sieve) to get the excess cocoa powder off. I love the look of them, very rustic. Beautiful.

 We then cleaned up and had to make Cornets? .. I call them Cones of hell. We have to cut triangles then roll them in to little cones for doing small detail work. Little bastards. I made a few poor ones which was fine enough, I just wanted to pipe some chocolate. Chef showed us a few examples of some classic french piping. One I could do no problem, but the other one. Cripes. It looks simple and when I'm looking at it I know what I have to do..It makes sense. I just couldn't do it. I was making little retarded looking trees. Not very fancy. Chef came over to help me and do another example on my paper and I practiced more around his. When he came back to check on me he said (pointing to the one he did and not realizing it) "oh! That one is really nice!" "yeah..that's the one you did.." "oh. haha well it's lovely!" hilarious.

 We had lots of laughs in that room today. From my classmate spilling the cocoa everywhere and chef coming in and stopping and laughing "well. Had some trouble with the cocoa did we? I'm going to pretend I don't see this" hahaha.
 I tried to act gangster - can't pull it off. To chef telling us a story about monkey ass. He always uses the phrase "smooth as a monkeys ass" and someone said "I've never seen or touched a monkeys ass." So he told us about the time he and his wife went to the drive through safari in Toronto and a monkey with a little bare bum sat in the middle of his windshield. It ended up leaving their window with a nice greasy monkey ass print. That wouldn't wash off! haha.

 This is just too much fun. Even when I get frustrated, Its still fun. I might never leave school. On graduation they are going to have to pry my little fingers off that school. I'm not leaving. Ever.

 This is my second attempt at blogging today. The first time I fell asleep right on the desk lol. So I'm glad I made it through it this time around!

...I'm really craving some chocolate. hmm.

Enjoy some pictures of my first day in the chocolate room!

Piped Ganache

All done piping! See my poo shaped ones?! lol

All done rolling. Good work team! 

French truffles. Yes, they are suppose to look like that. 

So rustic and beautiful. 

Learning to temper chocolate. 

My first attempt at piping skills. Can you find the two chef did?

lol I need some practice. 

I have dreams...

It's 8:00 and I'm drinking tea, this means I have survived Monday (and the Target opening..) let me tell you about my day.

 It starts off like any other day, the overly cheerful people on the radio (who in the hell is that happy at 530am!?) wake me up, I hit snooze and fall back to sleep then wake up 6 minutes later in a frenzy thinking that I'm late. I take a luke warm shower because for some reason the hot water doesn't feel like working (but who can blame the poor pipes, it is 5:30 am after all..I wont hold it against them). I get as pretty as I want to be for the day. If I get my hair straightened its an accomplishment, forget make up and taking cat hair off my clothes (those two things are only for REALLY fancy days.)

 Then I try to beat the old jackass with the sports car out of the under ground parking. okay, here is the story on why I call him the "old jackass"... He lives a few doors down and his nice expensive sports car is parked directly across from my car. We leave our apartments at exactly the same time every morning, me carrying my huge chef bag and a lunch bag, him in his suit, leather jacket and sobeys bag with food. The weight off my backpack and my short little legs means I can't walk quite as fast as him...But I'm not miles behind him either. He's always in my eye sight. He NEVER holds the elevator for me, so I have to run down the stairs to the parking garage and he's usually exiting the elevator when I reach the bottom and then he never holds the door to the parking garage. It slams in my face.  Jackass. So because of this he always gets to his car JUST before me and i always have to wait for him to reverse his car then follow him out of the parking garage. Now I can understand his love for his car, I really do..I'm protective of my car and its not as nice as his. But "lucky" for me he takes the bedford highway..so I have to follow him the whole way to the bridge. He leaves (not exaggerating) a min of 4 car lengths in between him and the cars in front of him..its way to much and causes problems - I mean come on..seriously!?  Ruby (my car) wants nothing more then to bump this jackass so he learns how to drive his sport car and so he learns to hold elevators and doors for me! I talked her out of it though...for now. Its become a game for me now, get out of the garage before him. I've beat him once this week. and oh yes, I'm keeping score. It's a good start to my day when I'm the first one out lol.

 Anyways! On to school.

 I had my first test today. Its been over 7 years since I've taken a test and I did really well. There wasn't any equipment that I didn't know. hazaa! And they even gave us bonus questions - "what is ice wine?" I knew that one! and "what is a tidal bay wine" and the only answer I could give was "friggen delicious" Cross your fingers I get points for that answer! haha.

 Today in Baking Theory we learned about Flour. There is so much to flour. Holy crappers. Proteins and moisture and this and that...cripes! Did you know you can mix flours to come up with different protein percentages which gives you different textures and stuff? It's really quite neat, I have a whole new appreciation for people who make bread for a living. Amazing stuff. I won't bore you with the structure composition of the wheat kernel.

 After Theory we had communications! I love this class. I was super excited to get our personality tests back. This was the Myers-Briggs test. She handed it back to me and it wasn't marked "Crazy" or anything so it was a bonus! It pegged me right on. I love doing tests like this. Mine came back with the letter "I,S,F,J" . Which means nothing to you..I know. Let me explain.

I = Introversion. People who tend to focus on the inner world of ideas and impressions.

S= Sensing. People who prefer sensing tend to focus on the present and on concrete information gained from the senses.

F= Feeling. People who prefer feeling tend to base their decisions primarily on values and on subjective evaluation of person-centered concerns.

J = Judging (now this doesn't mean I'm judgemental..) People who prefer judging tend to like a planned and organized approach to life and prefer to have things settled.

ISFJ
 "Quiet, Friendly, Responsible, and conscientious. Work devotedly to meet their obligations. Lend stability to any project or group. Thorough, painstaking, accurate. Their interests are not technical. Can be patient with necessary details. Loyal, Considerate, perceptive, concerned with how other people feel." This is me! I'm going to email my teacher and ask for a more in depth description of this. So now she wants us to use what we know about ourselves to challenge ourselves and learn. Work with people of the opposite personality and learn from them and have them learn from us. One thing I did find funny is when she said "people who are introverts usually get mentally and physically tired being around extroverts.." and I started laughing because its so true! When I am around very out going, loud, talkative people I get mentally tired very quickly and I need down time. It's really neat how it all works.

 We also had a past graduate from the Boulanger program come in to talk to us about portfolios. I did a portfolio in college round 1 and I loved doing it. I'm worried because I don't know what my niche will be. I don't know what I want to do with this yet. When she mentioned that she combined her two passions ; Ballet (she was a dancer and teacher) and baking she has now created 'sprinkle toes' her own business. Its really amazing. I started brainstorming and writing things down that I had done and that were my passions. Childcare, Baking...wait. Baking for children?...teaching parents to bake with their kids?..childrens parties? A cafe where moms, dads and children are all welcome? Using my Early Childhood Education and my Pastry education.. The possibilities are endless!! I'm seeing this come together in my mind and I'm just so impressed with myself. The dreams are there I just need to work towards them. Stay tuned for awesomeness!

 Then we had a computer class and by now I had a wicked headache and no advil and was about ready to cry when I couldn't get the database to find me things on hobby farms. (part of an in class assignment) . Asking me to stare at a computer screen while my head is pounding is torture. Slow painful torture. But I made it though.

 This evening we went to the pre opening of Target in Bayerslake. It was nice, I didn't buy anything. The prices didn't blow me away and It stuff you could get pretty well any where else. But i'll go back once it calms down a little and check it out again.

 I think that's all about my day. How was your day?

 Tomorrow is the start of a whole new adventure. We are going to be put in to our groups and then we start our rotations. I can't wait to see what I'm working on this week! Very excited!

 Have a great night everyone.

ps. Don't be afraid to leave comments or to pass my blog on to others who you think might enjoy it! I would love your feedback! :)

mmm cinnamon buns

Rainy day. Blurg.

 Luckily rain doesn't matter when you are making bread and cinnamon buns! Turns out the heat and humidity is just what they need. Myself on the other hand..heat and humidity makes me look like I was just put through a car wash. Not a pretty sight.

 So as I mentioned before we made yeast dough and cinnamon buns (which are a none yeast dough). We made the dough for the bread first which is called milk bread. We also got to use something that I have never used before - fresh yeast. Not the stuff that comes in those little packets thats all hard, this is a big cold brick of active yeast. Very cool! And making the dough was super simple. The method we used was called the 'straight dough method'. Its where you put everything you are using in to your bowl all at once and using one hand mix it up and once its pulled together enough thats when the fun really starts! He told us that a lot of people over flour their dough. Your bread dough is suppose to be sticky, its not until you work it that the gluten starts forming and the stickiness goes away. You need to knead it back and forth and then slam it on the table! I LOVED rolling out this dough. Knead, stretch, SLAM, knead, stretch, slam! You keep doing this until you are able to rip off a little test piece and stretch it out thin without it ripping. Very fun. Then you wrap it up and let it sit for an hour or so until It doubles in size. I was giddy with excitement when mine was filling up my bowl! Its like you created life and its growing and it just wants you to love it. mmmm...ahem. okay. moving on. Thanks for letting me have my moment there.

 So while that was rising we moved on to the cinnamon buns! The dough we use for cinnamon buns is a quick bread which means no yeast and no fermentation process. And I also learned that you do not want to use warm liquids with baking powder because it starts the reaction, you want the reaction to happen with the heat of the oven, not while its in the bowl. And see faithful readers, I'm helping to make you all better bakers at home with my newly learned tips! Enjoy!
 I have no trouble making the dough, I have trouble rolling my dough to make a certain shape. You would think that rolling something in a circle or a rectangle wouldn't be hard- but it is. I know the way I have to go - up-down-left-right. Make.A.rectangle! And I also have a little trouble moving my dough around without ruining it to get more flour under it. I (and by "I" I mean my dough) got a little stuck to the table so Chef had to come and bail me out. He makes everything look so damn easy. But I eventually got everything rolled out, brushed with butter, sprinkled with my cinnamon and sugar mixture and rolled in to a nice a log. He caught me using a "sawing motion" to cut my log and corrected me. One quick slice so I don't rip the dough. Good tip! Its funny, Im always worried that Im mixing something wrong but Its usually the little things like moving your knife back and forth while cutting cinnamon buns thats wrong. You don't even think about it..but he has an eagle eye. He'll catch ya.

  So we got them cut and in the oven and baked and then we put a "flat icing glaze" on the top. simply icing sugar and water. We got to keep one and man oh man they were goooooooood!! They were big though, I couldn't eat it all and it made me sad to throw it away.

 Side note..I thought I burned myself on a tray today, it hurt then it stopped and I forgot about it. I just flexed my fingers and noticed a big hard blister on the side of my finger. Will I ever have a day in the kitchen when I don't come home with an injury?

 Anyways! Now that the cafeteria has like 200 cinnamon buns to sell we were going to make them bread! haha
 So we got our milk dough out and pounded it down to release all the carbon monoxide thats built up then we break it in to two and roll out two "snakes" as i call them. Then we made a two braid..loaf?....bread?...huh i don't know. I was confused while I was watching him make this because when you think of braiding something you think of laying it down on the table and braiding it towards you. no. This you braid up, sort of like a knot. Then you stretch it and lay it out. Its really neat and hard.  Mine pulled a little while baking but I still think it looks really good! Very proud of it :)

 Then came the time to come home, tell Davin alllllll about my day make a vegetable sandwich and fall asleep.  OH! I will also be signing up for the skills competition! Lets see If I've made enough of an impression on chef to get picked for it! Fingers crossed!

Here are some cinnamon buns to enjoy. Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for the saliva damage on your computer screen when you start licking it. 

Buns Rolled, Cut, pressed and ready for the oven!

mmmmmmmm! 

Just glazed and ready for sale! 

My braid! 

Wine time!

Happy Thursday!

 What a great day we had. oh my gosh! It was winery tour day!

Baking and Pastry and Boulanger all piled on our bus and we were off to our first winery, avondale sky. Really really beautiful. The main part of the winery was rebuilt from this old church that had to be floated up river, the boards were numbered and taken apart to get treated so they could legally use them (building codes). They had the original stained glass, really really stunning. So we got the history of it and we got a nice tour of the grounds. We were shown the testing ground where they grow certain grapes with certain soils and rocks then test them out to see what kind of flavours they have created. They had some dogs that were running around being funny so I got a little distracted and missed some of the other information...
 She also said the deer like to use the yards as daycares. There are a few mamma deers with babies that come in to the fields, leave their fawns in the grapes then the moms go off and do whatever momma deer do in the middle of the day then come back for their babies around 4pm. The workers are always on high alert when they are on their tractors for "brown rocks" that weren't there yesterday. If they come across one and are unable to reverse the tractor they are to turn off the tractor and leave it there until the mom comes back and takes her baby home. I loved that they are so respectful of that. But saying that, they are very protective of their crops (for obvious reasons) and they have a fake osprey with sounds that flies around. They have air cannons that fire randomly and they have lots of other intimidating bird noises that play to keep little pests away. They also have some electric fences for raccoons..cant blame them for that decision.

 After they filled us with information we were brought back to the cabin for some taste testing! We tried four different kinds. The first one was Summerville (I bought this one) it was so good. We swirled, we tasted we tried to identify what flavours were in it. I need more work on my wine skills. I know that i like what I'm tasting, but I have a hard time identifying key notes in the wine. *sigh* oh well practice it will be! twist my arm. The second one was another white called Tidal Bay. I LOVED this one. Very sweet and very fruity (I bought this one as well). At this point I was thinking "well..i'm going to be broke if i like the next two as well.."
The third one we tasted was called Bliss. Another white, but I didn't like it. It tasted like crab apples, it was very very tart and just completely dried out my mouth. not a fan. THEN we got the final one, a red. I don't even remember the name of it. She poured it for us and i was thought "i'm not a fan of red, but lets give it a shot..." yeah. bad. There were several people who were not fans of this one. It was very very strong. When the owner said "so, what do we think about this one?" the girl behind me said "its disgusting!" haha. oh boy. So the owner told us about the little dumping pot for people who didn't want to finish their glass or just plain didn't like it. I took full advantage of that pot. So many people were complaining about how much they hated it but no one was going to dump it out. So I marched right up and poured it out while everyone laughed. If I don't like it i'm not going to drink it! Chef came over and laughing he said "oh ashley, what are we going to do with you?...dumping wine!? you're not coming back on the bus." haha.

 So I bought two bottles of wine from them. Can't wait to try them out again.

 Then it was back on the bus and off to pete lucketts winery. We had a few people on the bus that were under age and couldn't drink and they were laughing saying "everyone seems to be much louder and a lot more giddy.." - well duh! lol. wine can do that to people...especially me.

 We got to petes and its just beautiful. The wine we had was okay..I wasn't blown away to be honest. But to be fair we only sampled two, a white and a red so my sample size was small. I'm sure they have wines there that I would love.
 They talked to us about ice wine (i love ice wine!) and about petes. a really amazing operation he has there. We were able to take a walk down through the vineyards to look at the grapes and to play around with the red telephone booth.
 funny story about the phone booth. A few people made phone calls and Sara said she wanted to call her sister. So she jumps in the booth and the friggen phone starts to ring! haha she answers it and has a lovely conversation with a man name Ed Harold (I believe that was his name). We are all standing around listening to her have this conversation with this total random man! Hilarious.  the best line was when she said "no...no...this is a phone booth in the middle of a winery..." How random is that!? So she walks up to tell the tour guide about the phone call she just received and he says "seriously? I didn't think we could receive calls on that?! Now that I know that I might cancel my cell phone lol" . fun times.

 Next we headed to a park to have lunch. We all brought something to have a potluck. It was wonderful :)

 On the way home a lot of us fell asleep. We looked like toddlers with the heads bobbing around. I mean grown ups or not you fill us full of wine and food then put is on a bus for an hour, how are we suppose to stay awake!?

 On the bus I was thinking and so far this doesn't feel like school. When I think about school I think back to high school where you are made to sit for hours and take notes and you're not all that engaged in whats going on. In this program while we are learning and being taught we are also experiencing. It's so wonderful and I feel so fulfilled and happy. I really appreciate the amazing teachers and my classmates and just the opportunity to be in this school. Couldn't imagine being anywhere else right now.

 If you haven't been to either winery I highly recommend going. Support local business!

 Tomorrow is yeast doughs and cinnamon buns! yes!

Here are some picture of our day!

Enjoy and see you back here tomorrow!

Avondale Sky winery. 

Avondale sky grapes

Avondale sky tour

Testing out the goods! 

Fake bird

summerville. mmm

LOVED this one. 

Petes. Thats his house right there. 

A beautiful fig that i was tempted to steal..but i didnt. 

Fig trees

petes grapes

a beautiful room where they hold the wine and have dinners. 

tasting at petes. 

view from pets dining patio

Jessica making a phone call 

Sara answering a random call from a random man. lol.