Mutant carrots!

Hello! 

 This is a split entry blog, I missed yesterday. So sorry. I had a take home test to do and my recipes and then I fell asleep, then grocery shopping (10% off student night!) 

Anyways, I am loving this Veinoisserie rotation. It's really enjoyable. Muffins, puff pastry, cakes, brownies, cookies, banana cake. so yummy. This is the rotation that I eat the most...It's a very bad thing, but so yummy. 

 Yesterday we made oatmeal and chocolate indulgence cookies. The oatmeal cookies were to die for. Absolutely loved them. I need to make oatmeal raisin for my dad, his favourite. We also made carrot muffins. These I loved because they didn't have pineapple in them. We put coconut and bran, really really yummy. I was on the task of the carrots while everyone else gathered all the other ingredients. Chef took me down the the culinary walk in fridge and we had a good laugh at the size of the carrots. These are not your everyday carrots, these carrots look like they have been grown in toxic waste. Absolutely huge, and yes I do have a picture. MASSIVE! Chef joked that he could knock someone out with a carrot this size - at least I think it was a joke ;) 

Carrot next to my peeler

Hand meet carrot..

See! Massive right!? No vegetable should ever be this large. I must say though, the large carrots made for quick shredding, 3 carrots and we had enough for 5 of us to make all our muffins. 

The muffins were delicious! Davin is not a carrot person and vows that he hates carrot anything. I forced the first bite on him, he then had two additional bites all by himself. Very proud of my carrot hating man. baby steps lol. 

Lovely carrot muffins. mm

 

We also may of had a little misstep. 95% of our muffins all went in to the same part of the deck oven (there are 4 levels) ...we may of left some of them in the bottom oven for a few hours. We were all cleaned up and Chef bent down to take something out of the bottom oven. I started laughing when he was standing there holding these burnt muffins. He didn't say anything, he just stood there. I didn't say anything, I just laughed. I was actually really impressed that they weren't more burnt, they were in there for a long time lol. Oh well! Lesson learned, check all the ovens, don't assume everyone got everything out.  

Just a tad over cooked lol.

It was a good day over all. Lots of laughs with my awesome group. Fun times. 

Wednesday: 

Today we got lots done! We are ahead of the game and will be getting some new recipes to do tomorrow. Very excited!! 

 Today we finished folding our puff pastry. Single fold, double fold, single fold, double fold. Laminated doughs are "fun". There is so much work and time that goes in to these doughs! 

We also covered our banana cake with ganache, we covered our brownies with ganache and white chocolate and made a little designs on them. We made a lemon tart. We also made our apple compote which we will use tomorrow for our turnovers with the puff pastry. We also made a chocolate hazelnut cake with orange. We made lots of goodies today! 

 In the beginning of december we will be doing a Christmas lunch buffet. Chef is being very hard on us in the creativity department. We have groups of 6 and we have a list of items that have to be presented at the buffet. We each are in charge of two items. We need to come up with our own flavours and presentation. Mostly every idea we came up with Chef said "BORING!" 

 He's been teaching for 20 years, so yeah he's probably seen a lot of the same ideas. They aren't boring to me/us. We are just starting to crack our little imaginations open. Learning about flavour combos, and fancy design. It's hard. I'm in charge of doing a coffee cake and a dipped chocolate. We will be fully graded on everything and need to present our products at the buffet. Nerves! Stay tuned for the stories on that. 

A great few days in the kitchen overall. Have a lovely evening my friends. For those of you who are in the middle of this storm, stay dry! It's nasty out there. 

Ganache covered banana cake. 

My hazelnut chocolate cake

I found the only none hotspot in the oven...

 Oh! Here is a link to the article about the chocolate affaire! I'm in it! :) proud. 

http://thechronicleherald.ca/community/halifax/1168616-crowds-gorge-on-chocolate

 

Vanilla beans ahoy!

Why 'ello there! (I'm trying out my british accent..)

Today we had our last theory class! yippie! I got my chocolate test back and I got 100%. Very excited about that! :)

 Today we learned about starches, salt and flavourings and such. Cornstarch is only so interesting..blah blah blah. Salt was quite interesting. We learned what is in it and how its made. Table salt is, to say the least, is horrible for you. They add so much crap to it - its unbelievable. Kosher or sea salt is the way to go. Those are the main salts davin and I use. It has a lot of natural vitamins and minerals in it. It's most definitely the way to go.

 What really peaked my interest was when we learned about vanilla. I absolutely love real vanilla. Cutting open a real vanilla bean is just so amazing. Forget perfume I'm going to rub vanilla bean on me every morning ;)

 Jean-Luc showed us some short videos on it that opened my eyes. I'm a big supporter of buying local as well as supporting fair trade. One thing I want to ask my readers to do is to read the labels when you buy a thing of vanilla. Is it 100%? most of them are not, they claim to be..but they aren't. Companies can put that it is "pure vanilla" as long as it has a certain percentage. It's a low percentage I think it was something along the line of 30% and under.

 I use to never think twice about my vanilla when I bought it..vanilla was vanilla, right? Then Jean-Luc showed us a video (that I'm going to post) that really opened my eyes to how our buying, and how our lack of knowledge about what we are buying are affecting those who lives depend on harvesting and selling the product.

 So all I ask is that if you have the time, to watch this video and if money allows to buy only pure vanilla. It's something simple that can make a big difference to people in the other parts of the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PoIgYMxnCQ

 This is the link to the more serious business about vanilla. A great watch.

The link below is how its grown and harvested. Its a cute little video with great music that makes you want to dance and move to tahiti.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjV_RVLP3Mo

ENJOY!

..I'm adding "go to tahiti and get vanilla beans" to my bucket list.

We learned lots today. It was fun.

 Then we had communications. We are going to be doing presentations on food. I just need to find something to present on, a style of presentation and a bunch of other fun things.

 I am also pleased to announce that I made it through computer class without snapping my pen. That is a successful day folks. It was a simple conversion and math thing. Hopefully I passed. Don't see why I wouldn't.

 I must get back to doing my recipes. We had salesmen from east link in the apartment for an hour, we will be switching and saving some money. More money to buy vanilla beans!

Have a lovely evening!

Christmas is in the air!

Greetings peeps,

 This week was a long but busy one. We started our Vienissorie rotation and are making all kinds of yummy goodies. We are currently two days behind in this rotation, firstly because we had to make some christmas cakes, secondly because Chef was sick on Friday.

 Making the cakes was fun, frustrating and challenging. I worked with my friend Sara, there was some butting heads when it came to deciding on a theme and colours but we worked it out and came out with a simple but very cute design (I think so anyways!)

 We made green isomalt trees, a white isomalt base and some pulled sugar garland that got wrapped around the trees. We lined it with marzipan snowballs and covered it with light blue fondant. We also each made a little marzipan figure to go with it. Coming up with the ideas took the longest. We had originally wanted to make pulled sugar christmas lights...mine came out looking like Mike n Ike candies. So we scraped that idea as well as many ideas after that.

 Everyone in the class did a really great job on their cakes. It's fun to get to see peoples talents when it comes to cakes. I don't have much of an interest in having a career in cake decorating, some people in that class could open their own business in cake decorating, really talented. Hopefully they can raise a good amount of money with pieces of art.
 OH! speaking of raising money, remember that chocolate affaire that we did? they raised over 40,000 dollars! Thats so awesome! Feels so good to be part of something like that.

 That was our day on Thursday. In and out. LOOOOVE IT.

 Friday we got to school at 7am to be told that Jean-Luc is sick and there are no classes. Could. of. slept. in. oh well! We decided to practice some chocolate piping to get ready for the piping test soon. I piped one line and quit. lol. I was so not feeling it. I went up to the library to work on re typing my recipes. Got quite a bit done..still so much to do. I think at one point I was laying back in the chair just staring at the ceiling and talking to myself...
 It was Friday and I was so checked out. I couldn't do anymore work. Come on Christmas vacation! I NEED you!

 This weekend I tried my hand at making homemade SKOR bars! I kinda sorta scorched it a little...I'm praying it doesn't have a bitter taste. I used a whole brick of butter! those things are expensive. So, burnt or not we will be eating it lol. To expensive to throw away. I'm sure once I cover them in chocolate you won't even be able to tell ;)

 Now, time for me to go type up some more recipes. It's a never ending task.

Enjoy my million pics of our cake!

Home made english toffee! 

sticking snowballs on

Look at that concentration...

Trying to figure out what to add to it..snow flakes?..no.

Colors! 

Completed! 

Saras cute turtle

My penguin

Teammates! 

"done by 11:30 or your going to lose points" eek!

Hello all,

 Today was our last day in Breads. (Thank goodness) I like making bread, but this rotation having to move so fast and not really knowing what you're doing, makes for a confusing and frustrating 4 days. Chef came over this morning to tell us what we would be working on. He said "You are doing 6 recipes, and I want all the doughs done and everything baked by 11:30 or I'm going to take points away." We all stood there like a deer in headlights. He can't be serious? It's already 8am! I looked at him and said "you're kidding, right?" "Do I look like I'm kidding? I'm completely serious. Now, get started." Cripes!

 We each picked a dough and got to work. I did Challah and sour dough. Went off without a hitch until I walked back to the mixer to get my sour dough. It was covered in grease! mixer grease. No idea how that happened. So I showed Jean-Luc and he just said to chuck it out. Not my fault, phew. I just had to make white rolls so we had something to give to the diners in the restaurant.

  We also had to torte and fill things that we had made last week. I am very happy to say my group was awesome and we got everything done on time! Mind you we didn't take our break, if we had taken our break we would of just been shooting ourselves in the foot. Chef came over and told us to go on break and I said "No. I'm going to keep working...we can't take a break." I do much better when I can find a rhythm and keep it going. Food will come later.

 Sara and I also baked our Genoise cake. We have to team up and create a christmas cake that will be sold for auction to help raise money for something. I don't remember what the event is called, but I'm very excited to make a cake! Chef helped us plan our cake, I had so many ideas I couldn't focus on just one. We also really wanted to do some pulled sugar, so that will hopefully make it on to the cake as well. We only have a few hours thursday morning to pull this off and get everything together and decorated. no pressure. We shall see how it turns out!

 Tonight I tried to make something out of a candy book I borrowed from the school library. I'm following her blog as well if you want to check it out. She's very good. SugarHero is the blog. I wanted to make fruit chews, I missed my 118C temp and got to 120C - Not chewy anymore! poop. Oh well live and learn, I'll try again another time. I need to take it off the heat at 116, sugar cooks very quickly so hopeful by the time I'm ready to dump it out it will be below 120.

 Still loving pastry school. Looking forward to my christmas break where I can bake things at my own slow pace and really enjoy it.

 Have a wonderful evening.

Brioche with bavarian cream and strudel on top! mm

Trying my hand at chewy candies! 

Grape! 

Catching up!

Hello peeps,

 I missed writing Friday (as I usually do) my group got out late. Trying to make bread with a broken proofer - well..it takes like 3 times as long as it normally should plus we are a little slow. We are boiling water in pots and putting the pot in the bottom of the proofer to create some heat and moisture...come on NSCC we need a new one! Go figure it would be broken for our rotation. oh well, what can ya do? As Chef says "Life's a bitch and then you die..get over it." haha.

 On Friday we made lots of yummy things. We made honey pecan sticky buns, streusel, bee sting mix, and more sour dough!

 I enjoy making sour dough, it's a beautiful bread and a glorious dough. Chef gave us each a loaf to take home and Davin is loving it. He wants me to attempt to make it at home and i said "absolutely! You just find a way to buy me a steam injecting deck oven and I will absolutely make it for you." I'm sure I could find a way to make it at home, but I just know it would be no where as good as when I made it at school. That seems to be a theme with me..rocked it at school...meh at home.

 The honey pecan sticky buns were fun to make. Just like cinnamon buns except you put your honey and sugar syrup in the bottom of the baking cups before hand. I think I would like to make these in one big pan so there is double the sticky goodness. When mine were done we needed to flip them out on to a baking sheet right away before they cooled. The pain and agony! Liquid lava sugar and steam. My classmates must of got sick of listening to me say "OW! DAMN IT!" every time I flipped one of these over with my hands, one of them went and got me two spoons and showed me how to do it without ever touching them. Brilliant! Chef came over when he saw me doing this, mumbled something about how I'm a wuss and helped me flipped them over. Even he was flinching from the pain of the hot sugar. He said we need to toughen up our fingers by holding hot things. pppsh, I have delicate little fingers and I like it that way!

 Next we made the streusel with the brioche dough, we rolled them out, put crumble on top and baked them. We are going to cut these in half and fill them with pasty cream. Dangerous. Can't wait to try one of these bad boys! mmmmm

 Next we used our other bin of brioche for the bee stings. These I did not like. I really really hate honey and these were just coated in honey and almonds. Looked amazing...
I took a few little pieces to Davin at work, he's a huge honey lover. He really really liked them. People were giggling at me because while we were boiling our honey I was gagging. Blurg. No thanks.

 While we were waiting for our sour doughs to bake we were able to chat with Chef about our work placements. I'm very excited and also scared shitless about going on a work term. I don't want to let anyone down or make a fool out of myself. I know where I want to apply, I just need to hope they take students! I know they have some of jean-lucs graduates working there..so I'm hopeful.

 When our loafs finally came out of the oven it was my turn to "toughen up my fingers" so I started grabbing the loafs and transferring them to the cooling racks, chef is also helping. I look at how Chef is doing it and I stop. He is using the insides of his index fingers to hold them! Not the tips of his fingers. I look at him and say "wait..you're using the insides of your fingers!" "well yeah, the tips of your fingers are sensitive, that hurts." I stare at him and say "yeah, no shit!" haha! He starts laughing. I ask him when he was going to share this little tid bit of information with us. His response? "oh, I don't usually whip those tips out until second semester." "That is cruel and mean Jean-Luc!" "watching you all flail around is funny, I want to see who can figure it out on their own." LOL! Always a fun time in class. Chef makes every day really fun, even if you are burning the crap out of your fingers.

 Today we had our chocolate test, I'm confidant that I did pretty well. We shall find out next week.

Thats all for now!

Take care lovely people.

Sticky buns getting all set up! mmm

Ready for the oven 

Fresh out of the oven. Don't worry I ate the broken one. 

Bee Stings

Beautiful Bee stings! 

Good day in breads!

Greetings!

 Today was a great day in breads. Thank goodness! Today we made Red wine bread, Challah, sour dough and our white and whole wheat rolls. oh, and pastry cream...oh! and brioche dough. I think thats it..

I had big hopes for the red wine bread. It smelled so so good and had sautéed onions with crushed walnuts in it as well. I had a roll with dinner and wasn't blown away. It was fun to make but not something I think I could reproduce at home because I don't have a steam injector in my oven. poopies.

 The Challah bread was fun to make and looked beautiful when we were done with it. There is something about being able to braid bread that makes you feel like your making something that shouldn't be allowed to be eaten. I love braiding bread. Thank you girl guides for teaching me how to braid! Girl Guides - Learning life skills such as braiding. awesome.

 Making the sour dough was interesting. We had to use the sour goo we made yesterday. It looked like boogers. White slimy boogers. Still want to eat sour dough? I do! I always find it interesting when you have a dough like sour dough and you try to roll it out. It is so bouncy and so full of air it like trying to roll out a pillow. It's really amazing. We got to use our bakers blades today as well. They look like little shovels but the shovel part is a blade and you get to slice (super quickly!) the bread. It's awesome. Slice slice slice.

 Chef is also secretly teaching us a lesson in bread. On the recipe he is putting the wrong amounts of liquids. He wants us to learn how our doughs are suppose to feel, he doesn't want us to just follow a recipe. We were wondering why our doughs were so dry - I thought I was doing something wrong! It's a good lesson. You need your dough to be wet enough to combine everything, but not so wet you need to add more flour. I'm confidant that I know the texture that bread is suppose to be now. Thanks Jean-Luc!

 We had our rolls out to the dining room on time today, so there were no fights about that with the tourism people. Score. There was less confusion and things moved along smoothly. Felt good.

 I missed some of the things going in to and out of the oven today because I was up getting my flu shot. Took a little longer than it should of because I had a little reaction and had to take an allergy pill, so because of that I needed to stay for half an hour so they could keep their eye on me. Something as simple as a flu shot - not for me. lol. The pharmacists were super nice and took very good care of me.

 All my pictures today are compliments of Sara. I didn't end up getting a single picture so I asked to borrow hers.

Our beautiful sour dough

Challah!  

Red wine bread. 

bread..day one. dun dun duun

Good evening,

 Today was the first day of our bread rotation round 2. Our group did so well to start out. We were pushing out our dough and working like a well oiled machine. We made Dutch Mottled Bread (aka Tiger bread - You will see why.) we made focaccia, south western corn bread, Sour (not the bread, the gooey starter) and we made white and whole wheat rolls.

 The tiger bread was easy to make. Straight dough method (everything in the bowl at once) then we weighed out 400g pieces, rolled them and then brushed a "topping" on them. Its like this weird yeast topping that looks really nasty when you make it and spread it on, but super cool when it comes out of the oven! Chef said those looked perfect. Thank god.

 The focaccia was really neat. We made the dough and let it rise. Then we brushed the blended oil and herbs and garlic on the parchment on the baking sheet. You roll out your dough and brush more oil on top and let it proof. Right before you put it in the oven you poke holes all over it with your fingers. Bake it for 10-15 minutes then flip it over on to another baking try and oil it again and keep  baking until you have a nice little crust. Its such an amazing bread, so light and airy with great flavour! I took my piece to Davin at work. Hope he enjoyed it.

The sour was super easy to make. You combine your flour and water in a bowl and mix it. You then add grape juice (not the store bought kind, its to pasteurized) and you get a liquid goo batter. Only, we didn't have any grapes to squeeze. Chef said we could use apples instead.  So I rasped 2 apples and squeezed the pulp through a sieve. Fresh apple juice is soooooo good. We will use this when we make sour dough. And we could have this sour for the rest of our lives, as long as we add fresh stuff to it everyday, it will keep for the rest of my life. amazing stuff.

Then we made the stupid southwestern corn bread again. We made this in the first rotation. Don't care for it. It is what it is.

After we got back from break and everything had to go in the oven things kinda went to shit. Confusion all around. Chef just said "go!" and expected us to remember how to do everything. And when you have 5 people all trying to keep up and on top of whats going on, confusion hits. Chef was a little taken back at how we were today - Tomorrow will be better. It has to be.

 Studying and my salad is calling my name - and by "studying" I mean watching TV with my notes on my lap. haha.

Have a wonderful evening!

My upside down focaccia  

Beautiful Tiger bread. 

Bye-Bye Decor round 2!

Hello!

 Today was our last day in Decor round 2. We finished our pate de fruit. And we made our arabica ganache dipped chocolates with nougatine sprinkled on top. We also tried our hand at two toned chocolate cigars.

 I loved doing the Pate de fruit. The raspberry was so yummy and we rolled them in sugar and sent them down to be sold in the cafeteria. Chef told us to measure them out to a certain size. Now, me and math on a good day don't get along so well. Math at 730 in the morning..forget about it. Chef looked at me and said "So, do them in 5 cm blocks. Whats 5X's 4?" "25!!...no wait...Jean-Luc its to early for math.." hahaha. I know it was 20. Embarrassing. Needles to say I got them cut to the right size.

 Next we made our dipped chocolates. We had to use a stand mixer to soften our ganache. I ended up whipping mine. oops. Just meant that my ganache wouldn't have a fudgie consistency. It also meant that instead of my chocolates having a shelf life of 3 weeks, they would only have a shelf life of 2. I think It has to do with the incorporation of air, makes it spoil quicker? That would be my educated guess.
 We also had to make nougatine. I love this stuff. You do a dry caramelization of sugar (something I am pleased to report I am getting better at doing! no burning! yay!) Then add your nut of your choice, its traditionally done with sliced almonds so thats what we used. Then you spread it out super thin, crack it in to pieces and enjoy. Expect we were using these as decoration so we crushed it in to a powder. So very yummy. Love it.

 Chef also showed us how to use the wood grain tool for chocolate. I need practice doing this. It looked like i made messy waves of nothing. No wood grain what so ever. We also practiced making the two toned chocolate cigars. They are so pretty! I'm always impressed when I can make something that looks more complicated than it actually is.

 The cook chefs are starting to hover around the chocolate room windows, so we feed them chocolates. I'm going to start demanding steak or lasagna in exchange for chocolate. Its funny, they wonder in to our kitchen because they love the smell of the sweets. I stand in the hall way and breath in the steak and pasta. I don't crave sweets, I want actual food! They want cake. haha.

 My group gave me a nick name today. "little Ash" haha I kinda like it. I'm anything but little but whatever floats their boat. I snapped a comment to one of my group members today and I heard "Little Ash is being a little Ass." Nice eh? haha sometimes I deserve it. We bust each others balls?...boobies?...whats the term when Its all women in the group? Anyways, we bust each other all the time.

 Tomorrow we start in Breads. We shall see how this goes. I know I'm going to have to attempt to roll stuff in to a rectangle or square - anxiety! I got this.

Have a wonderful evening.

Pate de Fruit! 

mmmm

Nougatine. 

All my chocolates dipped. Don't worry, I ate the ugly ones. 

These are Jessicas chocolates. She cut one open so I stole her picture to use so you could see. 

My cigars

My beautiful group members and our chocolate mess. 

Remembrance Day long weekend.

It's Remembrance Day. A Day when everyone stops to think about how very lucky we are here in Canada. We think about all the amazingly brave men and women who have and who continue to sacrifice for us. I also think about the families of those solders, they also sacrifice - a lot. Thank you to all of them.

 I have been lucky enough to have 4 days off. No school. No work. It's been heaven! Friday we had a PD day at the college, and today, of course is remembrance day.

 I would like to say that I got a lot accomplished. I got stuff done...but a lot? Don't think so. Sometimes you just need to say "screw it. I'm watching movies and sleeping today." Which is what Friday was. I did get cleaning done and I got all the winter gear out and the summer stuff put away. Flip Flops are no longer acceptable to wear outside :(

 I also organized my disaster of a baking cupboard. I was scared for my life every time I opened it. Now I fling both doors open while singing! Glorious!

 By the time Davin got home from work Saturday evening I was scratching at the windows to get outside. So he humoured me and we went to look at Christmas stuff. I did not want to go look at these things....I always give in to him when It comes to Christmas. He's giddy like a child, who am I to deprive him of that joy? Although, I will share that words were exchanged when he said "Once we get a house we will have all these inflatable characters on our lawn! totally decked out." "...."
 I don't friggen think so buddy. We came to a compromise.

 Sunday we spent 6 hours Christmas shopping! I bought two things and Davin bought some lights for the Christmas tree. Last year we only bought white ones, and we didn't quite have enough - It didn't look very nice. So this year we have over 60 feet of coloured lights! This I'm excited to see lol.

 I also got my bake on this weekend. Davin has been whining and complaining ever since his chocolate chip bricks..I mean cookies..didn't turn out. He tried. A+ for effort. He said I owed him cookies. So I delivered. I also made extra dough, scooped it in to portions and froze them. This way when he wants a cookie he can just bake one.

 I didn't have any baking powder when I went to make them. No problem! I made some! For anyone who runs in to this problem here is what you need to do. All baking powder is made of is, Cornstarch, baking soda and cream of tarter.

Mix together:
1/2 tsp cream of tarter
1/4 tsp of baking soda
1/4 tsp of cornstarch.
Bam! Baking powder.

I doubled this recipe and got about 8g of baking powder. This recipe is from McCormick, cream of tarter bottle. So if you ever forget, but have some cream of tarter in your cupboard just check out the side of the label!

Oh. I've yet to talk about my school day on thursday!

 We made Pate de fruit? It like a homemade gummy. Ever eaten those fruit shape jelly candies that are rolled in sugar? Thats what this is. I loved it. Can't wait to make more. We also finished our covered almonds. We made some with icing sugar and some with cocoa powder. I tasted both of them (several times..) and they are both amazing. Very addictive. Can't wait to get back in to that kitchen tomorrow. Last day of the decor room for our group. Wednesday we start in Breads. yay? I'll let you know how that goes.

 I could ramble on about all the little things that have gone on in my 4 days off. I fed some ducks, then pulled a strangers dog out of the pond when it decided it was also a duck and jumped in, but couldn't get back out.
 I played PS3 with Davin. We make a great team in life...not in nintendo. Enough said.

He is now making dinner so I am off!

Good night beautiful people!

All nice and clean! The top looks more unorganized than it is. 

Cocoa covered almonds

Icing sugar

Want some?

Yea..you do..

I hate chocolate bows

Salutations!

 Another day in the chocolate room. Today it consisted of making a chocolate box and a chocolate bow. I made the box no problem - not a fan of bows. I was ready to crush it with a hammer. smash! I'm just being dramatic, it wasn't that bad. It just turned out ugly and I hate having an ugly end product.

 Today we had to temper a lot more chocolate. Pain. OH! We also made covered almonds! Those I enjoyed making. We put the sugar and water in a pot, brought that to a boil and then threw in the blanched almonds and cooked them until they were beautiful and golden brown and caramelized. They smelled so beautiful and nutty. We spread them out on a baking sheet to cool. We then roll them by hand in chocolate twice. The third a coating of chocolate will come tomorrow - It has to be tempered chocolate. Then we will be rolling them in cocoa or icing sugar or something. Can't wait! People might like these for christmas. Almonds are super expensive though..so maybe not.

 So back to the chocolate box. Its a lot of melting, tempering, spreading on asatate, or textured plastic and shaping it. We had to do the lids twice. We were suppose to make them on guitar paper (gives it shine) but I made them on parchment. Fail. That got a "look" from Chef. Lesson learned : Guitar paper gives chocolate a shiny finish, parchment a matte finish. okie then.

 Then came time for the bows. We had three strips of transfer sheets with a heart design. We had to spread tempered chocolate on to it, wait until it set a little, make score lines down it, about 2 fingers wide...now. When Chef says 2 fingers wide I don't think he realizes that my two fingers are MUCH smaller than his are - I should of used three fingers to get the right width. Then you fold the top over to the bottom and press them together to make the rolled shape. Let them chill and peel the sheet off and just break your pieces off and voila!

 The first sheet I did..well It was useless. I didn't score it all the way through the chocolate so I had no lines to break it apart. I tried to break it apart anyways and it just crumbled in my hands. Luckily Chef made a demo one so I just took some of his pieces. When you fail, just steal someone else's work and use it as your own! haha.

 Chef showed us how to put it together so I made the base and he said I had to many on..so he took some off and spaced them out. After I was all done my crappy bow he comes to look, and says "its a little spaced out...you should of done it closer." *slow head turn up to Chef* "You took my pieces off and spaced them out..." "...oh...yes. Well its too spaced out haha." Chef got "the look" from me. My next one will be better.

 I wish we had chances to do things a second time. You learn a lot your first time and you just want a chance to do it again because you know how to make it better. There is just not enough time to do it. Kinda sucks. Fondant bows are so much easier than chocolate is.

 I know I complain a lot about chocolate, but its really not so bad. Just a lot of work and you need to know what you are doing - and I don't fully know what I'm doing. Which results in a lot more work. A bonus about being in the chocolate room is that Chef allows us to listen to music. So tomorrow I will be bringing my iPod and we will be rocking out! Sara had music playing from her phone today and in the middle of working I would bust out the dance moves (maybe thats why I kept making mistakes?..hmm..)

 I need to go work on my paper about modern vs classic cakes. I'm actually loving doing this assignment. Trying to avoid doing my resume and cover letter...

Have a lovely evening! (I said like that Dracula - just so you know)

This was after I added more pieces to try and fill it out more

My box came out well. 

I added my ribbon. Looks a little better..

Excited to put my jelly chocolate in it!!