Last day before Christmas break!

Merry Christmas folks!

 Its almost that time. It's amazing how quickly it creeps up on me every year.

 Now that I am on Christmas vacation I have some time to write about my last day. We were going to be finishing up some baking we started. We had our chocolate piping test and we had to do a deep clean of the pastry lab.

 We finished our creme brûlée on a daquoise base. So damn good. I could of eaten my weight in those little things. Chef showed us how to "hot knife" a creme brûlée to get the crust on top. I loooooved doing this. Mostly because it involved fire and sugar. We put some palate knifes in the fire of the gas stove and let them get super duper hot, we sprinkled brown sugar on the tops of the CB and we slide the screaming hot knife over the sugar. Smoke and burnt sugar smell everywhere - but really fun to do. I prefer this way to using my blow torch.
 Some of them turned out, some didn't and the torch had to come out to touch up the spots that didn't caramelize. If you did it to slowly you could burn the sugar or it would get so hot the sugar would just stick to the knife and you pulled it all off. If you did it to quickly the sugar didn't caramelize.
 I needed to try it. It was sooooo good! Tasted like ice cream. mmmm

We also finished our chocolate and vanilla pate in chocolate cups. Those were also good. Sort of like a mousse thing. I wasn't a fan of the white chocolate, but the dark chocolate was amazing. White chocolate is touch and go with me.

 We also baked off the rest of the apple strudel. I would change the recipe if I was making this for me. I hate raisins. So i didn't eat any of this.

Next came the piping test. EEEK!
 The hardest part of this test was rolling the damn conays! Rolling parchment paper cones are a huge pain in the bum. My hands were shaking lol. A few unrolled on me. After a deep breath I finally got them all done and could start my piping. We had 1 hour to do 10 different designs. I know that sounds like a lot of time - I thought it was too, but it went by so quickly!  We could re do them as many times as we wanted, but we had to have 10 done at the end of the hour. So my plan was to just do one of each so they were done, then go back and look them over and re-do which ever ones I thought weren't going to be good enough. He is looking for even spacing, fluid clean lines and probably lots of other things.  I surprised myself! I had a pretty steady hand and pretty well kept all my originals. Practicing them on paper was super helpful. I tried to correct a few little mistakes but my second round looked much worse than my first, so I just threw those out. I really want to know what my mark was!

 So, thats the end of the first semester. Crazy!! It's been such a blast. I'm a little scared for second semester because I know Chefs expectations of us are going to be very high. Challenge accepted! Time to whip out the talent and stop second guessing myself. I got this.

 I'm excited to do some christmas baking at home. I have shortbread dough in the fridge. I'm going to make cookies tomorrow with Davin. Nothing more fun on a snow storm than decorating cookies and decorating the tree.

 I'll try to update this during my break with what's going on and what I've been practicing in my kitchen. I'm going to be going back in to the school next week to work on some stuff for the skills competition. Exciting!

Merry Christmas!

Last week of first semester!!

Hello!

 Today was the start of our last week before our 3 weeks of christmas break!! I am so excited.

 Our rotation this week is in restaurant. I love restaurant. The only down side is that there is no dinner service during the day (this week), so we won't get to do any plating. I guess I'll survive.

 What did we make today? hmm. We covered our chocolate cheesecakes that we made last week in pastry. I was remelting my coating ganache and i guess my double boiler was to hot because it got really grainy and started to separate. I took it off and took the temp...yeah i was way in to the 50's..not good. So I put my bowl on some ice to cool it down. I called chef over to help me because I didn't know how to fix it. He asked me to grab my whisk and he would fix it in 4 steps. Yeah right... He totally did.
 He whisked it for a few seconds, grabbed an ice cube and dropped it in, stirred it for 5 seconds and took the ice cube out and mixed it again. I looked at him with my mouth open wide, pointed and said "how in the hell did you just do that!?" - he starts laughing and does like a jazz hands type thing and says "magic! ta-da!" LOL! With my mouth still open I just stared at him and he said "It's called French skill.." "I WANT FRENCH SKILL!" haha. I was seriously impressed. I'm going to remember that lesson.

 We got the cheesecakes covered and then we did the little fancy design with white chocolate. oh god, the white chocolate. That got over heated as well (not my fault this time..) When white chocolate gets over heated it gets really thick and lumpy because of the milk solids that are in it. Again we had to get chef to come over and rescue us. He took the chocolate and grabbed a strainer. He lectured us about temperatures and to stop killing the chocolate. While he was straining it he started having a little conversation with the chocolate. "Poor little chocolate. I know...I know. You are hurting because they keep heating you up to the point where you want to scream. You were once a little happy cocoa bean hanging on a tree. Then you got picked and shipped to Nova Scotia where these girls hurt you. You don't deserve this."
 ... We are all just standing there staring at him. lol. I was laughing. I thought it was hilarious! I turned  to my group and said "girls, I think thats his passive aggressive way of saying to stop fucking up the chocolate.." Chef looks up from his conversation with the white chocolate and starts laughing and says "yyeeeessssss!!"
 Never a dull moment. It's always fun.

chocolate cheesecake

 Oh! We also made apple strudel and strudel dough. Strudel dough is soooooooo much fun to play with! It just stretches amazingly well. You roll it out to the length of your rolling pin, then using the back of your hand, you slowly stretch and pull it out. I loved doing it. We didn't bake them today, they are in the fridge all ready to be baked tomorrow!

My apple strudel! 

We also finished up our european cheesecake that we had made in the pastry rotation. Its a beautiful orange no bake cheesecake with a orange cream on top. We brûlée 'd the top. I was a little chunky when putting the brown sugar on top, so it doesn't look as nice as it should of. I also got to use a huge blow torch today. I love playing with fire! I blame it on the fact that I am the daughter of an EOD specialist (explosives..). Everyone else was very timid around it and scared to get burned. I was ready to go! Gimme the torch!

European cheesecake

 We asked Chef if we could try this one. Unfortunately, we don't get to try the cakes. Something about it being unprofessional to sell a cake with a piece of it missing. I wouldn't mind, but whatever. ;)
 We did get to try this one though! Since we each made 2 cakes we got to keep a little one and we all just grabbed forks and went to town. This was so good. So light and fluffy! Really really yummy. I brought a piece home for Davin and he loved it. Winner!

 We will be done on Thursday this week. Chef has a funeral to go to on Friday. Which means our piping test is on Thursday instead of Friday. So tomorrow I will be staying at school to do some practice piping. I hope I can do okay on this test. I haven't done much piping practice. Bad Ashley!

 Have a wonderful evening you lovely people.

Christmas Buffet!!!

Good Evening!


 Today was such a fun day! :) We presented our Christmas Buffet in the restaurant. People bought tickets for 30$ and culinary made a buffet of their own and when people were done with their meal they made their way over to us.

 The guests were so wonderful. They were asking us all sorts of questions about the course and what we had made. They were as equally as excited as we were.

 I went to school a little early. I was so scared that my madeleines weren't going to turn out. I've only tried them once, last week...and they burnt. We had to have everything ready for 11:30, so if they didn't turn out I would of needed to come up with a back up plan very very quickly. Luckily, they turned out just wonderfully! I used my madeleine pan that my dad got me a few christmas' ago. Thanks dad!!

Medeleines right of the oven! Chef said they were prefect. 

 Next I started working on my chocolates. I had re-done my ganache because it was not "rummy" enough. The new batch I made was soooooo rummy! When you tried it with just the chocolate, it was sort of like doing a shot lol. Chef kept joking that he was getting buzzed from sampling my product haha. Then I put the hazelnut on the top and tried it, it was perfect! Such a great balance. I am so proud of these chocolates. Mostly because they were mine! Not copying chefs idea..the ganache recipe was his though. I loved it, other people loved it. I'm so proud of myself!  I only made 16 with hazelnuts and gold leaf for the buffet (thats all we needed to do) but when Leona walked past our guests they asked her for more of them! So she brought out the rest of mine that weren't fully finished and they ate all those as well! It's so friggen exciting!
 I also had a gentleman come to the table and ask who made the madeleines. I told him that I made them. He said he wanted to take them all home with him. He said they were "absolutely fantastic, so light and perfect." - I was on cloud nine!

Dark chocolate base, rum ganache, candied hazelnut with gold leaf. 

This was my first time using gold leaf.

Next we set up for the buffet! Enjoy the pictures of our buffet fun! 

 Have a wonderful evening! 

My chocolates and Jessicas (white chocolate mint) 

Karens dark chocolate orange cake 

Jessicas amazing yule log

Katies piped shortbreads 

Jessicas second yule log

Almost done!

My madeleines

All ready to serve some sweets! 

lol Sara being creepy and watching us from the Lab. 

prep prep prep prep

Good evening,

 Today was a day filled with decorating cakes and cheesecakes. I loved it! I need to thank my old job at Susie's for all the practice icing cakes. I'm not confidant with many things, but icing a cake is one thing I can do.

 I also had to make chantilly cream today. Never made it before. Chef said "what is chantilly cream?" "umm, whipping cream sweetened with vanilla??" - I was close. It's whipping cream with icing sugar AND vanilla. Sounds super fancy, super simple to make!

 The first cake we did was our cheesecakes. It turned out really well! We piped some rosettes around it and put some chocolate cigars on it with my blueberry compote. We brought them out in to the cafeteria and mine sold pretty quickly! Super pumped!

My two cheesecakes. I like the one on the left best.

We also made a carrot cake! I loved how my carrot cake turned out. I had to practice piping my carrots on the table before I even touched my cake. They were looking more like little orange penises. Phallic carrots. Yum. Luckily, with some practice they looked more like carrots. The cream cheese frosting was delicious! Carrot cake is certainly growing on me.

The next thing we finished up was our hazelnut cake with caramel cream filling. We covered them with the chantilly cream and we also got to make some fun caramel dipped hazelnuts! To do the hazelnuts we needed to put them on the end of a toothpick. There should be a "possible death" warning when it comes to doing this task. First Sara stabbed herself, while she was cleaning up her blood, Jessica stabbed her thumb. I take over the task and while I'm laughing and shaking my head at the clumsy girls the hazelnut breaks and I stab my thumb! haha. Karma. We are all around the sink cleaning off our thumbs and Chef sees us and says "are all three of you hurt!? Seriously!?" haha! He found it so funny. So did we though. It hurt like a bitch, but it was funny.

aren't they pretty!?

Very proud of my cake!

At the end of the day my group stayed to get a jump start on our buffet stuff. I got to play with some isomolt! yay!! I tried my hand at making candy canes. Unfortunately we can't eat them, but they look so pretty! Not bad for my first time ever attempting it!  Hopefully the group can use them to decorate their cakes and goodies. :)

Isomalt candy cane decorations.






I'm very excited to see everything that we come up with for the buffet! Lots of pictures to come.
Have a great evening! 

Monday in the kitchen

Happy Monday!

 Today was changed around a bit. We usually have all classroom stuff on mondays, but today we were in the kitchen. Totally fine with that.

 We did have to go to the classroom to write our Theory test. salt and cornstarch - hazaa! My weekend was quite busy so I didn't get much studying done so I was confidant in this test. I think I aced it! It was super easy - which worries me a little bit haha. Ever done a test that was surprisingly  easy but when you get it back you have failed it. Let's just hope thats not me. I'm finding I'm getting better at understanding all the information I'm given. That might sound weird, but I've always had to study very very hard and over and over to get something to stick. Everything we are learning, it's all starting to click and it feels so good. I'm slowly gaining confidence in my abilities and my smarts. Love it.

 We didn't do much today we all had to be done by 11:30. Chef had lots of stuff to do today with his second year culinary students. We made a caramel cream (so so good) and we layered it with our hazelnut cake and put that in the freezer to set. We made a berry compote for our cheesecakes. The recipe called for mixed berries but I'm not a fan of mixed berries so I did all blueberries. Blueberry compote on cheesecake - hell yeah!

Blueberry compote

I wanted to eat it with a spoon..

 We also made cracklin. Looooooove cracklin! You melt down your glucose, sugar and water then add your sliced almonds to it and spread it on to parchment. You put it in the oven until its golden brown and then while its still hot you cut it in to squares. We are going to be putting these around one of the cakes we are doing. It will look lovely! I was actually very pleased with myself - they actually look like squares! They look like evenly shaped squares. *pat on the back*

We are getting excited to work on our Christmas buffet things. I am so excited to see how my chocolates turn out. Lots of pictures will be on here after we present it. We had an elderly lady approach us today while we were on break. She told us to get back in the kitchen and work on that food haha. She said she's very excited to eat all our sweets on Wednesday. It was sweet. Our turn isn't until Thursday, hopefully lots of people come.

 I can't believe it's december already! Time is flying and Christmas will be here before you know it. Things are starting to get very very busy. I just need to get through my communication project and this buffet and I think I will be fine. I can start focusing on christmas baking and stuff. Haven't even started on the christmas cards (groan) - I'm so behind.

Have a lovely evening!

Starting to get busy!

Hello!

 Last week we finished our rotation in Veinoisserie. I love that rotation. You get to do a lot of individual things like cookies, cakes, pastry. Just awesome. We also finished our whole recipe booklet a day before hand so we got to make extra things! We made macarons and madeleines. We also made some lemon squares. I'm just starting to come around on Lemon, It can be hit or miss with me. These were a miss. So lemony...not a fan. When Chef saw the look on my face after a took a bite he come over and tried one. I think he was worried I screwed it up. lol. I made them right, I just hate lemon.

Lemon bars! 

 The madeleines didn't work out for me. The pan Chef had was super old and metal and sort of rusted. The biggest problem was the fact that the bottom oven got turned off just before I put them in.
Chef went over and turned the oven on for me, then came back to show me how to pipe it in to the molds. I put them in the oven and when I went back to check on them they were still raw. So I called Chef over and he said to just leave it for a bit longer. So 5 minutes pass and I go back over and they are still raw...slightly cooked, but still raw. I call him over again and his face drops "someone turned the god damn oven off!" So I quickly transferred them to the top oven, but by then it was to late. They were just dead and not going to work. I think Jean-Luc could see the disappointment in my face (I was so excited to make these) he told me it wasn't my fault. The pan was shit and the oven didn't help. Everyone else piped theirs in to cupcake pans and they turned out great. I'm going to bring my silicone mold and try that. Hopefully it works for me.

 Next we made macarons! I've never made these before, so this was exciting. We teamed up to make them (we didn't need hundreds of them apparently) Leona and Jessica made strawberry filling while myself and Sara made blackberry. The filling was so so so good. Chef was trying to make it work for us but we didn't have any instant gelatine so the filling didn't set up as well as it should have. When we whipped it, it should of became fluffy and airy but it sort of broke down and was a little watery and loose. Still tasted great though. We also coloured our macarons.
 TIP: When you are colouring macarons make the colour very dark to begin with. Once you add your meringue you lose a lot of colour. Our purple didn't turn out as dark as we wanted, but it was still lovely in the end. Not bad for a first time!

Fresh out of the oven and cooling

Our "purple" ones. See my snail I made!? haha

Invasion of the macaron snail. 

Our finished product. 

 We also made apple turnovers with our puff pastry. SO.GOOD. I even took pictures of my puff pastry while I was rolling it out so you could see all the butter thats in it. I am so excited to get in to a bakery and do this for a living. I will have the best job ever!

See all that amazing butter?

Three cheers for puff pastry!

Apple turnovers ready for the oven! 

mmmm

Not bad for a first timer! 

So many yummy treats. I hear the gym calling my name...

Have a wonderful evening!