Finished bread and moved on to V!

Hello Gang!

 Well we finally finished up our bread rotation yesterday and we started in Veiniossarie (or something like that..I'll just call it V from now on)

 Bread yesterday was fun. We made 5 different breads and just puttered about. There was only three of us in the group so we each got to pick a bread and make it our selves. I jumped on doing the pretzels. I love that dough. I also volunteered to make the raisin bread - that was kind of a pain in the ass. Never made that one before.  Chef cuts back on the amount of liquid in our bread recipes so we have to make adjustments until we get to the right consistency. Not always the easiest thing to do when you have never made that specific kind of bread before. Some of them I would have to add a half a litre of liquid. I was worried about "over watering" (as I call it). It's a good way to learn, or else you are just following the recipe and not learning by touch.

 I also got to learn to use the cooks meat slicer to slice potatoes for our potato bread. It's the next day and the right side of my back is so sore. I hate that machine! lol. The worst part was taking it apart to clean it and not being able to get it back together. And apparently none of the cooks could help me. I was in that kitchen for a looooong time before I got that piece of equipment back together. I love our pastry lab. Feels like home. Going in to the cooks kitchen is like going in to Narnia..a far away weird land.

 We got through our last day in bread smoothly and ended that part on a high note :) yay!

Blueberry Scones

Raisin bread

Potato bread

 Today we started in V. Love this section.

 Today we made beautiful brioche. You all should remember my love affaire with brioche dough. It's like silk. I want brioche pyjamas.

 We had to roll out our brioche. I've told you all how I can not roll a simple shape like a circle or a rectangle. It's impossible for me. Today I made a kite haha. I was  already having a cranky day but this just made me laugh. It did not matter how much I stretched or rolled this dough, It wanted to be a kite. I called Chef over to help me and he stood there laughing and said "well, if this was a kite making contest you win!" haha yay! I win!! He tried to save it for me and got me a rectangle. The problem with brioche dough is you can not work it to much because of the high fat content, it gets really soft quite quickly.

 I dove in to my tool kit to get my little off set spatula. My bakers blade (a blade on a stick essentially) had the safety cover off and i ended up slicing the top of my finger and down underneath my nail. Hurt.like.a.bitch. I'm pretty lucky and my injury list is small for this year, but when it do hurt myself I make it count! haha.

 We finished off the brioche with some almond cream, candied orange and crushed hazelnuts (I believe..could of been walnuts. I was busy tending to my wound when they got them) we baked them and they got brushed with a flat icing. SO GOOD!

I mean come on! How amazing does this brioche look!

Then we spent the rest of the afternoon making Florentines! These are amazing Italian cookies. Very time consuming though. You make your syrup then fold in the sliced almonds. Scoop them out and then spread them nice and thin. Bake them, shape them. Coat the back with chocolate and eat. I forgot to take a picture, but I brought some home for Davin and myself so I snapped a quick phone pic of it..half eaten. haha. Davin loved them! Candied fruit, almonds and chocolate. Seriously good.

mmm florentine! 

 Today is Wednesday so we were suppose to do skills training. Nope. Second wednesday snowstorm in 2 weeks. I'm so behind in my training. We are going to be working on our french pastries tomorrow but I work..same as last week. Poopies.

 The drive home was hell. I love driving in snow, not a problem for me 99% of the time. Today it was ice with snow on top of it. I almost wiped out twice just walking to my car. Not the little slip.. but the full out arched back, standing on one leg, arms flailing trying to keep your balance while you cuss your little brains out. My back was already sore and I think I tweaked something trying to keep my balance. Work tomorrow should be a blast and a half.

 I got completely stuck on three different hills. If the person in front of you stopped or slowed down you were done. Tires spinning and you just slid from side to side. An 18 wheeler slide sideways so myself and the women in front of me both got stuck on the hill. Had to reverse down the street until we could gain some speed to get up the hill.
 I got around the turn and got stuck again because I had to stop for a car. Again I was not the only one sitting in the middle of the road with their 4 way flashers on. So again I reversed down the street on to a side street and had to try five times before I made it up my street. I was so glad to of made it home in one piece.

 I may be Canadian and winter is just what Canada is..but boy lord am I ever ready for spring. I just need the snow and ice to go away. forever.

 That's my pastry day in a very small nut shell.

 Have a wonderful evening you beautiful people!

A LONG week in the bread rotation...

Hello,

 I apologize for being away for so long. This last week has been kind of super busy. I started back at my old bakery job, and the bread rotation is....interesting. It takes up a lot of time. We are usually the last group to leave the kitchen. You can only work so fast in bread, with two proofs, then rolling and baking. Takes lots of time, especially when you are making 6-8 different kinda of breads at a time that you have never done before.

 Working in our lab is a joy. The pastry lab has 99% of everything we need, so we don't need to go in to the cooks kitchen for much of anything. The cooks however...they come in our kitchen a lot. We had a very rough week with the cooks. Somehow a butt ton of salt got dumped in to our huge sugar bin, so the pastry group had VERY salty buttercream and cakes. We had salty cinnamon buns. We had to get Chef to try all our doughs before we made them to make sure the salt balanced out.
 They use our proofer as well. After they were done with it, they turned it off.  With our product still in it. *grumble*
 They used our scale and it always stays on KG for us. They changed it to LBS and we didn't notice (so its half on us I guess) so we screwed up our measurements.

 A few other things happened but I've started to block out the bad that happened lol. Not worth the stress.

 I mean it was just a horrible week. We had some tension in our group which makes for a super rough day. Everything got sorted out, which takes a lot of stress away. I hope next week will be better. Due to the snow day we had on wednesday we will be continuing bread next week. ....yay....

 Now that I'm done complaining, we did actually make some very yummy breads.

We made pretzels. Jogger bread. english muffins. Potato bread. hungarian twist. Rye rings. Gibassier. cinnamon buns. sour dough. tea biscuits and white and whole wheat rolls.

 Most of the bread was really fun to make AND quite yummy!

Gibassier:

 I liked this bread. It had anise seeds (black liquorish flavour) and candied orange peel. Then we shape them and when they come out of the oven we brush them with butter and dip them in sugar.

 I don't have any pictures of the english muffins, Jogger bread, potato bread, or the sour dough. Those were pretty busy days where pictures just didn't happen.

The hungarian twist was really fun to make. I loved that bread. We did dough plain and the other dough we added cocoa powder. It doesn't taste like chocolate, I think it just added some colour and maybe a little sweetness.
 We cut the dough in to 100g pieces and we rolled them out in to skinny logs. Then Chef showed us how to braid them. Left over right, Left over right, right over left. I'll never forget.

The rye rings were also fun to make. We got to use our elbows! It's very exciting when you get to use something other than your hands to shape bread. You roll your piece in to a ball, then flatten it a bit, then use your elbow to make a hole in the middle then roll it in to a ring. You need to make sure your ring is big enough though so when it proofs it doesn't expand to much and you end up having a piece of bread that looks like a butthole. teehheehee. Butthole bread.

On Friday Chef gave us a break. There was no restaurant service so we didn't have to rush to get anything out. We just had to make 4 breads for the cafeteria. We made focaccia, sour dough, two different types of tea biscuits and jogger rolls. We also got to dip and finish our chocolates we started in the decor rotation.

 We made all our dough and while we were waiting for it to proof we dipped our chocolates. I went in and grabbed the tray that they were on. I looked at mine..."hmm..I made 24...I have 14. What the hell!?" So I showed Chef and I accused the Cooks (they always eat our chocolates!) And he says "oh yeah. Thats my bad. I ate those. They are so good!" "You ate 10? haha holy crap. Why couldn't you of reached in a little further and eaten someone else's? I only have 14 left. *evil glare*" 

 He was right, they are so friggen good! They were a hazelnut ganache with a cracklin base, dipped in milk chocolate and drizzled in dark chocolate. I ate 4. I can see why he ate 10.

The inside 

 

 Then he wanted us to make tea biscuits. I love tea biscuits! One of my favourite things to make. He wanted us to come up with some different ones. We made bacon and cheddar  and sour cream and chive with a sour cream and cream cheese topping. *drool*

We also made pretzels! Loved these too. They weren't like the ones you find in the mall. These had chew to them. Didn't like the texture at first, but it grew on me as I nibbled on it. Davin loved them. We made salted, cinnamon and sugar and poppy seed. Delish!

I'm sure more has happened this week that I wanted to tell you about, but this is a start. Starting a new week tomorrow. Very excited.

 Have a wonderful Sunday evening.

I can smell the spaghetti and meat balls my hubby is making and I'm so excited!

Lookie what I made!!

Happy Sunday! 

 It's been a busy few days so I'm just catching up now about my day on Friday. Friday was our last day in the Decor rotation - sad face. It was so chill and mellow and enjoyable. Tomorrow starts the bread rotation where I will be going ape shit batty. Stay tuned. 

 We used all our beautiful flowers. We each got to make an isomalt base in any colour we wanted. I went with a light purple, light pink, white and yellow theme. So I did my base light purple and prayed it would work out for me. We poured them in to these hexagon shapes and let them sit. We also had to make a pressed sugar base. All you do is take some white sugar and add a little egg whites and mix until it comes together, then you press it in to a mould and let it dry. Easy peesy. 

Our bases

  The scary part came when we had to handle our passtillage. This is a very fragile clay sugar type thing, it dried and then you sand it down to make it smooth. We had to sand it. Everyone was very quiet and focused and all of a sudden you would hear "SNAP! *GASP!* SHIT!!" Everyones eyes would shoot up and just stare in horror at the snapped piece. Oh the sympathy in our eyes for our classmate. It was like someone died. 

 I the hyper planner made lots of extras because I expected to break some of mine - Didn't break anything! Score! So now there are extras for people who need them. 

 Next we melted down some clear isomalt to use as our glue to get everything together. This stuff when boiling is about 160 degrees C. I think Chef was nervous we were going to burn our selves to death. He kept reminding us that it was in fact that hot. When sugar is boiling I think it closer to Lava temperatures..I personally think he's a little low on the actual temperature of the sugar. But that's just me and my skin. 

 Next came the terrifying part of gluing the passtillage pieces on to the base. This is where the sweats start, my hands shake, my heart is racing out of my chest and I just stood there in fear. I needed a plan to get this together. Plan plan plan. Chef told us to do it one way, thinking about his way made me come up with a new easier way to do it! I'm so smart. He wanted us to glue each piece on separately and then reinforce it with the gum paste hearts we made. PPSH, why glue one on at a time when I can glue two!? 

 

 I wanted to put both pieces on the flat table and get them placed where I wanted them, glue the hearts on to them THEN glue that whole thing on to the base. Seems so easy. So I told him my idea. While I'm telling him, I'm basking in the glow of my much easier perfect way to get this task done. 

SQUASHED IDEA. haha. He told me it wouldn't work and the chances of breaking both pieces was much higher if I do it my way. So of course me being me, I "argued" with him for a few minutes explaining why i think my idea will work. In the end he laughed and said "okay then. You do it your way..go for it and let me know how that works for you." - He called my bluff. He told me to do it. Now I'm questioning my whole idea. It was the way he said it. He also told my group to do it my way. "NO! Don't do it my way! What if it breaks!?" haha damn it Chef. Making me doubt myself. 

 So I played around with the pieces and did a "dry run" of gluing them together. My way was totally not going to work. Both pieces are completely different shapes and to get them straight on the base you did actually have to do them one at a time. Damn that know-it-all. When he came back in I told him I figured out why my idea wouldn't work and his would. I wanted to slap that grin off his face. LOL. He said " I don't want to always tell you how to do something, I'm not a know it all.  I'm open to your ideas and I want you to think for yourself, but I have been doing this for years and with THIS I am right."   "yeah..I know. It just made so much sense in my brain. *mumble under my breath* I still think it's a good idea though.."  I'm so stubborn sometimes. 

 haha He's such a good sport with stuff like this. You can argue with him about something but he 99% of the time proves you wrong, with a smile on his face I might add.  I'll find that 1% and show him at some point.  It'll happen. 

 So after I got some nerve I went for it! Time to get this thing together. I'm usually the first person to do things in a group, gotta get shit done! So I put some Lava glue on the back of my piece and glued it to the base while trying to move it around in the 5 seconds I have before my sugar sets. You needed to get it pretty bang on when you first put it on, there is not a lot of wiggle room. Luckily I got everything on straight! We had a person helping with some compressed air to help cool things down faster which was awesome! Then we put on the hearts which wasn't as nerve wracking. Once it was on and there was no cracking or snapping I took a breath and relaxed again. 

It's together! Time to breath again.

 The hard part was over. Next we steamed our flowers (to bring out some shine) and we cut the tooth picks off. Holy toothpicks! Do you know you could kill someone with a flying toothpick!? I'm holding my flower upside down in one hand, and cutting my toothpick with the other hand. These things are like heat seeking missiles! If someone wasn't paying attention they would of lost an eye. "launching in 3...2...1...locked on that persons eye and FIRE!" Holy cripes haha. Everyone had there eyes closed while we were cutting them. The dangers of pastry school. I'm shocked I'm still alive to be honest. 

 Then came the time to play around and figure out where we wanted to arrange everything. I just placed everything around until I found an arrangement I liked and then simply removed them and glued them on. Success! I'm so very proud of this piece. It's mine, my colours, my flowers my design. Mine. And I love it! My confidence is slowly going up the longer I'm in the course and it feels so nice. 

 

 Once it was done I stood back and looked at it. Perfect!..no..wait. My daises are not spaced apart evenly. I just need to move it like 1/4 of an inch. Not.Going.To.Happen. I was ready to get out my blow torch and melt it off to move it but I would of burnt my passtillage. Damn it!! It's the little things that bother me. I just wish I could fix it..It's driving me nuts. oh well! Nothing I can do about it now. 

Chef said that at this point in the course we are going to start doing things on our own and will be making things are own. Love it. Finally! 

 We also did some more cake ideas for skills. I'm getting a little nervous when it comes to skills. Coming up with ideas that are complex enough but simple enough for you to execute perfectly is a lot harder than It seems. I'll figure it all out though :) 

 Tomorrow we will be talking about the decadence event and Chef will be picking the desserts from the ones we submitted last week. Im excited to see who's got picked. 

 Anywho, that was my day on Friday. Exciting stuff eh? Time to go prep supper for the hubby who's working today. Chat later! Enjoy the many pictures of my creation :) 

My finished flowers. 

Cala lillies :) 

My daises and roses

My finished piece

My base

The top

One proud Chef. 

We made flowers today!

Good evening,

 Today was a pretty mellow day. We made more flowers!

  Our group got to relax and bond and laugh while we were making gum paste flowers.

 First we made daisy's.  I've done gum paste flowers before, I did all the winton courses. Chef does everything differently though, so now it's time to learn how to do things his way! I think knowing more than one way to do things is a bonus. We rolled out our gum paste, cut out the flower shape. We cut each petal in half and then rolled each one with a toothpick. Then we glued them on to the bases we made yesterday and hung them upside down to dry.

Next we made carnations. I had trouble with these in the wilton course and I had trouble with them today. I made a new kinda...triangle carnations! lol. An Ashley special. I'm going to try and fix them tomorrow.

 Then we made the roses. I LOVE my roses. I've never been good at making these, but the flower gods were on my side today. These were run to make. Very time consuming, but fun.

 And that was my day in pastry.

 I went up and spent a few hours on the computer working on excel. I'm so glad i did. It really helped me get ready for the work we have to do on Monday.

 Once I'm done this I'm going to go sign up for the skills competition. I am scared shitless. It's so intimidating, but I can do this....I can do this...I can do this.

 Every Wednesday we are working on skills stuff after class. By next wednesday Chef wants my ideas for my french pastries. These next few months are going to be absolutely insane and over whelming.

 I'm off to go sign up for skills *with my heart racing in my chest*

Chat later loves!

My daisy and one of my roses

Roses

My triangle carnations

I'm back!

Good evening!

 I hope you are all having a wonderful Tuesday.

 Before I get to the events of today I want to tell you about my weekend. On Saturday we had a joint birthday party for my step mom and a friend of the family. There were 13 of us, my brother (who is a chef) prepared the meal - which was amazing! And I made dessert. I made a chocolate sponge cake, with a ganache centre with german butter cream. It turned out okay. I think I kept my ganache to cold, because when I cut in to the cake the cake kinda fell apart. I was a tad ticked and disappointed. In the end it tasted fine, and people seemed to enjoy it. The lemon European cheesecake turned out really well. Very tasty. That one I was happy with.

 My brother is taking off with his girlfriend to work in London and travel the world. They left today actually! So it was a wonderful way to say good-bye to them. It was an absolute blast talking with and sharing the night with a bunch of wonderful people.

The chocolate cake for the birthday party.

Me and my little brother in our Chef whites ready for the evening.

I wish them the best of luck in their travels!! Love you Matt.


Yesterday was another Monday at school. Classroom day.

 First we had baking theory with Chef where we presented our wines and the desserts that we thought would go well with the wine. We shall see if our groups idea gets picked. Then he talked about the new trends in pastry and a little about plating and such.
 It will be fun to learn what kind of style of Chef I am. Still discovering myself in food. I'm still so new to all this and when you're in school it's just a lot of doing what you are told. Coming up with my own ideas is harder than I thought it would be. Challenge accepted though!

 Then we had human relations. A nice class. We talked about stress and time management. I have a problem with time management. There is not enough time in a day to get everything I need to get done, with school, gym, studying, typing up recipes as well as napping. Napping in mandatory. I am a person who needs sleep. If I don't get sleep people better watch out. Ask Davin, he will tell you.

 Then we had a long 2 hour break until our next class. Boring! So we all went up and pinned things on pinterest. Probably could of gotten some work done in that time...but...pinterest... I stand by my decision.

 Then we had our Excel class. Holy smokes. I am an excel dummy. I sat down and watched all the tutorials then followed the instructions in the book to get though the exercises. Our teacher (a new young Chef instructor) got his exercise that day. haha. Hands were just up everywhere. It's not a hard program, it just the wording in the book makes things super confusing.
 Instead of just saying "Now save your work in a new name." it uses all this stupid long wording. Unnecessary wording makes me look like a dummy. Gotta keep things simple for my brain.

 Chef also said he's going to rename our class "cell 15" LOL. Let me explain. In the book it said "now go to I5 and type "total." ... Almost every single person said "where is cell 15?..." Yeah, It wasn't 15. It was I-5. Something so simple, confused so many people. It was really funny.

 By 7pm Monday night I had the head nodding going and was only able to keep one eye open at a time. Dead. Davin was laughing at me and encouraging me to stay awake until 8 because If I fall asleep to early I will wake up to early. I pushed though and stayed awake until 8. Then he gently shoved me in the direction of the bedroom and I slept from 8 - 545 the next morning. It was wonderful.

 Today was our first day in the Decor room. We will be building a centre piece. We made bases for flowers. We will be making calla lilies, daises, roses and carnations.
 Then we made pastilliage, and cut those out to shapes. Once it dries we will be able to sand it down and stuff. It's pretty neat stuff. Then we made hazelnut ganache. Pretty simple day.
 The decor room is nice where its so low key and quiet. It can also get boring because of those same facts.

I'm off to go do grown up things such as laundry. Boring! Laundry is my most hated chore on the planet. I would rather scrub a toilet.

 Have a wonderful evening!

We painted today, what did you do?

Happy Friday!

  Today was a pretty chill day in the restaurant rotation. We all made our sorbet. We had a lot of pink colours, someone should of made mango or passion fruit to add some yellow in there. Oh well!

 Then we put our plates together using the "wood cake", the white chocolate that I cut out and our sorbet. We made a painters plate. They were so friggen cute!!

 After we "glued" together the white chocolate easels Chef told us to grab a rectangle piece and use the coloured cocoa butter and paint whatever comes in to our imaginations. Creative freedom...panic! When you spend the last 6 months being told what to do, and then all of a sudden you are told to think for yourself..well lets just say when I heard that my brain sounded like crickets.
 I'm not a person who can think "I want to draw a dog" and successfully paint a dog. It will end up looking like a seal. I love abstract art. Colours and shapes are my thing. Okay! let go with that!

 My first painting was just me violently swinging my pain brush up and down. Splatter effect! So much fun. I can see why artists like doing this. It wasn't just random though, I really thought through the placement of my colours.

 Next It was lots of coloured strokes.

Then I thought, lets make a smiley face! Scariest.face.on.the.planet. First thing I did wrong - I used red. If you have ever seen the Mentalist on TV, It looked like the face that Red John left for him after he killed someone. So I thought "well shit. That's really scary! Lets throw some yellow in the back ground to make it more happy." *eye roll* bad painting. Chef walked by and took a glance at my art. Stopped walking. Took a few steps backwards. Focused on my red face. His eyes got wide. "..I added yellow to make it less scary..did it work?" "Sort of. It looks like a monkey now." " *blink* Thats what its suppose to be. *shifty eyes*" If Chef says it looks like a monkey, then it's a monkey.

 Then I did another abstract thingy. Either way it was fun to do :)

After we were done our painting Chef showed us how to put the plate together. The other girls cut out the cake to looks like a painters palate. They were just perfect! And we piped chocolate brushes.

Doing this plate was pretty much our day. Very enjoyable! We got to hand them out to people. I made my way to the cafeteria and found a group of elderly ladies and handed them two plates. They were so excited :)

See my creepy face on the table? It looks like spongebob squarepants!! haha

Those are all my plates and creations! I'm very proud of myself.

On the way home from school I went and bought stuff to make a chocolate cake and a european cheesecake for tomorrow. My step mom and a friend of the families birthday is tomorrow so there is a big celebration! My brother (who is also a chef) is cooking the meal and I'm doing dessert. I can't wait!

 I also bought my ice wine. I just finished doing my tasting of chocolate and wine. So good. So very very good. I may of had a tad to much wine. It is taking me a little longer to type this than normal. Lots of little typos that I need to fix - Even more than usual when I haven't been drinking!

Anywho, I'm off to bed. Work tomorrow morning then a night of fun!

Have a wonderful weekend :)

It's a french toast kind of day

Hello,

 Today was another fun filled day!

 We made lots of goodies today and we also got to do another plate! yippie!

 First thing we made was powder. Sounds weird, but we did. Remember that sugar and white chocolate thing I talked about? Well we broke it up and put it in a food processor and used it to make decoration sugar. We used a decoration mat which is a mat with little bumps on it. You spread the powder over it and press down, throw it back in the oven until it re melts and then peel it off while its still hot. It's like a big sheet of sugar with holes in it. It's really neat.
 I am useless when I help someone try to peel it off. You need to do it quickly because as soon as its off the mat it sets and can break. My little virgin fingers can't handle the heat so it takes me to long and when I try to peel it off it just breaks on me. Luckily we needed small pieces anyways!

 The other girls made chocolate tulip paste. We were going to be doing a jaconde sponge with tulip paste design! We spread the tulip paste on a silpat and we had to use the wood grain tool to make a wood design. Again this is not a tool that I am good at using. I couldn't get the hand motion down properly. Chef tried to help me by showing me the motion by doing the "Moon dance" "...You mean moon walk?" "YES!" - So we did the moon walk with our arms. It worked a little. haha.
 After we got the design done we threw that in the freezer to set and we made our jaconde sponge. We spread it over the frozen tulip paste and baked it. Once it was done you flipped it over on to a parchment lined baking sheet and peel off the silpat and voila! Wood cake! I believe I yelled "We have wood!" buahaha!

See how cool that looks!? mmmm wood cake.

Then we made our sorbet. Sorbet is easy! syrup and puree. Easy peesy. We all chose different flavours. Strawberry, black current, blood orange and I did raspberry. We boiled our sugar, water, powered glucose and inverted sugar and added that to our puree. We will be running those through the machines tomorrow!

We got to use our ginger bread loafs that we made a few days ago. We made gingerbread french toast. I was not excited about this. I'm not a fan of french toast - to eggy. Chef noticed my scrunched up nose and said "What? You don't like french toast? Whats wrong with you!?" "many things chef.." haha.  We put it in the bread pudding base that we made and fried it up. I've never made french toast before..like i said, I don't eat eggs so I never ate it. Chef had to keep his eye on me because I wanted to cook it to within an inch of its life to make sure it wasn't "soggy" anymore. Turns out you want it nice and soft. After my first two all the others were perfection.

 We cooked all them and set them aside. Then chef showed us how to plate it. Quite the process. You took a piece of french toast, put some maple syrup in a pan and re heated the toast in the hot sticky syrup (I'm soooooo doing this in the future at home) Then we took it out of the pan and trimmed the edges. Put that on the plate.
 Next we sliced some pears that had been soaked in a ginger syrup on the toast.
 Next we put little "ginger bread melba toasts" on top of that. (we sliced the bread thin and put it in the oven to get crisp). On top of the crispy bread we put two panna cottas. Then we ran some of the blueberry sauce over the top.
 On top of that went two small scoops of the cream cheese ice cream and then the decoration sugar we made earlier.
 Next we took some maderines and put them in the skillet with some maple syrup and water. Put the warmed oranges on the plate and used the sauce for a drizzle.

 Holy. Lord. Amazing. Our group shared a plate and I think I ate the majority of it. After class Chef asked me if I liked it, I told him I LOVED it. "See. Would I lie to you Ashley?" "I don't know, would you?" "I'm french, we don't lie. We bend the truth..but we don't lie"
  Totally changed my opinion of french toast. I'm going to have to make this for Davin for a Sunday brunch/ dessert. I need my ice cream maker first though. Gotta have the cream cheese ice-cream with it!

 It's really amazing how you can learn so much from something as simple as french toast. mmm french toast - I just drooled on my t-shirt.

Dessert anyone?

I could eat that blueberry sauce with a spoon. Might have to make some of that for myself. I need a bigger kitchen and a much bigger freezer. Well I don't "need" it..I want it. There is so much I want to do and practice!

OH! We got assigned our wines today! Leona and I got 'Muwin Northern Compass Iced Apple' - sounds amazing. All I really know is that a sweet fruity desert wine can go with anything, as long as the dessert is less sweet than the wine. If it's more sweet you could get a bitter taste from the wine. I think thats right..more research is needed.
 We have to present to Chef on monday what our wine is, the history, the tasting notes and our idea for a dessert. He will pick the ones he likes and we will make those desserts for the decadence event. He keeps stressing to people "Don't get offended if I don't pick yours." I honestly can't say I won't be upset. I'm a competitive person and of course I want ours to get picked!
 I might just have to pick up a bottle and test it out for myself!

 I think thats my day in a nut shell.

I have lots of baking to do tomorrow for a birthday party we are having on Saturday. Wish me luck!

Have a great evening!

Plating? YES PLEASE!

Greetings! 

 Today was a wonderfully fun day! First thing we did this morning was put our ice cream bases in the machine. Chef said "you girls know what you need to do first thing, so go do it." I looked at him. Looked at the machine. Back at him. Back at the machine. I didn't remember how to use it. Oops. Luckily he knew exactly what my shifty eyes meant and showed me again. Not that complicated. 

 First thing we need to do is clean out the funnel at the top of the machine (that's where you pour your base in) and we have to run hot water then cold water through it to rinse it out. When I put the first bucket of water in it started to leak everywhere. Just running out the front of the machine. Great. "Chef!!!! It's leaking! help!" The people who used it last didn't put the rubber seal back on properly. So, always check the seal before starting. Thank goodness it was just water and not the ice cream that was leaking out. 

 Also, did you know that if you don't use the timer thats on the machine it will not start freezing even if you switch the button to freeze? I also learned that today. I used my timer that was attached to my apron, I thought it was a good idea so I could hear the timer when it went off. Chef said "..did you turn on the timer?" "yeah I did *points to timer on belt*" "..well that's great but the machine won't work unless you turn this timer on." "ohhh...well shit." - I won't forget that lesson. 

 The ice cream was sooooooooo good! If I ever get my own ice cream maker we will not be buying ice cream..again...ever. Sorry DQ. The coconut ice cream was so smooth, ugh so good. Chef tasted it and did his little happy dance, always a good sign. We cleaned out the machine and then put in the cream cheese ice cream. Not confidant this would be any good. I LOVED it! Probably more than the coconut, and I love coconut. Chef said that he likes to make a raspberry jelly and fold it in to the cream cheese ice cream when its coming out of the machine..that would be amazing! Like i said, I need my own ice cream maker! Very exciting stuff. 

Coconut ice cream!

 Next we used the Savarin we made yesterday. They are a yeast dough that is very similar to brioche. I tasted them yesterday and really didn't like them. Dry, plain..no good. We transformed them today and they were amazing! 

 We made a simple syrup with lemon zest, we strained it (to get the zest out) added a little rum and then we soaked them in the syrup. They puff right up and are just full of moisture, but they don't fall apart like a normal piece of bread does when it gets wet. 

We let them sit for a few minutes on each side then hold them under until that last bubble goes *bloop*..mmm..moistness. Take them out and set them aside. Chef made us one and he poured more rum over the top of it - at this point I was jumping for joy. RUM! RUM! RUM! So freeking good. We sent a bunch down to the cafeteria (without extra rum) with some cream and strawberries.

Then I cut up a bunch of fruit and added it to a different syrup that we also made yesterday. It looked like sangria! mm booze. April made a chantilly cream, she also made puff pastry triangles. Chef was going to show us how to put a plate together that we would of used for the restaurant. Yay! plating! 

 I told him "See now that I've done some plating I will stop complaining...as much.." :) 

OH!! I almost forgot the most exciting part! (for me anyways) We made angel hair! Caramel that we whip in to the air over a bar and then roll it in to a ball. Throwing sugar around the kitchen is so much fun!! I love doing anything with sugar, but this was just to much excitement. My group was giggling because I was giddy while doing this. 

Making angel hair! 

SO EXCITING! hahaha

angel hair balls

Now I can talk about the plating. Chef showed us how to put a plate together. 

Chefs plate

Then we got to do it! We had so many of these to do we just started handing plates to random people in the hall ways. I gave one to the security guard "would you like some desert?" "...seriously? yeah! totally!" He was so excited :) We gave a lot of them to the cooks, they were pretty happy. They love getting sweets and we love getting actual food. 

 I love putting a plate together. you get to play with it and you get to make it your own. We also got to make some quenelles with the ice cream. The ice cream was quite soft so it was a little bit of a challenge but I also loved doing this too. Spoon over, spoon under, spoon over, spoon under and voila! 

One of my plates!

Do you notice the difference between the angel hair on my plate and the one on chefs plate? See how mine doesn't look as soft and fluffy? That's because the sugar was getting to cold which causes the sugar to become more brittle. I might need to try making them at home! 

 At the beginning of class today Chef was showing us how to use Albumin powder. Sounds fancy, but It's just egg white powder. We are going to be getting in to molecular baking. I've been asking for him to show us how to make fruit caviar. Have you ever been to Cherry Berry? Ever had Bobas? those little fruit balls that explode when you bite them? Those are made with molecular baking. I'm SUPER excited to learn how to make those!! 

 Today he used the Albumin powder to make marshmallows. Passion Fruit Marshmallows. Holy amazing! Using this powder with fruit puree helps to keep things more stable and they are less likely to separate than if you used real egg whites. 

Did you know that way back when Marshmallows were used for medicinal purposes? They use to contain marshmallow root which helped combat many illnesses. Today we don't use the root and they are just a sweet treat. Neat eh? 

 I really like the idea of using puree to add flavour instead of using an artificial flavouring, taste much better.  I have a few in my bag to taste with Davin tonight. 

 We also made vanilla panna cotta. Not sure how I will feel about them. I've never tried a panna cotta before but If they end up having the texture that I think they will I see a gag fest coming my way. I'll let you know how those turn out tomorrow. 

 We also picked our groups for the decadence event coming up. Chocolate and wine! I'm excited to see which wine I am assigned and to do some "homework". How can eating chocolate and trying to pair it with wine be homework. seriously? Bring it on! 

 So many exciting things! 

See you all tomorrow! :)