Happy Holidays!

Finally! Exam week is over and  freedom ensues!

I must say, this week wasn't easy. I even felt like breaking down and crying at one point, but it is all done and I did pretty darn well, if I say so myself.

The first two days concentrated on baking, prepping, and finishing a sponge cake and a red velvet cake. I really did not want to spend the time tempering chocolate to make another lattice roll so I opted out and instead topped my cake with an extra snowflake from the red velvet cakes. I think it looked better like that. While it is fun to make the lattice roll, it seemed out of place before.

We ran out of the premade carrots for the carrot cake so most of us had to pipe cream cheese carrots. A little anemic looking, but I think you can still tell it is a carrot.

Wednesday was marzipan day. This time we had to make 12 each of bananas, apples, pears, strawberries, oranges, and peaches. So much fruit!

On top of that, we had to make three marzipan roses with two leaves each.

Marzipan doesn't take long so compared to the previous two days, Wednesday felt relaxing. We used the extra time to prep pie dough for Thursday.

Thursday Pie day. The worst day of the week. I'm not sure about you, but I still have yet to get pies down. Or maybe pies just don't want to be understood by me. My crust for the lemon meringue pie kept breaking over and over again. I had to remake it three times!! I was so frustrated I had to take a moment to breathe or else risk an angry cry face - the ugly kind, and no one wants to see that. I cannot send enough hearts to S who made the lemon meringue filling and meringue topping while I fussed over the pie crusts so that when the crusts finally turned out right, we could finish them up right away. Also, hearts to V who gave us her extra dough as I used up all of mine! Can I say "Yay for teamwork"? Yes I can. I'll shout it even. Saved my day. :)

While the apple pie ended up being a bit of a disaster (the filling burst out in several places, but I managed to patch it back together), the lemon meringue pies were great!

Disaster apple pie hiding in the background

The last task on our examination list was another fondant covered cake. The previous one I had made was my first time working with fondant and covering those corners was a pain in the derrier! YouTube to the rescue! V and I found a youtube video about covering a purse cake just like ours. It really helped and we managed to get that cake covered perfecty. :)

I decided to make a panda purse. Chef thought it was Mickey Mouse and another lady called it a polar bear. Really?

V made a Chanel purse. There was amazing detailing in the zipper and the individually made pears on the CC logo!

My favourite purse - S's alligator purse! I just love the mouth! So creative.

By today, most of us had already completed all the tasks and were just helping with cleaning the lab room in preparation for next semester. What is one to do with a leftover cookies base, meringue, and chocolate? Make a s'more pizza of course! Cookie base topped with toasted meringue, melted chocolate, and more toasted meringue. One delicious sugar rush!

So sweet, but so good!

Leftover roses from peoples' exams

The ridiculous amounts of sugar we ate this morning may or may not have contributed to a sugar high for V and myself. :)

Afterwards, the three of us went out for a celebratory lunch at a korean restaurant. Bakers tend to crave salt by the end of all those sweet sweet days. :)

Salty bibimbap goodness

Until we meet again, happy holidays everyone!

Exam Week

I have just delved into the void that is the first day of exam week and emerged alive. That being said, I won't be posting this week because I most likely won't have time to take pictures. But before I disappear back into the void, I'll show you pictures from the last few days.

Keeping with the Christmas season, we made swiss rolls. The Chef gave us creative reign while stressing the need for us to use up random bits of chocolate decorations. A really neat decoration was created by putting bubble wrap on top of tempered chocolate.

Bubble wrap is so useful

In our textbook is a picture of a swiss roll with a mix of light and dark fillings. I wanted to recreate it. I decided to use up some leftover chocolate buttercream and flavoured white swiss buttercream with passionfruit. I didn't realize how much buttercream I had layered on the cake and ended up having to try to scrape half of it off which made the final cross section a little messy looking but it still worked.

Start with chocolate lines

I used S's leftover mango swiss buttercream on the outside and then topped it all with random pieces of chocolate. :P

We also made purse cakes and let me say one thing: fondant is not my friend. It was my first time working with fondant and we got very little instruction. Working with the fondant in general wasn't too bad, but trying to get clean corners was painful! I ended up with wrinkles and folded edges. The best part about these bags, however, was that we got creative reign once again. Some of the bags were awesome! One girl did a zebra print with bright pink and brown.

Cut and fill the cake with chocolate buttercream

Drape the fondant overtop

Try to make nice corners, unlike these ones

Starting to add details

Magically it's done!

We made fun of V's cake and called it a whale purse. It's too bad she didn't keep that tail on. :P

Thursday will be marzipan day so I took home some marzipan over the weekend and practiced making roses.

Making petals

Put all the petals together to make a rose!

Today we had to bake all the cakes we will be working with this week and let us just say that the dish situation looked overwhelming. The poor dishwashers...

It looks like a Christmas tree...of dirty containers

Only four more days. Out of the giant list of things we have to do, I only dreaded two things: getting all the cakes baked on time, and pies. Since the first one is now behind me, it should be mildly bumpy sailing ahead until Friday, aka Pie day. Until then, my friends, stay warm! And check out the Christmas bake sale at the Market place this week if you have a chance. :)

Man-handle Those Banan-dles!

Marzipan has been the word the last two days. We got make some super cute marzipan fruits. And they also made for some awesomely raunchy jokes. ;)

Peaches and apples waiting to be colored

We shaped 6 each of apples, pears, oranges, peaches, strawberries and bananas then air brushed them with some color to give them life.

Cloves make awesome stems. Push them all the way in for oranges with the star side upwards. Push the cloves in star-side down for the pears and apples. I kept the stems longer for the pears than the apples. I made the suggestion to use cloves instead of brown marzipan and the chef told the whole class to do the same!

Coloring the bananas allowed for the most creativity of all the fruits. I like brown spotted bananas more than the ones with lots of green so I tried to mimic that. I put lots of brown on the ends of the bananas with a touch of green and flecked them with brown.

The fruits got packaged into nice ribboned boxes. The bananas were packaged in their own bag. I'm not sure who would buy a bag of solely banana marzipan pieces though.

Frosty the Hulk topped my red velvet cake and delicate chocolate snowflakes adorned the sides of the cake.  The cake was surprisingly good and I gobbled up all my trimmings, which was a good thing actually. Fewer cake scraps means fewer rum balls we'll have to make later on. I also have a suspicion that eating the scraps gives me a better waste management score on my professionalism mark! Or I'm just making an excuse to eat all that cake. :P

The red velvet cupcakes got butterflies and a surprise squirt of raspberry jam in the centre.

Some cute romance went down in the lab today. One of the cooks from the other side came over and gave V a swan cream puff he made. Apparently he had been asking other girls in our class about V and whether she had a boyfriend or not. Too bad for him she's already in a happy relationship, but I admire his guts. :P

V's love swan

Prince Battenburg and Frosty the Hulk

Way back in 1884, Princess Victoria, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, wed Prince Louise of Battenburg. In celebration of their wedding, a cake was created and named after the prince. Traditionally, battenburg was an almond flavoured sponge cake dyed two different colors glued together with apricot jam and then wrapped in marzipan. Due to anti-German sentiments at the time, Prince Batternburg eventually changed his name, but the cake stayed the same.

Our battenburgs were a little bit fancier than the ones of old. Instead of apricot jam, we used whipped cream and raspberry jam. A tastier option if you ask me.

First we started with the pink sponge and spread on a layer of raspberry jam followed by a layer of whipped cream. Due to a mix up in the cakes, I ended up using an unclaimed pink sponge. But not only was this layer too thin and over baked (crispy instead of spongy), it tasted like some major yuck in the mouth! I used it anyway to gain the experience of making one, but two things went down with my cakes 1) I halved the pink sponge and sandwiched them together with jam to make the pink layer thicker and 2) these cakes weren't sold. :(

Stick the yellow and pink layers together and slice into strips.

The two outer strips get some whipped cream "glue".

Flip the middle one and squish them all together.

Repeat and stack the layers.

Color some marzipan and wrap those cakes up!

When you slice a piece, you get a nice cross section like these!

All packaged and pretty

We had so many scraps left the class filled a 50L bucket!

Buttercream rose on top of a pile of cake trimmings

Today we made red velvet cakes and cupcakes. The amount of food coloring we used was ridiculous! We didn't decorate them today so I didn't have a chance to taste them, but I wonder if I would be able to taste the food coloring....they smelled delish though. :P

The cupcakes are going to get chocolate butterfly decorations. The Chef said to make the wings red and green for Christmas but I can't agree that the colors we ended up with were very Christmas-y. Plus, butterflies creep me the heck out. Up close they're just like flies - all hairy, slimy, and buggy. Yuck!

Flood the outlines with colored white chocolate

The leftover chocolate pieces looked like chocolate chip and mint chips. So disappointing when they didn't actually tasty minty.

The full sized red velvet cakes will be decorated with chocolate snow flakes and snowmen. Once again, the colors. Why red? Probably because we have lots of red colored marzipan.

If they weren't smiling, I would imagine something along the lines of "Angry Snowman SMASH!" in the voice of the Hulk. :P

I am finding it hard to believe I only have two more weeks left in this semester! This week will the be the last of the new material and all of next week will be examinations. Five days of baking and decorating cakes, pies, and making marzipan fruits with no help or guidance. It's going to be dead quiet in the lab room. I will not lie, it sounds intimidating. But, one day at a time. Tomorrow is marzipan fruit!