She's Alive and Making Flowers!

Yes, I am alive. :P

It's been quite a while, hasn't it? Did everyone have a good summer? I hope you managed to soak up lots of sun because it's gotten chilly already. There was frost on the grass this morning!

I'm already into my second class of this semester. The first class was Fine Pastries. It was a bit of a shock to our systems as from the very first day, each class was packed with tasks to do and was almost always a time crunch. Fine Pastries focused on mousse cakes, individual desserts and petit fours.

Chocolate cake with a chocolate mirror glaze 

Individual chocolate cakes

Triple chocolate mousse

Lemon and white wine mousse

There was a lot of chocolate tempering involved in this class. Some of us really learned to "love" it. :)

Petit fours are small 1-2 bite cakes or cookies often served after a meal, during tea time or at some dessert buffets. They're usually pretty dense inside (tall fluffy petit fours fall over too easily) but very nicely decorated.

Different glazes, garnishes, and shapes

Fine Pastries was rather intense time management wise, but I had an awesome partner and we coordinated really well. Well enough that I ended up spending most of the last class turning left over cake into sell-able products because I was all done.

Now I am one week into Wedding Cakes! To be honest, I am not a cake decorator. A lot of students in the Baking and Pastry arts program want to open their own cake business but I am definitely not one of them. I still want to learn, of course. I want to learn at least a little of everything, but I honestly thought this class was going to be terrible. I am not particularly creative when it comes to design and colors kind of boggle my mind. I have the idea that mixing red and blue will create purple, but how exactly to get a specific shade of purple? Not a clue!

Despite all that, I'm actually having fun. It's frustrating at times (like when things break off), but I like the meticulous nature of creating figures or flowers.

Our first assignment was to make mice wedding cake toppers. The bodies were made out of marzipan while the embellishments were made out of either rolled fondant or gum paste.

I added a few things after this picture to hide the cracks where the arms joined to the body. The piping on the dress was actually to cover up the cracked edges! :P The guy is about 2 1/4 inches tall for scale. Yes, I know his eyes are crazy! The heads moved a bit so it looks like he's looking elsewhere. "Who are you looking at!?"

We're also making flowers! It really saddens me that such a time consuming and fun assignment is worth so little compared to everything else.

Stargazer lily 

Orchid

I've turned the dinner table into my new flower studio. Believe it or not, but there is order in all that chaos!

Drying flowers upside down. That way, heavier flowers stay in shape and petals don't fall off.

2 roses and 3 calla lilies

Rose buds

Rose leaves

Up next is a traditional wedding cake meaning lots and lots of piping with royal icing. Traditional wedding cakes were very intricate and all white. We also work in teams to create a 4 tier edible cake. My team is still a bit iffy, but we're thinking a cake with flowers that can be used at any grand event. Whatever we make, I know it will be beautiful!

Alien Homeland!

The last three days have been a bit of a trial and error period. We're all still feeling out the stitch, trying to adjust our timing. But it's all coming together and we're turning out some beautiful products.

My group is responsible for making danishes, bee sting buns and fruit crumble yeast cakes, banana bread, and farmer's bread.

Nothing can happen without a nutritious breakfast though! Yesterday I snagged a broken half of a baguette and made my group a little sandwich. Slices of salami, a smear of butter, and melted mozza.

Today our Chef made us breakfast! It was heavy, but so so good. He called it Swedish muesli. It had muesli, almonds, raspberries, and bananas, all in a mixture of yogurt and heavy cream. Lots of heavy cream!!

Today's danishes were topped with a swirl of cream cheese and homemade raspberry jam or cream cheese and blueberry pie filling. One group decided to make a braided loaf filled with a cream mixture and a rosemary raspberry jam. The rosemary wasn't nearly strong enough but it was still luscious and delicious.

The customers downtown are very much the single-portion crowd as they usually come in to grab some lunch. As such, we don't make many large items like we did when baking on campus. Normally, the fruit crumb cakes are 6 inches in diameter, the same size as a regular cake, but today, I decided to make mini fruit crumb cakes. They looked more like muffins really, but were amazingly popular. The cashier ladies reserved half the tray for themselves!

Filled with a little pastry cream surprise

Can't forget the bee stings - simple and delicious. Today we had a little bit of dough leftover so I made a mini version. I called it my "baby sting", but Chef laughed at me and said "It's not bee sting, it's just a mosquito bite".

Baby sting got a little bit of raspberry jam too

The banana bread we make is interesting. It's not the quick bread version most people know and love. This is a yeast version so it is very much like a whole wheat bread with the flavour of bananas. The recipe also calls for dried mango and coconut. It is a very tropical bread and quite popular, but I just can't seem to like it. I think it is the mixture of whole wheat with overly sweet chunks of mango and random bits of coconut. Also, it needs more banana. :P

Banana bread gets braided

And topped with apricot glaze, fondant, and coconut

Do you know the first picture is? It's a preferment! A preferment is a mixture of flour, yeast, liquid and sometimes salt that you mix together several hours before you make bread. A good example is sourdough. Preferments are used to impart flavour, help to balance the pH of the bread, and can shorten the length of time required to proof a whole batch of dough. There are four major types of preferments. This one is called a sponge. The major difference between them is the amount of liquid added. I think it looks so cool - like the homeland of an alien species!

Each group gets to choose a recipe of their own to make on Friday. I wonder what we should make... :)

The Start of a Fun Class

Yesterday was the last day of demos which meant that today we finally got to bake things. :)

But let's start with yesterday. There was bee stings (with no filling), brioche, cinnamon buns, bee sting cakes, a fruit crumble bread, farmer's bread, herb and onion focaccia, and gluten-free buns and gluten-free lemon cakes. It was a busy day yesterday so by the time everything was done and we could finally have a taste of the products that were demo'd, everyone was rather ravenous. As soon as Chef finished cutting a bread, people would lunge to grab a piece. Hungry hungry hippos!

Onion and herb focaccia

Fruit crumble yeast cake thing

Other than the gluten-free cookie from nutrition class, I had never made anything else gluten-free before. The gluten-free buns and lemon cakes used a lot of ingredients and required more attention than the other products, but they turned out well. I would never have guessed either were gluten-free and the lemon loaf was actually really good! Just like a really light and fluffy chiffon.

Gluten-free buns get baked in muffin pans

Gluten-free buns

Gluten-free lemon cake

Friday's are a bit different here in downtown compared to Monday to Thursday. From Monday to Thursday, we make the same things over and over, but on Friday, we get a different set of recipes and we have the chance to bring in one of our own recipes to try out. Special projects Friday's it's called. For my group, we made potato sourdough, chocolate brioches, and apple cinnamon sticky buns.

Lovely cuts, Mr Potato-bread

The chocolate brioche fillings looked just like two-bite brownies.

Chocolate brioche filling

Chocolate brioche in three stages

Cut each little brioche bun

Top with more chocolate and icing sugar...viola!

When you cut a chocolate brioche open while it is warm, the center should still be soft and slightly gooey, a bit like a lava cake. If those decorative cuts are a bit too deep or the center of the dough was too thin when rolling it out, you'll be able to see the chocolate filling like in the brioches below.

Back to front: Cheese and ham danishes,
Mad Hatter oatmeal bread, and chocolate brioches

We had quite the tasting platter today but hey, it's Friday! Or as a previous workplace used to call it, "Fat Friday"!

So many goodies!

I can already tell this is going to be a fun class. My mind is already thinking of what kinds of recipes we could make on special Friday. The Chef said he would like ethnic breads, so maybe pineapple buns? Or how about a variation of cocktail buns? So many things to make, so little time! :)