Root Beer Float Reincarnates as a Doughnut!

The past two days have been a blast. A and I never stop surprising the Chef with our creations. For our last two days on the doughnut station, A and I decided to do half savoury doughnuts and half sweet.

We knew right away the savoury had to contain brie. There was a giant wheel of brie in the fridge; who can resist? We saw a tub of cherry compote sitting all alone and begging to be used so we grabbed it along with a huge chunk of turkey and some thyme.

I'm not sure why the idea of a savoury doughnut seems so weird. What about the Krispy Kreme burger? I actually wanted to make a grilled cheese doughnut, haha! Chef shook his head when we told him our plan for the brie, but when he tried it, he liked it. :)

On our first day back on doughnut duty, A and I were stumped as to what sweet flavour to do. We both just stood in the fridge for 15 minutes, staring at the shelves. We were looking into different containers and moving things around when A spotted a tub of strawberry jam. For a commercial product, it was pretty decent. Then I spotted a tub of sour cream. Bingo! Strawberry sour cream it was! (Unfortunately, we found that the sour cream was previously frozen and thus, gritty. We switched to cream cheese instead. :))

Of course, this doughnut had to be a filled one with the classic and simple dusting of icing sugar on top.

Do you like root beer floats? Do you like doughnuts? If you like both, have I got the best doughnut for you! Root beer float doughnut! A root beer cream with root beer jello (that still fizzes), vanilla whipped cream, and a bright red cherry to top it all off. The class loved it!

It was funny to listen to my classmates comment with surprise that the jello "tastes like root beer". It was simply root beer with some gelatin so I would expect it to taste like root beer. :)

The doughnut station also produces, oddly enough, a batch of no-time bread. The past two days have been sourdough because we've been on an animal shaping binge. Yesterday was turtles.

Happy turtle in a house

Some of the leftover turtle dough got fried. Other bits were stuffed before frying. :)

Today was octopi and other random shapes.

Sir Ocotpus

Sam the Piggie

Round octopus

Chef's, of course, was crazy awesome. I wanted to make suction cups for mine as well, but I didn't have the time.

Devilishly cute!

Just before baking I topped Sir Oct with some seeds and olives for eyes.

I'll be spending my last two days at the rye station. The Chef wants our table to experiment with quinoa in the baguettes. He doesn't have a recipe so we have to adjust as we see fit. Tomorrow is going to be fun again, I can feel it!

Basil So Yum

Do you have a favourite herb or spice? Something you'd put on anything? Everything? I love loooove basil. There's just something about it that makes me reach for it all the time. That's not to say I don't have a huge appreciation of other herbs as well (thyme, you are a close second), but oh basil, the stuff of herby green dreams.

Friday and today were my last days on the quick bread station. While I really liked working more with dough on the other stations, I will miss the ability of muffins and scones to be vehicles for all sorts of flavours.

Friday's flavours of the day were black forest muffins with cherries, milk chocolate, and maraschino whipped cream and pesto and parmesan scones. I knew the scones were going to be good because A's pesto is stellar, but I was surprised at how well the muffins turned out! I am not too fond of the muffin recipe we have to use (you can taste the baking powder), but A really has the talent to turn out delicious food. :)

Our line up of goodies to try. From closest to farthest: mandarin orange soda bread, cinnamon pull-apart, pesto scone, greek bun (arugula, feta and sundried tomatoes), and a black forest muffin.

A line of yum!

Today's flavours were a strawberry basil muffins and a blue cheese, candied pecan, and pear scone. If you ever feel like making ice cream, I recommend fresh mint and chocolate chip or strawberry and fresh basil. It may seem unusual to use fresh herbs, but it's delicious! Fresh herbs add a wonderful green and....herby flavour. Fresh mint is quite different from mint extract.

The basil was strong without being over-bearing and paired with the strawberries, it made for a light muffin. We garnished it with basil whipped cream and a strawberry. Love the green! (And look! Natural sunlight!)

It occurred to me that I have yet to post a picture of my own clover buns. Tadah!

Clover buns are three little balls of dough rolled and baked in a small muffin tin. Here we topped them with course sugar.

These are our cinnamon pull-aparts. Normally we roll and knot the dough but I prefer to be able to pull my buns apart. :)

Topped with pistachios, almonds, and macadamias

The lovely white bread group made taco bread today. Their secret was a packet of taco seasoning! One more thing that tastes better with basil. The box of basil had huge leaves inside!

Giant basil

A girl from that group also made this super cute mini crab bread.

I asked Chef to teach A and I how to make turtle bread tomorrow! Needless to say, I am quite excited. :)

What will our doughnut flavours be tomorrow? A has an itch for a filled doughnut. I have an itch for a root beer float doughnut! Did you know that if you use pop as the liquid in jello that it will retain some of the fizz once it has set? Try it, it's so good. Fizzy jello may or may not show up in a future post. :P

This is our last week in this class (Yeast Fundamentals) so A and I are making the most of it, squeezing out all the last bits of fun and knowledge we can!

Rolling with the Punches and Buns

Let's start on a good note. Let's talk about today first and leave yesterday to later, kay?

Today was test day. In an attempt to improve upon the disasters of yesterday, my group split up the work. A and I would handle the baguettes, cheese buns, and fancy buns while M and J would handle the kaiser buns and cheese bread. A fairly even split considering there are twice as many kaiser buns to stamp as there are fancy buns to roll and shape. And off we went.

A and I wanted brie. We needed brie. What goes with brie? How about turkey? And cranberries, of course.  If we had gravy, I would have thrown that in too. I had the idea of turkey dinner in my mind the entire time.

Giant dough baby

We ended up with over 130 little delicious buns.

And each one was topped with more brie, turkey, and cranberries.

After the cheese buns, A and I banged out more fancy buns as quick as we could.

At the end of the day, A and I had some leftover dough and leftover pizza bread toppings from yesterday. So what did we do? We made pull-apart pizza bread of course! It was delish and the class devoured it.

There's bread in there somewhere

Now for yesterday the disaster-day. There will always be people that clash with you. People whom you just can't seem to agree with. Is it because that person is a *insert choice words here*? Is it because you're a *insert more choice words here*? It's probably a combination of both - a lack of communication and understanding. Or perhaps it's due to expectations not met. In my case, when I entered this program, I expected my classmates to be motivated, driven to learn, interested in baking and/or pastries. After all, we all had to go through a selection process to prove we were, at the very least, very interested in this career path, that we understood what we were getting into. It turns out, however, that this is not the case. A real-life slap in the face. It is really disappointing to come to class and have to work with people who are not motivated whatsoever - and not just in the current class, but baking and pastries in its entirety! Either way, you've got to make it work or nothing's going to work at all. 

Yesterday was a people-clash day. The result? Dough was left to over-proof, baguettes were almost burnt, and everything took so much longer than it really should have. Note to self, I really need to work on scoring my baguettes. Jagged ripped edges don't look good. :P

But let's focus on the good parts of yesterday! There will almost always be something good about a terrible day. Like this:

Chef made us breakfast again! An Austrian sweet...thing. It was like a super fluffy pancake that then got scrambled like eggs. The most important thing: it had rum...lots of rum.

He also made a really tasty spread from lard. Most of the class stayed away from it, but it was mighty tasty. Just a little salt, paprika, and thinly sliced onions.

Yesterday's cheese buns were pizza buns! (If you couldn't guess already.) The Chef really liked them and kept burning his hands trying to eat them before they were cool enough.

Big balls of pizza bun dough turns into...

little balls of pizza dough

A and I also had some fun with the fancy buns. We ended up with some straaaange looking buns.

Most days are good, great in fact! But some days, oh those days, I just wanna...!

There's always bound to be some drama, but hey, it's life. :P I know I want to learn as much as I possibly can while I am here so like the rain, I'll just let these incidents roll off my back and keep on roll'n.