Away From Winnipeg

April / May

2010-05-19T12:08:00.001-07:00

I can't believe how close we are to the end of college! There's only a couple of weeks left now.

I've been concentrating on chocolate for the past month, and next week I'll be constructing my centerpiece. Right now I've just got a bunch of chocolate eggs in different sizes, some modelling chocolate, and other chocolate bits and bobs. My marzipan piece is sitting half-finished on my kitchen counter, and my wonky pastillage house just needs to get its' roof attached and then finishing touches. So I've neglected working with sugar, but hopefully I'll manage to practice with it for a week or so.

I've managed to get a part-time job making pastries in a cafe, which is pretty cool. I actually have a lot of freedom to make different things, and it's different from any other job I've had.

There's really not too much going on, and I find that without a competition to work towards, I'm really lacking motivation some days... Oh well, onwards and upwards!

March 22 - April 1st

2010-04-05T05:39:00.000-07:00

College has been fairly quiet after all the excitment from the competitions. Apart from making fudge and having a little play-around with spun sugar, we've really only been killing time because we're now off for two weeks (woohoo!)

When we get back to college we've got six weeks to come up with something. Exactly what it is that we need to come up with isn't quite clear, but we have the choice of marzipan, sugar, pastillage, or chocolate. Pastillage is usually used for some sort of construction, like how you build a gingerbread house; cut all of the pieces out, let them dry, and then assemble them. A sugar piece should include a couple types of sugar; pulled, blown, poured, rock sugar, bubble sugar, or anything else you can do with sugar. I use marzipan pretty much just like clay for modelling. And for chocolate you can do moulded chocolate pieces assembled, carved blocks of chocolate, or you can use modelling chocolate, again, sort of like clay.

I've already started my pastillage; a wonky house. I've already put together all of the walls and some of the roof, I just have a last section of roof to pop on, and then I have to cut out some accent pieces, let them dry, and put those on as well.

I also brought home some marzipan to work with over the break. So far I've made a rather large cupcake, but I won't share any more in case it doesn't turn out.

I also want to do a chocolate centerpiece and maybe some more chocolate petits fours, and practice making sugar roses and ribbons.

Feb 22 - March 17

2010-03-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

This has been the longest month of my life. Anyone who thinks students are slackers should have come with me for the past month and tried to keep up! For the past two weeks I've given in and resorted to purposely sleeping on my commute to try to squeeze in an extra hour, and my computer has lain neglected except for a couple late-night recipe searches.

Why have I been so busy? Well first, there was London, where I entered chocolates in a culinary salon. I got a bronze medal. This was easy compared to what was coming up because we travelled down with everything already prepared. Anyway, my flavours were honey(comb), salted butter caramels, spiced rum and pistachio paste, apple with maple-pecan praline, hazelnut nougatine and gianduja, and strawberry marshmallow with balsamic syrup.

Then there was Bournemouth two weeks later. That didn't leave much time for practice, and I ended up taking on too much in the long run. This was also a culinary salon, but the pieces were also being judged for the UK Skills competition. I submitted Petits Fours, and Afternoon Tea Cakes, receiving a merit for both. I'm not surprised at what I received, I just really wish that I'd been a bit smarter when choosing my classes because I could have scored higher. I really did choose the two classes that were the most work, because it needed to be fresh and most of it had to be done down in England. In fact, some of it may or may not have been done in my hotel room (which would explain the bits of marzipan and the pistachio pieces ground into the carpet...) If I'd done petits fours and, say, a decorative display piece, I could have done the display piece ahead of time and been able to spend more time in England woking on the petits fours. Anyway, lesson learned. My petits fours were othellos, kirsch choux buns, rose macaroons, pink grapefruit meringue tarts, chocolate tart, and earl grey madeleines with a honey-lemon syrup.

My afternoon tea pastries were a raspberry and chocolate millefeuille with a hazelnut genoise base, a fruit filled savarin which got horribly squashed on the way down but was soaked in an absolutely lovely coconut milk and spiced rum syrup, and a cherry and almond cake.

I reckon that had the savarins made it down to England intact I could have been looking at a bronze for these. I also reckon that had I been able to do the white chocolate collar for the millefeuille I really would have been a candidate for a silver. My instructor was impressed though: at seven o'clock the night before the cherry/almond cakes were a disaster. They were supposed to be coated in fondant, which was too thick and ruined the cakes. I had to tear all of the fondant off, salvage seven cakes, and decide what to do with them. On the way back to the hotel we stopped off at asda to get sugarpaste to cover them with, but in the parking lot I decided to go with marzipan instead, which worked out better. So in my hotel room, at two o'clock in the morning I was putting the finishing touches on my marzipanned cherry/almond cakes. When my instructor saw them the next morning as she was helping me plate up, she told me that that was some of the best on-the-spot thinking she's seen in a while, which made me feel really good (for half a second, then it was back to panicking!)

The final part of the competitio for me was the live marzipan modelling. We had to do a novelty easter cake model in twenty minutes. I was shaking like a leaf, and as a result I finished just out of time (I had finished the modelling but hadn't started the torching yet.) There were three of us from our college and we all used minimal tools, whereas the rest of the competitors in the heat were using garlic presses and all sorts of tools. I didn't get awarded anything for this, but I'm not sure if that was because I finished out of time, or if it was because they preferred the use of colours, if they didn't like my technique, or if it just wasn't good enough.

There were four of us who went from my college, and I was the only one who didn't get two medals. I'm still dissapointed in myself, but I really did put a huge amount of pressure on myself, and I really pushed myself to the limit.

Ah well, at least now I can sleep in my bed, and not on my train seat...

Feb 15 - Feb 19

2010-02-21T12:58:00.000-08:00

This week I've only been working on my chocolates. The competition starts this weekend coming up, so that's also my plan for this week.

The flavours fo my six varieties are finished, it's just the garnishes that I had left to do. I had a lot of problems with temperature in the class, so I had a lot of problems setting my chocolates, which I had mistakenly thought was due to a mistake I had made.

Friday, myself and the other girl doing a competition piece were moved into a different kitchen, which proved near-perfect for me because it had an outside door directly across from one of the work surfaces. That meant I could just open the door to cool down the surface quickly, or shut the door to stabilise the temperature.

I spent friday afternoon making chocolate cigarettes. For this, you have to pour chocolate onto a surface and scrape it off with a sharp edge. It sounded simple enough, but it sure didn't feel that easy as I was just chipping bits away! I chose to temper the chocolate, I wasn't sure if it was necessary, but I wanted to err on the side of caution here. The temperature of the chocolate needs to be just right - too warm and it won't curl, too cold and it will just flake or also won't curl. I poured out pretty big lengths of chocolate, and warmed up sections by rubbing them with the palm of my hand, but using a blowdryer on low would be more effective (I just didn't have a socket close by.)

I did a lot of extra cigarettes so that I can take time later sorting out the nicest ones, or the ones that match the best (because I need to show seven of each variety, and they should all be identical.)

It was a pretty long afternoon...

Feb 9 - Feb 11

2010-02-14T13:08:00.000-08:00

This week I spent stressing about chocolates, so I think my work suffered a bit. Tuesday we were paired up and given two cold desserts to do. For the first time I was paired up with the girl in my class who's deaf. I found it really difficult to communicate with her and she felt the same way because I don't know any sign language, so we were both frustrated, even though the college has interpreters.

Our first sweet was a chocolate and pear millefeuille.

The second sweet was a raspberry and drambuie parfait. I think we both liked this one a lot better.

And what happens when you forget cheesecakes in the fridge for two weeks? This:

And my flatmate got some good news; he's been offered a new job and has accepted it. I got the news thursday afternoon while I was at the college working on chocolates, so while all the kids in the level below me were working on valentines cakes, I put together a mini cake as a little congratulations. I still kept with the valentine's theme a bit with the piping, but still kept it simple and not too over-the-top.

Feb 2 - Feb 4

2010-02-12T10:59:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, I'm not entirely sure why, but only myself and five other students showed up for class. Not cool. So we paired up and each group did one dessert.

There was a berry clafoutis, which was small, custard filled tarts with a berry, served on top of a orange sauce with berries and parisienned apples.

An orange sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce, vanilla ice cream and a brandy snap.

Lemon curd ice cream fritters:

The next day the only dish left to do for our group was a souffle, while everyone who hadn't been in on monday tried to do everything we'd already done. It was a nut souffle, butterscotch sauce, and a shortbread biscuit. I've never made a souffle before, but I was watching the group making it, so I feel like I've got a good idea of how to do it.

I was in the group making the fritters. Now, we did make them absolutely huge, so we really should only have put two per portion. It was my first time doing a fried sweet (apart from the doughnuts,) so I really enjoyed it, even if we did get stressed out trying to make the sugar spirals, and had a couple of manic moments over the deep fryer.

A couple of other girls in the class were quick to point out that the ice cream was no longer frozen after we fried the fritters. Looking back on it, it did seem like they were kind of trying to rip us apart. The teacher was quick with a reply though: the ice cream hadn't been able to freeze properly, because the desserts were due for the end of the afternoon. The group doing the sticky toffey pudding with the vanilla ice cream had the same problem.

I spent a lot of time working on my chocolates too, and I made some real headway this week.

Jan 25 - Jan 29

2010-01-31T10:27:00.000-08:00

This week was a catch up week for techniques we needed to have done for our qualification, so we did vacherins, cheesecake, doughnuts, and stollen.

For the vacherins we piped round meringue caskets and lids. When they were cool we put small bits of sponge, soaked with an orange syrup, in the bottom (mostly to fill it up probably) We piped a bit of cream on top of the sponge and decorated with a bit of fruit. I tried one and I really liked the contrast of the crispy meringue, the soft sponge, and the sweet cream and fruit.

My cheesecakes were made, but they didn't set in time! The college has been missing deliveries, so the class didn't have enough soft cheese for everyone, so some of us had to wait, and that meant the cheesecakes didn't set by the end of the day - not cool! They're still in the freezer, I just need to take them out of the moulds.

The next day we worked in teams of three to make three recipes: two types of doughnuts, and stollen. The two others that I was with made doughnuts. They actually made two types: yeast raised, and cake-type doughnuts. These are the cake doughnuts. They were rolled out and cut with a doughnut cutter, fried, and then topped, or sliced in half and filled with cream. The yeast doughnuts were rolled like you would a bread roll, proofed, fried, and then filled them with custard and jam. The teacher explained that because of the equipment used, mass produced doughnuts will always be better. I thought that these were okay, but the teacher was right: Tim Hortons will be better than any doughnuts I could make. I liked the ones coated in sugar the best, with a nice cup of tea. They were definately greasier than the mass-produced ones, and really not worth making at home, for me, anyway.

While the girls were busy with the doughnuts, I had my hands full with the stollen. I love stollen, -in fact, I would go so far as to say that's my favourite thing about christmas. I made stollen before at college in Canada, so I was keen to see the differences. Big difference #1: Fruits. The fruits we used here were mixed into the dough dry, but in Canada we marinated the fruits in rum for about three months before making the stollen, which really let the flavour soak in. I made a starter for the stollen, which had to sit for about an hour while I got everything else ready. I mixed the dough, and then divided the it so that everyone on the team got to shape their own loaves. I also had some premium marzipan put away (that I had been using in one of my chocolates, which I'd scrapped,) so I pulled that out for our group to use in place of the regular marzipan the rest of the class was using. The teacher showed us how he shaped the stollen. I wasn't particularily happy with it though, so I made mine a bit more rounded. Big difference #2: Dipping. After baking, while the stollen was still warm, we dipped it twice into a rum syrup, brushed the top with melted butter, and then dusted the top three times with icing sugar. In canada we had dipped the entire stollen in clarified butter, coated the whole thing with vanilla sugar, dipped in the butter again, and a final coating of the sugar. No matter of the difference, I always like stollen. I don't usually take much home, but I did take two of these -one of which is still in my freezer, the other didn't last a week.

Also did lots of chocolate this week, more coming up on that next week though.

Jan 18 - Jan 21

2010-01-30T13:06:00.000-08:00

The first thing we did this week was finish off the caramelized orange gateau which we had started off just before we left for christmas. All I had to do was slap on some apricot glaze (all over, including the sides so that the biscuit didn't dry out,) and make a marzipan rose.
I brought this gateau home (I don't bring home much,) so I got to see how it worked out and what I would change the next time. My biscuit layers were too thick, so I should have either spread the batter thinner, or cut the layers in half. I also should have taken more attention to the composition, because the bottom layer of mousse was thicker than the rest of the layers. It still looked nice, and customers still would appreciate it, but technically, it wasn't as good as it should have been. Oh well; all things to remember...

Next, we had a lemon meringue pie to do. The pastry had to be blind bakes, and then filled with a cooked custard-type filling, topped with meringue, and then put back in the oven just to colour. Not everyone read the recipe properly, which was pretty obvious when you looked at how long some people were blind baking their pastry for (mmm, raw pastry!) I hadn't made this in a long time, so it was good to do it again. I still messed up a bit though, overwhipping my meringue. But it still got good reviews: I had to bring this home for my flatmate to bring to his brother's house, and I was relieved to hear that everyone liked it.

Jan 11 - Jan 14

2010-01-17T10:12:00.000-08:00

This week was the official opening of the college, so we had to make something to go on display for it. Ann had us do gingerbread houses, so our week was full. There were three teams, each doing a different house. Ann gave us plans that she'd taken from a book, and we had to figure out amongst ourselves how we were going to do it.

My team had four members. I was away half the time working on chocolates though (not enough time in the world left, really!!) and one other member was the HNC girl, who was working on her cake, so she was out the entire time. On the second day though, one of the guys who had been off, came in, so he joined our group. We spent most of the first day arguing about how we were going to make it (all of the measurements given didn't match up with the shapes), but when we finally got together on what we were doing, we really got things done.

It's been a couple of years since my last gingerbread house, but it was a really good experience, and I liked that everyone in our group was contributing and we were all sharing ideas.

The gingerbread house was a lot of fun, but I still had loads of work to do on my chocolates for the competition. I spent all of thursday woking on one flavour combination: matcha (green tea). I made three different ganaches, and then added different ingredients to try to narrow down what I was after. I had an idea of what I wanted, and I thought it would be a nice peach compote or gelee. However, I couldn't get any peaches. Now, I did like some of these, and I've got a better idea of what I want now, but none of these were close enough to be finished in time for the competition. One of the things I had to make was pistachio paste. I'd made an extra ganache just for fun, and I've decided to pair that with the pistachio paste for a simple, classic chocolate.

Onwards and upwards!

Jan 1st: New Year, New Start!

2010-01-01T13:01:00.000-08:00

This year I have some resolutions. When I make resolutions though, I like to make some for myself, and I don't tell anyone. I keep them on my mobile, and I look at the list every so often, to keep me in check on the way that the year is going. I did this last year, and it worked out really well for me. So I did it again this year, and I made a 'public resolution' too. Not so much a resolution really- more of a promise: I'm going to make this year better than last year. That's it. Last year was a good year for me, but I'm going to do all I can to make this year even better.

(Now, good, I've gotten all that positive nonsense out, I can go back to normal!)

So, there's nearly another two weeks to go before I go back to college, but I'm still going to try to get some things figured out. Like my sculpture. I need to do a chocolate sculpture to go with my chocolate selection in London, and I've not really started yet. I've decided that I want to use an art deco theme, but that's as far as I've gotten.

Happy New Year!

Dec 14th

2009-12-24T11:34:00.000-08:00

Our last week at college for this year was quiet.

We made some christmas cakes to sell at the college, as well as some shortbread and mince pies. Of course, I spent my time in a self-described marshmallow-hell, and then caramel-hell. I made six batches of caramel in one morning, then I had the kids in a class below come in and ask what I was doing, so I had to explain sugar-cooking to them.

I ended up with two recipes that I was really happy with. -and then... disaster. I tried one of the marshmallow chocolates earlier this week, and it looks like the sugar crystallised (the texture became quite grainy), so when I get back to college, it's going to be straight back to marshmallow-hell for me...

Dec 8/9th

2009-12-11T13:07:00.001-08:00

This week we started on gateaus, which was pretty exciting. Tuesday we made a strawberry hazelnut gateau, and Wednesday we made (or mostly made... more on that in a bit) a caramelised orange gateau.

The Strawberry Hazelnut gateau used a dacquoise base, covered with a strawberry bavarian cream, and with a strawberry jelly on top. The dacquoise is like a meringue, with hazelnuts and almonds. And a bavaroise is basically a sauce anglaise with gelatin, into which you fold whipped cream and whipped egg whites. This makes for a pretty light, pretty stable, mousse-type filling.

Now, I'd taken ages to carefully lay out strawberry slices to form a flower on the entire top of the gateau. And you really were supposed to be able to see it, but because we used fresh fruit for the jelly, the jelly turned out too dark, and not clear enough. So all my time spent making sure to fill up all the gaps, and carefully slipping in 'petals' had just gone to waste.

We also did some of our prep for Wednesday's gateau, a caramelised orange gateau. We made an almond sponge for this, to use as a base, to use around the sides of the gateau, and to insert as discs in the middle of the gateau to give us layers. So we lined the inside of a metal ring with squares of sponge, and put a disk at the bottom. It's got to be quite snug, or you could have some leakage ('eeewww!' I always look absolutely horrified when this happens to someone in my clas.) A layer of orange mousse goes onto the bottom layer of sponge, but don't make it too thick because there's lots to go in yet! A second layer of sponge is placed on top of the mousse, which is firm enough to hold it up without sinking. Adding layers of sponge is a good idea because it creates distinct layers, and provides a bit more substance to a gateau which would otherwise be a bit unbalanced. A second layer of mousse goes on top of this, and a final sponge disc. The top layer of the gateau is an orange cream. You should try to make all of the layers the same size, not only will it look a lot prettier, it'll also be easier to serve and eat, and you'll get a nicer flavour balance. This needs to be chilled so that the gelatine can set. After chilling, slide the ring off. Sometimes you need to warm it up a bit, but I just put the tinniest bit of butter on mine and it slid right off. The gateau isn't finished yet though, because it's not caramelised yet! The top of the orange cream needs to be sprinkled with sugar (granulated or castor,) and then torched, like with a creme brulee.

There's a lot to this gateau, and I was the only student who got it done in one day. It's important to read all the recipes that you need for the different conponents of the gateau. For example, both the orange mousse and the orange cream needed pastry cream and orange curd. And the recipe that we received for orange curd took one hour to cook and roughly another hour to cool enough to be used. We also used two types of syrup; a simple syrup to go in the mousse and the cream, and an orange syrup to moisten the sponge.

I really liked this week; I felt that I accomplished something with these gateaus, and I actually learned some new things.

I've also gone into panic stage 2. We only have nex week and then we're off until the new year, so I'm working my butt off on chocolates, trying to get as much done as possible before the break. I'm finalising things now for three of them, and I should have them boxed and all ready to go by the end of the week. (yay!)

Dec 2nd

2009-12-11T13:03:00.001-08:00

Not very much happened on Wednesday. Ann was back and telling us all about her great time in Malta. We mostly did paperwork to catch up on everything.

Dec 1st

2009-12-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

We still had David teaching us the next tuesday, when we made a mediera cake, scones, and sultana cake.

Mediera cake is a good all-around cake to know, because it's versatile and because it's basic. It's like what the americans call Pound Cake; a pound each of flour, fat, sugar, and eggs. This doesn't make the nicest cake though, so we used high-ratio shortening, which allows you to add more liquid, in this case, milk, to make a moister cake.

We made scones with oil... No butter... not a piece of it in sight... This made me a little bit sad, because I know scones as a very flakey bakery item that uses butter to create it's fluffiness and flakiness. These didn't disappoint though, they were nice, they just needed to be served with a nice pat of butter!

These sultana cakes were quite dense, definately not my favourite, as I prefer lighter cakes. However, I can see it would do well as part of an afternoon tea selection because it went further than a plain cake, without being too daunting for customers.

November 24-26

2009-12-06T03:21:00.000-08:00

This week our regular teacher, Ann, was away with a competition, so the bakery teacher, who also happens to be the head of the department, David, stepped in to teach us. It was interesting to see how someone else did things, so that you can experiment a bit and find your own style.

This week was all about sponges and cakes. What's the difference? A sponge is made by whisking sugar and eggs together, then adding flour and a fat, but a cake is made by creaming the sugar and the fat, then adding eggs and flour. That means cakes are richer, moister, and can hold heavier coatings, like sugarpaste and buttercream, which are a bit too heavy for sponge.

I slept in Tuesday morning, which is never a good thing. And the trains were all a mess because of a landslide, so I made it to college an hour late. Everyone was already paired up and finishing off our first assignment, a jelly roll, by the time I arrived, so I got to do one myself. I'd arrived just in time for our first break, so I worked straight through it and had my sponge out of the oven by the time everyone was back from their break.

For a jelly roll you need to make up a thin sheet of sponge. This gets baked, and while it's still warm you need to flip the sponge out onto a sheet of greasproof paper covered with sugar, and roll the sponge, and JUST the sponge (don't start worrying about jams or fostings just yet!) You need to do this because if you just try rolling a cold sponge it'll break, but by doing it when it's warm, the sponge is a lot softer, and is more flixible. So you leave this rolled up, bare sponge until it's mostly cool. If you were to put the jam on it while it's still warm, the jam would just soak into the sponge, which isn't what you want because the idea here is a nicely defined layer of jam. So once it's cold, unroll, spread the jam, and roll back up. (Always make sure when you're rolling/unrolling you've got a kitchen towel or a bit of greasproof underneath it, to make it easier to roll evenly.) Because I was working by myself, and didn't have a partner, I was using a whole sheet pan to myself, which is pretty big. I got help from some of my classmates while I was rolling it because it really was a bit too big for me to do myself, being my first time making a jelly roll.

My failure of a victoria sponge. (Don't worry, I'm laughing as I write this.) When David showed us how to construct a victoria sponge, he only used one round, sliced in half, to create the victoria sponge. I see that as being WAY too much cream to not enough sponge, so I decided to use two rounds. (I'm still struggling with how much cream is used here. If it's not whipped, it's pouring, and if it's not one of those, it's clotted!) In retrospect mine looks a bit out of proportion as well, but I didn't want to start cutting 1/3 off each round to make it look better, I was still playing catch-up from running late that morning.

Sponge fingers, dipped in chocolate and filled with cream. We used the same sponge as for the victoria sponge, but this time it was piped out into fingers and rounds onto lengths of greaseproof paper, and (here's the best part; the complicated bit!) the length of greaseproof is flipped upside down into a layer of sugar. That way the fingers and rounds get coated with sugar, but it doesn't get wasted by going all over the sheet of greasproof. I was surprised that it was so easy to do. My group took turns (there were 3 of us), so everyone got a chance to pipe, and a change to flip the sheets into the sugar.

Wednesday we made a chocolate butter sponge. It uses the same method as all the others sponges, just with the substitution of cocoa powder in place of a bit of flour. We filled the layers with cream, and covered the entire gateau in another thin layer of whipped cream. We used coating chocolate to help mark the portions of the gateau. This didn't survive my journey home very well (walk, bus, train, bus, walk.)

Thursday we made our first cake, a plain yellow cake with lemon buttercream and a lemon curd layer on top. I thought the curd should have gone between the two layers of cake, but because the buttercream was flavoured, it actually worked well like this.

I'm not a cake person, but this week made me feel more optomistic about them.

November 17-19

2009-11-22T00:55:00.000-08:00

We didn't really get forward in our curriculum this week, but I got lots of things sorted out for my chocolates.

We had some cakes to do as a favor for someone: 900 pieces!! So while most of the class was busy getting those cakes ready, myself and the other girl who're entering the competition got to work on our entries.

I was making marshmallows for my chocolates, which can be a disaster! Most of the time I just ended up with a VERY gooey mess. I found a recipe that I'm happy with now though, but I had to make it so many times that I was literally giving it out to people at the college!

Next week Ann, our regular instructor, is away for a competition, so we've got someone new standing in for her. He's another teacher at the college, and everyone else has been in his class before, but I'm not really sure what to expect.

We're finished with the bread unit now, and we're going to start with cakes and sponges. Generally I like classic tortes and cakes, but I don't like doing plain cakes with buttercream. I like eating cupcakes, yes! But I just don't really like making cakes like that unless I can do something to make it really special, which is what I'm going to have to try to do.

November 9-12

2009-11-13T14:45:00.000-08:00

Monday we made filled buns called Bread Shots. It was a nice soft dough, and it gets bakes with steam at the beginning. The crust that was produced was a bit too hard for such a small roll, but on a loaf of bread it would have really been great.

Tuesday we made focaccia. Now, I know it's rolled out too thin, and that's what I thought when we were making it, but I was just following the instructions, and hoping that it would rise more than I really thought it would. I often have this dilemma, where I have a certain way to do things, but Ann uses a different way. This time I tried to follow her instruction, because I'm trying to become a better follower right now, and it didn't really work out.

Next we made ciabatta. I've only ever made ciabatta once before, in college, so I wasn't really too sure how this was going to go. When I made it before, I made quite wide loaves that could be sliced in half and used for sandwiches. This time though, we were making baguette shaped loaves. Now, to be fair, you could make a sandwich out of a baguette, but ciabatta sandwiches and ciabattas that I've seen in the shops have always been wider, so I wasn't really sure if it was going to work out. It was a very soft dough, and you really want to handle it as little as possible. My loaves turned out okay, but I really did wish they'd been wider.

November 3rd

2009-11-13T11:49:00.000-08:00

For this week, we did laminated doughs - that's doughs with alternating layers of dough and fat. I think it's very relaxing to do this type of dough (if you're not in a huge rush!) We'd done puff pastry before, but this time we were making dough for Croissants and Pains aux Chocolats, which has yeast in the dough, and also has less folds (only three instead of six,) making it a little bit quicker to make. The croissant dough was made with butter, and the next day we made danish dough, which is essentially the same, but we used a type of pastry margarine instead of butter. We ran out of time during the week, so the danish dough is still in the freezer, hopefully we'll use it soon! I was happy with the shape of my croissants - it was surprising to see that some people's weren't really a good shape, and it made me wonder if they knew how the dough would bake, where it would rise, and if some of them had even seen a croissant before!

Thursday was the pastry practical exam! I had spent the day before, and the whole night before thinking about all the things that could go wrong, and panicking that I didn't know how it would turn out because I'd never made the recipe before. That, coupled with the fact that I'd reduced the recipe with something called a baker's percentage, meant that I was praying that all my calculations were correct and I wouldn't run short of anything! (Baker's percentage finds the ratio of all the ingredients and uses that to change the quantity that a recipe produces, and is a lot more precise than just dividing all the ingredients by a number. It comes in handy when you have a recipe that makes, say, three tarts, when you only need one tart for your pastry practical!)

I made a Vertechoc. What's that? An almond pastry tart shell, with a pistachio frangipan filling, and a chocolate ganache topping. I had never made this recipe before, and I knew that I was challenging myself with this one because there were a lot of components. The college refused to bring in pistachio paste for me, so I had to make some on the previous day, which I'd never done before, so that was part of the challenge too. The frangipan used required a pastry cream as well, made on the day. Preparation is the key to success, so on the train home the previous night I'd made up my schedule so that I wouldn't confuse myself or start doing things in an order that didn't make sense.

Not very many people garnished their pastry, but I'm really happy with myself for getting that done as well. Unfortunately, the oven temperature was a bit high, so the pastry was overcooked on the sides, and the filling was under-done in the centre. This wasn't helped by the fact that I didn't get to use a tart ring, and had to use a dish, which meant the bottom of my tart was double-panned, but not the sides. The instructor seemed otherwise happy with the way that I managed myself, and the final result. The chocolate should have been a bit more set on top, but I didn't have access to a blast chiller to cool it down, but the instructor understood and looked past that.

October 29th

2009-11-13T11:00:00.000-08:00

On Thursday we made an Apricot and Oat Bread. The dough didn't actually feel so nice for this bread, and it was quite tough, even after being rested. We only have a half-day on thursday, so most of the students left at lunch, but myself and one of the guys stayed behind to finish the loaves off, because the dough had only just been left to rest when we were supposed to finish our day. Some of the dough became a bit better after resting, but some people's dough was still quite tough. The loaves never rose very much, so we'd assumed that the yeast had been killed, or that there was something wrong with the dough, but we sliced a loaf open when they came out of the oven and it tasted surprisingly good.

When we'd made the bread dough in class and were waiting for it to rest, we got to decorate a halloween cake. I'm not a cake person, and I don't claim to be - better than that: I went on a tirade in the middle of class about how I don't like icing cakes, decorating them with fondant or sugarpaste, and I don't even particularily like eating cakes! We used a plain sponge cake, and filled it with a buttercream frosting and a bit of raspberry jam. I did end up bringing the cake home, and my flatmate and I ate the whole thing over the course of the weekend.

October 26th

2009-11-09T05:04:00.000-08:00

This week was another yeast product week. Our usual day runs from 9am to 4pm, but because I'm going to be competing in the London Culinary Salon, I stay late to work on my chocolates. This week was pretty much lost because I'm really just trying to get back to where I was two years ago, and I spent most of my time trying to temper chocolate.

I have one of my chocolate pretty much finished to the point where I'm happy with it. (Sorry, I won't be saying what any of them are until we're a lot closer to the competition...) I realised that I'm not happy with one of my ideas, and I'm still trying to figure out exactly where I want to go with it. It's a fruit flavour filling, and I know how I want it to taste, but I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to execute it yet, which is really frustrating. I had a batch of the filling made up, and I knew I wasn't happy with it, but I went ahead and finished the chocolates anyway. Finishing the chocolates sometimes makes it all come together and work, but not this time: I really just hated it. It was basically a very loose pâte de fruit, like a very sweet jam, in a dark chocolate shell. I think in theory it could have worked, but it wasn't what I was going for at all.

Back to the actual course!

The week before last we were in a different kitchen for the first two days, which really threw everyone. It was interesting to see how everyone would work in a different environment, because most of us are so used to being in our normal lab. I preferred the different lab though, because we were in teams of two with each team having it's own oven, stove, sinks, and sets of utensils. In our normal lab, we have to share everything, which means someone might change the oven temperature from what you need, or leave dishes in the sink (this is always a big battle!)

We made up the dough for a savarin, six babas aux rhum, a brioche, and six mini brioche. The savarin and babas were baked, and the brioche was left to ferment overnight in hopes that we would be back in our normal lab the next day.

The next day the savarin and babas were soaked in a very alcoholic rum syrup. They were then turned out and the centre of the savarin was filled with fruit and decorated with cream. At this point the teacher pointed out that the entire class had forgotten to apricot glaze everything. Fantastic. What followed was some very careful glazing, trying not to melt my pretty whipped cream border.

The teacher liked my fruit, but I thought I was a little bit sloppy with the kiwi fruit. This made me think that I don't really know how to prepare kiwi fruit in a way to make them look really attractive and appetising.

The babas aux rhum are supposed to be prepared in a specific way here, like this:

Which looks a bit funny because this is before I managed to glaze them... I don't particularily like this presentation, but the teacher reflected on it for a bit, and decided it was probably done like this to make it easier to transport. I'm not sure exactly why I don't like this presentation in the end, but I would avoid doing it like this.

This is how mine looked:

No, I'm not entirely happy with the presentation, and it would probably be a lot more difficult to eat this, but I find it a lot less boring than the example baba.

We also baked off our brioche.

My brioche had a bit of a funny finish, but I'm not enitrely sure why. Cuts need to be made just above the tin in a way that follows the ridges made by the tin. The cuts continue the lines, but I don't think they're really necessary. It's really hard to make a perfect brioche with a tête (head, that's the part that sits on top) right in the centre, and as you can see, I failed...

I'm going to break this post up a bit, so I'll do thursday separately, and the next week in another post.

MotherWhere??

2009-11-02T12:07:00.000-08:00

I'm a Canadian in Scotland, studying to be a pastry chef. I go to college in Motherwell , with a solid teacher and good resources. All in all, this is a perfect opportunity for me to get as good as I can. And I plan to take advantage of this oppotunity.

Why Scotland? Canada doesn't really have a qualification system, only certificates, which don't really say much on the international job market. Here, in Scotland, I'm currently doing my SVQ 3, and potentially I'll be coming back next year to do my HNC as well. Whether it's an NVQ, an SVQ, or an HNC/HND, it's always better to have a qualification behind you.

What do I know so far? Well I did go to college in Canada for baking and pastry, and I have about a year-and-a-half of experience working in pastry behind me already. So this year, I'm really trying to hone my skills.

Right now we've already completed the pastry unit, I just have a practical coming up at the end of this week. We're about halfway through the bread/dough unit already, and I'll be posting photos later on this week.