Paisley Appeal

I have only two more days of culinary school.  This is a disturbing fact for two reasons.

a) I misread "baking powder" last night and instead added baking soda to my batter- a HUGELY rookie mistake and

b)  I love culinary school and have no desire to graduate.

True, I still have three months of interning to go before I can call myself a pastry chef, but it sure feels like its over.  Next Wednesday night, I will get a real chef's hat (no more of this comis hat nonsense, and then poof, done  (That is, unless they decide to fail me because of the silly soda/powder snafu).

In a week's time I will be cleaning out my locker, which is currently strewn with culinary paraphernalia and school debris, and inhaling the butter/sugar aroma of the classrooms for the last time.  How sad.

I should note that I am basically the only member of my class who feels this way.  My classmates will be sad to loose the camaraderie and friendships, but for the most part they cannot wait to get out of school.  There has been much grumbling over the late hours and less-than kind instructors, the lugging of equipment back and forth and the fact that we all need to start earning money.  Not me!  I take comfort in the fact that I will (hopefully) learn loads at my internship, get bossed around by the executive pastry chef and not earn a dime.

As for what I am currently learning in school- more about wedding cakes.  People earn their living doing nothing but bake and decorate wedding cakes, so the least we can do is spend three full weeks devoted to the art.  At the beginning of the process I was just making gum-paste flowers with abandon, without a plan to follow or a clear idea of what my final cake (note- the final cake is our final exam) would look like.  Two weeks in and I have a weak idea...that I altered last night.  Have I mentioned that I'm a go-with-the-flow type of chef who inst great with "planning".  School has taught me to stick to recipes and think one step ahead, but wedding cakes require one to look seven steps ahead and that takes some practice.  Much of what has to do with professional baking is scheduling and proper time management, and this is one of the things I most look forward to learning and experiencing at my internship.  School had attempted to teach this, but when we are given our schedules and told what to bake when, it is hard to master the skill.  Real life will be much more demonstrative.

I had at first the vague notion that I would pipe some pretty floral medallion-like designs on the sides of my top tier using royal icing (egg whites/meringue powder, powdered sugar, lemon juice, whip until stiff. If you have ever eaten or made a gingerbread house, you're familiar with it).  Chef seemed excited and encouraging about this plan of action.  But in my usual half daze in which I normally travel home, my mind wondered back to my cake and I discovered that more than anything, I wanted paisley on the tier.  Why?  It’s more fun and whimsical than my previous "uptight" design.  Yes, cakes can be uptight. I barreled into class last night, told Chef about the paisley plan and she faltered.  Not such a good idea, apparently.  Royal icing is hard to pipe onto the vertical rounded sides of a cake, and paisley is time consuming and requires a lot of detail.  She was worried that the cake would look like "a five year old had piped the designs." To test this hypothesis of Chef's, I took out a cake pan and began piping paisley on its sides last night.  As it turns out, it looked like a eight year old had piped it using her left hand -she is a rightly.  I don’t want to give up, and I am exploring options.  Chef's advice was to practice at home and then (I could have sworn she said this as she walked away) forget the paisley and go with a nice floral. Will I give into Chef's  (founded) lack of confidence in my piping abilities? Had this not been my final practical exam we were talking about, I would probably throw her warnings to the wind and go with my odd paisley fetish. (Admission: I own NO clothing with a paisley pattern.  I don’t even like paisley all that much, but im really feeling it for this cake.)  Because the cake will affect a large portion of my final grade, there is no telling what I will do.  As per my usual MO, both options are on the table and I look forward to exploring them both before I (most likely) settle on a third option (herringbone? plaid? who knows?).  I have two classes to cover my cakes in fondant, place my flowers on top and design the sides.  I have some half-dazed thinking to do.

-Sarah (I'm not a chef yet but you can all call me that if you like)

ps. please note that I caught the baking powder mistake moments after adding it and knew (thanks to ten months of school) that two are NOT interchangeable and threw out the batter, avoiding a wedding cake disaster

I will continue to update you all about my externship and tell you how my measuring and peeling skills are progressing in a real-life restaurant experience, but as this is my last post as a culinary student, I want to take the time to say Thanks.

Thank you to the many important people, both family and friends who have allowed me to grumble about my schedule and sleep on their couches throughout my time in school, feeding me dinner at midnight and enabling me to get to work on time in the morning. 

Apologies the friends and family members who have had to put up with my schedule and with whom I haven’t been able to spend enough time. Please note my schedule is about to change but wont be any better- sorry in advance.

Unlocking the Artist

Spending hours are spent learning how to make a basket weave design and creating flowers out of clay-like materials may sound like arts and craft at camp, but it actually the second half of module four.  Advanced cake decorating is where artsy people shine.  No-one cares that you cant bake a cake when you can make fondant roses and buttercream fleur-de-lis.  It is interesting how those who were trailing in other modules really shine now.  The skill set involved is different that the one required to make fudge or caramel sauce, similar only in the attention to detail that they both require (caramel goes from amberly-delicous to burned in split seconds). 

The class is structured very differently now.  We mainly work by ourselves and are sitting at the worktable while Chef walks around and corrects us, or else tells us the ins and outs of being a special events cake decorator.

Fact:  These flowers are so labor intensive to make that big-name wedding cake purveyors would employ dozens of people and pay pennies so that they could churn out enough azaleas to engulf a six tiered cake, creating gum paste-flower sweat shops.

Fact: depending on your exact design preferences, grand wedding cakes usually begin for about $10.00 a slice, and depending on how many peonies you demand, the price goes up from there.

Fact:  Most wedding cakes with this amount of sugar work taste terrible due to the fact that the cake is baked a week in advance and left out so that the sugar coating (fondant which is essentially preserving it) doesn’t get condensation from sitting in a refrigerator.

That being said, the cakes that are being made are beautiful.  Many cake decorators are trained artists who decide to go into the business, using the same techniques but swapping clay and paints for edible mediums. 

I am enjoying the module so far, and my only complaint is that the heat has been on in our workroom.  This means that working with buttercream is like a race against the clock.  If it sits out too long (it seems like twenty minutes is the limit) it begins to melt and wont hold its shape.  It also means that by the end of class, our pores have opened up and butter has seeped in, mingling with sweat, sugar, and luster-dust. (Incidentally, I LOVE luster dust- It is what we use to add some color and sparkle to marzipan fruits and gum-paste flowers.  Did I mention that it’s called LUSTER DUST?).  The heat also makes working with modeling chocolate (melted chocolate + corn syrup = tootsie roll like substance, once cooled) nearly impossible.  Warm modeling chocolate melts in your hands, smears on your worktable and droops.  The rose I made out of it looked like it was sad and dying (though the fact that it was dark brown probably helped with the death references).

I go back tonight to continue work in our sweat-shop. But dont worry, I wont be trading in my chefs jacket for an artist's smock.  If nothing else this, module will have taught me the devotion, fine motor skills and patience required to work in this line of pastry and reinforced that I lack, at the very least, the patience to keep it for long.

Sarah, Lover of Luster Dust

Below see pictures and prices, based on labor and sense of entitlement felt by all Pastry Chefs when forced to sell their art to the masses:

Lemon cake with orange buttercream, buttercream weave and marzipan fruits. $49.75

Butter Cream Rose Cupcakes $8 each, or $25 for three.  They are small.

Marzipan Easter Roses (NOT kosher for passover) $29.50 Each

Tootsie Roll Death Flower. $25 a dozen

Please note that i am not actually selling these confections; the prices and names for these items have been made up

Temperamental Chocolate

Welcome to Module 4 of culinary school!

Mod four is all about chocolate making and advanced cake decorating, with some fancy sugar-work mixed in.  It is my last in-class module (mod five is my externship- which I have thankfully secured!) and I am trying to savor it as best I can.  The fact that we have been working exclusively with chocolate for the past three weeks or so helps to appreciate the sweetness of the experience.

The first thing to know about chocolate work is how to temper it.  Well, really it's the second thing- how chocolate is made is actually both interesting and surprising but I will leave that to the experts.  Not tempering, though- I will attempt to explain that.

It is very important to temper chocolate (unless one is baking with it- then it doesn’t matter).  The word (in the culinary world) refers to slowly heating, then cooling the chocolate in order to ensure proper crystallization.  The result is smooth, shiny chocolate that has a nice snap when cooled.  Un-tempered chocolate is usually dull, streaky and sometimes even lumpy.  It melts in your hand (unless it has a candy coating!) and has an "off" texture.  If you have ever tried just melting chocolate down and making/dipping anything in it, you will understand the difference between that and properly tempered chocolate.  There are three methods for tempering chocolate, but they are technical and I wont describe them here.  There are exact temperatures and thermometers involved.  Gloves are often worn.  It’s pretty impressive and intimidating, take my word for it (if you don't want to take my word for it and want to learn more about tempering chocolate, read THIS article)..

Working with chocolate is extremely dirty work.  It is nearly impossible not to get splattered with it, or find that you have dipped your sleeve in a bowl of it, or find that there are crumbs of it near your mouth. I have hit that trifecta many times.  Luckily for people like me, plastic aprons are provided, ensuring that in the very least one's torso remains clear of brown stains.   These aprons are reminiscent of the plastic lobster bibs that I often see on Red-Lobster commercials.  I am usually the first in the class to don a plastic apron, and I can be found at the beginning of every class routing through the day's equipment pull to find my prize.

So far we have made dipped delights, butternut crunch, rolled truffles and molded chocolates.  To round out our chocolate module and to Wow our loved ones, we made chocolate showpieces.

Have you even seen a Food Network Challenge, where participants are expected to create a showpiece from start to finish, five feet high, and then move it across a field, through a moat and up a mountain?  You must have missed that one.

We were given three or four classes to complete our sculpture, a modest 18 inches high, and were told to move them to the conference room down the hall.  I feel confident in telling you that the two experiences, that of the one on Food Network and my own, are parallel in ever way but one:  We worked with a partner. Note that when attempting to make your own chocolate sculpture, only use tempered chocolate, otherwise there will be disastrous results.

The piece I worked on with my partner had a vines and leaf theme.  Sadly for me, it was another group who created a rising phoenix (can't make this stuff up). Why didn’t I think of that first?

Impressively yours,

Sarah, the chocolate splattered Apron Queen

BaerFoot Contessa: Gingersnap Cookie Recipe

BaerFoot Contessa: Ginger Snaps

The Good Cook's Gingersnap- Adapted!
(In my opinion, these taste almost like Pepridge Farm's Ginger Bread Men, which is the highest compliment i could give a recipe)

All Purpose Flour- 9 oz.

Baking Soda- 2 tsp

Salt- 1/2 tsp

Ground Ginger 1 1/2 tsp.

Ground Cinnamon- 1 tsp

Ground Cloves- 1/2 tsp

Allspice- 1/4 tsp

Butter- 6 oz.

Sugar -8 oz.

Egg- 1

Molasses- 2 oz.

Coarse Sugar for rolling- Optional

Cream butter and sugar together untill fluffy, then mix in molasses.

Add egg and molasses and mix untill combined.

In a seprate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt and spices and combine. Sift (I think sifting once is enough).

In three additions, add in the dry ingredients.

Scoop out batter into small balls- about half an ounce, leaving two inches between the cookies (they spread!).  If you like, you can roll the balls in coarse sugar before placing on the pan. Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes untill slightly crackled on top.

Happy Trails to You!

Last week we had a final exam and completed module 3. The practical portion was to bake, fill, frost and decorate a three layer cake. Simple, really. I mainly got points deducted because of my chocolate cornet handwriting. The "H" of my "Happy" (we each had to write "Happy Birthday + our name") was too different than the one in "Sarah". It was as if one was in Times New Roman 12, and the other looked more like Arial 14. Seriously.
At this point in my coursework, we are simply given a list of ingredients and measurements, then a baking “method” at the bottom. For example, 3oz. X, 2Tbs Y, 5 eggs. High ratio method. We are expected to know in what order and in what way to mix the ingredients so that they result in an edible concoction, one that is a close replication of what Chef had demoed at some point during the module. I wont bore you with more exam details, as you have heard about them in older posts. Let me tell you about Trailing.
A trail is the culinary world’s equivalent of an interview. Though I cannot tell you how trails work across the board, I cant tell you about one of my experiences and let you assume that this is standard practice.
I arrived at my first trail at a predetermined time. To the trail one wears interview clothing, which is quickly changed for a chef’s jacket, silly checkered pants, an apron, comis hat, side towels and orthopedic shoes. In addition to a change of clothes, basic equipment is brought to a trail. I chose two knifes, a peeler, spatulas, measuring spoons, zesters and other small implements and toted them in my knife roll. I witnessed another girl on her trail who brought her entire pastry kit in a large duffel- unnecessary and unwanted in a small kitchen with very limited space (she made me look great, though!). Upon arrival, I was introduced to the Chef, shown around the kitchen and given five minutes to change (I think that my coat was in this entire time, making my “nice interview clothes” completely irrelevant). Then the fun began.
I walked up to the chef and asked her where to start. You see, at a trail you must perform whatever task the chef tells you to do. Over the course of my trails, I peeled, chopped, mixed, baked, rolled and sliced. Any simple task that I couldn’t mess up too badly was asked of me. While nothing was too daunting, I still managed to screw up rather splendidly. After peeling a dozen pears, making cheesecake and rolling out rum balls, Chef asked me to make graham crackers that are crumbled up and used in one of their plated desserts (why not use Nabisco? Because these graham crackers are just plain BETTER. More of a mix between a gingerbread cookie and a packaged graham cracker). I jumped at this opportunity to bake something instead of just prepare the ingredients for Chef. I was using the recipe, measuring everything out and dumping it into the Hobart. A Hobart is like a massive stand mixer, about five times the size of your run of the mill kitchen aid. I was making a lot of graham cracker. After measuring everything and mixing all of the dry ingredients together (simple one step mixing method) I glanced back at the recipe. The recipe was given in grams. I looked at the scale. The scale was set to ounces. My heart sank. (To clarify why this was so horrifying- in professional kitchen we don’t usually use measuring cups to measure ingredients- they aren’t accurate enough, especially on a large scale. Instead we use kitchen scales to measure everything, and they have different settings- ounces, liters, pounds, grams….) Now do you understand why this was such a problem?
I admit, for a moment I wasn’t going to say anything, just play it cool. The dough would bake, and maybe even look right! After all, they weren’t gong to use my graham crackers until after I was out of the kitchen- maybe they would never find out it was me! This may be an obviously bad move to most of you, but really, would you want to fess up to something SO dumb on a job interview, when you could likely be spared the embarrassment, judgment and annoyance of Chef? Don’t worry, I admitted my mistake, sparing dozens of diners a terrible dessert experience...but I was close to just walking away.
I tapped Chef on the shoulder and got it over with (I replaced the look of feigned confidence I was sporting for an apologetic and defeated one and said something a long the lines of "Chef? *grimace* I made a big mistake..."). I think we had to throw out a couple pounds of flour and various other ingredients in the end. But I started over and mercifully got it right the second time.
Trailing is difficult for many reasons, but that particular trail was hard because I had n idea when I could leave. Chef kept asking me to do more things. Five hours passed. Six. Seven. Finally, eight hours after I arrived at the restaurant I was told that I could leave. I changed back into my “fancy interview clothes” and spoke to the Chef- for about five seconds. “We’ll be in touch” she said.
Needless to say, that while I have been in touch, she hasn’t responded to my emails.

-Sarah (Palatino Linotype 12)

C is for Coco Butter

Hello!
My, it’s been ages since I last posted here, and I apologize for that. The last two months or so have been very busy, and many a pastry has been baked in that time. Now, I could use this post to give you all a quick overview of the last dozen or so classes, but instead I will pretend that I have not been remiss in posting and simply tell you about last week’s classes.
I’m not sure how familiar you all are with the different components of chocolate. Good, basic chocolate has four ingredients. Coco solids, Coco Butter (the two combined are called Chocolate Liquor- don’t worry, there is no alcohol in it), Sugar and Milk (or oil/other substitution for parve Paskesz lovers). The percentage you find on commercial chocolate refers to the amount of Chocolate liquor – 70% bittersweet chocolate has only 30% sugar added, Baking Chocolate is 99% liquor and 1% sugar (don’t make the rookie mistake of eating baking chocolate- you’ll regret it). White chocolate, it might surprise you to know, has absolutely NO coco solids in it. It is made of Coco Butter, Milk, and loads of sugar (some foodie snobs claim to hate it and make snide remarks, refusing to call it true chocolate. We all know they have a stash of Hershey’s Cookies and Cream bars under their beds. But I digress).

Now that I have provided the background knowledge, let me set the atmosphere for my embarrassing story. Last week was Cookie Week. My classmates and I baked dozens of different types of cookies, making thousands of cookies in all. 0% exaggeration and about 150% sugar. There were loads of ingredients strewn around the room, with and without labels, and we were working double time to finish in time for Milk and Cookie Night- when we were allowed to invite friends and family to eat the cookies.

A running joke in my class is that while I don’t sample any of the baked good we produce, I eat more than any of classmates anyway- the raw ingredients that is. Oranges, figs, bananas and chocolate- ALWAYS chocolate. I was happy, on this Sunday night- the production frenzy night- to find every type of chocolate available. Bittersweet, semisweet, milk and white. As the night progressed, no one was surprised to find me snacking at the chocolate bags. To be tricky, I’m sure, Chef hid a small container of small white chips at the bottom of the pull box (for definition of “pull” see an earlier post, not sure which). Nonchalantly (I always “play it cool”) I dipped my hand in the container and popped a handful in my mouth. And then I chewed. Then I chewed some more. They were smooth, had an initial crunch, were NOT melting and had NO flavor, but were kind of oily. These were not white chocolate chips. I had no idea what I had just put in my mouth, which I risky, as they could have been a) something so rancid that had no discernable flavor or B) something not kosher (gelatin pellets? Did those exist?) In any case, I spit them out and continued my work, hoping no one would find out.

Finally, Cookie and milk night arrived. After days of crazy production, we made gingerbread, linzer cookies, chocolate chip, rugalah, ice box cookies, lemon bars, brownies, white chocolate macadamia, macarons, macaroons, spritz cookies, rum cookies, ginger cookies, snicker doodles and MANY more. Avi brought Trader Joe’s Cat Cookies (chocolate) and we snaked in the back and watched people sample and box up their holiday cookies. It was a truly great party.

The next day (two days after the initial incident), I was still pondering about these odd mystery chips. On a run to the equipment closet with Chef, I slyly asked her, as though the thought had just occurred to me, what the white small chips were. It took her a moment and then she said “Coco Butter”.
I had eaten pure cocoa butter. The stuff used in hand lotions. Apparently, it is one of the most stable fats, used as an emulsifier in baked goods. Again, it is also used in its pure form in Hand Lotion.

Happy Chanukah,

Sarah, the ultimate food snob who will only eat pure Coco Butter, none of that adulterated, sugary “chocolate” made for the masses.

PS. Fun Fact- Those poor souls who are allergic to Chocolate cannot eat White chocolate, even though it lacks Coco Solids- the butter is enough to elicit the allergic reaction. Learned that the hard way, Dad, didn’t we?

Sarah Goes to the Hospital and Other Thrilling Tails

Hello Everybody!
Due to my schedule insanity, this post will have to fill in the gaps of the last (two? three?) un blogged about weeks. If only I could fill in the gap on my finger…but I’ll get to that shortly. I believe I have already blogged about making two types of laminated dough (doughs with layers of fat rolled into it and folded in onto itself to create hundreds of layers of dough and butter/lard/shortening) namely Danish and croissant. The crux of the last few weeks has been a third laminated dough, the most widely used dough in a kitchen.
Lauded for its transformative properties, its abilities to straddle the line between savory and sweet and its visual heights is the Puff. Puff pastry is something found in many home cook’s freezers. Why would you make it yourself when you could easily find it in your grocer’s frozen section? Because chef tells you it’s a must. And then she tells you it’s actually more cost effective to buy it in most cases because it takes a long time to make. Truthfully, if you want really astounding height and even rising, you should make it yourself- but for what you would mainly use for, you could BUY IT. Being the fancy pastry students that we are, we made puff pastry three ways; a fast puff, a classic puff and a machine puff. I won’t go into the nitty gritty of making puff pastry because it is very similar to making croissants, just without the yeast. Besides, I have more gruesome tales to share.
One classic dessert you could make with puff pastry is a napoleon. Napoleons, for the uninitiated, are layers of crisp puff pastry, layered with pastry cream and sometimes berries, topped with either powdered sugar or glazing fondant. They are generally regarded as delicious (by me and my family) and are a cinch to make. They are not, however, a cinch to cut if you want to maintain the beautiful and delicate layers. To do so, you need to use a long, sharp, serrated knife. I was packing up a classmate’s napoleon for her as she washed dishes- (who wouldn't swap cutting napoleons for dishes?), when I carelessly cut my finger. I had cut myself before, and no one was surprised to find me heading to the first aid kit. Luckily, I have two ex-nursing students in my class and they were able to place bandaids on my finger like pros. Chef spotted some blood on the floor before I was able to clean it up and insisted I remove the bandages and show her my cut, then hailed in another chef to ask her opinion. The consensus? HOSPITAL. I put up a fight until chef held up one of her fingers and told me how she no longer has feeling in it because she didn’t make it to the hospital in time. A classmate gave me a lift to Bellevue (a lovely hospital) where I was super glued back together (literally- I didn’t want stitches and asked instead for Derma-Bond. I would recommend stitches). I came in my uniform and was asked by no less than five members of the hospital staff why I hadn’t brought them any treats- they are used to seeing people in the culinary field and were disappointed that I had left my napoleon back at school.
My finger is on the mend, and I was back in school this week in time to make Sfogliotelle, Cannoli and Breton. I would describe these foreign treats (Sfogliotelle and canola are Italian, Breton is from Brittany) but my half hour lunch break has expired. Suffice it to say that Sfogliotelle are as interesting to make as they are to spell, and require lard -Look out for an upcoming experiment using Crisco and butter as substitutes. Cannoli are awesome and probably the next trendy sweet treat and Breton is pleasant enough but not all that exciting (I hope I haven’t offended those of you hailing from Brittany).

-Power Puff Girl

Fun fact: I was not allowed into the adult wing, but was made to use the children’s emergency ward because I wasn’t yet 25. A special thanks to my Mom for picking me up!