Measure, Sift, Repeat

And we are back with week two of Culinary School!
Last night we jumped right into practicing our chocolate piping skills. We were supposed to do this using the Cornets (Cor-Nays) we made last week. I say "supposed to" because I didn’t complete that homework assignment and showed up with twelve unformed pieces of parchment paper. A classmate saw that I had none and gave me two of her own. Sharing is Caring!
Five minutes into class I nick my finger with a knife. Wusthoff knives are VERY sharp. I try to ignore it, but I’m getting blood all over, and as we are about to play with chocolate, I decide to help myself to the first aid kit's band aids. There are some crazy first aid gadgets in there. Burn gel, bandages of all sizes, cauterizers. This makes me pause and wonder how badly maimed we will get over the course of the next months. But no time to daydream, there are chocolate fans to make! We practiced for about an hour, tracing patterns onto parchment paper with melted chocolate, learning how to make, fill, hold and wield the cornets. When done incorrectly, this is a very messy and frustrating assignment. Make no mistake; this was done incorrectly by nearly everyone in class, including myself. Twice I cut the tip of my cornet too wide (rookie mistake) and so my lines of chocolate were not delicate. Chef did complement me on my coordination however and noted how my hand barely shook. Take that Cornets!
We then sat down to learn about cookies. There are three methods for making cookies- creaming (cream the butter and sugar, mechanical leavening), sponge (lights batter, chemical leavening) and 2 stage (alternate dry and wet ingredients) There are many types of cookies - rolled, ice box, spread, drop, bar and so on. We learned about different leaveners and when you would use each. For example, Baking soda reacts with acids to make things rise, baking powder reacts with moisture and heat. Cocoa powder is considered an acid, as is buttermilk, citrus juice and something else that is escaping me at the moment. For some reason, Chef breezed over these important chemical tidbits and instead spent a half hour explaining how one would make a checkerboard cookie. But I guess in culinary school cookie trumps science.
After that exercise, we split up into our groups to bake for the very first time in class! My fashionista partner was absent so I had to join another group of two (for someone such as myself who doesnt enjoy sharing kitchen space or responsibilities, this was tough). Though the recipe didn’t call for it, one of my partners asked Chef about sifting the dry ingredients and then made us do it TWICE. I told her "wow, I very rarely sift" She said "I guess that’s why you're here". I said "no, I’m here because I rarely measure ingredients or use recipes." That shut her up.
We made a Gingersnap Cookie Recipe, a basic "creamed" cookie. Some groups used all butter, other groups used all Crisco, and my group used a combination of both. While there was no discerning taste difference (or so I was told), the butter cookies spread more than the Crisco cookies. At the end of class, as everyone was sampling and hording cookies to take home, Chef asked me why I didn’t want any. With tears in my eyes I woefully told him that I couldn’t eat any because I kept kosher (my third time reminding him). He told me to take some for friends...but there really weren’t any left after my classmates had taken their share.
I hope my partner is back for tonight's class, although then the likelihood of taking home any leftovers are even lower...

-Sarah "I don’t need a recipe to make sense of the world" Baer