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