A regular Willie Wonka

I am currently in a class called chocolate confections and sugar centerpieces, where we are learning to make candy, whether it be chocolate or sugar, and giant centerpieces out of all different types of mediums. I am having so much fun in this class, everyday we make something not only fantastic to look at, but oh so tasty as well. I have been singing songs from Willie Wonka all week, my current tune is "The Candy Man Can".

This is a simple chocolate centerpiece with an assortment of chocolate confections. The centerpiece really only took about ten minutes to make, chocolate is so much easier to work with than sugar. Sugar has to be at such a high temp for it to stay malleable. Chocolate on the other hand is kept in the high 80s and solidifies very quickly. The assorted chocolates consist of rocher, which are absolutely to die for, sliced almonds covered in apricot liqueur and sugar, then toasted, then covered in gooey dark chocolate and set out to congeal. There are other confections on the display, but once you've tried a rocher, you wont want any other chocolate... ever!



This is my sugar centerpiece with assorted chocolate confections. It is a mixture of pulled sugar, poured sugar, and eruption sugar. Below is a bigger picture of just the piece.

This is an assortment of chocolates I made for my dad.

a Couple of Cakes

Although I love the cupcakes we make at our bake shop on a daily basis, the cakes people order are the real fun. There are those people who know exactly what they want, whether or not it is possible. Then there are those who just have an idea and let us run with our artistic abilities. These are the clients that are most fun to work with, don't get me wrong, I love each and every cake I make, because its something fun that I have never made before, but when someone calls requesting a 16 layered cake in the shape of a castle and wants a quote over the phone, hello, we are just two pastry chefs, one of whom is still in school, we are not Cake Boss!

This is a pull-apart cake I made for a childs birthday party. One of those awesome customers who wanted a fish cake to my hearts desire, the only requirement, that it be orange. It was so much fun to make, I really love the pull -apart cakes. They can be made into pretty much any shape you desire, and they require no cutting later!

This cake was for a little boys first birthday, we were debating at the shop about this cake being his smash cake (the cake a one year old is given to destroy at his will). His mother called and wanted a cake with lots of colors for a little boy... ta da

These were cakes for a set of two year olds, one boy and one girl. Fondant might not taste very good, but it definitely is fun to play with!!

I have done wedding cupcakes before, but this is my first wedding cake. My pastry chef iced it, but since the wedding was at the Sunday House, which is litterally minutes from my house, I got to meet the owners of the shop there to assemble it and add all the finishing touches. I was definitely a little bit nervous, but all in all, I think it came out pretty good!

Rainbows and Butterflys... Lollipops and Sunshine

So there was a Gay Pride Day parade, on Father's Day no less, we had to make 300 rainbow cupcakes, and 200 rainbow cookies. After spending all day looking at the psychedelicness of all those rainbows started to take a toll on our sanity. We ended up singing every song we could think of that included the words; rainbow, butterfly, lollipop, and sunshine. Including both the movie version of "Somewhere over the rainbow" and the ukulele version.

And of course I had to make some extra for my Gators ... even though we lost. But as always, I'm still a proud Gator!

Its official... My life now revolves around cupcakes!

I just got a job as a baker in a cupcakery! Yes, I could not be more excited. I start bright and early tomorrow morning! And no worries, I will be posting pictures!

On top of that... As you all know I am in culinary school for baking and pastry, but there are a lot of others that are there fro culinary. So there is a competition every quarter called "Battle of the Blades" it is our schools version of Top Chef, but it is directed to the culinary side. In class the other day I was talking to my pastry chef about a cupcake competition, she told me to ask the dean about it. So I went to talk to him about it... His response "Do it," so I did. I went home and made flyers and hung them up around campus. So around Labor day my school will be having its first quarterly Cupcake Challenge! Woot!

This week we had a competition in class where our chef gave each group a picture of a gourmet cake, the group that made their cake look most like the picture won. The cake our group got was a Payard cake, it was pistachio meringue, pistachio mousse and vanilla spongecake. The trick about making this cake was the shape of it. So one of the guys in our group made a mold for us to assemble the cake in. Our hard work payed off because we won.

This is the picture we were given This is the one we made

I think we did pretty good!

Some Cupcake fun... or not

So every time I go anywhere cupcakes are served I have to try one... of course. I went to this adorable little shop called The Girls in Delray Beach. It is an ice cream parlor that has a shop similar to the shop at Cracker Barrel, filled with fun old fashioned and new fashioned toys, yummy candies, and fun trinkets. Out back there is a garden you can walk through that has tons of exotic birds, and a strawberry garden where you can pick your own strawberries. While inside I found a beautiful looking chocolate cupcake with bright pink frosting.

Although it looked fun and tasty, it was actually quite dry. And the amazingly bright pink icing tasted slightly of food coloring. Fail. Oh well. I will definitely be returning to this fantastic shop, although the cupcakes weren't very tasty, everything else was awesome.

thegirlsstrawberryupick.com

Also... check out the newest ink. I got it a while ago, but I haven't had a chance to post a pic yet.

Central Plains

Central Plains... this is basically the entire middle of the country. With foods like Kansas City BBQ and yummy macaroni and cheese.

Wild rice was in a couple of recipes, have you ever tasted wild rice? I'm not really a fan. I remember the first time I ever tried wild rice, my mom made stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner with wild rice in it. I asked her why the stuffing had sticks in it. It is a long grain rice that is very stiff, it doesn't soften when cooked like most rice. You will know when its done because it pops, but watch out, its hot. We made a stuffing with wild rice and corn and wild rice cakes. The stuffing I felt the same way about the first time I tried it, ugh. The corn and rice cakes were pretty good though.

We made pork medallions with a blueberry sauce. Once again, I absolutely love to make jellies and fruit sauces. They are so delicious and for some reason I feel a great deal of pride after each one. Macaroni and cheese is always a favorite. This particular recipe made for an extremely creamy mac and cheese. It only called for cheddar, but I can't resist changing things up, so I added goat cheese. It gave it an amazing little kick. We made Brussels sprouts, and it always amazes me that so many vegetables recipes call for pork. I know it adds a nice flavor, but come on, take the healthiest thing on the plate then add a ham hawk. Which, by the way, is a pigs foot. I just don't understand the consumption of pork. They say you are what you eat, which means you are what you eat eats too. Pigs eat garbage.

And last, but definitely not least, for dessert we made a sour cream coffee cake. It was pretty good, but not a surprise, it didn't have enough cinnamon. Plus I'm not a huge fan of dried fruit, which this was filled with.

Cajun and Creole

It is interesting that the Saints won the Superbowl one weekend, the following weekend is Mardi Gras, and the week in between we are covering Louisiana style food in American Regional. Coincidence... I don't think so. BTW... WHO DAT! I loved this week because we could finally make food really spicy, since before last week we were in the boring northeast.

Anyway... on to the food. We made Chicken and Andouille sausage gumbo. This was actually quite good. But it seems that the recipes we get from our book are always inaccurate, we needed almost twice the amount of stock the recipe called for to ensure the flour was cooked out.

Crawfish etouffe is a soup similar to the gumbo, but it more liquid. Very tasty, and spicy (gotta love the spicy).

Tomato and hericot salad was ok, I'm definitely not a big fan of mayo so I didn't really like it.

Our bread pudding was amazing! Chef Pam said it had too much cinnamon, excuse me, is that possible. I think not. I had never eaten bread pudding before and after reading the recipe I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy it. Bread pudding is essentially soggy, milk soaked, day old bread. Yeah, I know, sounds appetizing right. But it was actually awesome, I loved it, it was like warm, gooey french toast. It was topped with a whisky sauce that another girl in my group made. Apparently she was trying to get us drunk, I had to cook it down for about fifteen minutes to try to cook out the liquor, but the whisky taste was still really strong. Nice addition to the cinnamon though.

On the second day of Cajun and Creole we made yummy fried oyster Po'Boys. An interesting fact about Po'Boys is that they are sandwiches made from cheap ingredients for "poor boys". These Po'Boys have a spicy Aolle sauce. It was amazing.

For the second time in my life I attempted to work with sugar. Thank goodness this time it worked the first time. When working with sugar it is important to get it to the proper stages before adding any acidity to it, and also to remember it is EXTREMELY hot. So this time I made parlines, very similar to peanut brittle in that they are both sugar morsels made with nuts, but these are softer and closer resemble turtles. Our group was a little ahead of time this day so I went and bought some dark chocolate to melt down and drizzle on top. They were so good, and the dark chocolate was the perfect offset to the sweetness of the cookies.

A day of baking

Sunday I attempted yet another one of Martha Stewarts creations. If you couldn't tell I love her projects. In her last issue of Martha Stewart Living she had a recipe for "pear rasberry heart pies." They are a cute and very tasty mixture between a pie and a sugar cookie with a pear rasberry filling.

It was an extremely easy recipe to follow. Its important that the dough is rolled out to 1/8th of an inch, other wise they will be to thick and the dough will be a stonger flavor then the filling. The filling was awesome, the recipe said to cut the pears to a 1/4 inch dice, next time I attempt this I will put the pears throught the food processor so the filling mixture will be more like an applesausce then small chunks of pear. These cookies were absolutely delightful.

On monday, in baking class, we had a practical on bread, thank God for once our bread came out amazingly. I never though getting bread to rise was such a difficult thing to do, but if you dont get the ingredients exactly right, your bread wont rise. The dough was extremely difficut to roll out and shape though, so thy aren't perfect, but the chef said they had a great crust and great flavor.

I also learned how to make two different types of pie crust. In fact they were the exact same ingredients, just different methods. For both crusts all the dry ingredients are sifted together then butter is hand mixed in. For a flaky crust you add the water when the dough has a flaky texture to it, but for a mealy crust the water is added when the dough resembles corn meal. It is important that the water be ice cold so it keeps the butter from melting.

The mealy pie crust was used for lemon meringue pie. The pie is basically lemon pudding with marshmellow topping. The meringue was very tasty but also very tempermental. It is important to make sure the egg whites are completely whipped and have formed soft peaks before the sugar is added, then its just piped on top of the lemon custard and flamed. I got to use a blow tortch, it was awesome!

This is before the blow torch

and after

The flaky pie crust was used to make pecan pie. Not much to say about the pecan pie, mix the ingredients together then pour in the crust and bake. It wasn't set before we left class so we didn't get to taste it. Not that I was that bothered by that, I'm not really a fan of pecans.

Later this week I will be making food from Louisianna, appropriate since the Saints just won the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras coming next weekend. Also I will be attempthing sugar cookies on a stick for Valentines Day. Stay tuned

Floribbean Day 1

Today was a day filled with citrusy goodness, which my burnt fingers were not a fan of. We had hearts of Palm salad, the dressing that the recipe called for was almost completely mayo, needless to say it was disgusting. So we made a lemon vinegrette instead.

We made corn custard which from reading the recipe I thought was going to be gross, but it was quite enjoyable. A mixture of creamed corn and quiche. Quite tasty in fact, I don't know if I will ever make it again, but at least it didnt suck.

Our protien for the day was supposed to be pan seared grouper, but we didn't have any grouper available and pan searing things is not the healthiest alternative when cooking fish. So instead we had grilled tilapia with a tropical fruit relish. It was awesome! The relish called for a red wine vinegar dressing, but it was a little too sour compared to the fruit, so I added some honey for a little more sweetness.

And last, but definitely not least was my famous Key Lime Pie. Chef Pam said it was the best in the class. It better be, not only have I been making key lime pie since I was little, but apon discovering it in Key West on vacation one year I became obsessed. Pretty much where I found my passion for baking. Graham cracker crust made with brown sugar and cinnamon instead of the granulated sugar most recipes call for, and the whipped cream with key lime juice is the icing on the cake, haha.

it was gone in 10 minutes, the entire class loved it
Hope you enjoyed the first taste of the Floribbean!

Hi people. I am currently a culinary student, and I am looking forward to blogging about my life both in and out of the kitchen. I plan on becoming an amazing pastry chef one day, and hope to travel around the world blessing people with my brilliant pastries. Not only will I be blogging about my life in school, but also my personal experiences with baking at home. I love trying new recipes and decorating amazing cupcakes. Hopefully this is somewhat interesting to all of you! I will try my hardest to be entertaining.

This past week was my friend Skyler's birthday, since I am in pastry school it is pretty much guaranteed that you will get a cake or cupcakes of some sort for your birthday. I have this book called Martha Stewart Cupcakes... most amazing cupcake book ever... Since I will hopefully make every fun creation in the book I showed it to her and let her pick whatever she wanted. She picked ice cream cone cupcakes.

These are the Martha Stewart version. They are so cute, you bake the cupcake straight into the cone. The tricky part was of course getting these cones to stand up in the oven. For the baking I bought aluminum cake pans, turned them over and cut holes into them. This was actually much more difficult than I thought it would be. They kept falling over and I burned myself twice while trying to get them to stand up straight. When i went to decorate them I covered a ceramic bowl in aluminum foil and put the cones into that, this was so much easier.

This is my finished project. The chocolate icing I had chilling over night so it was a little more solid, made for easy scooping. The vanilla icing I piped to look like soft serve. If I ever attempt these ice cream cone cupcakes again I think I will make them in waffle bowls, they will stand on their own and I think they would be super cute with little spoons and such.

Well I am off to work on my 800 word research paper on Key Lime Pie. Need to know anything about the history of Key Limes or anything else in Key Lime Pie, because I am now an expert. Tomorrow in class we are making foods from the Floribbean. Should be fun... Night folks