Week 4

Well week 4 in school was one of my best and worsts. My Monday Baking class was...interesting. We changed groups sadly and AGAIN I was the only girl in my group. There was one boy that is also in his first quarter so that is one step away from being the odd man out. But he was....well an idiot. The other two guys in my group were interesting. One was nice, good at his work and a little bitter at the chef instructor lol. The other was a total ass! He was rude, condescending, and not helpful at all.

The idiot guy didn't know what he was doing AT ALL! I pretty much had to do all his work. Which means I was a little later to do my work and by the time I was ready to use a mixer there wasn't one available. Picture this: 5 tables, each table making 4 different recipes; only 4 mixers in the kitchen! Helpful? FAR FROM IT! Oh well we do what we have to do. So I was one of the last to use a mixer. So my bread dough didn't have enough time to ferment and proof. Because of this it wasn't perfect and we got a little lower of a grade. We got a 90%. I was bummed that it happened but we would have gotten like a 60% if I hadn't helped (done) the doughnuts for that other guy. The one guy who was nice in my group was like yes a 90%, way to go team. The jerk guy blamed it on me, asked what quarter I was in and when I said first he said oh that's why. Then asked if I have ever worked in a restaurant before, when I said no he said wow you are going to have a hard time in school. By this point I was just angry so I told him actually I hadn't had any issues until I was in his group since he wouldn't help when we asked for it before. Even though I helped him roll out the brioche. Whatever! I helped on 3 dishes and he barely did one. I hope that the next time we are in groups of 4 I at least have one more girl in my group!

Here are the pictures of what we made:

This is our brioche.
These are our cinnamon rolls.
Here is out challah bread.
Here are a few doughnuts and doughnut holes.

Then on Thursday and Friday I had my pastry class. I loved this week. We got to make a quiche, an apple pie, and a few fruit tarts. I really like the people in this class. They are really friendly and helpful. Most of the boys are savory students so they are just as lost as everyone else even though they are in their 3rd or 4th quarter. So they ask me for help just as much as I ask them. It's nice to start making friends. We can joke around with each other and we check to see how each other are doing. It makes a crazy class day go so much faster. I spend 10 hours a week in pastry class and 5 in baking and I feel like I am in baking WAY longer! It's totally the people!

Anyway here is what I made this week in pastry:

This is my quiche and my apple pie. I didn't fill the pie with apples because I didn't have enough time to do enough apples so the pie dough cover sank down to meet the apples that were in it. Oh well not the prettiest but it still tasted good. My quiche had bacon, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, and spinach it in. My dad said it tasted good. I didn't get a chance to taste it.

My tarts turned out pretty...I think so at least. I was excited to come home after working on Saturday and eat the strawberry/kiwi one...but while I was at work my mom ate it. I think my parents are enjoying me being in culinary school. But I took one to my friend Garret, my dad had one, my mom had two, and I took my boss one. They all seemed to like them. The last one was left for me in the outside fridge and I forgot about it. So again something I didn't get to taste. I will tomorrow when I make one for my midterm though. (I made 4 tarts which I am showing but I brought 6 home. One girl couldn't take hers so she gave me two of hers.) There was a contest in class to see who could create the most perfect tarts that day and whoever did it would get a full letter grade higher on the midterm or final. Well I was disqualified because I forgot to put the glaze on top. A mistake I won't be making again. So I put the glaze on top and took my sad tarts home. I still like them...well all but the one in the top right! :-)
So week 5 is midterms! AHHH! I will have another post soon about how those went! LOL!

Painting Stripes

You may or may not know that I have been in the process of painting my room for months. I painted three walls a few months ago and never got around to the last wall because I wanted to do pink and brown stripes on the wall where my bed is. The colors match my bedding.

So I learned this weekend that painting stripes is more work than I thought. The painting part actually wasn't bad but the trying to figure out how big to make them and tape them off was a pain in the butt!!! A few people tried to tell me how to do it and I really appreciate all the help. But when it came down to it I had to do it my way because I ran out of pink paint. I would have had enough if I hadn't had a palm tree on my wall before hand. Being lazy and thinking the colors were dark enough I decided not to prime over it! BIG MISTAKE! It took me forever to cover the palm tree with the pink parts. In the end you can still see a little bit of the tree coming through the pink in certain parts if you really look but it wont bug me.

The first thing I did was figure out where the stripes would be and then I painted the pink. I forgot to take a picture before so you just have to use your imagination to see the tree. :-)

Then I taped the stripes and painted the brown. (This was the tricky part because I had to measure carefully and use a level.) The pink stripes look smaller right now.

Then I removed the tape after a little while so that i could see how it all turned out! It's not perfect but it's good enough for me. I mean I am pretty much the only one that sees it all the time!As soon as I put my room back together I will take a picture to show what it all looks like with my bedding. Hopefully it will look good!

Ending Week 3

So last week I got really sick and wasn't able to go to class on Thursday and Friday. So I knew I had to step it up this week to make up for it. And I think it went pretty well. We were in groups of 3 and my group was a girl who was in her 3rd quarter and another girl in her 1st quarter. The girl in her 1st quarter was very slow so we had to kinda step it up even more to make up for it. I hope she speeds up for her sake...she may not survive. But we did end up making some fun stuff.

On Thursday we made flourless chocolate cake, apricot gelee, chocolate ganache, and a high ratio yellow cake. We over filled our yellow cake pans so they were very tall and took forever to bake. But they turned out great. Then we took one sheet of flourless chocolate cake and covered it with the ganache, then another layer of cake, then a layer of apricot gelee, then another layer of flourless cake. We wrapped everything and froze the chocolate cake layers and refrigerated the high ratio cakes.

On Friday we took the flourless chocolate cake layers and cut it in half. Then stacked one half on top of another. We then cut that into 3 pieces, where you could see the layers on the side. We made a chocolate gelee and covered the top with the chocolate gelee. We made buttercream frosting then we took the high ratio yellow cake and cut it in half. Filled it with buttercream, and put the top layer back on. Then we crumb coated the cake with the buttercream. The crumb coat is just covering the cake with enough frosting to cover it and make sure there are no loose crumbs that will get into the final frosting. We were running out of time so we took cocoa powder and with parchment circles we made "snowflake" designs by folding and cutting the parchment. Laying it on the cake and then putting cocoa powder over it. Then taking off the parchment. We then put some chocolate circles on the sides. My cake tasted great, but didn't look perfect. But I figured it's a crumb coat that we weren't going to finish and the more I worked on it the unhappier I got with it. So I stopped working. LOL! And like I said we were running out of time.

So week 3 was a success and a lot of fun! Here are some pictures.

This is the flourless chocolate cake layers...when done called a Ruby Torte

Here is my cake...not perfect but it's ok for now!

This is the finished Ruby Torte!
At the end of class Chef Zamora plated some of the Ruby Torte...it's so pretty!!!