Oh. My. Cuteness.

So John has this theory. When it comes to girls, the smaller an item is, the cuter we will think the item is. So basically, to a girl, mini-anything is adorable.

He’s probably right ;)

This week we started petit fours. Mini pastries. CUTE mini pastries (see?). I mean, how can a little bitty tart NOT be cute?! Anyway, we made more than just tarts, we made lots of yummy things this week. (grab your drool towel!)

We made daquoise (dah-KWAHZ) cookies with a yummy cream filling
We learned how to make a lot or different things using pate a choux (pah-tah-SHOO) It’s the stuff we use and fill to make cream puffs. But we learned new and wondrously delicious fillings. Like the hazelnut/pastry cream/buttercream mixture we made for the paris brest (PAH-ree BREST)
We mixed pastry cream and hazelnut praline to fill the chouquettes (shoo-KETTS)
Just regular pastry cream for the Salambos (sah-LAHM-bohs) – well, we were supposed to put kirsch in there too…but we didn’t. And then we topped them with caramelized sugar and an almond.
We made chocolate pastry cream for these mini éclairs. Aren’t they so CUTE?! They are about the size of my index finger. :) Betcha didn’t know that éclair means lightning! Another translation (as I understand it) is the zipper of your pants. Weird. I know.
We made mini blueberry tarts, topped with streusel
Here’s the collection for that day :) Yeah, I brought half of this home on one day. John ran a race downtown that day and so we towed it all over downtown before bringing it home. Then I had John take it back to work with him. They LOVE me over there! By the way, John did AWESOME on his race, running 3.5 miles in less than 22 minutes. He was given the “Eating Healthy is Overrated Award” at his office for running his time at the race “fueled solely by cookies, pastries, and cakes”. Nice, huh?  
We made chocolate financiers (fih-NOHN-see-ehys). These were made with bankers and workers of the financial district in mind. Traditionally, they are made into a bar shape. To look like a bar of gold ;)
At the end of the week we made these chocolate espresso tarts. I didn’t have any of these because of the coffee, but there are still cute, yes?

And that was pretty much it this week for class, but I did go on a little field trip on Wednesday. The school had gotten us free passes to the Sweets and Snacks Expo, a large floorshow of candy and snack companies, so I headed over Wednesday morning with Jill to check it out. IT WAS SO COOL!

We were given these gift bags that we FILLED with TONS of free samples! Oh yeah, sugar overload at 10:30 in the morning? Yes, please.

This was a booth for this super sour candy (which I LOVE). The stuff in the jar on the left was really good :)
LOVE me some jelly bellys!
The place was huge!!
The displays were awesome
And at the bottom floor, we found this: (This is for you Mom)

A PEEPS bug! AH!! So cute!

That night I laid out my spoils of the day. I came home with soooo much candy
That lollipop is the biggest jawbreaker I’ve ever seen. Whether or not I’ll actually try to eat it remains to be seen. I’ll keep you posted ;)
There were several companies there that I didn’t recognize, so it was fun to try something new
KOALA COOKIES!!!!!!!!! They had these in Okinawa! LOVE THEM.
Some companies (like Hershey) were giving out samples of candy that hadn’t hit the market yet. It’s pretty cool!

So it’s been less than a week and I’ve probably gone through more of my stash here than is healthy…what can I say? ;)

We are down to 3 weeks left of school! One more week of petit fours (stay tuned!) then we have a week of exams, and then we spend a week making sweets for our graduation dessert buffet (I know, right? awesome) and cleaning for the end of the term. It’s going by so fast!

Updates, Announcements, Housekeeping and Such

So my blogging has consisted mostly of my weeks at school and, as fabulous as it is, I feel like I haven’t really had a chance to blog about anything else. And there are other things I must blog about! And so, an I’m-finally-going-to-update-you-on-my-life-and-whatever-it-is-that-I’m-doing post.

Randomness:
*I totally broke the showerhead in one of our bathrooms a couple of weeks ago and it is finally fixed! Just so you know, I was trying to be responsible and I was cleaning the shower when I broke it. I guess I just don’t know my own strength ;) I’m REALLY glad I ended up choosing this apartment with two full bathrooms. It took forever for maintenance to get up here and fix it.

*I had a day off of school on Monday -  NOT for memorial day, I get ANOTHER three day weekend for that! woot! Anyway, it was a good day. My friend Jill and I went to check out a food service store called GFS. It’s kind of like Costco for food service, but you don’t need a membership. We were drooling over the commercial sized plastic wrap. No joke. We also looked around a place Jill had told me about called Home Goods. It’s kind of like a high end TJ Maxx. Jill scored this SWEET cupcake “carousel” that carries 24 cupcakes and…here’s the kicker…it’s SHAPED like a cupcake. I wish I’d snapped a picture to show you. It’s awesome.

I also took the time to be a little crafty on my day off :) You know me! We (finally) finished off the gallon tub of vanilla ice cream we’ve had sitting in the freezer for who knows who long (I’m thinking Thanksgiving?). I was craving my hot raspberry sauce on ice cream on Sunday, and I happened to have everything that I needed, so I pretty much had ice cream for dinner ;) Anyway, John washed out the ice cream bucket and I knew I wanted to use it to store some of my cookie cutters. I’m amassing quite the collection (much to John’s chagrin). I tried a color scheme I’m starting to become slightly obsessed with and tried to make some kind of pattern that kind of looks like argyle…?

Cute, huh? Unfortunately, it only holds about half of my cutters. What? They’re bulky! I guess that means I need to get more ice cream ;)

I also made cupcakes from the leftover cake batter I had from making Asian Themed Cupcakes. I still had some buttercream frosting and the cake recipe I use makes a LOT of batter and it freezes really well, so I thawed it out and it was a pretty quick project. (And satisfied my need for a cupcake that day – it was on the brain, thanks to that cupcake carousel) And since I wasn’t going to eat them all…I made John take them to work with him. I’m becoming quite popular over there ;)

*We have had some CRAZY weather around here. We were on tornado watch on Sunday and we had a crazy 5 minutes of hail the size of marbles, followed by a sweet thunderstorm that night. Then we had a nice day or two, and then Wednesday, the heavens opened and DOWNPOURED. More thunder, more lightning. Was awesome except we had to walk around in it. Now were back in the 40s. Ridiculous? I know. We’re a week away from June!

Announcements and General Updates:
So. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about what I’m going to do after school. Well, I have an answer! But first, a story:

About halfway through May, I got the chance to interview with this amazing company:

(that’s Disneyworld, by the way) EEEEE!!! I know, right? SO COOL. Disney was recruiting at another culinary school downtown called the Le Cordon Bleu. My school had been invited to choose some students they would recommend for the interviewing process. We’re talking a 4-month paid internship in ORLANDO, FLORIDA. Awesome? I know. I was pretty excited.

Well? I had my interview. And it went horribly. No really, it did. It wasn’t entirely my fault though. The interviewer/recruiter was a chef from Disney, and to my dismay, I found him to be rude, abrupt and demeaning throughout my interview. I was already nervous, so this didn’t exactly help my performance, and I freely admit I didn’t do that great of a job, but I was very unsettled at how I was treated. I also was not prepared for any of the questions I was asked. I was asked very technical questions, like, “what kind of flour do you use for this product?” or, “what temperature do you set the oven to for this product?” A lot of the harder questions I just didn’t know, and the interviewer made it clear he was unimpressed. I left the interview thinking “that was weird.”

Turns out the interviewer was this way to all of us students from my school. I cannot say whether or not he treated the Le Cordon Bleu students in this manner, but there was definitely a trend for those of us from the French Pastry School. The head chefs at school are very upset with the feedback they received from us and I understand that they are taking action in response. It was so disappointing! Now, I love Disney, and will always love Disney, but now every time I think of Disney, I’ll always have in the back of my mind the memory of this negative experience. After my interview, I was pretty disenchanted with the whole thing. I mean, the interviewer was a chef at Disney! Aren’t they all supposed to be happy and friendly and cheerful?! It’s the happiest place on earth! What if there were more people there like him? But given my interview experience, it was no surprise when I received a rejection letter last Saturday. Oh well. I have other plans :)

Not too long after my interview with Disney (we’re talking the same day here) I was called into “the principal’s office” (Co-owner/Founder of The French Pastry School, Chef Jacquy’s office) and after talking to Chef Jacquy for a few minutes, he asked me to consider the internship that the school offers. I had considered it before, but wasn’t really sure that I could make it work. I was also waiting to hear about Disney of course. So, feeling overwhelmed with not knowing what to do, I thought, and thought, and prayed, and thought some more. Who knew so many opportunities would create such confusion?! I talked it over with John, I drew up a little chart detailing the pros and cons of all my options (complete with post-it notes :) and finally, I applied for the school’s internship. And I got it! I will be one of 8 interns working from July until December. That will put me at 4 months in cake, 6 months in pastry, and 6 more months as an intern! I just can’t stay away! ;) It’s going to be crazy! But I’m really excited, and I’ve totally prolonged having to figure out what to do with my life for at least another 6 months ;) And I love the school and all the chefs there and I think it’s going to be a great experience.

Whew! I think that’s all the important stuff I needed to cover. Anyone want to know anything else? ;)

The Ultimate Carb-Loading Experience

 

If you’re on a diet, beware. You might want to rebel after this.

We made sooooo many yummy things this week, so grab your drool-catcher towel, and let’s go!

We started of with Farmer’s Bread, which had rye flour and walnuts in it. I wasn’t too crazy about the walnuts in there, but it was much better than I anticipated, since I wasn’t sure if I’d like rye flour.

We also made kugelhopf (KOO-gul-HOPF). In Alsace, France, if it’s not baked in this mold, in this shape, you cannot call it a kugelhopf. They are very protective of their kugelhopf, and if you own a shop there and try to make kugelhopf in a different mold, people will come find you and ask you to stop. There are molds made for both baking and decoration. We were told that Chef Jacquy (one of the School’s owners) has quite the collection. Anyway… It’s another enriched dough, and we put raisins in it and topped it with almonds. By the way, did I mention that we have Chef Jonathan for this class? I don’t think I did. Aw…and I don’t think I have a picture of him either…I guess you’ll just have to click on his name and see his bio… ;)

anyways, the kugelhopf. (whoa, the butter in the mold in this picture looks like it’s under a black light or something…)
Ta da! Pretty, huh?

We also learned how to make chocolate croissants, which, I had never noticed, but they are a different shape. We don’t cut them into triangles and roll them like the normal ones. They are square. And they have chocolate in them. ;)

This is all I had time to take a picture of that day… sorry. I had John take them to work and they were devoured!

We also made baguettes!! Oh my deliciousness. Along with croissants, I’ve been waiting all term to make baguettes. I took them home and made one loaf into bruschetta and it was AMAZING.

John and I went through that whole loaf of bruschetta that night! It was pretty much all we had for dinner. It was soooooo tasty.

The next day we entered a whole new level of deliciousness. We made brioche. But it was soooo much more than just brioche. We filled it with cream, chunks of butter and then covered them in granulated sugar. Oh. My. Deliciousness. It’s pretty much a heart attack in your hand, but oh, at least I would die happy.

I could eat those everyday…until I died of said heart attack. ;)

With the rest of the brioche we tried a new shape, a braid

And then we made some loaves that we sliced, covered in almond cream, and topped with sliced almonds

We also learned the French style “cinnamon bun” but we used danish dough and filled it with almond cream and raisins. Chef said we could certainly try it with different flavors like cinnamon. I think this was John’s favorite, he’s been having them for breakfast all week ;)

Then we made more breads. We made sourdough:

We made country bread and learned different kinds of decorative shapes. In France, different regions have their signature shape, so we learned the shapes and where they come from. (And I can’t really remember any of that lecture…so sorry…hey! I was trying to remember all the other stuff we need to know about bread doughs! gimme a break!)
Our crown shape there got a little squished in the oven…oops…

Oh yeah, and we made another batch of croissants so we could learn how to make almond croissants

And finally, we made a multigrain sourdough bread. And this was intensely multigrain. We had sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, black sesame seeds and I’m probably forgetting another 1 or 2. Oh yeah, oats were in there too.

So I had a lot of bread to take home on Friday. We did manage to give some away, like to the train conductor, a homeless guy, random people, you know.

But today, I did something amazing with one of my sourdough rounds for lunch. I found this awesome recipe on Our Best Bites. It was posted yesterday and I knew it was meant to be, because, I just brought home four loaves of sourdough. I used butter and this homemade garlic bread seasoning (Also from Our Best Bites! ;) and then covered it in mozzerella cheese.

And it was amazing. Try to watch the drooling.

And now I’m totally stuffed and ready to slip into a food coma. ;)

One month to graduation! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!?!?