Intermediate Patisserie

I'm two weeks in my Intermediate Patisserie course now, and things got off to a bumpy start. First, there's my stupid finger - I had to wear a glove over my bandage for the first week, and it drove me crazy. I couldn't feel anything properly, and one of the best things to happen all year was taking the damn thing off. My finger's still alternating between being numb and sharp pain when there's any pressure on it, but anything's better than the bandage. Second, our group has increased in size to fifteen people in the kitchen, which means things are even more hectic and crowded with everyone rushing around to get ingredients. Third, the weather's been warming up, which means it can get hawwwt up in the kitchen. It doesn't help that we're wearing thick chef jackets, aprons, two tea towels and a hat, all made out of extra thick cotton. I'm seriously contemplating cutting out armpit holes to air the business out. 

On the plus side, I attempted my first mini mock-up of the wedding cake that my brother's fiancee wants for the wedding. I was pretty surprised at how well it turned out! I'm still working out the little tweaks in the design, but it looks like all systems are a go!

Now, I just have to carry it off on the actual day. Scary!

School's been going well, I think our new group is getting into the swing of things and figuring out how to work with each other in the kitchen. Since my old partner went back to Malaysia (sad), I've been working with my new partner, and things have been going really well. We get on, and we both work at the same pace, so I'm pretty happy. She's also another "tall", which means I still have someone to reach the high shelves. Teehee.

Oh, and here are the brioche, croissants, and danishes I made last week. Chef told me my bear claws were the most ferocious pastries he's seen in a while. I'll take that as a compliment, thank you very much. I think he was a bit confused though when I swiped at him with one with a loud meow. That's right, bear's can meow if they want to. 

Now that I've been doing the pastry thing for a few months, I'm starting to ask myself what, if anything, I'm going to do when the course ends. Most of the kids have firm plans to continue working in the patisserie field after they've finished their studies, but I'm not quite sure yet. I've heard lots of talk of long hours for pitiful pay, and something about that just doesn't appeal to me. It seems to me that you have to want to go into patisserie for the love of it and not so much for the cash money. Although J makes a good living, I still like to contribute my bit and help pay for the kitty kibble. I guess I still have to ponder it a bit more and continue to do some more research. 

On a separate note, I don't know what it is but my hair's been bugging the bejesus out of me. It's been in this godawful growing out phase for so long, and I just couldn't handle it anymore and then this happened...

Yeah, my hair really is that blond right now. But no longer on my head. Hahaha.