Week 8: Cake and More Cake

It's been all about cakes this week, starting with the Gateau St Honore. It's a combination of pate brisee, pate de choux, caramel, and creme patissiere. I garnished mine with toasted almonds and crystallised violets. I was actually really pleased with how it came out! I just need to make my choux a bit smaller and make my piping more slanted for a more defined chevron pattern.

 

I really enjoyed making this cake as it tests a lot of the pastry making skills we should have by now and it's also an exercise in time management since you're constantly bouncing back and forth from all the different elements.

The next cake we had was the charlotte aux cassis, which is a cake with blackcurrant Bavarian mousse and a blackcurrant glacage with white chocolate piping. We watched as the chef demonstrated all the different borders that we could pipe on our cakes, and we were all depressed. Piping with chocolate is hard!

Luckily, mine turned out not as badly as I anticipated. Whew. My piping could still definitely use work, but I didn't feel the need to tear my hair out in frustration, which is a big improvement over earlier attempts!

We had a bit of a scare in the kitchen during this practical. In order to remove the cake from its mold, it's necessary to lightly blowtorch the metal mold. Can you see where I'm going with this? We have a bit of a Disaster Jane in our class, and she ended up blow torching a piece of parchment paper that went up in flames. Instead of tamping the fire out, she tried to put it out by blowing on it! Um, not a candle! My partner and I ended up pushing her aside to put the flames out, and I approached her carefully to turn the blowtorch off, which she had on this whole time. Geez.

Better luck next week!

Week 7: Let Them Eat Gateau

It's been all about cakes lately at school, and I've been porking up big time from eating a cake a day! Classes end too late for me to drop them off at friends' offices, so J and I have been crushing them all by ourselves after dinner. Oops.

This is a Black Forest cake with griotte cherries and creme chantilly with chocolate decoration.

The cakes have almost been too pretty to eat, but I did say 'almost'. This is a chocolate charlotte with Bavarian cream and chocolate ruffles and pistachios for decoration. Yum.

As you can see, we've been working with chocolate this week, and it's been extremely messy. I ended up with cocoa powder on my hat (how?!), but I had  more ingredients in my cake than down my front, which I count as a win. But it's definitely time for a good wash of my uniform.

We've got gateau St. Honore next week, and it's a good opportunity to practice a lot of our skills since the cake has a lot of elements. Pate brisee, choux pastry, creme patissiere, piping, caramel cooking, it's got it all. Chef's creation that we're supposed to replicate: 

Um, we'll see. Gulp.

The weather has also been on the up and up, and we've actually had some dry days. It was mild enough for me to take Casper to the park this past weekend, and a cheeky little sparrow came right up to me to ask for food. Spring really is coming!

Valentine's Day and the Lone Wolf

J and I make a pact each year to not celebrate Valentines day. I think it's kind of a corny holiday, and I sympathise with the ridiculous amount of pressure most guys are under to make it the most romantic day of the year. The overpriced bouquets of flowers, the prix fixe menus, the obligatory box of chocolates, and all the damn pink and red - just ugh.

So it's pretty funny that I ended up with flowers and chocolates by happenstance. J had to go to Geneva for work last week, and he brought me back some frighteningly good chocolate. It's not like you can go to Switzerland and not buy the chocolate. 

I've been actually scared to eat this chocolate since I don't feel worthy, but I finally worked up my nerve so that the box is currently near empty. I guess I got over that real quick!

And we also picked up some orange roses on our weekly grocery run on Sunday. Major score, and without having to pay a 900% markup! 

They really perk up the flat, especially during the wettest winter on record. It's rained pretty much every day since November, and the winds have been so bad that Heathrow flights have been cancelled this past weekend. Absolutely nutso. It doesn't help that our boiler has been on the blink lately. I'm just grateful for hot water bottles and fireplaces until we can get the boiler sorted.

We did have one sunny day, and everyone was out and about. Who knows when we'll see sun again?!

School has been going fine, but I did have a bit of a meltdown last week during our practical for an exam dish, the genoise a la confiture de framboise. In plain english, raspberry sponge cake with French buttercream. Chefs creation:

It was this ridiculous comedy of errors where someone accidentally took my cake, so I ended up accidentally taking someone else's cake and not realising it until I was nearly done icing it. Then I had to scrape all my icing off and start again with my actual cake once I sorted out who had taken it. And I had to make 3x of everything between my partner and I because someone didn't have a partner, which slowed everything down considerably so I lost the time I had gained doing all of my individual tasks ahead of schedule. Argh! I was so disgusted with everything by the end of class that I just got out of there ASAP before I scratched anyone's eyes out. 

I was so irritated with the whole debacle that I remade the dish by myself once I got home, and it turned out wonderfully. J didn't like the cake I brought home from school, but he loved the cake I made at home. It not only tasted better, but it also looked a million times better. I'm still annoyed, but I no longer feel like punching walls. It's ironic that I usually get top marks in teamwork, but I absolutely hate it with a fiery vengeance.  Hear this lone wolf howl!

A Busy Week 5: Puff Pastry, Bread, Eclairs, Tube Strikes, and The Lockhart

An entire weekend passed between our demo and practical, which meant I walked into the kitchen early Monday morning bleary eyed and a bit hazy on what I was doing there. Luckily, I had my notes to refer to and really nice classmates to help me along the way. I was meant to be whisking furiously while making the creme patisserie, but I wasn't capable of doing anything fast that early in the AM.

I finally managed to wake up by the end of the practical and eked out an alright looking bande feuilletee aux fruits de saison. Pretty fancy name for a relatively simple pastry! I've been trying out different cuts for the fruit garnish, but it's impossible to know what the chefs will like. For example, the chef for this demo wasn't such a fan of the diced mango. Who knew?

The hardest part for me is applying the egg wash, believe it or not. It's beyond annoying that such a small element of this dish is what's tripping me up. Arghhh!

What with all the pastries that I've been eating, I've been trying to step up my fitness. It's been a bit difficult since I usually work out at home, and Casper thinks all of this exercise nonsense is a bad idea.

I'm actually pretty glad I started running again since the tube has gone on strike this week and the next. It's nice to have running as an option in case the replacement buses are full. I've been fairly lucky with hopping on a bus for part of my journey since I've had a very early start most mornings, but it seems that lots of other people had the same idea. Traffic was pretty bad even before the sun came up!

Getting up so early for several days running has been a bit painful but necessary as we've had loads of demos and practicals this week.

We had our first bread session, which was pretty fun. I was a bit over enthusiastic about kneading the dough for our dinner rolls and slapping it down against the work bench. Chef said I had enough rage to get the slapping motion down pat. No pun intended. And it was fun shaping our dinner rolls into animals and plaits and even funner to munch on them while shopping on Oxford Street after class.

We also learned how to make another exam dish: coffee eclairs. They're fiddly little things, and I'm a bit terrified of them. I absolutely hate piping chocolate. I end up with chocolate in the strangest places i.e. in my hair, on my back, in my pocket, etc. In any case, I've got to get over it and practice, practice, practice!

On the plus side, they turned out alright and tasted great! I love coffee, and I was a bit worried about overdoing it on the flavouring so I asked my classmates to stop me if I looked like I was dumping the entire bottle in my creme patisserie.

Despite the week being pretty hectic and busy, I decided to stop by the school demo fair where we got to see some of the chefs in action.

Chef Javier with his sugar artistry:

Chef Julie and cake decorating:

It was fun watching the chefs in their elements, and the cherry on top was that we got to sample most everything. Yum! I'm still undecided about continuing with patisserie after the basic course is over since classes aren't exactly cheap and the lure of returning to work and making some money is pretty strong. I guess we'll see.

It was an exhausting week, and I was glad to see the end of it. I kind of just wanted to go home and catch up on my sleep but we had dinner plans with some friends at The Lockhart, a southern American restaurant not too far from our flat.

I'm glad I dragged my tired ass there as the food was amazing! I had shrimp and grits for the first time in my life, and J was in heaven with their buttery cornbread. We wanted beignets for dessert but they were out so we got the lemon meringue pie instead. It was interesting to compare it to what I've been making at home, and poor J let me dig through it before he got a bite. That's love.

Another plus is when you're passed out on the floor from all the rich food, you have a beautiful tin ceiling to look up at.

It's American-owned (obviously), and it really shows in the stellar service. We'll definitely be making a return visit soon!

Week 4: Practice, Grades, and Jalousies

I don't know why, but I can't stop thinking about that damn lemon tart. Knowing that it could be my exam piece and that I'll have to make it from memory is freaking me out. It's gotten to the point where I'm waking up early, and I can't go back to sleep because I'll start rehearsing the recipe in my head while I'm still laying in bed. It's not the ideal way of starting your day.

They say practice makes perfect, and I think actual practice (not just in my head when I'm barely conscious) will probably help me feel a lot more prepared so I've assembled all the various bits and bobs so that I could practice at home. That means I've finally made a long-awaited purchase: a stand mixer! They're bloody expensive so I kept dithering on buying one, but I finally bit the bullet on a KitchenAid.

In related news, these 8AM classes are killing me. They're sporadic throughout the week, so I don't really get the chance to fall into the habit of waking up early. I was thinking how absurd it was that a bunch of people all over London were waking up at all kinds of godawful hours to go watch a guy make puff pastry for 3 hours. This may be why aliens haven't yet made contact with our kind.

We got our midterm grades today. Stupid me, I didn't realise we were being graded on our practicals, and they're worth half our final grade. Being practicals, I thought they were essentially just practice! Nope, wrong. I thought the chefs were just checking their emails or Facebook or whatever when they were tapping away on their tablets. Wrong again. Sigh. I'm doing pretty alright, a bit better than average, but everyone's been pretty cagey about their grades so it's hard to figure what that even means.

Ultimately, my grade doesn't really matter so long as I pass. Hell, I don't even need to pass since I have nothing riding on this. The grading scale is pass, then pass with merit, then pass with distinction. Pretty much everyone passes, and almost no one gets pass with distinction, so I'd like to walk away with a pass with merit. It's my greedy little heart, what can I say? I'm not quite sure if I stand much of a chance if chef takes my behaviour into account. Let's just say I don't have anything to lose and a cheeky sense of humour that's not infrequently directed at chef.

Speaking of practicals, we finally had one today after a weeklong break from the kitchen. We made jalousies out of puff pastry with pears and almond cream. Yum.

Chefs creation.

And mine (after I cut it in half).

I definitely could've left it in the oven for a bit longer but we were running out of time since we had rock hard pears that took forever to cook. I also could've done a better job with the egg wash and gone a little easier on the syrup. But so shiny! In all honesty, I'm just glad I had time to finish as someone accidentally stepped on my rolled out pastry as it was chilling in the fridge, and I had to start over again. I swear, January was so not my month and I'm beyond glad to see the back of it!

Week 3: All About Tarts

It's kind of crazy how quickly things ramped up at pastry school in the last week. The practicals, where we try to replicate what the chef did at demonstration, used to be at a pretty relaxed pace, and we would chit-chat as we worked on our dishes.

Not this week. Not even a little bit.

We found out that we would be required to make a dish from memory from a choice of three options for our final exam: a lemon tart, eclairs, or a genoise. We won't know which dish until we walk into the kitchen on the day of the exam.

We've only learned how to do the lemon tart at this point, and I showed up early for that demonstration, but it seems like everyone else had the same idea. I did manage to take some snaps of what it's supposed to look like, and chef had the chance to show off a little bit. It's amazing how beautiful everything looks, and it's also a bit intimidating that we're expected to do the same.









I think the best part of the demonstrations is that we get to sample most of the things. I've learned by now to not eat breakfast before class so I have lots of room to gobble down chef's creations. Teehee.



As fun as eating at the demonstration can be, the practical was beyond stressful.

We have only 2 1/2 hours to make the lemon tart from scratch, which means making and blind-baking the tart shell, cooking the custard filling, making and piping the italian meringue, candying the lemon peel, and assembling it all into a beautiful presentation within that time. I made plenty of mistakes like forgetting to strain my custard after I finished cooking it and forgetting to add the butter until I already cooled my custard. Urgh. My custard was also a bit runny, and I think a bit more sugar wouldn't hurt.

In the end, it came out fairly presentable and was ridiculously delicious. I was planning on taking it to J's office, but he told me to take it home instead. Big mistake. We ended up demolishing the entire thing that night after dinner.



The following demonstration/practical was for an apple tart, and it was a walk in the park after the lemon tart. I actually had time to slow down and enjoy myself, which resulted in a pretty good looking tart. Chef was very kind, and I got the best marks I could've hoped for! I took it straight to J's office, where I hung around for a bit to enjoy a piece, and I was glad I didn't take it home. Otherwise, it would've been a repeat performance of the previous night, and I'm not quite sure how much my waistband can stand!

The £209 Storm

I've had my first real smartphone for less than a month when it decided to do a swan dive out of my (closed!) purse and faceplanted onto the pavement. I had just left my cheese lecture, and I was running to get out of the unexpected downpour. But to be honest, that's my own damn fault - when in London, one should always expect a downpour. In any case, the jogging caused the flap on my purse to fly open and my phone to take its suicidal plunge. And now it looks like this.

Apple told me it's going to cost £209 to replace the outside case, and I have to wait a week for it to be back in stock.

This is why I can't have nice things.

It's been raining pretty much nonstop, and J and I have been spending most weekends hunkered down at the flat. The only times we do venture out is when we need to go to Tommy Burgers to satisfy J's burger addiction and to restock our coffee supplies.

So far, this year is not looking good.

The only good news is that the pets in LA are much better. Torre's ear infection has completely cleared up, and Kitty is much more mobile ever since her surgery removed her tumours. My mom swears up and down that Kitty still has a lot of life left in her. I really, really hope that's true, but I'm being as realistic as I can.

As for the cat in London, he's up to his usual ruckus and closing in on 12 lbs! No one believes me when I say Casper can do more tricks than some dogs so I made a little video of him working for his kibble. He can also "sit" and he comes when he's called. Not half bad for a moggie!