Chocolate 1

Let's just say I have a much stronger appreciation for those who work with chocolate. Not only is the process of making chocolate from cocoa pod to bar incredibly complex, but getting it to do anything that you want it to is a pain in the ass. This was our first chocolate unit, and it almost ruined how I feel about chocolate. If you showed me a Snicker's bar after class, I would want to vomit all over it instead of saying "Snack time!" like I usually do. Luckily for me, I could never get really and truly sick of chocolate.

In our first class, we received an introduction to how chocolate is made and tempered. Chocolate making requires the beans to be harvested, fermented, dried, roasted, cracked, ground, mixed, refined, conched, tempered, and molded. Alterations to that process, as well as the way it is sourced, alters and the taste and mouth feel of the chocolate. We tasted a lot of chocolate in order to figure out all of those subtleties.

We then learned how to temper it. Correctly tempered chocolate allows it to stay solid at room temperature, and contains the 5 S's : smooth mouth feel, shiny, snap, sets, shrinks. In order to temper, it requires time, temperature and agitation in order to fight off the bad crystals (4 of the 6) from setting and ruining the good crystal structure. One must heat it up to 122 f, cool it while constantly agitating down to 81, and then reheat and hold it at 86-90. If any of those points are missed, or if you do not maintain that awful holding temperature, then you have to start all over again. You can NEVER get any water into it throughout this process.

Most of you know me. Most of you know that I am neither neat nor patient. You can imagine my frustration at this part. We also didn't get to MAKE a lot of shit. I really like making shit, not spending an hour tempering and re-tempering chocolate, getting water into it, starting over again, making a mess, cleaning it up, re-tempering, getting chocolate on my face, etc.

This is what we did get to make. First, a dried fruit and nut chocolate cake with chocolate glaze and chocolate leaves. I loved the flavor of this cake.

A chocolate box to hold our truffles. I forgot to take pictures of the truffles, but they were a chocolate orange truffle (I HATE chocolate and orange mixed together. HATE IT. I will forever reference those god awful chocolate oranges from back in the day that were DISGUSTING, to the point that I could never even imagine tasting these, which were supposedly really tasty). I was actually proud of my chocolate box. While I originally wanted my sides to be smooth, I ended up painting over them to create kind of a woody texture because they got really messy. My design was a little corny, but whatever, I made a box out of chocolate!

Queen of Sheba cake. I always think of the Julia Child video of her making this cake. It was a nice and dense chocolate-almond cake. We decorated it with chocolate tiles we made using a transfer sheet. I went a little out there with my chocolate tile placement, but whatever, it's school.

And now, for the grand finale. For our final chocolate project, we had to create a chocolate candy stand that was at least 6" high and contained a bowl to hold our chocolate candies. It had to be made entirely of chocolate and we had 1.5 classes to complete it. We had to choose a theme based on the first letter of our first name.

I chose Jupiter (jazz, jellybean, and junkyard were not interesting to me), so I decided to make a stand called "Jupiter and its Moons". I know you dorks are going to say that Jupiter actually has a shitload of moons, but I decided to do the main 4. It was incredibly stupid of me to think that I could put a heavy object (Jupiter) on top of a 6" skinny pole, relying on just perfectly tempered chocolate to pull it off. Only at the end did Chef Jae say "Julia, it was very risky making this", not when I showed him the diagram. Truthfully, I wanted to make something easy, I hated working with this shit.

I had multiple fails while making this, to the point where I began calling it Poopiter. I had fun decorating, though. I loved my solar system base, and making Jupiter look like Jupiter- it had a red storm and everything. It survived the trip from my work table to the chef's table, but on its way to the display table, Jupiter fell over and acted like a bowling ball, knocking down all of the moons in its path. I thought it was the perfect finale

Cakes II!

In cakes dos, we were able to build upon what we learned from cakes uno (go figure) with more focus on decorating techniques. Decoration ain't really my thang, despite it being my means of gainful employment. Sure I want it to have eye appeal, but I would rather spend more time making that shit taste good. It was fun anyway.

Yule log. I didn't know people made these anymore. I think it's a throwback to French hotel dining back in the day. That's the only setting I can see someone pulling this off. Ye Olde Yule Log is essentially a roulade cake. For this one we used a simple sponge, soaked in booze, with a cranberry meringue buttercream and chestnuts. It's wrapped and chilled, then cut and assembled to look like a log in a forest. We decorated it with chocolate buttercream, meringue mushrooms, and marzipan Holly. I thought it looked mad corny, but later in my life when I am a housewife in the suburbs, I can pull this one out at my annual Christmas party and really wow the husbands. <--- That was a joke. Yule-icious!

Lemon chiffon cake. This was VERY similar to a cake we make at Mags. A lemony cake, with lemon curd between the layers. But we used a plain buttercream to coat the outside. It was buttery and delicious. I practiced my basket-weave in buttercream on this one, something I hope I never have to do in my professional life. So tacky!

Chocolate-pistachio roll cake. I know this cake doesn't look at all interesting from the outside (we were practicing covering cakes with rolled marzipan) but it was BOMB on the inside. A chocolate roulade cake with pistachio cream! I LOVE chocolate and pistachio!

Fraisier cake. This was pretty tasty and rich. Vanilla cake layers soaked in champagne, with moussaline and strawberries. Note how I spelled "Fraisier" wrong on the top.

Hello. I am a Black Forest cake that stepped out of the 80s.

Ah, and the grand finale. This baby was my pride and joy! This was for our midterm exam, and we had to draw from a hat out cake, filling, and covering combinations. I got Biscuit Cuillere (lady fingers), Bavarian cream, and fondant. To do this successfully, I had to pipe my lady fingers into discs, and make a buttercream barrier to my white peach Bavarian cream. The chill the whole cake for awhile to get it nice and solid before covering it with fondant and decorating.

We had to choose a celebration theme for our cakes, and because I make birthday, anniversary, and congratulations cakes all the time, I wanted to choose something different. Adam was going to go crabbing soon, and wanting to do something pictoral, I decided on "Happy crabbing!"

How I made it: I tinted my fondant a light blue and covered the cake, squaring it off. I then painted the water, seaweed, and a couple of fishies on. While waiting for that to dry, I made all of my fondant decoration parts - I made the crabbing boat with the figures, and a bunch of little blue crabs. Once it was dry, I piped the beading on the bottom - coloring the royal icing to make it look like pebbles on a river bed. I then piped royal icing on the border of the water and sky to emphasize the frothiness of the waves. I stuck all the fondant pieces on, piped a royal icing trap, seagulls, and inscription, and VOILA! A crabbing cake! I was impressed with how much detail I was able to pull off in the about 2 hours of decoration time I got. I know it's hard to see, but in between the 2 crabbers, there is a crabbing basket with a claw sticking out. That's one of my favorite parts!

Petit Fours MUTHA FUCKAS!

Petit fours are such a tease! They're dessert "four(s)-play", if you will. And served in a line on silver platters you can't help but treat them like cocaine. Give me more!

So I liked this unit a lot. Not just because I got to work with Janet (or Janae, as the cheese-eating surrender-monkey French would say - holler girl!) but because they're just so goddamn cute! AWWWWW! Little-wittle desserts...

Janae and my first platter was composed of (from left/top to right/bottom) these little raisin cookies that I thought were gross and old-timey that I couldn't stop eating nonetheless; Financiers (w/ mango!)... tasty!; pate sucree with passionfruit curd and a blueberry; Sarah Bernhart's boobies - almond macaroon with whipped ganache and choc glaze. I was a fan of most of these things.

Next tray. I actually didn't like most of these. It was composed of desserts that just weren't quite cutting it for me. The French seem to like their good shit all muddled up with bad shit. Making a caramel? Put some chocolate in it to make some combination of muddled choco-caramelyness that's not good as either. Making a cake? Put as much fucking buttercream and filling on it that it makes you want to vomit it all up (but still eat it the first time around because it tastes good until you feel your stomach rapidly sinking into your small intestine). Nice lemon cookies? Dip them in chocolate for a totally unnecessary citrus chocolate combination WHICH I HATE. So here goes from left/bottom to right/top: Some thing with cake on the bottom, 3 different types of buttercream (Janae and I chose hazelnut, vanilla, and raspberry - but through no fault of our own this still just tasted like a shitload of flavored buttercream on a wafer); lemon and raspberry sandwich cookies dipped in chocolate; caramel mou - caramel with chocolate and rolled in cocoa powder; a cake thing made with raspberry jam, marzipan, and a fondant glaze; and another thin layer of cake thing with a mound of buttercream "enrobed" in chocolate. Good grief this tray looked like it stepped out of the 80s!

Mmmm.... how pleasant... Macaroons! From left to right: Gerbert macaroons with a raspberry filling; lemon Madelines; some gross shit I don't remember the name of made with peanut butter puff pastry, royal icing, and raspberry jam; chocolate macaroons with chocolate ganache; more Madelines; Opera cake - really good - hazelnut and chocolate together is my jam!

From top/left to bottom/right: Pineapple pate de fruits "tropical!"; Nougat; almond tuiles; sablee chocolate and vanilla swirl cookies - not too much going on, but pleasant; Russian tea cakes - always good; Florentines - not my jam but a respectable addition to the party. The sophisticate uncle from Italy, if you will.

Ahhh... Janae and my opus to the art of petit fours. Our Sistine Chapel amongst the punk-ass Basquiat wannabes. Our very own "little ovens", we birthed these babes from our combined creative juices. Yes, that's right, Janae and I made them. I present to you our final exam. Together we made 7 - we had to collaborate on 1 freestyle petit four, and separately freestyle on 1 other, and then adapt a recipe from the unit for 2 more. They are as follows, from left to right:

(Our combined freestyle) A black sesame seed pound cake with passionfruit curd, white chocolate glaze and toasted black sesame seeds.

(My adaptation) Pistachio Russian tea cake.

(My adaptation) Kaffir lime mousse sandwich, biscuit d'Amandes w/ pate a cornet design, candied orange.

(Janae's freestyle) Mini banana cream pie with painted choc crust and caramelized banana

(Janae's adaptation) Lemon Madeline

(Janae's adaptation) Green tea checkerboard sablee

(My adaptation) Sarah Bernhart with almond macaroon, earl grey and honey ganache, chocolate glaze and candied lavender.

B-b-b-b-b-b-bomb baby.

It was so good I had to post all 3 pictures that Janae sent me.

This post is mostly a way to scare off my grandmother from reading my blog. I thought she didn't know how to turn on her computer, despite my mother and I showing her multiple times. However she does, and uses the interwebs, and locates this blog and reads it. Grandma, if you're still reading this, then you can withstand more than I thought, and you're even cooler than I thought you already were. Sex, drugs and rock and roll GRAM$! And computers!

Did you get enough shout-outs Janae?

Bread 2

We had our 2nd bread unit in Pastry 2. This was for the most part a continuation of the Vienoisserie in Pastry 1.

This was not my most favorite unit, and I was going through a personally rough time - temporarily homeless due to an absolutely crazy landlord, Adam and I had to crash at people's houses, lose lots of sleep, meet with lawyers, and find a new apartment throughout the duration of this unit. I fucking hate landlords. This resulted in me not really giving my all to school - I was doing the minimum according to my standards. So lets just look at the pictures and move on, shall we! Petits Fours is next!

Petits Pans. Wow, small baguettes!

Irish soda bread. Tasty!

Croissants take 2. Plain, ham and cheese (super yum!), and pain au chocolat.

Sweet potato brioche. This was really tasty, we stuffed it with spiced pepperoni, and goat cheese.

5-grain rolls. Not a huge fan. "healthy".

Banana muffins. Kind of dry, liked the crumb topping.

Tart Alsacienne. Caramelized onions, olives, anchovies. Decent.

Ciabatta. Fun fact: means "slipper" in Italian.

Corn muffins. Included jalapenos and bacon! Best kind!

Lemon poppy muffins. Zesty and poppilicious.

Foccacia. Sounds like an STD, tastes like rosemary.

English muffins. Cool. Note: burned ones made by Lindsay and Melissa, inferior students and sabateurs (pictured below).

San Francisco trip!

Adam and I recently visited our buddies Steve and Devi in San Francisco for a wonderful weekend. It goes without saying that we ate a lot. And given that I haven't posted on anything other than school for a long time here goes...

Adam and Devi in front of some cool murals. Saturday we spent walking around, going to the SF Aquarium, napping, and then we went to Chez Panisse.

I have no pictures of us going to Chez Panisse. I don't like going to fancy restaurants and taking pictures. Sorry. It was an absolutely delicious meal - we had a nicoise salad, followed by a ravioli in a garlic soup, some of the most delicious lamb I've ever had, and then a honey-muscat cake with berries and sabayon. It was all delicious - and drinking a lot of great wine and being there with close friends made it perfect. The restaurant is in this beautiful Frank Lloyd Wright-esque buiding, with plenty of greenery around it. The best part, by far, though was seeing the kitchen. A waiter gave us a tour. It was small, calm, and composed. There was a grill and wood-burning oven, copper pots, everything neatly tucked away. A station per course. We talked with some of the cooks, who were calmly and happily chopping vegetables, grilling lamb, and plating. It was one of the most laid back and composed kitchens I've ever seen. There was an actual lady with white hair working. I have never seen a woman over the age of 40 cooking in a restaurant kitchen's line. We finished our meals, and tipsily made our way back to the train for a night of rest, in the process waking our friend Justin who was sleeping on the kitchen floor up to make fun of him being a hippie. We're great people sometimes.

Next day we slept in and then walked to Tartine. I had heard of this bakery, and have flipped through their cookbooks so when Devi mentioned it I was game! We arrived to a line out the door and halfway down the block. It was revenge for making people wait in line to get a Magnolia cupcake. I always feel like such a sucker when I wait in lines. We were really hungry by the time we got in - and between the 4 of us, we got a lemon tart, banana cream tart, frangipane croissant, and 2 ham croque monsieurs. All good decisions! The frangipane tart was absolutely delicious, and after just making croissants in school, I had the utmost appreciation - super flaky, crunchy, but soft and sweet in the middle. Not too sweet though. The lemon tart was beautiful, but the lemon curd was not my favorite - it didn't have the tang I look for. Beautiful texture though, and it was a pate brisee crust, which I prefer. The banana cream tart was good but not mind blowing. They painted the crust with chocolate before putting the banana and creme legere in - which was great. Croque monsieur with accomanying pickled carrots was great. Tasty breakfast. Oh, and I ate more throughout the day...

After that we headed over to the waterfront to the ferry terminal. I took this random picture of meat hanging somewhere. Don't know where that was from, but I just think hanging meat is so damn SEXY!

We then ate oysters from Hog Island Oyster Company, while overlooking views of the bay, while also drinking lemonades.

It was beautiful that day - 60s and sunny. So we headed up some big hill that had a tower on top that looked like the Lord of the Rings tower, and took in the scenery.

Alcatraz! Holler to all my people behind bars! But not any more!

After all that walking, we decided we were hungry again, and went to Chinatown. Cleanest Chinatown I've seen. We decided to go to one of the throwback Americanized Chinese food places. My favorite part: the lazy suzan in the middle of the table and the pork dumplings. Awesome decor.

After meeting up with more friends, we went to a tasty dinner at a vegetarian South Indian restaurant. It was pretty good, but I was still full and didn't enjoy it as much as I could have. Oh well, had that shit before.

But I have a second belly for dessert, so we went to Humphry Slocombe, an ice cream shop with some crazy mothafuckin flavors. I got one scoop of balsamic caramel, and one scoop of malted dulce de leche. Both were good, but the balsamic caramel got old after the 5th bite. Malted dulce de leche, which to me just tasted like browned sweetness stayed good. I think my tongue was just tired at this point and wanted to eat some McDonalds or some shit. Here's Steve enjoying Special Breakfast, which was Bourbon ice cream with cornflakes.