First Wedding Cake I Ever Made

Our assignment for this week was to make a 3-tier wedding cake from start to finish.  I was pretty worried; before starting pastry school I could hardly pull off a layered birthday cake.  I decided right away that I didnt want to make a frilly, lacy, traditional white-on-white wedding cake.  I wanted something fun, funky, and different.  I am really pleased with the results.  Here it is:

The cake is fondant dots on buttercream.  The blue looks so much cooler in person, it is metallic and very shimmery.  The flowers and made of sugar gumpaste.  I learned to make them but I have to be honest and say that I did not, in fact, make these.  It is a long, long process to make gumpaste flowers and I found these at a cake supply store for a price that could not be beat.  For the time involved to make them it is much preffered to purchase them if you can find the flower you are looking for.

Sugar Showpiece

Tonight I finished my sugar showpiece.  It went so much better than the chocolate piece.  While I had some bumps, everything was able to be remelted and fixed very quickly, and I am really pleased with the final piece.  In keeping with the pirate theme, I decided to go a little more whimsical this time.  What do you think?

Look closely - He has a hook!

Chocolate and Tears Don’t Mix

Last week we created our Chocolate Showpiece – and the theme is Pirates. I designed mine to be a rum bottle and a drunken parrot on an island with a palm tree. Well, lets just say that isnt exactly what I ended up with.

It may be important to note that my stepdaughter returned home, 3000 miles away, when this began and the stress of her leaving hit me very hard. Like a ton of bricks actually. Getting out of bed the first few days without her there to hang out with was nearly impossible. So I tried my hardest to shake that off when I went into the kitchen but it came back to bite me. As Chef says, when you’re stressed it all comes out in the chocolate.

So to start, I had to make a mold of a rum bottle. I brought in a bottle of Captain Morgan and hacked up, melted down, and poured a bunch of gelatin. Not knowing frozen gelatin doesnt work the second time around – this used up several hours that had to be redone. But I learned. And I redid. And eventually I got a a gelatin mold that I filled with chocolate. The first chocolate bottle didnt work out and I had to make another one.  I got really upset with myself that I ruined the first one, but I learned from  it.  Removing the bottle from the gelatin mold is a process which I am told feels very similar to birthing a cow – though not a process I care to actually compare it to any time soon. I’ll take their word for it. Ick.

Chef showing me how to "birth" my gelatin mold

 Because of the cuts made to get the first bottle (ya, the one that broke) out, the second bottle came out with wings.  It was an awesome effect, but it wasnt very piratey.  It took some time to get these cleaned off.  Here is what that looked like:

Wings

I ended up scrapping the parrot in the design, for the combined reason of not having the time to make it properly and not having the space to put him once I realized how big the bottle actually was.  The rum bottle is made of solid milk chocolate, and I spray painted it with a paint gun with a mixture of chocolate and cocoa butter to thin it out.  That was fun - we had a makeshift paint booth set up in the dish sink. 

I originally had two palm trees and all the palm fronds were solid poured chocolate but they broke just before presentation time.  This is when the tears welled up.  I dont even know what happened, just looked over and palm fronds were all laying on the base broken off the trees.  I had to yank one of the trees to salvage what fronds we could.  We covered the hole left with a piece of chocolate coral, and Chef was nice enough to help me finish it since we were running out of time – literally security had come and said we had to leave the kitchen they were about to leave the building.  Chef just told me “At least your piece didnt break on national television, it’s going to be ok” and we made some palm fronds to fill in the empty space out of modeling chocolate. 

I am happy with the way the piece turned out with all the problems I had.  It isnt as great as I’d like it to be, but considering what happened, it could have been a lot worse.   Here’s the final piece.

Chocolate Box

I just added a Flikr account over here —->   Hopefully it’s working.  Last night in class we finished our chocolate boxes.  My box is made of dark chocolate, with textured sides.  I made a white chocolate bow on top that is colored with transfer sheet (essentially screenprinted with cocoa butter coloring).  Take a look at the pictures and tell me what you think.  Also, check out the bonbons I talked about before – do they not look like Madonna boobs?!  Putting it all together was very stressful but I really enjoyed it.  Chocolate has been my favorite medium in pastry arts so far.

I’d love your feedback!

A Child’s Understanding of Corporate Finances

To start today’s story, it’s important to know that The Guy and I have his little girl for the summer.  She’s 8 years old, and is a blast to have around.  When she isnt spending the summer and holidays with us, she’s 3,000 miles away with her mother so it’s been fun figuring out how to answer all the many questions that little inquiring minds come up with, as these dont typically come up in phone calls like they do in car trips around town, reading the newspaper, around the dinner table, etc, etc.

Well today, we were doing some final back-to-school shopping (taking advantage of tax-free weekend) and the stores were PACKED and parking was a serious issue.  In one particular shopping center on our destination list today was an abandoned grocery store of a local chain that recently declared bankruptcy and closed nearly all locations, selling one or two that remain open.  Kiddo said “that store has TONS of empty parking spots!  How come?”  So I informed her that that store was no longer open.  She, naturally, returned with “Why are they closed?” 

Normally, I would try to broaden her vocabulary and teach her something in the process.  However, I was not sure that Kiddo is familiar with the term Bankruptcy and it was far too early in the morning to try and explain it all unless she asked, so I simplified things with “The company ran out of money.”  She thought this over for a second and said “Oh, so they couldnt give people change anymore?”

Well, not exactly.    But it made my day.

Fun with Chocolate – Day 1

We knew today that we would be making molded chocolate bonbons.  I was extremely excited to try this – especially for the mold prep which is extremely reminiscent of finger painting.  My class is pretty big, and we had enough molds for everyone but they all are different.  I didnt even consider this when I stopped at the water fountain on the way to the kitchen.  I ended up getting the only bonbon mold left and I kid you not…  I am now the proud owner of two dozen tilted conical Madonna-bra-esque chocolates. 

I am slightly disappointed in the finished result, and not just because of the suggestive shape.  I suppose I did not buff the mold enough, because my tasty treats dont have the amazing shine as some of my classmates.  I also did not get the swirl in my color that I was going for, but I had some serious fun trying.  Preparing a bonbon mold prior to pouring the chocolate is extremely similar to finger painting, only much tastier.  Basically, you fingerpaint the mold as you desire with colored cocoa butter.  Then, you fill them with tempered chocolate and pour it out so you’re left with a hollow shell, fill said shell with ganache, and cap it off with chocolate. 

Our instructor told us the first time that we ever had chocolate in class (in Introduction to Pastry class) that “Chocolate has this amazing property to reproduce like bunnies when you arent looking and end up all over you” but amazingly, with all the chocolate being poured, shaken, tapped, scraped, and smeared I walked away from class with a completely clean coat and only two tiny dirty spots on my apron.  The chocolate must have known that I bought the Costco size bottle of Clorox 2 today.

Photos will follow – we are making a chocolate box to present all of our candies and I’ll take pictures of the final presentation.

Life is better with pastry!

So here I am.  Blogging.  I am not committing to call this a “food blog” or a “blog about culinary school” or anything.  This is going to be my life – with pastry. 

Today was my first day of my final class in culinary school.  I am a pastry major, and I have six weeks of class left then I am off to complete a three month internship before I graduate in December.  For the next week, we play with chocolate, making candies and a chocolate box to present them in.  I am really excited about this class, but nervous too because it means I am thisclose to going out into the real world and working in a professional kitchen.

So I thought it fitting, on the first day of class, to begin this adventure in blogging.  We shall see where it leads.