Happy Valentine's Day!

Conversation heart cookies

Valentine's Day has always been one of my favorite holidays, regardless of my relationship status. It's just a fun holiday that partially revolves around chocolate, and who can object to that? I think a main influence of my love for the typically loathed holiday is my mom, who has always made it a really enjoyable day for the whole family. When my siblings and I were younger, we'd all get dressed up in our fanciest clothes and have a special meal that my mom had prepared for us. I've been trying to spread my love of Valentine's Day for years, and I think I'm making some progress. Typically, every year I host a party for my friends, but this year with school and work, there was just no time to plan it. To carry on my tradition of trying to make the day special for everyone, I went into baking overdrive last week to put together some treats to mail out to some friends and family members.

Slight modification for a friend who is into math

The first thing I made was iced sugar cookies. These are really a pain to make. They're so labor intensive and (in my opinion), don't taste that great. But, when they're done right, they look amazing, so I continue to make them. My inspiration for these was the very talented baker/blogger at A Dozen Eggs. I seriously do not know how she does it! I made two sets of cookies, traditional conversation hearts and boxers & lips. They took two nights to complete.

Hot lips & boxers

I also made Rice Krispie treats. I haven't had a homemade one of these in forever. My only complaint is that the recipe on the back of the box (which claims to be for a 13x9" pan) just does not make enough. They came out pretty thin. So, if you're making these using that recipe, double it. I like really thick Rice Krispie treats. I put some heart sprinkles on the top of these.

Rice Krispie Treats

Next up was brownies. I used the tried and true recipe from the Baked cookbook. These are really great, especially if you use good chocolate. No Hershey's chocolate in these...

The marshmallows started looking like this

And ended like this

The thing I was most excited about making for this Valentine's Day was marshmallows. I had never even contemplated making these before I started seeing recipes pop up for them, and I thought they were going to be incredibly complex to make. They could not have been any easier. With only a few ingredients, and a minimal level of skill required, these were really great to make. I dyed them pink for the holiday. I love making things that have a "wow" moment, and these went from a flat cloudy white mixture to a fluffy, shiny marshmallow in under 10 minutes.

Cut marshmallow, rolled in powdered sugar

Hopefully everyone enjoyed their treats!

Everything packaged and ready to go!

Superbowl Desserts

Somehow I've managed to fit in some baking outside of class this past week. Over 15 hours of my week are devoted to baking in class and then I have a full time job, so it's been tough finding outside baking time. Last week for the Superbowl, I made chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches and cupcakes to bring to a party.

The ice cream sandwiches went over huge, and they were relatively easy to make. The night before, I made a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and put in in the fridge. On Sunday, I scooped out cookies that were approximately the same size and baked them. After they were out of the oven and while they were cooling, I took some ice cream out to soften. My original plan was to make my own ice cream, but I was short on time. Once the ice cream was soft enough, I spooned it onto one cookie and pressed another on top. After they were sandwiched, I rolled the edges in rainbow sprinkles.


The cupcakes were a vanilla base with raspberry jam on the inside. They were all frosted with vanilla and half were rolled in coconut.

Week 5: Pate a Choux

With the completion of the Tarts & Cookies unit, we've moved on to pate a choux. Pate a choux is cream puff pastry. Initially, I wondered how many things you can make with cream puff pastry, and like I suspected, not much. The whole unit is only four classes long and we've already done two of the. The last class is entirely devoted to making a croquembouche. I had attempted a croquembouche (cone-shaped tower of cream puffs) for Christmas Eve, and it was a total disaster. Maybe I'll post that sad picture next week.

Eclairs

Choux is a really cool dough. You cook part of the ingredients (flour, butter, water) on the stove until it's thickened and then you cool it down in a mixer before adding a TON of eggs. Seriously, 10 eggs per batch of dough. That's a lot. When you pipe it into whatever shape you desire, and it looks pretty flat and dense. Then you bake it and it puffs up almost triple its size and the inside is completely hollow and airy, ready to be filled with something delicious. Like I said, cool stuff.

Paris-Brest before it's baked

Filled Paris-Brest without the top on

The first item in choux was eclairs. I thought I didn't like eclairs, but these were really good. I think the key is that I don't like pastry cream that eclairs are usually filled with. It's too thick and weird-textured. The eclairs we made in class though were filled with flavored creme legere (pastry cream lightened with whipped cream). We made vanilla, chocolate, and coffee. The coffee were awesome.

Finished Paris-Brest

The second class in the choux unit had cygnes (swans), profiteroles (ice cream-filled cream puffs), and Paris-Brest. Paris-Brest is sort of like a cake. It was created by a baker in France to commemorate the bicycle race between the cities of Paris and Brest, which is why the choux is shaped like a bicycle wheel. Once the choux pastry is baked (with almonds sprinkled on top), it is cut in half and then filled with a special praline buttercream that is carefully piped into the center to further resemble the treads of a bicycle wheel.

Profiteroles

We had our first introduction to plated desserts with our cygnes and profiteroles. Both were plated in a lake of chocolate sauce, and we decorated the plates with some of the creme anglaise Chef Joseph had reserved before spinning the rest into the rest into ice cream. I have a lot to learn about plating, but I thought my first attempt wasn't too bad.

Cream puff swans

Chef Cynthia also demoed popovers for us. Because they're so hard to get clean out of the pans, she thought it was best not to have us all make them. Which was probably a good call. After seeing the pan, I think it would have taken us all class to scrape out the remnant popover.

Popovers

First Exam: Tarts & Cookies

This past Tuesday was my first exam in pastry school. Technically, I had already taken my sanitation exam (which I passed!), but this was the first actual exam testing my knowledge of baking. Not knowing what to expect, I was thoroughly freaked out and studied probably more than I ever had before. The exam had both a written and practical component. I felt confident about the practical (actual baking) part, and the written section was a lot less difficult than I thought it was going to be. Each of us was randomly assigned a set of 2 tarts and 1 cookie. They were all things we had previously made in class, and I got nut tart, chocolate ganache tartlettes, and bourbon pecan cookies.

Presentation tray of finished tarts & cookies

I'm happy with the way everything came out. I felt like I was organized, worked at a good pace, and produced a good end result. Chef Cynthia seemed to think everything went well, but I won't know for sure until I get my grades back on Tuesday. She did say my cookies were a little on the large side, but I'm pretty sure they tasted okay (I couldn't actually try two of my final products because of the pecans and hazelnuts).

Close up of my ganache tartlettes, decorated with white chocolate

Now that tarts & cookies is over, we've moved on to choux (cream puff) pastry. After each unit, we rotate partners and this unit I happen to be the odd man out (we have 17 students in my class). I think it will be okay as long as I can stay on top of dish washing!

Pastry School Week 4: Last Week of Tarts & Cookies

This past week was our last week of tarts & cookies. Our big exam is Tuesday and I have a lot of studying to do (and Grammys to watch), so I'm going to keep this brief. Or at least try to...as I'm sure you have already noticed I have problems with brevity.

Tuesday was chocolate day in class. We made a chocolate Bavarian tart, a ganache tart and sablee cookies, which are not chocolate.

Chocolate Bavarian Tart

We had real issues with the heavy cream (well, at least I did). It seemed much thicker than usual, and it was warm. Now that it's been several days since I ate it and no food borne illness, I can say that I'm sure it was fine, but it was definitely sketchy. The chocolate Bavarian tart was amazing though. We made a chocolate custard and lightened it with whipped cream--soooo good.

Ganache Tart

The ganache tart was very rich. We also got to practice our piping skills, adding the white chocolate as a finishing touch.

Sablee cookies

Ok, so these cookies are one of my favorite things we've made so far in class, if not my absolute favorite. Pate Sablee could be used as a tart dough, but we rolled it out into cookies. We added a bit of candied orange & lemon peel into the dough and finished them with a lemon glaze. And then I ate all of them for breakfast the next morning.

Thursday's theme was caramel- we made it both for the tartelettes tatin and caramel nut tart. I've had issues with caramel in the past, but this one went pretty easily. However, at one point we were watching our instructor demo something and the room filled with a lot of smoke. Someone had left a pot of caramel on the stove and it had turned to char.

Tartelettes Tatin

These apple tartelettes were something else I ate for breakfast this week. Tarte tatin is a classic French dessert with the caramel is poured into the tart pan first, followed by apples and then covered with dough. When they come out of the oven, you quickly flip them over, out of the tart pans.

Bourbon Pecan Cookies

Caramel nut tart

Inside the caramel nut tart

The caramel nut tart got really great reviews from my coworkers. Even though I can't eat it (nut allergy), I think I'll definitely be making it again.

Saturday was the last class before our exam. We did some review and finished up the last tarts.

Raspberry compote

We made a raspberry apple compote for our linzer tortes. Those are two of my favorite fruits, so I thought it was great.

Linzer Torte

I also couldn't eat the linzer torte because it had hazelnuts in the dough. Stupidly, after rolling out the dough, I must have touched my lip and it was sooo itchy after that. The lattice top of the torte was a real challenge, but I'm happy I know how to do that now.

Quiche Lorraine

If I could eat one food for the next three months without gaining 100 pounds, it would be quiche Lorraine. I was iffy on it when I saw it on the syllabus. For some reason I didn't think I liked quiche, but this one was really amazing. It was a flaky crust and a really creamy custard with bacon and gruyere baked into it.

Now it's time to study for my test! That was definitely not brief!!!

Pastry School Week 3

I can't believe the first three weeks of pastry school are already over, and I can't believe how fast it's going. We're continuing with our tarts and cookies unit, and you would think I'd be sick of tarts by now, but there's so many (delicious) variations!

Sliced fig newtons

They all got crumbled when I put them in a bag

Last week we started out making fig newtons. My brother really liked the packaged kind growing up, but I was always wary of figs. In fact, this was the first time that I had even tried figs. We used dry figs because apparently figs are only in season at the end of summer. We cooked the figs in port wine, water, and sugar. It smelled really good, even though my figs took about four times as long as everyone else's to cook. I wasn't a huge fan of this cookie, but they came out pretty well.

Onion tart

Everything I've make at school during the week, I bring into work for my coworkers to eat. All of the tarts and cookies basically disappear as soon as I put them down on my desk. The onion tart was the exception to this. I was wrong in believing we'd only be making sweet pastries, and this onion tart was the first savory recipe to appear on the syllabus. The tart was made from carmelized onions, blue cheese (the amount of mold on that cheese really turned me off), walnuts and tomatoes. The whole thing smelled very strongly of cheese, and not in a good way. A few brave coworkers tried it, but there were no rave reviews. A lot of "it's....okay...."

I braved my nut allergy to try these spritskakor cookies. They have almond paste in them, and almonds aren't one of the nuts I tested as allergic to, but I sometimes have a reaction from eating them. All kinds of nuts are frequently processed in the same plants, so there's a lot of cross contamination. Fortunately I had no allergy symptoms, and they were just as great as my coworkers were reporting. They were a really great butter/almond cookie piped into a rosette with a spot of raspberry jam on top.

Clafoutis is a traditional French dessert that is a baked custard traditionally made with cherries. The original clafoutis is usually made in a bowl, not a tart shell. This one we made was made in a tart shell, with blueberries instead of cherries because cherries aren't in season. So this was kind of a departure from real clafoutis. It was still delicious though.

So there's two things that I'm really afraid of - burning myself and cutting myself. Being a pastry chef, both of these are bound to happen...more than once. This past Saturday I burned my thumb pretty badly trying to attach a KitchenAid bowl to the mixer I had previously had cooking on the stove. I should have realized that the bowl would be as hot as what was in it (135 degrees) or hotter, but I wasn't really thinking. I didn't cut myself this week, but during a lesson of candied lemon peel, we needed to julienne lemon peel, which means to cut it in thin strips. Our knives are REALLY sharp, and in order to do this, they had to be really close to your fingers. I think I need a lot more practice with knife skills before I feel more comfortable with them. The candied lemon peel came out really nice.


With the candied lemon peel and the meringue that burned my hand (well the bowl it was in at least), we made lemon tartlets. Using lemon curd we had previously made and refrigerated, we filled the mini tartlets and then piped a decorative design with the meringue. Then using a BLOW TORCH, we browned the meringue edges. The blow torch was also scary (see fear #1 compounded with my fear of things exploding). The candied lemon peel went into the center.

The last item on this week's menu was nut tart. Using our pate sucree (sweet dough), we lined our tart rings with it, spread a thin layer of raspberry jam, sprinkled over some toasted almonds, and then poured in the almond and hazelnut batter we had lightened with a French meringue. We were supposed to sprinkle powdered sugar over top in some sort of design. In the haste of the last minutes of class, I haphazardly overlapped two cardboard circles and powdered away. When I removed the circles, I immediately realized the design resembled cleavage. Oh well, lessons learned! Only one more week of tarts & cookies before our big exam on February 2!!

Pastry School Week 2: More Tarts & Cookies

Fresh Fruit Tart

My second week of classes at the French Culinary Institute were a lot less nerve-wracking. I had calmed down a lot since the start of class, allowing me to make some really great things in class. We're in the tarts and cookies unit of the course until February 2nd, and we continue to make more and more of these two pastries.

Tarte Bourdaloue

I hadn't ever really contemplated how many tarts one can possibly make. I had never made an actual tart on my own (only pies), and that has quickly changed over the past couple weeks. I am now on my way to becoming the Queen of Tarts.

Tarte Alsacienne

The class is extremely fast-paced and every class, in the matter of only five hours, we make between 3-5 completed pastries, depending on whether we have a sanitation lecture as well (that exam, my first at school, is this week!). Because we make all components from scratch - doughs, fillings, etc., it takes a bit of time to get to the finished product.

Pots de creme

The tarts we made this week were Tarte Bourdaloue (poached pairs and almonds), Fresh Fruit Tart, Apricot Tart, Tart Alsacienne (apple & custard), and mini fresh fruit tarts. In addition to this, we made gingersnap cookies, Vanilla Kipferls (vanilla hazelnut cookies), and Chocolate Heaven cookies, and pots de creme (kind of like chocolate custard).

Apricot Tart pre oven

Apricot tart after baking

The most exciting moment of the week was learning how to flambe. Being scared of both fire and knives, the choice of going to a culinary school may seem dubious, but I'm determined to overcome both in these next 9 months. I'm already making progress- I cut myself and lived and this week lit a pan on fire (on purpose).

Gingersnap Cookies

Vanilla Kipferl

Chocolate Heaven Cookies

For the Tarte Alsacienne, the apples were first sauteed and then using apple brandy, lit on fire. It was very cool! Seemingly unrelated, right after we were done flambeing, we saw a couple of firefighters walk by our classroom. They must have gotten word that there were beginner students playing with fire.

Fresh fruit mini tarts

Week One of Pastry School!

A couple months ago I applied and got accepted into the classic pastry arts program at the French Culinary Institute. I will be attending the night program, while working full time, and cannot be any more excited to have started!! Baking is a real passion of mine, and it's amazing to be able to take it to the next level. Classes started this past Tuesday, and with the first week done, I can safely say that I LOVE it!

Full uniform - my embroidered jacket didn't come in yet. Sexy hat!

This week I got an email from a friend that said something along the lines of, "Hey, I saw you started pastry school this week. It's about time you realized that's what you should be doing." I feel that way too.

First fully baked project - apple tart

The first week of classes was simultaneously exciting and terrifying. I was so nervous to start. I had no clue what kind of skill level my fellow classmates would be at, what my instructors would be like, etc, etc. I get all kind of anxiety about starting new things, and this time was no exception. Fortunately everything went so smoothly. My chef instructors are amazing. The head instructor is Chef Cynthia, and she's really incredible. She made Caroline Kennedy's wedding cake, and now in addition to being an instructor at French Culinary Institute, she has her own really impressive cake company in NYC, Cakeline.

Banana tart - A couple of the rosettes got smushed in the fridge

In our first week of class, in addition to covering some basic lessons, we made and completed an apple tart and a banana cream tart. I brought the apple tart to work and I swear it was completely gone within 5 minutes of unwrapping it. I shared the banana tart with my family yesterday, and they approved. I'm really looking forward to all the other things I'll be learning and hope to be able to update this with pictures and stories while I'm going through these next 9 months before I graduate!