Back in Action.

And we're back. Today was actually our second day back at school, but our first day in the kitchen. I sort of forgot how intense it can be with 20+ people running all over the place trying to do things quickly. I walked into at least three people and a stationary baking rack. Yeah, that happened. We are in new groups this semester so for the most part everyone is working with at least a couple of new faces. Our group started in the bread section, which is fine with me. There isn't any restaurant service this week, which means we don't have to have bread ready at an exact time, so that takes a bit of the pressure off. But we did a LOT today. My arm is sore from rolling dough into balls.

Today we made: 

Jogger Bread which is a combination of whole wheat flour and cornmeal, basically. It is a little bit denser than whole wheat bread. It is a straight dough method, so we just threw all the ingredients together and mixed them on the first speed til blended and then on the second speed for 5-7 minutes. We were making these into small rolls, so we used the divider and then rolled the pieces into balls. After they were shaped, they went in the proofer, and then they were egg-washed before going in the oven. We did them in the convection oven at 350 and they only took about 10-15 minutes. I forgot to take a picture until we had already taken them to the cafeteria, so I snapped a quick one of the two that had fallen on the floor...

 
Pretzels which were really cool to make! The dough was a straight dough method so that was easy enough. After the dough had doubled in size, we shaped them. First we used the divider and then we used 1.5 balls of dough and rolled this into a long strip. After we had rolled all of the dough into strips, we went back to the first one to make it longer, and so on. To shape the dough, we brought the ends together, twisted them around each other, and lay them flat, so it looked like what a pretzel looks like. After this, they went in the proofer. Then we made a "poaching solution" which is essentially boiling water and some other things. Once the pretzels had proofed, we put them in the poaching solution for a few seconds. The temperature of the water kills the yeast to prevent the dough from rising anymore once it goes in the oven. This results in a denser dough, rather than having a bun that just happens to be shaped like a pretzel. The process for bagels is similar as well. all of the pretzels had been soaked, we put them in the deck oven at 425 for 15 minutes (until golden brown). Immediately after they were out of the oven, we brushed them with butter and sprinkled our choice of topping on them (we did coarse salt, cinnamon and sugar, and poppy seeds). 

English Muffins which we all prepared but only half the group actually got to see the cooking/baking process. The rest of us will see how to do it later in the week. The dough again is a straight dough method and it is mixed on the second speed for a little longer than usual. Since you mix it for so long, we added cold liquid instead of liquid at 28 degrees, so the dough takes a little longer to rise than usual. After the dough has doubled in size, we used the divider and put two pieces together and made a ball. We rolled these out into flat, large-ish circles, and then sprayed them with water on either side and put them in a bowl filled with cornmeal. Then, we put them in the proofer, and once they were proofed, a couple group members went to cook them on the flat-top grill in a different kitchen. 

Scones were not as easy to make as I was hoping they would be. First we mixed the dry ingredients, then added the wet ingredients, and then added our fruit. We had a choice between blueberries and cranberries, and I think I was the only who used only blueberries (everyone else either did just cranberries or half and half). As I was mixing the dough, I realized that the blueberries were a terrible mistake. Because they were frozen, once I started mixing them, all of the juices seeped out and my dough literally turned purple (as did my hands...and the table...). I timidly went over to Jean-Luc and asked him if it was okay that my dough was violet... he said it was fine (and blamed the frozen blueberries). Once they were done, they weren't actually all that purple, and they tasted pretty good. So, don't be fooled by appearances, I guess. They weren't our best product though. 

It felt like a pretty intense first day back and I think the week is only going to get busier... 

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Today's Recipes 

Joggar Bread

Pretzels

English Muffins

Scones

Great semester everyone. Now get out.

And that's a wrap! The last day of class flew by, especially the hour we had for our piping test. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Our group somehow had way more to do before we got to start prepping for the test, so we got maybe a three minute break (rather than 30 minutes) before we started it.

First we made a mixed berry topping for our cheesecakes, which was basically heat up frozen berries, sugar, and water; add corn starch and water; fold in mixed fresh berries; place in the blast freezer to cool. After that, we made some sweetened whipped cream to do a crumb layer on our caramel cakes. The tricky thing about icing cakes with whipped cream, is the more you try to fix and smooth out imperfections, the softer it gets, making it super hard to fix anything. Sigh. After we were "done" we put the cakes back in the freezer.

Then, we got our cheesecakes and made more whipped cream (we went through a lot of whipped cream today) and made rosettes around the edges and filled the centre with our mixed berry topping. There were a lot of cakes because we each made two and then there were two extras that someone had forgotten about. So. Many. Rosettes.
 

 Next, we got our caramel cakes out again and did a final layer of whipped cream, a border of rosettes, and craquelin squares around the bottom edges. I wasn't super happy with my rosettes but I was rushing and our whipped cream was a little on the soft side and everyone around us was already ready for the test / on break. Normally, the cakes would have crazy hazelnut topping on them, but we didn't have time, so we are going to learn to do them next semester. The hazelnuts are on big toothpicks and then dipped in sugar and then left at the edge of the table so the sugar drips off and then once it hardens, you're left with hazelnuts with a thin strand of sugar sticking up from it and those are spread around the top of the cake. It's pretty cool. But the cakes still looked good without them. I managed to make the top of at least one of mine pretty smooth, which at that point, was good enough for me.

After this, we basically cleared off our table and got ready for the test. It wasn't AS bad as I thought it would be and there were only a few moments where I felt super rushed. I made a couple of the best cornets I've ever made and I think that helped, especially since they were bigger than mine normally are, which prevented me from having to fill up another one eight billion times. I think overall I was pretty happy with my designs. Funnily enough, in the last five minutes, I decided to redo a couple of the designs I'd done already and they turned out better than when I was going a lot slower. I had eleven good ones in the end so I left the eleventh on the tray... just in case. One of the really hard designs to get that actually ended up okay got smudged when a draft of wind (inside?!) blew it into another strip. CHOCOLATE IS THE WORST. But it was over and that was enough. The feeling of placing my tray on the rack with all of the other completed trays was like no other feeling [I tried my best not to look at anyone else's designs to compare mine to theirs, especially not the ones that were face up in the garbage that looked way better than mine but were ones that other people threw out because their other ones were better...what? Uh...]

After the test, we did a MASSIVE clean-up of basically everything in the kitchen. It literally went from 11 a.m. until almost 12:30. It was intense. And then we gathered for a few last announcements (our marks will be posted on Wednesday; Jean-Luc will be in next week for people who want to practice stuff for the skills competition; try not to forget everything you have learned this semester; etc). I think Jean-Luc finished the semester by saying something like, "Great semester guys. I really enjoyed it. Now get the hell out of here."

And that was that.

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Today's Recipes

New York Style Cheesecake
Mixed Berry Topping
Chocolate Hazelnut Cake 
Craquelin 

Carrots, caramel, and cutting cakes

One more day of class. Still trying to wrap my head around that. There's no way we're finishing everything in our booklet. We really only have until 9:30 to finish any stuff in our rotation and then our piping test is at 10. I finally spent some time in the decoration room working on my piping skills and let's just say, this is not a test I am going to ace. I am mostly aiming for "not totally awful" or "that looks almost good" and so on. We'll see.

The first thing we did today was make cream cheese icing for the carrot cakes we made yesterday. All we did was soften the butter in the KitchenAid with a paddle, then we added icing sugar, then we added softened cream cheese and kept mixing until there were no lumps or clumps of butter left. After this, we took our carrot cakes out of the fridge, took them out of the cake rings, and cut them into two "even" layers. I used to be pretty okay at cutting cakes into layers, but that skill has somehow vanished entirely from my repertoire. Come back! We cut so many cakes today. After our cakes were cut somewhat evenly, we spread the cream cheese icing between the layers and did a crumb layer and then put them back in the fridge.

Next, we took out our chocolate hazelnut cakes -- we each had a small one and a big one -- and cut those into three layers. We cut out strips of acetate to line the cake rings we had baked them in with, and then placed the bottom layer back in the cake ring. I prepped some soaking syrup, which we would be using later. Then we started on the caramel cream for the inside of the cake. I think I was at an advantage here only because I made a caramel sauce for my Christmas Buffet tart and I also made a mousse cake, and this was a caramel mousse, basically. First, we whipped our cream and put it in the fridge so it would be ready when we needed it. Then, we did a dry caramelization of the sugar, added hot cream, and then added butter. To this, we added hot milk and gelatin (dissolved in the milk). Then, once the caramel mixture was around room temperature (e.g. not warm enough to melt the whipped cream) we folded the whipped cream in, starting with a third, and then the rest. We divided the cream between each of the two layers of both cakes and brushed each layer with soaking syrup before adding the cream. These then went in the blast freezer and later we transferred them to the regular freezer and hopefully, we will finish these off tomorrow.

At this point, it was already time for our break. Once we came back, we finished off our carrot cakes. We did a final layer of icing (softening it up a little in a KitchenAid first) and coated the sides of the cake with sliced toasted almonds, which was surprisingly terrifying. Mostly because we had to lift the cake and hold it in our hands while we pressed the almonds on... I feel like there might have been a better way, but apparently this way was the "easiest." After the almonds were on, we then coloured 3/4 of our leftover icing orange and 1/4 of it green to make little -- you guessed it -- carrots around the edge of our cake. Although I still lack confidence in my cake decorating / piping skills, making the carrots wasn't as awful as I thought it would be. In fact, it was kind of fun. I think I am getting better at adjusting the pressure on the piping bag when I am trying to create specific shapes. Once these were done, two went to the cafeteria and two went into the fridge to save for restaurant service tonight.

The carrot cake was actually the only item we finished today, so that's it for pictures. The last thing we made was craquelin for the chocolate hazelnut cake. Craquelin is basically brown sugar, glucose, butter, and sliced almonds. The first three are heated on the stove until melted, then the almonds are folded in. This mixture is then spread on a baking tray lined with parchment paper then baked at around 350 in the deck oven for 7-10 minutes (until golden brown). Once the craquelin was done, we greased our chef's knives and cut 1.5 inch squares of craquelin. We made the same thing in the first time in the restaurant section, but we baked it in a silpat mould and had little craquelin rings instead of squares. It basically tastes like brittle or any sort of caramelized nut. As the craquelin gets cooler, it is more likely to break when you cut it, so we had to make our squares quickly before it cooled down too much. These we then set aside for tomorrow.

After we had everything cleaned up, I relocated to the decor room to practice my piping in preparation for the test tomorrow. I don't know if I'm quite ready for it, but I think there's only so much practice you can do the day before... or at least, that's the theory that I'm going with. I am better at it than I thought I was, but I'm not as good at it as I'd like to be. It's funny because the designs that look super hard and intricate are sometimes way easier than the ones that look very simple. I might make up some on-the-spot designs tomorrow, because then at least there is no template to compare it to... I should probably not have a cup of coffee before the test, because my hands tend to shake in situations like this, and I'm sure the caffeine would not help.  After a couple hours in the decor room, I decided to call it a day. I sort of wish I had stayed after class more often, because there's something kind of nice about being one of four or five people around and having no time constraints on what you are doing. Especially when that involves chocolate.

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Today's Recipes 

Carrot Cake
Cream Cheese Icing 
Chocolate Hazelnut Cake
Caramel Cream
Craquelin

Apple of my eye

First day of the last week... I have no idea where the time went. I'm actually still looking for April 2013. But that's a different story.

The first thing we did today was work on our puff pastry from the last section. We cut it in two and rolled each piece out to a square that was the length and width of 3/4 of a rolling pin. Then we took our largest cookie cutter and cut out as many circles as we could out of the squares of dough, putting them in the blast freezer for a few minutes after they were cut out. After this, we rolled them out into more oval shapes. We egg washed the bottom edge, placed a spoonful of apple compote in the centre, and folded the other half of the pastry over, and pressed down the edges. We used the not-sharp edge of a slightly smaller cookie cutter to press on the dough enough to seal in the filling. Then we flipped them over onto a baking tray and egg washed them. After this, they went back in the fridge to rest.

The next thing we did was actually part of our new section [pastry]: a chocolate hazelnut caramel cake, but only the cake part, which was almost like a sponge or genoise. The main difference is that the egg yolks and the egg whites are mixed separately, which creates even more volume. It also required a LOT of egg yolks -- 250 ml per person. First, we heated the egg yolks and sugar to room temperature and then whisked until light, then scraped this into a bowl. After washing out our bowls to ensure there was no egg yolk left in them, we heated up the egg whites and sugar to room temperature and then whisked those just until stiff peaks started to form. This mixture was then folded into the yolk mixture, followed by the sifted flour, cocoa powder, and ground hazelnuts, and then the melted butter. Once everything was folded in, we poured the batter into a medium and small cake ring and baked them in the deck oven at 350 for about 40 minutes.

We don't actually have class on Friday now, so we have one less day of this section and since our piping test is on Thursday instead of Friday, we actually have one and a half days less than we thought in the semester. So, Jean-Luc wanted us to get a lot of the cakes baked off today so that we would have time to decorate them tomorrow. So, next we made the carrot cake. It was fairly simple, aside from the fact that we had to peel and grate a lot of carrots. Luckily, the KitchenAid has a carrot grating attachment. The mixing method for this carrot cake is the "muffin method" which means that you mix your dry ingredients and mix your wet ingredients, and then you add your wet ingredients to your dry ingredients and mix it all together. Once that was done, we folded in the carrots, and then poured these into cake rings with foil on the bottom so the batter wouldn't spill out from underneath. Then they went in the deck oven at 350 for also about 40 minutes.

The last cake of the day was the New York Style Cheesecake, which I was vaguely familiar with, because I made little ones for the Chocolate Affaire. First we mixed our graham cracker crumbs and melted butter together and pressed that into our parchment-paper covered springform pan. The instructions for the cream cheese mixture were pretty straightforward; mix cream cheese, sugar, and cornstarch just until blended; add eggs; add sour cream and vanilla. The mixture still looked pretty lumpy when we were done, but it's also important not to overmix cheesecake, because the more air you incorporate into the batter, the more likely it is to rise and crack in the oven. Also, the lumps of cream cheese would melt in the oven. Each of us made two small cheesecakes. We cooked these in the deck oven at 300 for about 40 minutes as well, placing a tray filled with water between the two trays of cheesecakes in the oven.

Once the cheesecakes were in the oven, we pulled out our apple turnovers so we could bake them off. First, we egg washed them again, and then we took the back of a knife and made diagonal lines going one way and then another, creating a sort of criss cross pattern along the puff pastry dough. We baked these in the convection oven at 350 for about 15 minutes, until golden brown. Then, as soon as they came out of the oven, we glazed them with a little bit of decoration syrup, just so they could have a bit of shine. They were SO good. The apple turnovers are the only photographic evidence I have from today, because they are the only thing that we finished. Once they were done, we put all but one tray in baskets and took them out to the cafeteria. The last tray will be for the restaurant service tonight.

And, after that, it was time to clean up. I'm not sure if we'll get through everything in the section, but we have done some of the stuff in the booklet already (e.g. the pumpkin cake). Also there are a lot of different cheesecakes, so maybe we will opt to not do one or two of them. Jean-Luc said that if we don't manage to finish everything then we could finish some things off at the beginning of next semester. Honestly, I can't believe half this course is practically over. I know that I have gained so much knowledge, but still...

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Today's Recipes

Chocolate Hazelnut Cake
Carrot Cake
New York Style Cheesecake
Puff Pastry
Apple Compote

One week to go.

Today was slightly more relaxed, because we were coming off the Christmas Buffet adrenaline and we also needed time to do a good clean-up and it was Friday and Jean-Luc tends to keep it slightly lighter on Friday, which is nice.

The first thing we did was do another fold in the puff pastry we've been working on since the beginning of our section. All we had left do was a double fold, but it wouldn't turn out as good if we rolled it out and baked it off on the same day, so we're going to finish it off on Tuesday.

After this, we got out the lemon bar sweet dough we made the other day and rolled it out to slightly larger than the size of a small baking tray. We greased the tray and put parchment paper on it, and then placed the dough on top, cutting it to about halfway up the sides of the tray. Then we docked it and baked it in the convection oven at about 350 for about 10 minutes. Then, we made the cream for the lemon bars, which was similar to a pastry cream, except instead of milk there was a lot of lemon juice. The method was basically put everything in a pot and stir constantly, taking it off the heat once it starts to boil. We then spread this mixture onto our pre-baked dough and baked until the filling was set. They were very, very lemony. I don't actually know whether or not I liked them. Or if lemon bars are something that I like in general.

Next, we made the batter for a hazelnut chocolate coffee cake, except we were actually out of hazelnuts, so it was a pecan chocolate coffee cake. First, we creamed the butter and sugar, then added the eggs and vanilla, the sifted dry ingredients, and then finally we folded in the chocolate chunks and pecan pieces. After everything was mixed in, we piped the batter into individual cups, which made a bunch of adorable little cake loaves. We baked them in the deck oven at 350 for about 25 minutes.

The last thing we did today was make an apple compote that we will be using for our puff pastry on Tuesday. I think we're making apple turnovers. This recipe required peeling and dicing 1 kg each of red and green apples, so my hand was sort of frozen in the peeling position afterwards. Once the apples were peeled, the instructions were pretty simple... put everything on a pot and put it on the stove over medium-ish heat, stirring every once in a while. The apples sort of cook in their own juices and it took about 20 minutes for them to cook to the right consistency.

And that concludes the second round of the viennoiserie -- aside from what we have to finish off on Tuesday. Next week, pastry AND our last week of school...!

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Today's Recipes

Lemon Bars
Pecan Chocolate Coffee Cake
Puff Pastry
Apple Compote

"It's never a disaster."

It is exhilarating, intimidating, exciting, and exhausting to be surrounded by the amount of talent that is in the pastry lab on a daily basis. I am constantly impressed by the ideas everyone has and the creative ways in which they express them. When we have projects, like baking for the Christmas Buffet, where we really get to do whatever we want, you really see so many different strengths in the classroom -- I think it's so cool.

So, today was the second Christmas Buffet, so it was the other half of the class's moment of glory. The day felt really intense, but we got it all done and everything looked delicious in the end. It was getting there that felt really crazy and also the cleaning up afterwards. The overall serving and standing at the dessert tables wasn't too bad and the people who I ended up serving were all really friendly and appreciative and complimentary. So that was really nice.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. I got to the lab around 7 a.m. because I wanted to get a bit of an early start. The first thing I did was crush the almond nougatine into smaller pieces with my rolling pin. Then I warmed up my salted caramel from yesterday so I could fill my tart. After I poured it in and swirled it around a bit to get it relatively even, I put it back in the fridge to chill.

Then, I decided to work on the royal icing snowflakes. Before I got started with the royal icing, I helped a group member cover her cake in the most amazing blue fondant. Seriously, the colour was beautiful. She missed the fondant cakes for the Festival of Trees, so she made the most adorable Charlie Brown and Snoopy lemon chiffon cake for the buffet. It was delicious and awesome.

I made a few cornets and mixed a little water into the royal icing til I got the right consistency and I tried piping a few snowflakes... and basically thought, "Oh, I am better at this in my head than I am in real life." So, five attempted "snowflakes" in, I crumbled up the piece of parchment paper, threw out the cornet, put the royal icing back in the fridge, and decided that these decorations were not the best use of my time.

With that decision behind me, I went back to my tart, which I think was my favourite dessert that I made for the buffet. It was actually surprisingly simple but I really liked the flavour pairings and I didn't have to pipe anything either. The next step for the tart was just heating up the chocolate ganache a little and then pouring it into the tart on top of the caramel. Before the ganache set, I sprinkled the nougatine pieces over it and then put it in the fridge. It felt nice to be completely done one of my three desserts.

Unfortunately, the cakes weren't as easy as the tart... alas. Maybe if I ever open a bakery, I should only do tarts. I think this could work. Totally. One of my main problems with cakes is that I am apparently awful at making Swiss buttercream. Seriously. I can't seem to get the right texture. The only time that the texture was actually right was when someone else from my group was helping me with it. I just don't know what I keep doing wrong. The other problem was that without the royal icing snowflakes, I had to come up with a new idea for my peppermint cake and I didn't have a solid idea for my chai cake either. So, this is pretty much when the stress started.

I tried to make a batch of Swiss buttercream and failed miserably so I made another batch. It could have been that I tried to add eggnog to the first batch, but I think I just did it really wrong. The second batch wasn't quite right but it was still tasty, so I went with it. The peppermint cake already had a crumb coat on it, so I just did a final layer of icing and then put it in the blast freezer so it could harden before I did anymore. For some reason, I did the top layer white instead of red (er... pink) so you could see the red through the white... I don't know why I did this, but I think it was because I just didn't want to colour any more icing. Or because I thought the white would completely cover it. Or I was going for a marble effect. We'll go with that last one. Yeah.

After this was the moment of truth... time to see if my chai mousse had set. I took it out of the fridge and immediately took it out of the cake ring (it slid right out!) and removed the acetate. The mousse was set (!) but a little soft, so I put it in the blast freezer just while I was making more buttercream. Ugh, so much buttercream. At first I thought that I could just do an icing sugar and butter buttercream, but someone else did that and Jean-Luc told us he didn't like the taste of it and we should use the skills we've learned and the buttercreams we know how to make now taste so much better. (The key phrase there is "know how to make"...) So, I made another batch of Swiss buttercream (sigh). This time, I had someone helping me, so it turned out okay. We had to stop and heat it up again at one point (I don't understand!) but then it was a good texture for spreading. I just needed to do a crumb coat on my mousse cake and then get it back in the freezer. I was trying to be very careful while icing it, because it seemed like it would be a delicate cake. I didn't want the mousse to start seeping out or anything.

As I was doing this, I was also trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do on my peppermint cake. I decided to try a piping technique that I found while browsing the Internet last night that, of course, I'd never tried before. Because, what did I have to lose at that point, really? So, I used some red food colouring and made half of my buttercream red and left the other half white. Then, I piped dots of buttercream around the edge of the cake and used my palette knife to smush them down a little. Then I piped a smaller circle slightly overlapping the smushed parts of the first circle and smushed those down as well. It sort of looks like petals. I did alternating red and white ones and it ended up looking pretty cool. Not bad for a first attempt. The bottom of the cake looked a little sad though, so I wanted to pipe just a border of dots. That didn't really work because the buttercream was way too runny for that. So, I had to use the buttercream I had done for my other cake, which was a slightly different colour (for some reason) than the other white... so, the bottom of the cake continued to look a little sad. I didn't even pipe these... another group member did it for me, because my attempts were failing. BUT the pattern on top of the cake turned out well... so... there you go.

The last thing I had to do was figure out my chai cake and what I was doing to decorate it. I put the final buttercream icing on top, and then someone else at my table was using whipped cream to make rosettes on their cake and I wish I had done a whipped cream coating instead of a buttercream... but she had some left, so I decided to just use that for rosettes to pipe around the top edge of the cake. I initially wanted to do maybe a caramel sauce or something in the centre, then I thought I could sprinkle something (nougatine?) in it, and then I decided that since I had it anyway, I could just pour some chocolate ganache in the middle. I was going to sprinkle nougatine on top of that, but I had already given it away to someone else to sprinkle on top of a cheesecake. So, I decided to use the ganache skills we learned for our banana cake and make a wave pattern in the ganache. It wasn't as great as the one in the banana cake, because the ganache had already kind of set and I kept getting whipped cream in the ganache and ganache in the whipped cream. But, it turned out okay. I opted out of doing a bottom border on this cake because I just wanted to be done and I was out of whipped cream. What might have been better is if I had done the chocolate ganache on the peppermint cake and something else -- maybe the caramel -- on my chai cake, but that's okay. Some decisions are made for you. [Based on what ingredients you have left.]

Once everything was done, we transferred our creations onto a variety of serving dishes, including slabs of slate, mirrors, glass plates, regular plates, upside down trays, and a bunch of other things. Moving fragile cakes all over the place is not my favourite. I blame the doilies. I only put one under one of my cakes. We had a cheesecake casualty, but Jean-Luc saved the day and magically averted disaster. He also said, "It's never a disaster; things can always be fixed," which I will have to keep in mind more often. After all of our stuff for the buffet was on serving dishes and ready to go, we checked to make sure that everything on our tables was in place and changed into clean uniforms. [Even though I feel like coming out of the kitchen covered in chocolate and buttercream is way more authentic...]

Everything ready to go!

At around 11:30, the buffet guests started walking into the restaurant, and once people had been seated, we started bringing our desserts in and setting them up on the tables. There were a lot of desserts. Once the desserts were set up on the table, our groups split in half and half of us from each group stayed at the buffet for the first shift and the rest of us went back to the kitchen to clean up. The more we could clean up now, the less we had to do after the buffet was over. We also took breaks to look through the windows into the restaurant (the most awkwardly placed windows) and see if our desserts were getting eaten. The cakes that didn't have any slices taken or the trays that didn't have cookies taken were definitely blows to our respective egos. But at the end of the buffet, I don't think there was anything that hadn't been touched at all.

Eventually, the rest of us went out to take our turn at serving. It consisted of a lot of repeating what each dessert was, so I'm glad we went over that before we started serving everyone. If I were at this buffet, I would be totally overwhelmed and not know what to choose at all. I would probably just eat a cookie and leave it at that. There was so much to choose from and the plates were very small. Some people had two plates; some people came back for seconds; and some people just took tiny pieces of a select number of things.

Our group's table. [All of these photos are blurry.]

And again.

A very weirdly lit picture of the other group's table.

And again.

Awesome Charlie Brown & Snoopy Cake. [I did not make this, but I love it.]

It was really great when people came back for seconds or to tell us how good something was... I was secretly worried that everything I made tasted awful. So, I'm glad it didn't. One of the gentlemen came back for seconds of the salted caramel and chocolate tart because it was "perfect" and one woman said, "I just couldn't get past your cakes. You should be very proud." And countless people told all of us as they were leaving how much they enjoyed everything and how great it all looked.

Once we were done, we took everything back to the kitchen and did a speed transferring into containers and washing dishes, because we had very little time to get out of the lab before the second year's got there and to salvage anything that we wanted to keep. The cookies were good to keep for the evening service and my peppermint cake (which only had one slice cut out of it, sadly) would be served in the evening as well. But other than that, the leftovers either had to be taken or thrown out. Someone got a giant stack of styrofoam containers for everyone and we all just went for it. I ended up taking the last slice of a delicious lime chiffon pie and about a quarter of my chai cake. After looking at dessert all afternoon, I couldn't really think about eating much of it.

After it was all over, I felt like I could have had five litres of water and we were all totally exhausted. But I have to say, I think everyone did a really good job. Our group today and the group yesterday made some awesome looking desserts. There may have been some cracked cakes and curdled buttercream along the way, but in the end, we pulled through and it all came together!

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Today's Recipes

Salted Caramel and Chocolate Tart
Chocolate Sponge with Peppermint Buttercream 
Vanilla Sponge with Chai Mousse  

Flavour Country

So, today was our prep day for the Christmas Buffet. First, we actually had to make a batch of whole wheat rolls and another group had to make a batch of white rolls, so that they would be ready for the restaurant. It was okay, because I had no idea where to start anyway. I had to make a list with all of the things I had to accomplish. It was a very long list. I'm not sure if it helped me figure out where to start, but I just went with it.

I started with the cake base for my buttercream cake so I could get it out of the way and so it could have enough time to cool down before I piped it. I was initially going to do a genoise, but I went with a chocolate sponge instead. I'm not really sure why. But there you go.

While the cake was baking, I made one of the fillings for my tart - salted caramel. I wasn't really sure what I was doing but I found a recipe online that seemed reasonable and I went with that. I caramelized some sugar and glucose and then added in cream, salt, and eventually, butter and mixed til it was all incorporated. I think it'll be really good in the tart.

Before I could move onto the next filling, it was time to shape our rolls and put them in the proofer. We didn't have to do clover rolls this time, so it was a lot quicker. We power-shaped two giant batches of rolls between three to four of us. Then they all had to be egg-washed and put in the proofer. At some point, we also transferred them to the oven. And then they were sent to the restaurant. I basically lost track of them after they were all shaped, aside from making sure that they weren't burnt.

Then I could do my next tart filling, a chocolate ganache. At first I was going to do just a dark chocolate ganache, but I decided that since the caramel was so salted, a slightly sweeter chocolate ganache might be better. So, I used the same recipe as the brownie ganache we did yesterday. The ganache was easy enough to make. Melt chocolate; add warm cream; mix in; add butter; mix in. Once the fillings were done, I decided I might as well make my tart, so I would have something to fill them into. I softened up the sweet dough, rolled it out, and placed it into a greased tart pan. Then it went in the deck oven until it was evenly browned.

One of the other group members couldn't do much stuff until tomorrow, so she kindly offered to help with anything I had to do. It took me a while to figure out what tasks I had to pass on, but eventually she helped me a lot by making a batch of royal icing (that I will hopefully have time to use for snowflake cake decorations) and a batch of nougatine for on top of my tart. So, that was awesome and two more things to check off my list.

Next, I made the peppermint buttercream for my chocolate sponge. I wasn't quite sure how much peppermint extract to add, but I think it turned out well. When I was cutting my cake into three, however, I totally hacked it into a million pieces... not really, but I did possibly the worst cake slicing job I've done so far this year. NO RUSHING is what I have to keep telling myself. I think it'll be okay once the cake sets a little more. The buttercream will act like glue, right? I wanted to do sort of a red and white swirl pattern, by using red food colouring and putting the red and white buttercream on either side of the piping bag, but that didn't work at all. So, I just did one layer red, one white, and then the top layer red. The red wasn't so much red as pink. Or "light red" but that's okay. I haven't decided what I'm going to do for the final layer; I thought about fondant and I thought about just doing icing. But I do think I want to do a red fondant. I might just do a red and white icing on top with snowflakes. We'll see.

Once that cake was done, I was sort of losing steam, but I figured I should probably get the mousse out of the way, so that I would know it was set for tomorrow. Especially since it was something I hadn't made before. I warmed up about a cup of cream and then steeped two tea bags in it and added a bunch of cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg. I wasn't really following a recipe at this point, just going by taste / smell / instinct, I guess. I also added one gelatin leaf into the hot cream and stirred til it dissolved. While this was steeping, I whipped about 500 ml of whipped cream to a soft peak. Then, once the chai mixture had cooled a little, I poured it into a bowl and folded the whipped cream into it. As I was doing this, I realized that I should probably just pour it into my cake now, because assuming that it sets (fingers crossed!!!!), I want it to set in my cake and not in a bowl, obviously. So, even though we had to start cleaning up in basically five minutes, I decided to cut my cake into three layers, trim it down to the size of the cake ring I was using, and fill it with mousse. Man, I really hope it sets. It tasted really good though, so that's something. As I was leaving campus, I wondered whether it should have been in the freezer and not the fridge, but I guess I'll figure that out tomorrow.

Speaking of which, there were a bunch of things that I'd wanted to do today that I didn't get done, such as the royal icing snowflakes. But I think I will do that first thing tomorrow. Actually, first I will pour the caramel into my tart and let it chill to set. Then I will do my snowflakes. Then make the buttercream for my mousse cake and do a crumb coat. After that, I will hopefully be able to pour the chocolate onto my tart and add the nougatine and potentially some sea salt. Then, the buttercream on the mousse cake will have hardened enough to do the final icing decorations, whatever those will be. Which leaves the peppermint cake -- add a final layer of buttercream (or fondant) and the royal icing snowflakes, which ideally will have dried by then. I think I can get it all done... I hope.