'Try everything.'

I can't believe how much butter we have gone through in two days. I mean, we're making A LOT of stuff, but still. I would add it up and get an exact gram count, but I'm sort of scared to. Jean-Luc did warn us that weight gain was one of the downsides to the program (/the profession in general). He loves to go around the room and sample various fresh-from-the-oven baked goods. "Try everything," he said, when I asked him if something that we'd just made was good. And then he handed me a giant sugar cookie. (Followed by a piece of oatcake, and half of a cupcake that he covered in buttercream.)

Today we finished off a lot of the things that we started yesterday. But not all. Jean-Luc forgot about the chocolate chip cookies, so I think we're going to finish them tomorrow. The puff pastry dough was rolled out, folded, rolled out, and folded again and went back in the fridge. I have a feeling we won't get to that until Friday. Any sort of laminated dough (e.g. puff pastry, croissants, etc.) is definitely not ideal for someone who wants to whip up something quickly. But now I understand what those croissant recipes were talking about when they said to fold butter into dough, roll it out, and wait. Our puff pastry dough is a "quick" one only in that we mixed the butter in at the beginning, rather than adding it to each layer of dough. I can't believe all of the things we've already learned after about four days of baking so far.

Side note: Jean-Luc started off the class with a demonstration of awesome caramelized sugar decorating techniques which was totally mesmerizing. He taught us how to caramelize sugar either "dry" (just sugar) or by making a syrup (out of sugar, glucose, and water) and then he made a lot of really cool things. He made a sugar "cage" by dripping the sugar onto the back of a greased ladle in a sort of checkered pattern, waiting for it to dry, and then gently removing it. He also added the [really hot] sugar to a piping bag and then piped a giant sugar spiral, which was flexible enough that he could pick it up, place it on top of a bottle, and it just cascaded down the sides. Then, just to top it off, he took a whisk and dipped it into the mixture and whipped it all over the place, creating thin threads of sugar (also known as spun sugar, also known as the coolest thing ever). 

The first thing we made today was our pur beurre. After rolling out the rock-hard dough from yesterday, we used our biggest cookie cutter to make giant cookie circles. Then we egg-washed the tops, made a design, and sprinkled them with sugar. I thought I knew exactly what they would look like once they were baked; they were nothing like what I expected. When J-L described it as "classic French shortbread" I didn't picture the light and fluffy cake-like texture we ended up with. I realized it's probably because I'm used to making shortbread cookies without baking powder, so they don't rise at all. They were yummy, but not my favourite. Which was the moment I realized that maybe not everything I make will be delicious to me. As long as it's delicious to someone. One of my group members didn't like anything that we made today, which was unfortunate.

After these were in the oven, we did pretty much the same thing with our oatcake dough. I thought that the other dough was hard. Then I tried to work with this one; I basically had to put all of my weight into it. Even though we did a lot today, it seemed less hectic than yesterday because most of what we were using was already prepped. Maybe I am just getting used to the hectic bakery life (doubtful). It's much easier to go from one item to the next if you don't have to clean your entire workstation and gather a whole new list of ingredients. So going from shortbread dough to oatcake dough to puff pastry dough was a nice break. Sort of. The oatcakes aren't quite finished yet because we're going to dip them in chocolate (yum) first thing tomorrow.

Two thirds into the day (morning, really), you never know what new big thing Jean-Luc is going to give you next. Today it was pound cake and Swiss buttercream icing. The lesson from making this is that I need to get a KitchenAid mixer for my apartment. Seriously. It made the whole process look effortless. Just kidding. But it did make things a lot easier, especially whipping the icing. We also used piping bags to decorate our little cakes, which I will definitely be practicing at home. The icing was SO GOOD. I may have eaten a little too much of it. One of the greatest parts of this program so far is watching Jean-Luc do really amazing things with very little effort, like piping adorable rosettes onto cupcakes.

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Today's Recipes

Quick Decoration Syrup
300 g sugar
50 g glucose
100 ml water

Pur Beurre/Shortbread/Sugar Cookies
250 g butter
250 g icing sugar
2 g salt
1 egg
50 ml milk
15 ml vanilla extract
10 g baking powder
500 g pastry flour

Pound Cake
250 g butter
225 g sugar
15 ml honey
2 g salt
250 g egg
5 ml vanilla
250 g pastry flour
3 g baking powder

Swiss Buttercream
300 g sugar
166 g egg whites
365 g butter
10 ml vanilla extract (or a pinch of vanilla powder)