Nine months, boys and girls, that how long I was in the Pastry program at ICE, and what do I have to show for it? Everything! For starters how about my final project! A celebration cake complete with gum paste flowers! I’m quite proud of my flowers, I can’t believe my stubby fingers made them!

Going back to school (I have a Bachelor’s in Digital Design) was hard work, I was working full time, going to school 3 nights a week, losing my Sunday nights, volunteering at Food events, trailing to find my externship, writing essays on the different components of laminate dough amongst a lot other little essays that covered topics I wasn’t even aware were topics at all until school started.  Hard work, however, that paid off! I am happy as a Clam (whatever that actually means!), and the externship I chose has been great.

Ready for more cake shots? Even the back is cool!

I could talk write forever, the radio version is that this was an amazing experience, and it’s only the start, I have so much to learn still. (Like piping large shells, seriously I couldn’t pipe decent Shells if my life depended on it!)

Edit: I’d like to add that this cake’s Color Palette was inspired by Alphonse Mucha’s Reverie (below),I have been obsessed with Art Nouveau since forever!

Strawberry Mirroir! My favorite cake so far! Pretty and Delicious!

Dobostorte, so pretty I wish I had a picture of the full cake.

This was my favorite cake, taste wise, it’s the Horseradish Grill Chocolate Cake, it’s insanely good. The decorations, however, are actually the wrong use of the star tip.

The next cake is a white lemon scented cake and in case you missed it was my first cake. Please cut me some slack on my chocolate writing it was my first time, doing so.

Don’t call it a comeback
I been here for years

OK not really maybe a year?!? or so?

Whatever, lovelies, I’m back… I am halfway through Pastry School and I’ve been doing pretty good. Lucky for you (and me!) ICE‘s Pastry Student blogger not only writes great blog posts, she’s in my class! Wanna see what we’re doing? Check out the series “Life as a Pastry Student“.

We’ve made Puff Pastry (Detrempe, Beurrage and Paton, oh My!), Tarts, Pies, Pithiviers, Frangipane, Marzipan, Bretons, Brioches, Croissants, Danishes, Mille Feuille, Pain Au Chocolat and even Muffins!  Now I have to start looking for places to trail and thinking about my Externship. (ooof) I’ll let you know, boys and girls, how that goes.

ps: That pie is from ICE’s blog Diced but I made it in class.

You know, dear reader, if you ever, per chance, bring home a bunch of yummy little fallen Soufflés you made in class and you mention to delighted eaters that you wish they could have seen them fresh out of the oven, chances are they will ask you to make it fresh.
Thus becoming my first pastry school project reproduced at home, successfully too! After husband (the main instigator) got the ramekins and I bought a huge chunk of Bittersweet chocolate (way more than I needed), I was good to go.

I had a lot of fun making these, after two consecutive days of souffle making, there wasn’t that much that could go wrong, and in fact even my oven followed through!

While I don’t think I should post the recipe from my text book, I will tell you that the recipe I used was just a little different from this one. Oh and instead of 1/2 cup of coffee I used an ounce of Bourbon (I’ve been adding Bourbon to desserts a lately).

Pastry School is going by too fast! Can’t wait for tonight we will taste our Panna Cottas and Gelées!

ps: I know the writing in this post is a little janky, I am having my first (and last) sugar hangover today… I’m a little out of sorts…

It started, Party People!

School has started and am crazy happy, no matter how many Pâte de Fruits burned (it was only one batch!) and how many cornets one still has to make until they are perfect! Our chef-instructor was kind to offer my team some of her Pate de Fruit (from the demo) to take home and I have to say tasting them fresh is a delightful departure from the boxed ones.

Other than Pâte de Fruit, we’ve baked yummy Ginger Snaps, weighed a lot of different ingredients (yay Metric!) and (total middle school throw back) did a LOT of cross multiplying! Thank you Baker’s Percentage! Oh we’ve also covered sanitation and I walked into a walk ins for the first time.

I realize now how little Ms. Cherryspoon knew about Pastry as a whole, cake decorating is the very last module and that would be the topic one guesses I’d know a little more about, but this is in no way a bad thing, quite the opposite, I very much enjoyed reading about the history of Baking, starting with flatbreads going through the Middle Ages all the way to Carême.

We’ve just completed lesson five and I already feel that it’ll go by too fast.

I also feel that I should work on my French!