Pastry Cream Blissfulness.

Day 4

Friday class....nobody likes those. BLEH and you can almost guarantee a good portion of the class is skipping (here at Jwu we don't believe in Fridays). We also had a "sub" chef today and will also on Monday and Tuesday. Lecture lasted longer than usual on topics we all have heard several times before, and in greater depth during baking science.

Two words, Pastry Cream.
For those of you who have never come across this before (or at least a well made one). It is absolute heaven. It's like the best vanilla pudding you will ever have...buttery and decadent, spotted with vanilla bean. And most pastry students are obsessed with it.
Chef gave us a demo on pastry cream (which we all already knew how to make...)

Pastry Cream Mise en Place

Chef Demo

Then Chef Demoed how to core and prepare a pear for poaching.
Here's mine...

The Poaching liquid was equal parts water and red wine, with sugar, cinnamon sticks and a few cloves. It smelled wonderful.

After they boiled in the liquid for a while, and came out a blush pink, we cooled the pear and the liquid and stored them together in the fridge to marry together further over the weekend.

We also had to make Carrot cookies....which were odd to say the least, and ended up being like little bite size pieces of bland carrot cake.

We also finished our butter cookies by dipping them in tempered chocolate, you should hear the snap on that chocolate!


And on a slightly savory note, our Chef took all the potatoes we spent all that time practicing with on the first day of class, and made us mashed potatoes. They were gooooood.

Fundamentals Skills and Techniques, First Days in Review

My first segment of the spring trimester is Fundamental Skills and Techniques.

Day 1- Knife Skills


Our Chef demoed how to correctly sharpen a knife as well as some "knife skills" including several versions of the dice and a few other cuts. For over TWO hours, we all hacked away at our apples, carrots and potatoes. And that was it. Exciting, I know...


Day 2-Chocolate Piping

We had no demos this day, instead we tempered chocolate, using the vaccination method, which for those of you who do not know, is you melt untempered chocolate to the correct temperature (for dark 120 F ish) and then cool the melted chocolate with tempered chocolate pieces (for dark 90 F). And we practiced not only our chocolate tempering skills, but also our parchment bags, which I find myself having a knack for. But most importantly we practiced our piping.

Now piping chocolate may seem easy peasy, but if you have ever attempted it, you know what a pain it can be. Many problems can arise, the line isn't thin enough, the chocolate hardens too quickly, the line isn't straight, so on and so on. ALL class long we piped chocolate.
Needless to day, it was very tedious.

Day 3- Finally Baking!

A more eventful day, the kind most of us pastry students are used to. Chef demoed how to clarify butter, which if you have ever mass produced Stollen (a holiday bread that gets a generous coating of clarified butter and then sugar after baking) like I have, you know how to clarify butter and LOTS of it. And then he showed us how to saute apples, yawn...

As far as production goes, My partner and I made Apple Cupcakes (that weren't so "spiced").


The finished apple cakes were tender, slightly sweet, with little to no "spice" flavor (the recipe called for a pinch...) and tender slightly tart pieces of diced granny smith apples. And a caramelized top. Great with cream cheese frosting ( I must admit!).


And of course, the classic standby Butter Cookies. Piped out in various shapes, some dotted with raspberry jam, delicious! Tender and buttery little cookies.