"Pastry Chef Teresa"

WE'RE DONE!!! We graduated yesterday so we are all now officially Pastry Chef's! And I might add that I graduated with honors. :-)

The last four days of exam were intense - there were a lot of breakdowns in class, but in the end everything turned out really well.

I completed all four items in a timely manner, but my stand is what caused me problems. Most of my stand was made of poured sugar but with the heat and humidity it just didn't want to work. But again, in the end, it all worked out.

Unfortunately, I don't have any photo's of my stand or my items. I was so absorbed in getting it all done that I forgot to bring my camera to class and my camera phone just wouldn't do any of it justice. But, some classmates did take photo's so once I get them, I'll put them up.

As for the final judging...
There were 5 judges and 4 of us were assigned to each judge. The judge then gave each 4 students individual critique's based on taste and appearance of your items and then the look and execution of your stand.
The judges were instructed to critique based on execution of the products and technique. They had a list of the items we were each told to make, and the recipe's for all the items.
I, of course, ended up with the judge that decided to grade based on his personal taste and opinion. He graded one of my items poorly because he would've preferred almonds instead of hazelnuts and lemon instead of pineapple... even though I was instructed to make hazelnut with pineapple for the final! It was pretty unbelievable. My Chef thought the product was great so I was pretty annoyed.
Although on a brighter side, my judge told me that my Sweet Potato Brioche was PERFECT, and I quote, "The best bread I've ever tasted by either Chef or student." I was pretty psyched.

I enjoyed my first day off by sleeping till 10:30 this morning!!! (a whole 5 hrs later than I usually sleep on week days!) I'm going to just relax and pack over the next week. I fly to Chicago to be with George next Wednesday, the 25th.
I will be staging for 3 days in the pastry kitchen at TRU in Chicago during the first week I'm there. I'm pretty excited about this. For those of you that watched Top Chef this season, this is Gale Gand's restaurant. She was the Chef that judged the "Wedding Wars" episode.
I may also look into staging at Charlie Trotter's for a couple of days if possible too. I'm only in Chicago for 7 weeks so I won't be able to get a paid kitchen job while I'm out there.

Here are some pictures I have from graduation:

the ladies with the awesome Chef Jurgen David

Meg and I with Chef Diane (our level 2 Chef)

The Chef's during the graduation ceremony

I've been toque'd!

with Chef Laurie (owner of Cake Alchemy, as well as an instructor at the school)

Kathryn, Meghann and I with Chef Kir (the Executive Pastry Chef at Orso NY, as well as an instructor at the school)

the ladies with Steven

Emily & I with Chef Jurgen

Thomas in my Chef's hat!

I wonder what it will be like to not eat ridiculous amounts of sugar and chocolate every day... I'm waiting for my sugar withdrawal to kick in today.
It's also time to work off the couple of pastry pounds I gained during the program!

4...3...2...1...

The countdown begins with today being day 4 of the countdown!

This past Monday-Wednesday was spend on our Wedding cake project. The level below us comes up with a factitious wedding and we have to tailor our cake to the client. It was for a Japanese business man from the states marrying a Geisha in Japan. The cake flavor was Ginger Milk Sponge and it was filled with plum compote and a plum bavarian cream. The flowers were peonies, cherry blossoms, azalea's and something else I don't remember.
The colors were a light green, gold and pink.

I am in a very talented class - here are some pictures of the cakes. Keep in mind that these pictures (from my camera phone) don't do any of these cakes justice.

My cake:

Vivien's cake:

Emily's cake:

Kathyrn's cake:

So Yun's cake:

Meghann's cake:

Steven's cake:

Today was the first day of our final exam. We had a 2 hour written exam this morning that wasn't too bad. But the rest of the day was spent working on our practical. We were each assigned 4 items to make: a 6-in cake or an 8-in tart, a petite four, a bread item and a chocolate.

I'm making Tart Bourdaloue (pears with almond cream), Financier's, Sweet Potato Brioche rolls and Butter Caramel dipped in chocolate. We have to plan our days and make sure we have everything done and assembled on a 3-tier stand by Tuesday at 11:30 AM.

We each have to construct a stand to hold 3 of the 4 items (we're leaving off the breads because they're just not pretty). The stand can be made up of pastillage, sugar or chocolate. But we have to take into consideration the heat and humidity during this time of year. Some mediums just won't work as well as others. (Especially when the classroom's AC decides to break down in the middle of the heat wave!)
The theme the class came up with for the stand is "Hometown's". A lot of us weren't happy with this theme considering we had already voted and confirmed the theme of Superheroes. Some people complained and we re voted. Being that I'm from Pleasantville there isn't much I can do other than trees, a blue sky and picket fences... So my stand is going to be pretty uninteresting. Oh well.

On Tuesday afternoon we get judged by 4 or 5 industry experts. It's pretty intense, but exciting at the same time.

And then finally, Wednesday, June 18th is our graduation!

I fly to Chicago on Wednesday, June 25th to be with George (finally!) I need some downtime after school so it'll be nice to have a week to just relax and pack.

more Sugar & Individual desserts

Here are a couple of more pictures of when we worked with sugar:

my pretty sugar flower

I made the fish and my partner Jenny made the owl. They're made using the same template.

making some new colors with the sugar (while burning our hands)

our pretty bow!

Our sugar basket. It took us a little while to get the hang of this, but once we got it, we did really well.

Individual Desserts, Part 3

5.20: Mango Beggars Purse
ginger-sake sabayon, lychee nut sorbet

Asian Pear Spring Rolls
creme fraiche-raspberry swirl ice cream

5.21: Strudel Day

Chef Jurgen demonstrating Studel dough

Studel tasting plate

Classic Apple Strudel
vanilla ice cream

5.22: Fry Day!!!

Bomboloni
these had three different fillings: chocolate pastry cream, vanilla pastry cream and raspberry

Tropical Fruit Beignets
tamarind ice cream

Fried Apple Crepes
hard cider ice cream

5.27: Free form Soufflé's

Lemon Soufflé Pancakes
honey-lemon ice cream

Pistachio Soufflé Pancake
vanilla-peach swirl ice cream

Baked Apple with Cream Cheese Soufflé

5.29: Chef Michael Gabriel

Pavlova

Manjari chocolate Peanut Butter bar
raspberry gelle

5.30: Warm Hazelnut Cake
pink peppercorn ice cream

Fondant
vanilla raspberry swirl ice cream

We handed in our Menu Project this past Tuesday. Friday in class half of us presented our menu's to the class and received constructive criticism from the Chef and our peers. It's so interesting to see what everyone came up with as far as desserts and everyone's different menu designs.


This Tuesday-Thursday is our practical for the menu project. The Chef's chose two different desserts from everyone's menu's and we each have two days to prep everything and plate up at the end of the second day. I'll be working on this on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then Thursday and Friday is all devoted to review for our final exam.

Next week, Monday-Wednesday is devoted to making a 3-tier wedding cake, then Thursday is the first day of our final exam. Our final is a four day practical ending on Tuesday and then we graduate on Wednesday, June 18th.

The next two weeks are going to be pure hell and are going to fly by so fast!!!

bad bad blogger...

I've been a bad bad blogger by neglecting to make updates. We've been so busy with school work that I just haven't had any free time.

Below are pictures of some of the stuff we've been doing:

Marzipan fruit:

Learning to make sugar flowers with Ron Ben-Israel:

Pastillage (sugar decoration):
We each had to create a stand where the theme was "The first letter of your first or last name". Using "T" I made a tic-tac-toe stand.

Chocolate 2:

We each had to create a chocolate stand with the theme "I can't live without it":

Individual Plated Desserts 2:

Sugar Stand:

For this project we each had to bring in a picture of "art". Then we were broken into groups and decided on who's picture to create with sugar.

The next few weeks are going to be crazy. We have a huge Menu Project due the day after Memorial Day. We each have to create a dessert menu with at least eight desserts. But we also have to have a name for the place, an address, a theme, etc. We have to design and print out our menu's and hand in recipe's for all the desserts along with color diagrams of what each dessert will look like. Since we're going away I'm hoping to have it all complete by Wednesday of this week, latest.

Then we each create a 3-tier wedding cake and then we're into finals, which is a 3-4 day process. OMG, it's all going by so quickly!