B&P Final

Phase 4, Week 6, Days 26 & 27

I'm going to throw these two days into one post. For our final for Baking and Pastry we had to produce a cheese cake with a graham cracker crust, creme anglaise, and a chiffon cake with swiss meringue butter cream icing inscribed with "happy birthday" in chocolate.

For the first time during a practical I was completely relaxed and calm. Even Jeremy commented on my demeanor. I didn't freak out, get the deer in headlights look, or even get panicked. I just cooked, or baked as the case may be. Maybe I'm finally getting it and starting to feel comfortable in the kitchen. I guess it has been six months since this whole thing started.

Day one I made the cheesecake and the chiffon cake. I hadn't made the chiffon cake before, so that was a bit of a wing it as you go thing and it turned out ok. It rose appropriately in the oven and didn't fall, which was key! Some other kids had their cakes fall and it was not pretty considering they had to get three layers out of the cake and  in the end their layers were only 1/4-1/2 of an inch thick. Sadness.

Day two, I submitted the cheesecake right off the bat. Made the creme anglais and put it in the cooler to chill. All I had left to do was make icing and put together the cake. Easy. The process was very smooth. Cutting and icing the cake was good. Now it was time to make rosettes and inscribe. The rosettes were ok, not great, but ok. Inscribing on the other hand was a bit more difficult. The temperature of the chocolate was off and my practice trials were horrible. I just had to do it and stop fussing. I got a new parchment cone and more chocolate and held my breath.

CRAP! I messed up bad!!! Now what!?

Well, I paused and remembered that the chocolate would harden and I could remove it. I had plenty of time to dork around with it. I chilled the cake and  then picked off the words. Re smoothed the top and tried again, with ok results.

Grades:
Cheesecake- 10/10!
Inscription- 5/6 (spacing of letters could be better)
Cake- 8.5/10 (rosettes needed to be more consistent, needed more simple syrup on the cake layers)
Anglais- 9/10 (a bit too liquidy to hold a line on the plate)

Totally satisfied with the results. Yeah!

10 out of 10 with wonderful texture!

A pretty good cake.

!

End of the Willy Wonka Tour

Phase 4, Week 6, Day 24

Last week in Baking and Pastry. This phase has been lots of fun, fattening, and educational. But I'm ready to move back into the savory world. The world that moves a bit faster, yields quicker results, and is more forgiving.

In the night class today, no lecture. We made caramel sauce and cheesecakes. No issues with the production. Glad we are actually making this today as this is also on our final test this week and it sucks to make something for the first time ever and be graded on it. I already am doing that with the chiffon cake so I'm happy only having to go in blind with one product.

The cheesecake we made is actually wonderful, a ton of ingredients, by very good!!!! Here is the recipe:

20oz Cream cheese
7oz sugar
.4oz corn starch
1t lemon zest
3/4t vanilla
3/4t salt
4oz eggs (2 medium)
1.5oz yolk
2oz Heavy Cream
1oz milk
.25oz lemon juice
Graham cracker crust

A yummy cheesecake