Summing up 2 months of classes in 1 blog post....

Is so not going to happen. I thought I could do it.... but the pictures alone would be too much for one. I'll try for two and see how it goes :)

First, we have pies and tarts (and yes, I realize this would have been helpful to have prior to Thanksgiving, but since I clearly couldn't get my act together before then, there is now a whole year to perfect our pies before the next Thanksgiving!). To (try to) keep it brief, I'll give you some really good tips and a few pretty pictures :)

 pecan pie with hand cut leaves and whipped cream rosettes

The key to any great pie starts with the crust... and to get the perfect crust, there are a few essential things to do. (Read: these tips are not optional, as I quickly learned in class). 

A simple way to remember how to make pie dough is: 3, 2, 1. Three parts flour, two parts butter, 1 part ice cold liquid. Here's a good formula that will make three 8-ounce crusts (you can freeze the dough). 

Basic Pie Dough: 

12 oz pastry flour

8 oz cold butter (or shortening.. shortening makes a flaky crust, butter has better flavor)

4 oz ice cold water (or milk, if you want a richer dough)

.25 oz salt 

1. Get all the ingredients ready. 

2. Mix the salt in with the water, then put the water in the freezer while you work. 

3. Sift the flour into a large bowl. 

4. Cut the butter into the flour. 

5. Pour the salted water into the bowl and gently toss the ingredients together until a sticky, lumpy dough has formed. 

6. Cut the dough (DON'T pull it apart) to weigh three 8-oz pieces, then wrap them and put them into the fridge. 

Now, those tips: 

First, use COLD butter and ICE COLD water. Really. You don't want that butter getting warm, either from your hands or from "cold" straight from the tap water. The reason being is that you want the butter to melt when it's in the oven, trapped between flour particles, so that it makes the dough flakey and delicious. If your butter gets warm, it mixes in with the flour too much, making the dough tough and chewy. 

Second, use pastry flour. It can be hard to find, but never fear- you can make it on your own! Just use a ratio of 60% bread flour to 40% cake flour (make sure you sift the two flours together). Pastry flour is perfect to pie crusts, because it has juuuuuust enough gluten to hold together, but not so much that its tough to work with. 

Third, mix the dough with your hands. Not only is it wonderfully cathartic, but you can really feel how the dough is coming together. To cut in the butter, first chop it into fairly even chunks around an inch square. Plop the chunks into the flour, then use your hands to squish and spread the butter into flakes. Kind of press your palms together, then push one hand forward and pull the other one back. To make the perfect top & bottom crust, aim for the majority of the butter flakes being about quarter-sized. 

butter chunks

cutting in the butter

the finished consistency (before adding water)

Fourth, give the dough plenty of time to rest. It gets tired getting made, and needs some time to relax in the fridge before it's ready to get rolled out. Really though, put the dough in the fridge for at least 4 hours before you plan on rolling it out and baking with it. (It's perfectly fine to leave it overnight too). If you shape the dough into a disc before you put it into the fridge to cool, it will make life sooooo much easier when it comes to rolling it out. 

Fifth, when you finally do roll out the dough, you will have the urge to ball it back up and roll it out again, like you can do with sugar cookies. This is a baaaaaaadddd idea. Don't do it. The beautiful dough you just made will go from baking to a perfectly flakey crust to a lumpy, tough crust. Roll it out just one time, fixing any little imperfections or cracks by pressing the dough together with your fingers as you go along. 

Side note... I just got this new rolling pin from Williams-Sonoma (thanks Mama!!), and I am INLOVEWITHIT. I didn't believe it would be as awesome as it is, but man, I will never use another rolling pin. Ever. Here's a link for it: coolest rolling pin ever. 

Oh! A tip about apple pie: peel, core and slice the apples (about 1/4" slices), then toss them with the spices and flour in a large bowl and let them sit in the fridge for an hour-ish (a little more than that is okay too). This lets a lot of the juice come out of the apples, which in turn makes the pie less likely to be a runny, juicy mess after the first slice is cut. When you place the apples in the crust, pick them up out of the bowl, so that you leave the juice behind in the bowl, not your pie. Trust me... I'll be doing this from now on! The apples turn out like this: 

Okay... more tips and formulas to come... but at least its a start! :) 

Happy Baking! 

Eclairs totally look like they got bitten by a vampire...

... well one with huge jaws anyway. It's true! Exhibit A:

I know you might only be able to see one "bite mark" here, but there are two. Filling an eclair is one of the funnest things ever, I've decided. After making your dual holes in the bottom of your eclair, and filling your pastry bag with thick, creamy pastry cream (and an 801 tip!) you get to fill your eclair. You stick that little tip into one of the little holes, pipe to the end first, then when you feel the cream starting to push back toward you, you flip the tip around and start piping to the middle. (You do this on both ends, obviously, so your eclair is stuffed full of cream). What was once an empty shell is now a stuffed, sweet treat, just waiting to be dipped in chocolate fondant. :)

In addition to these eclairs, today I made Bavarian cream, cream puffs, Paris Brest (not a typo), swans, and Napoleons. 

First, the swans... which are legit. Pate a choux can be used to make awesome things... like swan heads/necks. By piping an "S" shape (don't forget the little beak), and a "body" (kind of like a teardrop)  onto some parchment paper, then popping it in the oven, you can make a swan too! 

The swan bodies are filled with chantilly, as are the cream puffs. All of the pate a choux products (if done correctly) essentially are hollow, so after shredding the little bits of webbing, they are quite easy to fill. 

(cream puffs)

Paris Brest (named after the beginning and ending cities for a France bike race), is essentially a pate a choux donut cut in half and filled with diplomat cream (which is pastry cream with chantilly folded in). 

The Napoleans were my second favorite (to make and taste), because they are just so beautiful and yummy. The design on top (done in fondant and chocolate) requires a go-getter, no hesitations kind of attitude. Once you spread the fondant on with a small offset palette knife, you line the chocolate, and go straight into the up and down knife pulls to finalize the design. If you wait too long, the fondant sets, and you are left with a goopy mess of chunks of chocolate and fondant. (As a perfectionist, this work quickly, don't look back, you-couldn't-fix-it-even-if-you-wanted-to, kind of production is a bit difficult for me to master). ;)

When everything was made, assembled, plated and graded, I had the super fun job of delivering all of my pastries next door for dinner service! There is something so awesome about seeing people enjoy the things that you have worked so hard to perfect. 

P.S. sorry about the tardiness of this post!!! :) 

More French pastries I can't pronounce

It seems like I should have taken French instead of Spanish all those years... at least then maybe I could remember (for longer than a goldfish can) how to say the names of the pastries we made today. In my notes, I wrote them all phonetically, so that when I went back to tell someone what it was, I could actually say it correctly. So jalouise became "ja-loos-ee" and pithivier became even simpler "PTVA". I thought that English was kinda crazy with its "silent 'e'" nonsense.... but it seems to me like at least half of the letters in any given French word are "silent".

So today, we made jalouise, pithivier, band de fruit, and we started making Napoleons as well. In addition to those completed products, we made chantilly (which if you remember from an earlier post is a fancy way of saying sweetened whipped cream), pastry cream and diplomat cream. Let me tell you... if given the option to make "authentic, hand-whipped, whipped cream".... ALWAYS say... "that's okay, I'll just wait for the mixer". That is, unless you haven't done your arm workout yet for the day, and you feel like squeezing in a good 15-20 minutes of pain. Try it... you'll see what I mean. I'll even give you a formula to follow: 8 oz heavy cream, 1 oz granulated sugar and about a half tsp of vanilla. Use a whisk to whip to the stiff peak stage (should hold together on the whisk without drooping or sliding off the whisk when you take it out of the bowl). Let me know how it goes ;)

Here are a few photos from today...

 This is for the jalouise... it's a pastry dough base with frangipane, sliced pears, cherries soaked in water and almond extract, and then sprinkled with a sugar/ginger/nutmeg mixture. 

 Here's the jalouise just prior to baking. I gave it a cream wash (which gives it a more rustic look instead of the egg wash), a sprinkle of sanding sugar, and then crimped the edges with a fork. 

 Finished jalouise.... I wish you could smell how yummy it was! 

 I just love these tools :) 

 Pithivier... not only does this have a complicated name... it has many complicated steps too. Essentially it is two layers of pastry dough with a layer of raspberry jam and frangipane sandwiched between. The cut marks are a little tricky and have to be very precise, otherwise you'll let steam escape where it shouldn't and the whole thing will be ruined. 

 Cream horns with sanding sugar waiting to go into the oven. 

 Close up...

 Here is the finished pithivier... I figured it would taste pretty good.. but I actually kind of forgot about it till I got home. Then I decided I should cut a slice so I could take a picture of it, and figured I might as well try it since I cut it. WHOA. It is SO SO SO good. (Yes- worthy of 3 "so"s.. and so good that I didn't even remember to put up the photo I took of it sliced).

 Band de fruit & other pastries set up for a buffet (and grading). 

 Finished cream horn

Top view of band de fruit

Close up of jalouise

...and I'm back in the game! :)

Hello everyone!

After a two-month hiatus, baking classes have started again! I have graduated from a total newbie to a person that other classmates go to to ask questions! It's so great to be back in the culinary arts building, doing more of what I love... and boy do I love it! My first set of classes is in "Classic Pastry", so I will be learning all about eclairs, palmiers, and tarts, to name a few.

We started out the day with a beautifully simple work space: a tidy pile of flour, small cubes of butter, a cold mixture of egg and water, and a pinch of salt. After working the butter into the flour and salt until it reached a sand-like consistency, I formed a little well then poured in (slowly) some of the egg/water mixture. Using my fingertips to swirl around the flour, making "hummus" per our chef's recommendation, I started to make my first batch of totally hand-made pastry dough. The trick with this is (well one of them anyway!)...  make sure that you never get so much flour in the well as you're incorporating the dry & liquid ingredients that you actually make a dough. If you make a dough clump too early, then that little dough clump is happy and wants to stay a clump! Then you have to work extra hard to get your dough an even consistency.

Later on in the class, we made Tarte Tartin, palmiers, and sacristans. Here are some photos of the day!

 "mise en place"

 making "hummus"

 locking in the butter

 pretty little palmiers

 my first ever batch of caramel

 raspberry jam sacristans

 cutting up strips for sacristans

 rolling up sacristans

 my homemade pastry dough

 sacristans with homemade dough and a ginger/nutmeg/sugar filling

 finished raspberry sacristans

 finished palmiers

 finished sacristans

 finished apple tarts tartin

a slice of tarte tartin

Life (or how a half-marathon turns into chocolate chip pancakes)

So it's been a while, and I apologize for the long long long delay between my last post and this one. A lot has been going on! I'll quickly fill you in, and encourage you to check out the website in the coming weeks as I have more time to work on it and add new goodies to try!

I finished up my year teaching preschool; a bittersweet moment to be sure as I will certainly miss my little kiddos, but I am very excited to be living more in the heart of the city, and getting a chance to do more cooking and baking at work. (You should definitely come check out the cafe- we have breakfast all day, awesome smoothies and a great outdoor patio!)

I also was able to visit an awesome friend of mine (and make some new ones!) in Alaska, which happens to be one of my all-time favorite places on earth! :) The two of us were going to run a half-marathon together, and what had started out as a strict training regimen got gradually pushed to the side as both of us became busier and busier... and busier. So when Saturday morning rolled around, and I hadn't carved out time to run even just once in the past two weeks (and prior to that had just gotten maybe one to two runs in a week)... hitting snooze seemed like a much better idea than jumping out of bed and going to run 13.1 miles. We had a delightful breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes on the roof, overlooking gorgeous Alaskan mountains. I wouldn't have changed any part of it! That same trip, I also got to go rafting in Talkeetna, fly in a 6-person plan around Mt. McKinley AND get out on a glacier up there too, see a mama and baby moose suuuper close up, smoke a cigar, and have some great chats with some amazing people. :) What an incredible world we live in!

I have realized that "the best laid plans" really do not always go according to plan... and although I chose not to run a half-marathon at that time, there will be others (perhaps the same one next year!), and I am excited that each day is a new one, and with it comes the ability to make choices that bring me life and let me bless others.

NOW, onto some baking news. I had been really pondering how many calories one really consumes when they eat a cupcake.... possibly because how often do you go into a bake shop and see nutrition facts posted or available? Ummmm... never. (I suppose that's because we don't really want to know...) Anyway... I found this article through NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10328143) which discusses the calories in popular NYC bakery cupcakes. A vanilla cupcake ranges from 386 to almost 800 calories. YIKES!

I decided to do some experimenting with different ratios of sugars, flours and fats, along with different ingredients... and came up with some pretty good combinations! I'm going to tweak them still, as I used olive oil instead of butter (which gave awesome texture but tasted a little too olive-y for my liking). But here's the best part.... the cupcakes (sans frosting, since I haven't played around with that yet) were all under 200 calories! One clocked in at 161 per cake! That means even with frosting, these new cupcakes are way worth the "indulgence" (since they'll still be no more than 250 per cupcake).  For one mix, I used honey, ground flax, and olive oil to replace granulated sugar and butter. Now, you can have a cupcake that tastes great, and has great things for your body too!

More updates (and photos!!) to come soon! 

Sous Chef for a day

One of my very best friends got married on Saturday (wooooohoooo!!!) and although the forecast throughout the majority of the week was rain all day Saturday, God delighted us with a gorgeous sunny day! She was a beautiful bride, and it was a beautiful day!

Then Sunday morning came... a little more tired than usual, I woke up for class. Imagine my surprise (and panic) when my clock said 6:32, which is already two minutes later than I need to leave my house, not to mention the fact that I still had bright pink fingernails (a major no-no in the culinary department). So after a stop at CVS for fingernail polish remover, since of course I couldn't find any at my house, I arrived to room 301 twenty minutes late. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who hadn't shown up, and our chef had already combined groups. This left me joining a group to make a group of 5, which is really not desirable, since we would be getting in each other's way all day. After apologizing for my tardiness, (which was appreciated and accepted), chef looked around and decided that it might be best for me to work with him for the day, doing side work and prep. He asked if I would be alright with this, to which I casually (as casually as I could anyway) said, "Sure!" 

Getting to work with the chef all day was busy, busy, busy, but awesome! I got to prepare different kinds of dough for demos, make Russian braid, hazelnut, apple, and cream cheese fillings, and pastry cream. I did start to feel a teensy bit self-conscious when other people in my class started calling me "sous-chef"; it was sort of reminiscent of being called "teacher's pet" in elementary school. It was nice to have answers to questions and be able to help people out, but I don't at all like it when I feel that people think I think I'm somehow better than them. (Know what I mean??)

Anyway, after being on my feet all day, learning tons of things about pastry, the huge box of goodies I brought home from class included the following delicious items: 

Russian Braid

Tea Rings (2 of them)

Banana Bread muffins

Sour Cream Coffee Cake muffins

Croissants

Danishes

and last but not least, Brioche with hazelnut filling, chocolate sticks and crumb topping

Anyone in the mood for some pastries? :) 

Chef said I did a great job on my tea rings (he might have even said they looked better than the ones he made that day for the demo!) 

Check out how you make them here:

After preparing the dough, you layer it with cinnamon filling and cake crumbs (which help absorb moisture). That 1-2 inches of open dough on the left is important.. you'll see why!

 Then you roll up the dough, not too tightly, not too loosely. (Here is the chef making a demo ring). 

Then, tuck the end of the cylinder into the dough that didn't have the filling, making a ring. 

 You then cut the dough at an angle with scissors, fanning out the cut pieces just a bit. 

After baking, the tea ring gets a glaze of apricot nepage and cinnamon roll glaze. (I put some sliced almonds on one ring too!)

Besides all the exciting baking in class yesterday, I also did a lot of other baking. For my friend's dress rehearsal dinner, I made vanilla-coconut cupcakes with 3 different kinds of buttercream: coconut, lime, and chocolate (so so so delicious!). Here are some pictures of those: 

 The "trial" cupcakes to test the frosting :) 

(coconut buttercream in the front)

 Chocolate buttercream: pre-toasted coconut

 Lime buttercream (with the swirl and sugar sprinkles)

Big cupcakes (regular size) with coconut mixed into the batter, chocolate buttercream and toasted coconut. 

Also, I made gingerbread men with my kiddos in school on Friday. They loved it! (And the hallways smelled like Christmas!) I decorated some and then they each decorate their own as well.. nothing like bringing home two cookies instead of one!