Out with the Old… in with the Slightly Different

So, this wee little project has come to an end. I promised that I was going to blog about being pregnant while in culinary school. Well, I’m done being pregnant and I’m done with culinary school. I feel like this is a good time to close out this blog. (Stick with me for the rest of this post. There’s a surprise at the end. Dude, don’t jump ahead. Just read on…)

What I Learned About Babies and the Process of Making Them

1. Miscarriage is not a bad word. It is definitely a sad word, but you can talk about it.
2. Making babies is a lot more fun than birthing babies. I’m sure you knew that already.
3. Babies are cute and that cuteness can apparently take a baby far. Or, at the very least, keep the parents from committing bodily harm to the screaming (albeit cute) face in the middle of night.
4. The amount of baby “stuff” that invades a home with a newborn is a force of nature. It does not matter if you board up your windows or put sandbags in front of the door. Small stuff will seep into your home. Little socks, caps and inserts for bottles, small hats, bouncy/shaky/vibrating contraptions, onesies, twosies, threesies… it’s a nightmare.
   

   See? Dress up is fun.

5. It certainly is fun to dress a baby up, especially since they do not have language skills yet. Dressing up babies is a parent’s way of getting back at the screaming, crazy beast child that now encompasses your entire day.
6. Babies WILL make you buy a minivan. Or, if your baby is less evil, it will make you trade in your really cute Mini Cooper for a Subaru crossover SUV. Mean baby.
7. Babies CANNOT make you give up heated seats. No matter how hard they cry and whine.
8. Babies are cry babies.

What I Learned About Becoming a Chef

1. I don’t want to be a chef.

And, that’s the crux of it. The thing I thought would be the scariest (being someone’s mom) turned out to be pretty simple. Of course, I now live by the following words: If I am wearing a shirt and pair of pants without dried baby vomit, it is a good day.

The thing that I thought would be the easiest way to change careers turned out to be not so career-changing. I went to culinary school to learn that I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Somehow, that’s OK with me right now. I am faster in the kitchen, more aware of what foods I like and what foods will kill me, and I have a huge appreciation for chefs that love food and do it well.

What’s Next?

The final take-away (to use a corporate bullshit-ism) of this project is that it reminded me how much I like to write (or blather on, yes… sometimes it’s just silly prattle). I’m continuing to blog about food and the making of it. I’m keeping the restaurant reviews, throwing in a few utensil reviews, and writing about new (and old) recipes.

So, join me on my new site, Kitchenalia, to read my continued misadventures in the kitchen.

Oh, and because I can’t resist taking pictures of my son that he will hate me for later, here’s the happy product of my culinary school adventures.

That's right, I bought my son a monogrammed chef outfit. I'm just that sort of crazy mother.

Baking Class Eighteen: Mousses

Time to assemble the tiramisu and yule log from the previous class. To do the tiramisu, we’re going to need some mascarpone filling. We made half of the recipe below and because we didn’t have enough rings to go around, we assembled it take away angel food cake containers.

Mascarpone Filling Formula

Egg yolks	2 yolks
Sugar	6 oz
Water	4 oz
Corn syrup	2 oz
Mascarpone	1 lb
Heavy cream	1 lb 8 oz

Whip the egg yolks until light. Make a syrup of the sugar, water, and corn syrup by heating it until 248°. Gradually pour the syrup into the egg yolks while whipping constantly. Continue whipping until cool.

In a mixer with the paddle attachment, mix the mascarpone until soft. Then, with the mixer running at slow speed, add the egg yolk mixture a little bit at a time. Wait until each addition is blended before adding more. Whip the cream until soft peaks form and fold into the mascarpone mixture.

This is the consistency of my mascarpone filling.

Assemble the Tiramisu

Take the first round and insert into tin flat side up. You might have to trim the round in order to get it to fit.

Use a brush to soak the cake with strong coffee. I also added Grand Marnier and a bit of sugar to my coffee. Put the lady fingers around the outside cake in one long circle so they are standing on edge. Soak them with the coffee mixture as well.

Kind of nasty looking, but it's getting there.

Dollop half of the mascarpone filling in, place the second round on top, and then soak with the coffee mixture again. Fill the top with the rest of the mascarpone filling. Now, we were short on mascarpone filling. So, I made some whipped cream and added the rest of the coffee mixture to it. And, then used to that to make sure the filling came to the top of the lady fingers.

Results

The dark lines on the top are chocolate cigarettes that I placed in the whipped cream. I know, it looks weird in the angel food cake tin, but it tasted lovely.

All filled in and lovely

For the yule log, you need a filling. We used chocolate mousse.

Chocolate Mousse Formula

Egg yolks	1.5 oz
Fine granulated sugar	1.33 oz
Water	1 oz
Dark chocolate, melted	6 oz
Heavy cream	11 oz

Whip the egg yolks until pale. Make a syrup with the sugar and water and bring to a boil at 244°. Whip the hot syrup into the yolks and continue whipping until cool.

Melt the chocolate and fold into the egg mixture. Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks. Whip one-third of the cream into the chocolate mixture, and then fold the remaining cream until it’s well incorporated.

Now that you have mousse. Take your sheet cake and lay it on parchment paper. Wet the cake with a simple syrup. Spread the mousse in an even layer over the cake, making sure to bring the mousse to the edges of the long ends (but not quite to the edge of the short ends).

Roll the cake up. If your cake is too thin or too thick, it will probably crack (as mine and a number of my classmates’ cakes did). Use the parchment paper to help keep a tight roll. Once rolled, wrap in plastic and refrigerate.

After allowing the roll to set up a bit, bring it out and frost it. I used buttercream with cocoa powder added to it to form a nice log. As you can see from the picture, my buttercream was a bit chunky and didn’t take the cocoa powder consistently.

Why does everything I make in bakery class end up looking like a turd on a plate?

Oh well, we can cover our mistakes with powdered sugar!

A sweet, sweet turd on a plate.

And then, I made these wonderful berries with leaves (on the back of a spatula) and snowflakes (my index finger for reference). Hasn’t my artistry come a long way? OK, these aren’t mine. Chef did them as example. ¡Que c’est joli!

So very teeny tiny, but so very detailed.

Nice, right?

So, that about sums up my baking class. I could do a tidy little recap here, but I’ll let the posts speak for themselves. (Psst: I learned a lot and have a new found appreciation for all things confectionary.)

 

Formulas from the fifth edition of “Professional Baking” by Wayne Gisslen.

Baking Class Seventeen: Biscuits and Ladyfingers

Our last two lab classes were another two-part series. In this class, we baked the lady fingers for the tiramisu and the sheet cake and Italian buttercream for the yule log. Assembly will be the following day.

Ladyfinger Sponge Formula

Egg yolks	6 oz
Sugar	3 oz
Egg whites	9 oz
Sugar	5 oz
Lemon juice	¼ t
Pastry flour	10 oz

Separate egg sponge method to make this recipe. Take your egg yolks and sugar and put in a stainless steel bowl over a water bath. Whip until warm. Then, put in a mixer with the whip attachment and beat on high speed until light and thick. Now, whip the egg whites, sugar, and lemon juice until you get firm, moist peaks. Fold the egg white mixture into the egg yolk mixture, alternating with the flour. So, bit of egg white then bit of flour, bit of egg white… you get the idea.

Now, stick the batter in a pastry bag and pipe with a plain tip. You’ll need two rounds and a number of fingers across the bottom. Pipe them out on to parchment paper (and put a few dollops in each corner so the parchment doesn’t blow up and stick to the top of your fingers whilst in the oven.

Yes, the ladyfingers are not elegant. But the rounds came out OK.

Dust with powdered sugar. Bake at 375° for 10 minutes.

See, the perfection of my ladyfinger round?

For the yule log, we used the creamed yellow cake recipe from the previous day. Instead of putting it in a round, we used a half sheet pan.

Yellow cake in sheet form

 

Formulas from the fifth edition of “Professional Baking” by Wayne Gisslen.

Brunch Mitten Style

Paul, the child, and I went to the D for Thanksgiving. And brunch must be had no matter the city. My parents were good enough to oblige us by taking us to The Gathering Place in Northville for happy morning eats.

The restaurant is located in a house (Not one that people live in, but that might be fun. “Nice robe, ma’am. Don’t mind us, we’re just here for brunch.”) Tables are scattered in various rooms with large, open windows. It’s one of those bright and cheery places that make brunch a sunny affair. This is not a hangover-nursing brunch place.

What We Ate

I had the spicy shrimp frittata. Eggs frittatized with shrimp, peppers, potatoes, and a mole sauce. It was spicy, but I still asked for Tabasco. They gave me the dregs of the Tabasco bottle—which was just as well because ooh man, the mole hit me with a bit of a vengeance. Served with toast of choice and homemade jam.

Paul went with a sweet dish, which is a bit unusual for him, especially considering they had a chorizo-based dish on the menu. He said he had plate envy, but his malted waffle looked tasty enough to me. It had apple and apple goo on top. He did cave to his meat tendencies by ordering a side of sausage.

My mom had eggs Benedict. They were perfectly formed, sitting on toast rounds. My dad went with a dish that had “sassy” in its name. It was the aforementioned chorizo dish with spicy potato-based hash. Avocado slices on the side.

What We Drank

Well, the child had a bottle during the meal, but since that’s not on the menu, I’ll stick with the adult beverages. Coffee for Paul and I, tea for the mum, and water for my dad. The tea comes in a cute individual pot.

All around yummy goodness. I highly recommend it to those driving around the mitten looking for eggs, waffles, and other assorted brunch goodies. Oh, they also do lunch and dinner as well.

Location: 505 N. Center Street in Northville, MI (south of Eight Mile Road). They have parking next to the building. Of course, it’s suburban Detroit, so parking is a bit of a given.

Baking Class Sixteen: Cake Assembly

After all of the cake baking the day before, we finally got to play at Ace of Cakes and assemble our cakes. The yellow cake got the Italian buttercream treatment while the Genoise was filled with raspberry jam and Italian meringue.

Yellow Cake with Italian Buttercream

Take the cake and slice it in half. It’s a lot less tricky than it sounds. Score the cake all the way around and then just ease your serrated knife in to the cake. This way, you only go halfway through the cake.

A cake divided against itself cannot stand. Well, it can stand, but it needs some frosting help.

Next, whip up the buttercream so it’s not a huge, cold block. You want to get the creamy texture you had it the night before. (Of course, if you whip it up the same day, you won’t have this problem.)

Whipping the buttercream so it's no longer hard.

Now, cut side up, frost the top of the first layer. Then, put the cut side up of the other half and press down. Add a crumb coat to the cake. Next, add the rest of the frosting to form the final coat.

This is after the crumb coat of buttercream.

I saved some of my buttercream and added cocoa powder to it. I used this chocolate buttercream to pipe the edges. Pretty good for a first try, right?

Check out the pipes on this one!

Genoise with Italian Meringue

My Genoise was really thin, but I was still able to slice it in half. We followed the same procedure as above but instead of buttercream, we used the raspberry goo from the bucket for the middle. You want to moisten the cake with syrup first because the Genoise is a pretty dry cake. So, slice, moisten, jam, press, moisten top.

Thin, but scored in half...awaiting jam and meringue.

Then, we whipped up some meringue.

Making meringue--Italian style

Italian Meringue Formula

Sugar	1 lb
Water	4 oz
Egg whites	8 oz

Heat the sugar and water in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves and the mixture boils. Boil until you have the mixture between the soft and hard ball stage. DO NOT let it get brown. While the syrup is cooking, beat the egg whites with a whip until they form soft peaks. With the machine running, slowly whip in the hot syrup. Continue beating until the meringue is cool and forms firm peaks. This should sound familiar as it’s the first step for Italian buttercream.

Once you have your meringue, gently ice the cake just like above.

Before the blowtorch and crazy piping, this is what an Italian meringue looks like.

Pipe a design into the top and or sides. (I couldn’t think of anything so you’ll see me getting goofy in the picture below. I blame the copious amounts of sugar that have building up in my system over the course of the quarter.)

Then, take a blowtorch to the entire thing and brown the heck out of it. Woo hoo!

I admit, not the most professional of cakes.

 

Formulas from the fifth edition of “Professional Baking” by Wayne Gisslen.