The zombie cake got finished, pictures to follow, but suffice to say he looked awesome. I got DmentD to print off some of the photos so I could take them into school and show him off, impressing some of the instructors, including ones I don’t even know! *grins*

This week at school has been a week of croissants and danish pastries. Mid week we all made croissants with different fats in them so we could see how they compare, obviously the all butter one was the best, and the all shortening left a horrible feeling in your mouth, the one with half and half wasn’t too bad. There was even one with cream cheese, which was interesting, and tasty, though not a croissant at all in texture and taste.

Today all the classes are having a pumpkin competition, each class submitting one entry. We started ours last night, my first experience of pumpkin carving, we’re doing a totem pole of severed heads *grins*

Then when I got home last night DmentD and I set to carving our pumpkins so they could be out on display today. This took a lot more skill and effort than the freeforming it in class. I chose to do the Cheshire Cat and he did the freaky old guy! It was fun, and kinda messy, I did an okay job, he’s a bit fuzzy round the edges, but he looks good lit up.

Laminated doughs has been good so far. We made 3 different types of puff pastry and then a whole host of items with them, palmiers, pitiviers, chaussons, band aux fruit, tart tatin, mille feulle, brie en croute, salmon en croute and lobster newberg. With the exam on chaussons and pitivier.

It went alright, it’s certainly been fun, a little change of pace from the hecticness of petit fours.

This week is more fun, yesterday we made the doughs and some fillings for croissants and danish and we start making them tonight.

In class on Thursday we’re carving pumpkins for the class to submit to the school’s competition between all the classes. The winning class win a meal in Ventana the school’s restaurant.

At home we’ve been excessively busy. We’re making a cake for Halloween.. Both wanting to try new things and be as extravagant as possible we’re making a full sized (measurements based off of DmentD!) zombie coming up out of the ground.

DmentD got to flex his sfx muscles and make a brain mold out of silicon that we then used to make a white chocolate shell that has been filled with a blood sauce. Copper armatures have been made, that I covered in lurid green krispie treats for the arms and hands. The torso is a green velvet sponge with a wonderful muscley fleshy tone of pinky red buttercream with gummi bones between the layers! And the head, aside from containing the brain has white chocolate eyes and teeth and is covered in krispie treats. And it’s all been covered in fondant!

We’re down to final details now, this morning I’ve been covering the board in fondant rocks and made the dirt yesterday and in the evening’s DmentD has had the airbrush out to paint and colour it all.

I can’t wait to see it finished.

I got my scores back for Petit Fours..

And I got an A

I’m happy now

First day of laminated doughs was interesting. Made 3 different types of puff pastry, I have a report on Antoine Careme due Wednesday and one due on a local bakery and the viennoiseries and laminated doughs they sell due Friday in place of a theory exam.

Got covered in flour.. but that’s nothing new *grins*

Came home to a nice hot chocolate and now to bed

But it was a nice weekend.

Starting Friday after class a group of us went to Magnolia and had food and drinks and chatting and gossiping and much relaxing and winding down after the exam!

Saturday DmentD and I didn’t do much, through we went round to a friend’s house in the evening for dinner and fun and chilling out.. and we ended up watching Indiana Jones (the new one) so it was a good evening.

Sunday was the usual utility day, laundry and shopping. I did the driving taking us to all the stores. I’m feeling better with the driving now, a bit more relaxed.. hopefully, maybe at some point this week I’ll drive us home from school.

The past few Sundays we seem to have fallen into the habit of making a large dinner that can then feed us for a couple of days.. This Sunday night I made lasagne…

Anyone who has lived with me will know that I am incapable of making small amounts of lasagne.. and then DmentD in his naivety requested that I make lots.

16 portions of lasagne, 8 portions of bolognese and 2 portions of spare cheese sauce later I finished cooking! I think I may have overdone it a little bit! Thankfully we have space in the freezer so we can spread out the eating of it and not get entirely fed up with it all before it’s gone *grins*

What can I say! I like making lasagne!

We sat and watched a film after dinner… I have finally been able to see the awesomeness that is Iron Man. Me likey lots

So glad it’s over, though it went well.

Tuesday this week was exam free, and we finished the battenburg, opera cake and petit four glace.. I love that opera cake so much, it tastes like tirimisu in cake form.. and I love tirimisu!

Day one was mostly prep work, making as much as possible that could be kept for the three days such as my buttercream. I parbaked my pastry and made the filling ready for the lemon meringue tartlets. The only thing I could cook completely was my pecan slice.

Writing out my plan ready I got rather nervous about how much time I had and how much needed to be done. Wednesday evening I was finished an hour earlier than we had, having made everything I could make that day and weighed out everything I needed for Thursday.

Feeling much happier day two went nice and smooth. Finished an hour and a half earlier than we had! Leaving just things that had to be made fresh on the day or presentation.

Had more practice tempering chocolate so I could stripe my pecan diamonds, and pipe my filigrees ready for the Opera cake.

Then after weighing out what I needed for the final day I ended up weighing out stuff for my Chefs.. and being called an overachiever by them.. why yes, yes I am, and proud of it *grins*

Friday I was back to being nervous, and even dreamed about how I was going to organise everything to get it done in time!

But then, even despite a crisis with my madelines (my chocolate bloomed) and having to remake them and retemper some more chocolate, I was done early and cleaned up and ready to present.

I was mostly happy with it.. What can I say, I’m a perfectionist and I knew where I had gone wrong.. and the majority of it I got called up on and lost points for..

Still I came out with 360/400, 90% just scraping in with an A.. now I just have to wait for my final grades for the unit to be calculated.

Next week we’re onto laminated doughs!

I finished my presentation so since I now have nothing to do here’s some photos of it.. I’ll take some photos of the actual petit four tray on Friday so we can see just how similar… or completely unsimilar they are!

My exam on Friday… I got my lowest score yet in the practical exam…

I only managed 190/200 *grins*

I did however manage 102/100 in the theory!

I lost the 10 points in the practical for my chocolate. 5 for it developing a fat bloom and 5 for having a bit too much on my madelines so it formed small ‘feet’

Chocolate isn’t the easiest thing to work with, the feeling of triumph when you get it right.. for me at any rate. It has to be melted to a very precise temperature, then taken off the heat and agitated vigourously while it’s cooled down, again to a precise temperature, then back on the heat literally for seconds to get it back to a workable temperature (as cooling it thickens it too much for use).  At that point get it even one or two degrees over the required temperature and you’re starting again as you’ve just melted the fat molecules you (hopefully) just got to align so nicely.

If you melt it to the wrong temperatures it fails, if you don’t agitate it enough it fails, if you get the slightest amount of water in it fails.

The fat bloom on my madelines are most likely that I got it minutely hotter than it should have been when reheated, I was working next to the ovens.

I have managed to get it right a couple of times and had beautifully tempered chocolate.

So now you can see why not many Chefs bother with tempering chocolate, they avoid it like the plague.. It is, though, a sign of a good Patissiere so I’m determined to be able to get it right!

After dipping my madelines I got to use the chocolate for piping practice, piping out hundreds of little filligrees (twiddly bits that will go on top of my petit four cakes) and practicing my writing too.

I also had to make macaroons for my exam, filled with a flavoured French Buttercream, coloured to match the flavour. I did alright with them earlier in the week, they were good enough, but there were many points where they could be better, and I got them nailed in the exam. They were perfect! Now I just have to do it again in my exam again this week.

It’s been a nice weekend, made better by the fact I have today off. We went to an Indian buffet for lunch, I drove us there which went mostly alright, we made it in tact even if I was a tad tense!

I had to pick up a poster board and some coloured pencils and pens for my petit four presentation (which I will be making once I finish procrastinating and writing here) so we went and got them on the way home (DmentD driving, I had had enough!). We found there a tub of Halloween cookie cutters so we decided to get them with the spurious reason that I can practice my royal icing and colourflow and decorating of cookies *grins*

Going through them to see what we had we found the spider cutters missing and these in their place

A prize to whoever can figure out what they are.. we don’t have a clue!

We washed the car and had people round Saturday night and then had a nice lazy but productive Sunday. Doing laundry and making skeletal hands out of copper as a base for our next paid cake (so so excited about making it, it’s going to be awesome!). I made some Bakewell Tarts, they turned out mostly ok.

I experimented with putting them in paper muffin cases which worked out nicely. My pastry for some unknown reason, decided to fail and just went completely dry when I pulled it out the fridge after resting it.

I stewed/candied some of DmentD’s Bounced Cherries for the bottom instead of using the traditional preserve and that worked fantastically, the sharp tanginess worked wonderfully against the sweetness of the rest of the frangipane and the icing. I kept the pastry savoury too which worked nicely even though that technically makes it not a tart *grins*

And today, I’ve done my ironing *pulls faces* procrastinated for a while, I’ll have lunch and then I get to make a poster of my intended presentation for my Petit Four display, and write some blurb on why I chose those items.. Apparently “because they’re tasty” isn’t good enough, it’s a lesson in chutzpah, I have to come up with something along the lines of main ingredients in the items representing the season.. or some other rubbish!

It’s not just a holiday here, it’s a whole season!

The other weekend DmentD went up into the attic and found his decorations and got me to help him get them down the ladder.. a job that was much easier with two of us, I wouldn’t want to do it on my own.

And then, when I got in from school Wednesday night I found the house decorated.. at least partially. I’m promised that closer to Halloween more decorations will appear.

Already the house is already more decorated than any place I have lived in!

And that’s not even everything!

Class has been fun. We’ve been tempering chocolate which has been interesting.. I think I’m finally getting the hang of it.. it’s very precise.

We started making petit fours, have an exam today on macaroons and madelines and then we’ll finish petit fours at the start of next week ready for our 3 day final exam making a petit four platter with 60 petit fours on it!

And finally, in a pre-emptive retaliation, I have photos of DmentD..

But first the history.. He has, in the past, put a bucket on my head and taken pictures of me promising to put them online. He has also put a bowl on my head and taken photos. So when he appeared in out hallway looking like this I just had to take photos, promising to put them online.

The difference being that when I promised to put them online here they are.. he still hasn’t gotten around to putting the photos of me online

I would like to reiterate the point.. he did this voluntarily and came and found me looking like this.. the photos of me, he put the items on my head! *grins*

Yes, it was that time of the week again!

We started off by making our Pate Sucree for the tartlets before heading to the theory test.. It was interesting as it was our first exam with the different instructors and they do things a little differently.

We weren’t allowed to start early, even if we were there early (which is how I managed to finish my book in last weeks exam) and then after we had made the Pate Sucree we weren’t allowed to start the theory test until everyone was ready to. Thankfully after that we were allowed to carry on with the rest once we had done our theory without waiting.

I did something a little silly, and refused to wear the support for my hand during the test, as it hindered my rolling and piping abilities. We had done the practice run of the lemon meringue tartlets on Thursday, so I knew I could not manage a quality piece with the restricted movement. One of my instructors said she would tell me off, but she’d have probably done the same thing!

I think I did alright with the theory this week, I’m waiting to see.. at least I’m done with memorising the 12 steps of yeast dough production! It was questions like what are the three types of meringue – describe them, and what are the two pie doughs and the differences between them, differences between pies and tarts, butter and shortening etc etc.

I then rolled out my flaky dough (made on Thursday) for the blueberry pies and chilled that while I made the filling. Rolled out the pate sucree and chilled before I assembled the blueberry pies and got them in the oven. Made the lemon filling for the tartlets while the shells were par baking and assembled them quickly and got them back in the oven to cook. Made the Italian meringue, piped it on top and torched it. All by 9 o clock, half an hour before our deadline.

At this point I was beginning to regret not wearing the support, so now I had finished baking I went and put it back on. Got my products graded, lost 5 points for the falky pastry on the pies not being very flaky but got top marks for the lemon meringue tartlets!

So this week has been pies and tarts, and then next week we’ll move onto the petit fours, ready for the final week where my final practical exam is spending three days to produce a petit four platter.

So there I was in class, had made some awesome pies that were sat cooling and we were cleaning up the lab.. When suddenly, as I’m steering a table while we’re pushing it up out the way, WHAM it swerves and slams into another table… with my hand between them!

It was the sort of initial pain where you stop breathing, someones telling me to shake it out, I’m just clinging onto the table saying I don’t want to move it!

It almost immediately came up with an egg of swelling turning a magnificent shade of black and blue.

I manage to make my way to the door, feeling kinda shakey, and both instructors are there, ones running to get me ice, and a cup of water, the other making me sit down on one of the stools in the hallway.

I sit down with the ice on my hand and start getting the sweats, and feeling a bit nauseated and feeling dizzy, and then suddenly I’m sat on the floor! Now there are mixed reports here, some people think I just go so dizzy I started falling, since apparently my eyes stayed open.. others think I passed out. Luckily there was someone stood there who caught me and lowered me to the floor so no extra injuries.. All I know is there’s a period of blankness there!

I got someone to call DmentD to let him know what was happening, thankfully he was close, so we sent someone out to meet him and bring him in while I stayed sat on the floor watching my instructors fill out the paperwork.

They wanted me to go to hospital, after the blacking out I felt much better, but DmentD arrived and reinforced the wanting to get me checked out.. especially since it was on the school’s money.

So I made it up and to the car, not feeling so wobbly, and we headed to the hospital, DmentD using his advantage and ringing ahead to see if we could queue jump.

We got in and registered and got seen my the triage nurse straight away (still with the ice from school held over my hand), and then sat and waited.. it didn’t take too long really, the Doctor came past and looked at it, wanted it x-rayed, the x ray came along and they took 3 pictures of my hand.

Results came back and no bones broken! So I have a splint to wear when it needs it, and I’m supposed to not be overusing it.. but it’s my right hand so that’s going to be impossible especially once I get back to class. And I will be back in class this afternoon, the Doctor offerred to sign me off for the day but I said I’d be fine.

Finally got home and into bed about 3ish. Trying not to sleep on my hand, keeping it raised.

And now this morning it barely looks worth the effort. The bruising’s gone down, for now, there’s still a bit of swelling and its sore, but whole loads better than it was. So I’m sat here icing it.

Well, I just had to be different, usually it’s going to be burns or cuts but No! Not for me!