We went to see Quantum of Solace last night.. it was awesome. I’m really liking this Bond, gritty, rough around the edges, he can bleed and he has emotions.. ok at the moment mostly hate and angst but he can feel.

Add the doses of gun fights, chase scenes and all those usual James Bond goodies and you get a good film! And Judi Dench was brilliant as always as M.

Film aside it was a good weekend. I was on the search for some new shoes for school.. the ones they gave me, while protecting my feet, were doing nothing for comfort, especially given my daily walks to and from the bus stops. I wanted to go have a look at the ones a lot of the Chef’s at school were raving about – Birkins.. They were awful! I cannot see the appeal.. they’re basically crocs only looking slightly less like an escaped mental patient. The sole gave me no confidence as to it’s non-slip abilities and it’s thin plastic, if I dropped something on my feet it would do nothing! They weren’t even particularly comfortable! We had a look at some of the other ‘work’ shoes they had there and decided that they all would do nothing to protect my feet.. I want protection and comfort! DmentD reccommended a brand of shoes he wore, so we trundled along to the sports shop and had a look.. technically they’re men’s boots, but they’re comfortable, they have reinforced toes and anti everything soles, even in oil I should stand a chance of keeping my grip.. and they were half the price of the work shoes we had been looking at. I’ll be wearing them for the first time today so we’ll see how they cope.. but I think they’ll do well.

I made a bread pudding on Saturday, we soaked some raisins in brandy and added them in, and then DmentD made a caramel rum sauce which was delicious to go with it.. heaven in a bowl! *grins*

Friday at school went well. My bavarian for the exam turned out nicely, I’m glad we were able to make two as I overheated the ring on one of mine as I was trying to loosen it and I melted the bavarian a little. I lost a few points for my glacage not being even and for it having air bubbles, but I got 106/100 for the written test so that balances out! We also got to unmold our Three Chocolate Bavarois (bavarois is the plural of bavarian) and try some of that which was so delicious words can’t cover it! I’m thinking of making it for Christmas maybe to share with others.

This week we’re finishing up custards. I think we have a few ice creams this week and then our exam on Wednesday before the long weekend for Thanksgiving. Next Monday we’ll do the last day of custards before moving onto International Cakes.

I successfully tempered it!

For the second time ever!

After managing it once during petit fours I was having trouble getting my chocolate in temper. We were playing about with it yesterday in class to garnish the L’Exotique and the mousse cake and I was successful! I think it helped that the ovens weren’t on yesterday, as my station is right in front of them.. so next time I’ll know to move elsewhere when doing chocolate. We also got to play with transfer sheets which was good fun, doing something different with the chocolate,

We’ve been having fun this week, making more bavarians than we knew what to do with! Various styles and flavours, and today for the exam we’ll be making the little individual sized one.

We got to decide on what cake we’ll be making next Wednesday in the exam (brought forward due to Thanksgiving) and I’ll be doing the Charlotte au Cassis, it looked fun and interesting.

The weeks are flying by so quickly!

The start of custards has been fun, we’ve made creme brulee and creme caramel, as well as bread pudding (with a bourbon sauce) rice pudding, and then Gateau St Honore and Religieuse, some very traditional French desserts, and well, it is a French school technically!

It’s gone mostly well, my Honore didn’t go so well as I forgot to turn the pastry cream into diplomat cream so I didn’t have enough of it, but my choux paste turned out really well in that and the religieuse, I was proud of that. We also got to make a cheesecake and then make our own flavours, whatever we wanted.. so I made a caramel sauce and mixed it with one half, and a ganache I mixed with the other and then swirled them together making a very tasty chocolate caramel cheesecake.

I’m still having problems with my tempering of chocolate, we’ll apparently be doing more of that this week so I’ll get to work on it some more and hopefully with one of the Chef’s help we’ll be able to figure out where it is I’m going wrong as I can’t figure it out! *shrugs* I’m not too bothered at this point, it’s why I’m paying tuition – to learn this stuff!

The exam was successful, we made creme brulee and religious, both of mine turned out pretty good so I was happy, and I got 100 on the theory so a nice start to the unit!

Friday after class DmentD and I took a road trip to Houston.. well, just outside, to stay with friends. We were making good time when just as we were coming into Houston we got held up. There had been a crash, probably not long before we got there, we were the third car back, already there were several police cars, and more soon joined them. We sat there for a while wondering what was happening when we heard what sounded like a motorbike (this story works best with DmentD doing the sound effects! *grins*) weaving between all the traffic.. Then we saw the helicopter coming in to land on the road! We waited some more while whoever was hurt was loaded into the helicopter and flown off, and then the police checked the road and started letting us pass.. About a half hour delay in all.

Saturday (after 4 hours of sleep) we were off to the Texas Renaissance Faire, piled into the car we made our way there after a breakfast of kolache and doughnuts! It was a fun day, and the weather was definitely in our favour, bright and sunny but nice and cool!

They have a ‘Medieval’ village they’ve built that we wandered about, looking into shops at the weaponry and costumes and leather. We got to see the Mud Show which was funny, and the jousting which I wasn’t all that impressed with.. It was very short and so obviously staged they were throwing their lances down and jumping off their horses. I got to admire all the costumes, I would have liked to go in costume, hopefully I’ll be able to get something sorted for next year. And I got to laugh and cringe at people’s accents! The Ren Faire accent is a horrible bastardisation of English, though my highlight of the day was when we were in a shop admiring corsets when a woman came up and asked in her best ren faire accent if I’d been measured.. I replied taking a good 10 to 15 seconds saying I had been but I didn’t recall it so I didn’t mind being measured again and then when she spoke again the accent was completely dropped and she was speaking normally *laughs* That’s still making me happy!

DmentD being all manly showed off and did one of the strength things when you hit the base with the hammer and try to hit the bell… he succeeded in hitting the bell all three times, he won a little card saying he was entitled to one free kiss from any willing man, woman or beast.. so he cashed it in with me *grins*

I would have liked to see more of the place, we didn’t make it round all of it, but it was a fun day. We went out to dinner in the evening with a couple more people form Austin joining us.

Next year, as well as a costume I want to take some pound coins! About half of the places use pound signs rather than dollar (even though they mean dollar) to add to the atmosphere or something *grins* Just once, I want to hand over pound coins and see what they do!

We drove back Sunday morning, it was nice to be able to see some of the scenery that I couldn’t see in the dark Friday night. We got back and after going grocery shopping, and picking up pizza for dinner we spent the rest of the day crashed on the sofa being lazy and watching films, interrupted only by changing the laundry loads.

This week at school is based mainly around bavarians and bavarois and we’ll get to make the decision on what we’ll make for the final exam next week, we have from 6 different mousse-sponge cakes to choose from.

Laminated doughs finished nicely at the end of last week, the doughnuts and beignets were delicious and the exam went well, gaining me a nice A overall. We then fulfilled our tradition of going out for dinner at the end of the block, 9 of us this time, crowding into Magnolia eating and chatting and having fun.

We had a good weekend, Saturday it was a friend’s birthday so we went to Bucco de Beppi for dinner, an Italian place that does family style meals, lots of huge plates so you can try bits of whatever you want. That was followed by a trip to the cinema to see Zack and Miri Make A Porno, which was funny, I feel that Jason Mewes stole the show *grins* not that that’s a bad thing, just an observation. We finished the evening with dessert at Chez Zee, where I was impressed enough with their dessert selection and bakery that I’m planning on emailing them about my externship.

Sunday DmentD made a Chicken Andouille gumbo and we had people round. The gumbo (my first taste of it) was delicious. Good job too really since we have leftovers in a freezer *grins* He also made ribbon cookies (addictive) and I had a blast at experimenting with recipes and made root beer cupcakes. I was happy, I found a good base recipe, that rose nicely and got a perfect dome on the top, and then substituted root beer extract in place of vanilla. It worked well, maybe could use a little more extract but they’re stronger tasting now as they sit. I made a cream cheese vanilla frosting to go on top and that worked splendidly.

Yesterday saw the start of my new block at school, with a new instructor. We’re onto custards now.. which is more exciting than it sounds! We made creme caramel, creme brulee and chocolate pot de creme, we’ll be finishing them today. We also made a lemon curd which was nice, and it’s a good recipe to sub in any citrus fruits. Today we’ll be doing stirred custards and then over the next 3 weeks we’ll be making all sorts of desserts containing custards, mousses, bavarians and bavarois. And then also some ice creams and sorbets since ice cream does have a custard base *grins*

We didn’t win the pumpkin carving competition in school. This was the finished product, the tongue of roasted red pepper grossed everyone out *grins*

These were some of the others

And this was the winner

Chef is already coming up with plans for next year!

It was a nice weekend. DmentD and I spent Saturday, after a breakfast of croissants (rescued from my exam!) bacon and eggs, baking for the Halloween party we went to that evening. Opera cakes, sugar cookies and krispie monsters, and then a sugar brain full of gummi bones!

Then Sunday we spent relaxing, doing not much. Got to see 3:10 to Yuma which was interesting and we caught up on some of the recorded programs we had.

This week at school has been fun, stretching the boundaries of viennoiserie a little! We started with strudel (which is classed as a laminated dough), stretching our own dough which was fun. And then we’ve been making brioche.. it’s high in fat and eaten for breakfast, therefore it’s practically a viennoiserie! The brioche recipe we had was much much nicer than the one we used in the bread block, much more flavour. We’ve made a corrone and galette, which we’ll be making again for the exam tomorrow, and then lots of other variations. The saucisson was so good my partner and I demolished it not long after it came out the oven… before remembering we were meant to show Chef first… so we presented this

Luckily she saw the funny side.. and at least we could attest to it being tasty and delicious! We also made crepes and hot cross buns, which were pretty good, and unlike my previous attempts in Aber not lethal weapons!

Tonight we really are stretching the theme and are making doughnuts and beignets (the French, not the New Orleans version!) as well as our doughs for tomorrow. We’ll also be making the strudel for the exam.

I’m hoping I can do as well this week as I did last week. I got 195 for the practical and stunned myself by getting a full 100% for the theory!

I’ve started looking at externships already. It’s not until next May but I want to be prepared. I’ve contacted a couple of bakeries and had a reply of come back in the new year with your portfolio. So I’m keeping everything crossed, and hoping my class mates keep to their ideas of wanting out of Austin placements.. or at the very least wanting paid placements. Since I’m not allowed to be paid (damn visa!) I’m seeking out the places that will only give unpaid externships for now.. though I’m sure if it comes to it places that usually pay won’t object to not having to! We’ll see. I’ll take the time to build up my portfolio some more and hit them all in the new year until they’re awed and amazed and must have me working for them.