For two weeks anyway… Not that I’ve had much time to appreciate it yet, I’ve been keeping myself busy!
The last week of school was fun, we started with an Angel Food Cake (an American creation that didn’t taste so good, chewy and no flavour at all), made a Frambois, Pralinettes which were very much fun, covering them in chocolate and topping with chocolate fans. The Julianna was good, took an entire lesson layering up the various cakes and mousses and creams, then tempering white and dark chocolate at the same time in order to do the woodgrain banding, I also made the striped cigarettes for practice.. because I could! A quick cake was the dobos, the garnish of the caramel covered cake was the best bit!

We finished up with an exam on a cake of our creation! Chef gave us a menu of items to choose from so I decided on chocolate and caramel, a flavour combination I enjoy very much. So I ended up with the sponge from the sacher torte, chocolatey and dense, soaked with a rum syrup and sandwiched with ganache. Covered in a caramel buttercream (made for the first time during the exam) with chocolate shavings on the side and caramel curls on the top. They were good fun to make, once you got used to the fact you were wearing two pairs of gloves and it was going to be very very hot.

I got the ultimate accolade for my cake.. Chef said she would buy it!

The weekend’s been busy… Annoyingly (for me!) I can’t talk about it yet as it was mostly part of Operation Christmas.. so presents for people that may or may not be reading this!

I got my Christmas cake decorated, it’s looking pretty awesome. I covered it in (homemade) marzipan and fondant. Then I made a wreath of holly and ivy and berries similar to this cake but made of modelling chocolate instead of fondant, and looking much neater and better! The leaves extend all the way down the side of the cake and the piping on top is much better (amazing what two years of cake making will do!).

Tomorrow I’ll be making the yule log, I made the meringue mushrooms today for it, and I have some holly and ivy left from the cake to garnish it.

We went to the cinema yesterday to watch JCVD. It was interesting, I didn’t realise it was mostly going to be in French with subtitles, but it fitted since most of it was set in Belgium. I liked that it wasn’t an action film, he did very little fighting and it worked.. I don’t want to say too much incase any one wants to go and see it.. but I enjoyed it!

We went to Ethiopian for lunch and I was pleasantly surprised.. the place we went to last Christmas was ok.. I could find something I liked, but it wasn’t a place I would actively suggest and ask we go to. This place was different, I preferred it. The food was flavourful and the server/cook was wonderful, suggesting that we order less as much as she wanted us to spend lots, she didn’t want her food to go to waste.. I think that was awesome.

Today I was enjoying my not having to go to school! I was annoyingly practical for most of the day though, getting laundry and ironing out the way, some more of Operation Christmas done and dusted, and then I finally sat down and watched The Other Boleyn Girl. I enjoyed it, they’ve taken a lot out of the book (which I liked very much) but it still flows, and they haven’t altered things too much.

It’ll be dinner time soon, I’m finally feeling festive with the cold spell in the weather.. obviously my mind just couldn’t accept that Christmas was on it’s way when it was still 70F outside!