So do yourself a favor, and make these.

Per request, the boyfriend asked me to make him a banana cream pie. So I did. And I’m so glad I did. It was delicious. One bite into the pie, I heard sounds come out of my bf’s mouth, that are pretty rare. It’s not that he doesn’t like everything I make, it’s that he doesn’t LOVE everything I make. He is a huge fan of the banana cream pie from Baker’s Square, and it made me so happy to hear him tell me that my pie was better! For the crust, I used crushed up Nilla wafers, to give it more of that banana pudding kind of pie.

I’m definitely going to make this pie again, in the near future (possibly on Monday = in honor of 3.14).

P.s. I know I’ve been absent from my blog. In all honesty, I’ve been busy, and extremely lazy to blog. To put my life in a nutshell, I’m working 2 jobs and I graduated pastry school in December. But stay tuned, I will continue to blog…sporadically.

I can honestly say this was probably my least favorite class. I think it may have been the artistic aspect that made me not as interested. I didn’t have a very fun time decorating, learning how to roll fondant, making gum paste flowers, and doing string work with royal icing. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I was terrible at it…I just didn’t have fun. I didn’t love it, and I definitely didn’t see myself doing it in the future. Maybe I’d do a cake or two on the side for someone if they really wanted me to, but I know I’m not going to be on the search for a job as a wedding cake decorator/designer. I do give wedding cake designers and decorators props for what they do, because it does take time and patience. And really importantly, they have to make the bride happy. Brides are scary, and I honestly wouldn’t want to deal with a scary bridezilla. Too much pressure. But I will definitely take the skills that I learned in the 2 weeks with me for the future. I learned how to properly frost a cake, and it made me think about all the cakes I’ve frosted so poorly, and it was like LIGHTBULB! Hello! Why didn’t I think to do this before!? I made flowers out of gumpaste which looked beautiful, and people would look at them and think WOW! How did you do that?! Guess what? It’s easy! You can do it too! With the proper tools, anyone can literally make gum paste flowers. I learned how to roll out fondant onto a tiered cake. That was interesting. Oh, and along with wedding cakes, we made a traditional French wedding cake as well — a Croquembouche. A croquembouche is literally a tower of pate a choux (cream puffs) held together by sugar. It’s delicious! This, I actually had fun making. I definitely wouldn’t mind having a croquembouche at my wedding. It’s something different, its simple and beautiful, and tasty. So here are some results of my time in Wedding Cakes class.

Two tiered buttercream cake

I did a terrible job decorating this, and If i had more time in class, I think I could have done better — but I’ll be honest with myself: my piping skills still suck.

One tiered buttercream cake

I did this one tiered cake for my finals. I liked how this turned out more.

Croquembouche

Traditional French wedding cake topped with a sugar fountain.

Three tiered fondant cake

Fondant covered cake topped with gum paste flowers.

So I think that wraps up Wedding cakes. See you when I see you!

Hazelnut Chocolate Mousse Cake


don’t mind these craptacular pictures: layer of chocolate biscuit, chocolate mousse, hazelnut dacquoise and a hazelnut mousse. pure delight.

Raspberry Silk Cake

Raspberry Silk Cake: layers of almond dacquoise, hazelnut crunch, raspberry gelee, and a white chocolate diplomat mousse.

I learned how to make puff pastry! I thought this was super exciting, because I never thought I’d be making my own puff pastry one day. It’s just so easy and convenient to buy the frozen kind. Well, even though there were a few steps in making this puff pastry, it wasn’t all that difficult at all. I enjoyed making it, and would love to make it again and use it with a savory recipe. With the puff pastry we made a Pithivier (pi-thiv-ee-ay) or Almond Galette. it’s a puff pastry filled with almond cream. It was super delicious, flaky and buttery, and I felt that mine turned out beautifully.

Pithivier or Almond Galette

other cakes we made that are not mentioned: nougat mousse cake made with a pistachio dacquoise, an apricot/passion gelee, nougat mousse, and dried fruits and nuts — i could see this cake as being a nice fall or holiday cake, due to the use of pistachios, nuts and dried fruit. A coconut passion cake made with a coconut dacquoise, coconut mousse and passion fruit mousse. this cake was very light and refreshing, a perfect summer cake.

now onto Tarts.

I was weary about tarts when we were going into it. The only tarts I had in mind were the ones I made in Petit Fours class, and I was not a huge fan. Little did I know I would end up LOVING tarts class. I was super bummed that it was only a week long class, because I honestly had lots of fun. Sure I did wrestle with the dough a bunch of times, because one minute I’d be rolling the dough out, the next, it would be ripping and sticking to my roller. I learned that when working with the dough, it should be very cold, and you need to work fast. If you don’t, you’ll be wrestling with it for a while. I also learned some valuable things in this class, not regarding tarts, but just regarding organization. My chef instructor is very, and I mean, VERY, organized, and it really made me more aware of my organization skills. I thought I was pretty organized, but during this week, I don’t know if it was the nerves or what, my organization skills were off. I know I need to work on it some more, because in this field you really have to make sure you’re on top of things. Anyhoo, here are some of the beautiful and delicious tarts I constructed.

fresh fruit tarts


filled with almond cream, figs, and apricots.

lemon cream tart

lemon curd filled tart topped with french meringue shells.

lemon curd tart

i went a little too far with the torch on the meringue, but turned out great. very tart, similar to a lemon meringue pie.

chocolate tart

chocolate custard filled tart topped with a chocolate nougatine crisp.

with the leftover chocolate custard, i made pots de creme.

lastly, we made an inverted puff pastry, where instead of folding the butter into the dough, we folded the dough into the butter. with it we made a Gateau St. Honore and Mille Fuille.

Gateau St. Honoré

puff pastry topped with pate a choux filled with pastry cream, and center filled with a vanilla crème légère (pastry cream with heavy cream folded in). This was by far my favorite. Soo creamy and good with a bit of crunch from the caramel atop the chouquettes.

Mille Feuille (Napolean)

puff pastry layered with pastry cream. Simple and delectable.

This week begins Wedding Cakes, so stay tuned!

here are some of my favorites petit fours that turned out great:

macarons with a buttercream filling

apricot tart with almond cream.

chocolate financiers

opera cake

raspberry and buttercream filled macaron

fresh fruit tart.

As for finals — I had exams Wednesday up until Friday. I can honestly say I’m not too sure how I did, as I did have a few mess ups on day 1 and 2. I was upset with myself, because they were minor mistakes that could have been prevented if I had been more careful. But mistakes are good, because I know I learned from them. It was hectic on day 1, everyone kind of running around the room trying to scale their ingredients, then having to work with our table mate on who would do what first because of the fact that we had to share a mixer and convection stove. I think my partner and I were organized pretty well, and by day 3, everything was running smoothly. I am kind of glad I had to perform this final first versus ice creams, or chocolates, because there was a lot of organization we had to have, and we really had to have a set schedule because of things that had to have time to proof, bake, etc. It made me think about food challenges on tv, and how organized they have to be, and I give them all props for doing what they do. It’s rough, and I will admit that. But alas, I am extremely happy my first finals are over, and am excited to move onto the next section in pastry school: CAKES! so stay tuned =]

This week we have moved onto Petits Fours. Today was only day 2, and so far i’m not a HUGE fan. Of course, I still enjoy learning about them, but it feels like a huge process because of all the prep work done ahead of time. Everyday is a little process — a little process for little desserts. We made pate a choux once again yesterday, and sadly there was an accident at my table, so we had to remake them today. Well, something went wrong, and we must have scaled something wrong, because our pate a choux didn’t turn out right. So, tomorrow my partner and I have to them again. I’m hoping it works out this time, well, because it has to. We’re making eclaires and salambos tomorrow, so we kind of have to have our pate a choux done! It was a hectic day in class today, and as much as I love baking and being in the kitchen, I was not feeling it today. I know there will be days where I feel off, but I know I just have to keep truckin’ along. Something that helped me get through today — Dacquoise. We made dacquoise, and i have never actually heard of them before today, and it saddens me, because they are delicious little treats. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to snap a picture of them today because our day was going by so quickly, and they kind of got smashed on my commute home. Luckily, they were still perfectly tasty! They are tasty tiny meringue type cakes topped with confectionery sugar, filled with a dacquoise cream, a combination of pastry cream, butter, toasted walnut powder (although other nut powders can be subbed), and a little port wine for flavor. I honestly could not believe how delicious these delicate babies were. But other than the dacquoise, my day was not going so well. I didn’t have time to finish everything, the kitchen was too warm for me to roll out my mini tart dough, and so I’m hoping tomorrow will be a better day. This week has already seemed too long, and it’s only Tuesday, which scares me. I’m hoping things will look up! At the end of the week, on Sunday, I am participating in a stage (short for stagiare in french), which means to volunteer at a bakery, restaurant, hotel, etc. Working for free! Who wouldn’t want to take someone in for free work, right? My stage will take place at a local bakery/sweet shoppe in my neighborhood, and it was a great set up, because the owner is a regular customer at the Starbucks I work at. I spoke with her, and we was extremely kind, and it went on from there. I will hopefully blog about it, and let you all know how it went. I’m really hoping I can remember to update my blog, because I almost felt as if the life of my blog was over.

Well, I hope this entry has brought you all up to date with where I’ve been. Now for some food porn on what you’ve all been missing:

Bostock Brioche

Almond Croissants

Basket full of sourdough, multigrain sourdough, country bread.

Danishes with frangipan and apricot.

Super tasty Farmer’s bread w/walnuts

The croissant that changed my life

Beautiful loaves of french bread in the oven

Brioche

For the chocolaze glaze, I decided to do use peanut butter chips and chocolate chips, to make a pb-chocolate glaze. After I dipped the doughnuts into the glaze, I topped some with sprinkles, and some were dipped in cocoa pebbles. Cereal is in, and if you didn’t know that, you do now!

Next up, the yeast glazed doughnuts. Now these turned out practically perfect. Pretty close to a krispy kreme, even. I think my yeast fears are finally over. The dough rised perfectly under the kitchen towel, and they fried up perfectly. Again, I didn’t fry them for the full time called for, I used my own judgement. After frying these doughnuts, I dunked em into the cinnamon glaze that I had prepped right before I fried the doughnuts.

Overall, I favored the yeast over the cake, which is funny, because normally, I’m a huge cake doughnut fan. But really, there is no doughnut that I won’t love. I’m going to work on the cake doughnuts again in the near future, and try to see what I can do to make them less sticky, and more manageable. They were a little dry, but not so dry that they sucked, but they could have been a little more cakey. The yeast ones were puffy and delicious.

So Happy National Doughnut Day, go get/make yours now !

*For all of you Starbuck-goers, I wouldn’t really recommend their treat sized cookies. I’m not sure as an employee, I should be saying this, but as a person who loves baked goods, these are not worth it, at about $1 a piece. You’re better off buying their outrageous oatmeal cookies, or chocolate chunk. But really, you’re better off baking these! ;)

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
recipe can be found here
yields approx 3 dozen “treat sized” cookies

1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup peanut butter at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup peanut butter chips
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 tablespoon sugar for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
3. Beat the butter and peanut butter until fluffy. Add the sugars and beat until smooth. Add egg, milk and vanilla. Gradually mix in the flour mixture and beat thoroughly. Stir in chocolate and peanut butter chips.
4. Place sprinkling sugar on a plate. Drop dough by rounded teaspoon into sugar and roll around, then put onto ungreased cookie sheet, leaving several inches between them for expansion.
5. Using a fork lightly indent the top of each cookie (or use a small offset spatula if you want a smooth top), but don’t over-flatten.
6. Bake for 10-12 minutes. DON’T overbake — the cookies may look really soft and underdone, but trust me, they aren’t.
7. Cool the cookies on the sheet for 1 minute, then transfer to a rack to cool completely.
8. Enjoy while warm! (or not, but awesome when still warm.)

The cookies turned out pretty good! I would describe them as being chocolaty, that hits you with a subtle hint of spiciness when your chewing. Nothing crazy spicy, and honestly I could have put just a tad bit more cayenne to kick it up a notch.

Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies
recipe from The Post Punk Kitchen
yields 18-24 cookies

For the topping:
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

For the cookies:
1/2 cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
3 tablespoons almond milk (Or your preferred non-dairy milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon chocolate extract (or more vanilla extract if you have no chocolate)
1 2/3 cups flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cayenne

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Mix the topping ingredients together on a flat plate. Set aside.
3. In a medium mixing bowl, use a fork to vigorously mix together oil, sugar, syrup, and milk. Mix in extracts.
4. Sift in remaining ingredients, stirring as you add them. Once all ingredients are added mix until you’ve got a pliable dough.
5. Roll dough into walnut sized balls. Pat into the sugar topping to flatten into roughly 2 inch discs. Transfer to baking sheet, sugar side up, at least 2 inches apart (they do spread). This should be easy as the the bottom of the cookies should just stick to your fingers so you can just flip them over onto the baking sheet.
6. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, they should be a bit spread and crackly on top.
7. Remove from oven and let cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Brown Sugar Cookies
Recipe from Furey and the Feast
Makes: 16-18 large cookies

3/4 cups unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg, room temperature
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 tsp course sea salt

1. Move oven racks to upper and middle third of your oven, and preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line two cookie sheets or with parchment paper. Cream butter and both sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer/hand mixer. Add egg, vegetable oil an vanilla, mix until incorporated.
2. In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt, and mix to combine. Add flour mixture to mixing bowl and mix until all ingredients just come together (dough will be somewhat wet and crumbley-like).
3. Portion dough into 16-18 balls (around the size of a golf ball) and place on cookie sheets about 2 1/2 inches to 3 inches apart. Bake for 12-15 minutes for chewy cookies, and 16 to 18 minutes for crunchy. Remove from oven, cool in pan for 5 minutes before placing on rack to cool completely. Store in airtight container.