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Petit Fours Day 1- Culinary School

Day one of petit fours was interesting. Everything seemed pretty simple, but not everything turned out quite right. The hazelnut financiers stuck in the molds and would not come out well and the tuiles d'amandes burned somewhat and then hardened faster than we could shape them. I got a few good ones for the sake of the pictures. :-) We also made raisin cookies, which taste very strongly of rum due to the rum and powdered sugar glaze on top. There is so much more to petit fours than I previously thought. Friday we are making macarons. I am excited about learning how to make these from Chef Alex. My chef instructor owns his own macaron company: L'Artisan Macarons. His macarons are delicious. Of course we will not be using his recipes, but that's ok. :-)

Last night after school Jason upgraded my iPhone to the new operating system, so unfortunately I lost my pictures. I called Jason this morning and he was able to get pictures of what was left after bringing everything to work. Thanks babe!

Top: Financiers Aux Noisettes (Hazelnut Financiers)

Bottom: Tuiles D'Amandes (Almond Tuiles)

Palets Aux Raisins Sec (Raisin Cookies)

Bread Final

Last night was my bread final. I was really nervous going into it. I wasn't sure I could fit everything in considering bread dough needs to proof. Bread is a lot of hurry up and wait. I actually finished a lot earlier than I thought I would. I still made a rookie mistake though, I took my croissants out too soon. They ended up not being fully baked. It was hard to figure out the bake time of everything. I baked them longer than what the recipe called for, but since the oven had been opened so many times by everyone in the class, they didn't bake like they should have. Chef didn't count me off too much for it though. I actually did rather well. He gave me two 10s and an 8 (the eight is due to the croissants).

Bread final waiting to be graded.

Pain de Mie

(I am very excited to make French toast with this.)

Croissants

(They are too pale. I should have noticed, but for some reason I didn't.)

Brioche a Tete

Apple Crumb Bread

(The recipe is actually for Banana Crumb Bread, but the school didn't have bananas. We all had to change our plans last minute. Chef told us to use apples and to saute them. The bread is really good. Next time I'm going to add some cinnamon to the batter.)

Bread Day 5

Last night was a whirlwind. We had so much to do. I came home with 5 different types of bread, muffins, etc. We didn't finish until 10:15pm and then looked around at a kitchen that looked like a tornado had passed through. Luckily, we are all pretty fast cleaners and we were still able to make it out the door on time. Monday is the final! Wish me luck! :-)

Here are pictures of everything I made:

Pizza- I know it is not a bread, but we made the dough and then were able to finish and bake an actual pizza. I didn't try it, but Jason said it was good.

Oatmeal Raisin Nut Bread

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

Foccacia

Cornbread Muffins

Bread Day 4

* I missed day 3 due to being sick. :-(

Last night was a first for me. I came home and didn't try anything I made. It was not because I didn't want to, though. It was because I was completely stuffed! The culinary students are cooking "family style" meals right now, which means they provide dinner for the entire school. Last night was Italian. We had green salad, bruschetta, spaghetti and meatballs, two different types of penne pasta, and lasagna. I grabbed a little bit of everything and it was delicious! Then a little later we went to visit the pastry 2 class's buffet. They had mini desserts spread out buffet style: eclairs, cream puffs, swans, macarons, pies, tarts, strudel, chocolate candies, chocolate teacups with cream, and some other tasty treats. We all grabbed plates and enjoyed! So you see, by the time I got home there was no way I could eat another bite. :-)

Class was pretty laid back last night. We made danishes, kaiser rolls, english muffins, pizza dough and oatmeal raisin bread dough. Both the pizza dough and oatmeal raisin bread dough will be used on Friday. We learned last night that we have a final on Monday. This unit went by so fast! Guess what I will be doing this weekend?? Yup! Baking bread. :-)

Pictures:

Kaiser Rolls

English Muffins (I actually had on this morning toasted with butter and it was pretty good.)

Cinnamon Danishes

Bread Day 2

Friday night I came home with a bag full of bread. We made two different kinds of brioche rolls as well as brioche donuts. We also made both regular croissants and chocolate croissants and a bread called Musli. I had a lot of fun in class on Friday. Making the donuts was probably my favorite part. :-)

Musli

Croissants

Chocolate Croissants

Brioche Donuts

Brioche a Tete