Today was my final day at the bakery. I was sad that it was my last day, but I was excited about all of the amazing things I have learned over the past 3 weeks. I was expecting to go through my normal routine, and hopefully learn one more thing at the bakery. When I got there, I was expecting to refill the dessert trays, however the head chef had me start measuring out ingredients for him instead. I measured out milk, heavy whipping cream, and eggs into a bowl for him. Once everything was measured, I mixed the ingredients together with a whisk. Then, he had me get a dozen apples and peel them. Once they were peeled, he had me cut them into pieces. Next, I measured out butter and honey for the head chef. I also measured out a gelatin and cold water mixture. Once I was done, he had me measure out brown sugar, flour, and butter into a bowl. Since I did a lot of measuring today, I thought I would show the type of recipe the head chef gives me. All of the recipes are handwritten, and a lot of the recipe is in a different language. He will hand me a paper like the picture below, and tell me what the ingredients and the quantities are. Then, he will leave me with the list and I will measure everything out. After I measured everything that he wanted, I helped another chef glaze the eclairs. Once they were glazed, I put them into a cupcake liner. Then, we made cannolis. The filling of the cannoli is half custard and half cream. There is always custard and cream made in the bakery. I took an equal amount of custard and cream, mixed them together, and added chocolate chips. After that, I piped the filling in the cannoli shells and put sprinkles on both ends of the cannoli. The last thing that I did today was put butter on top of 3 trays of eclairs. Today might not have been the most busy day I have had, but I did get to work with eclairs which I have never done before. It has been a crazy 3 weeks! I went into the bakery the first day very nervous and not knowing what to expect. I really did have such a great 3 weeks at the bakery. It was very fun to be in the middle of a busy bakery and getting a behind-the-scenes look at how bakeries work. I learned so much while I was there as well. I am most excited to try and continue making the desserts I have seen and worked with at the bakery. I also learned so much from doing research and baking at home. I had always wondered about certain things like the chemistry behind leaveners and how to work with dough. Through my research, I know have the answers to those questions and so many more. I am also very proud of all of the new things that I have created over the past few weeks. Everything might not have gone to plan, but all of it was practice that helped me improve as a baker. Going into this intensive, I wanted to do two main things: learn new desserts to make, and improve my skills. Both of these things definitely happened. I also want to continue doing research on my own. I underestimated how much the research was going to help my baking going into this, but now I know that having a good understanding about what you are doing helps you become a much better baker. I value all of the experiences I have had over the past 3 weeks, and I am definitely going to keep baking and improving on my own.
0 Comments
Today was bread day! I was excited and nervous going into today because I had decided to make bread, something that is difficult, but amazing if you can execute it properly. I was really not expecting my bread to be great since it was my first try, but I had done a lot of research yesterday about bread and how it can go wrong, so I was hoping this would help me as I made my bread. I obviously had the goal of making amazing bread so that I could bake it more often! I started by finding a recipe. I wasn’t going to do anything fancy, I just wanted a very simple bread recipe and that’s what I found. I started (as always) by getting out the ingredients for my bread. Then, I heated up my water. From my research, I know that this is a very important step: if the water is too hot it can kill the yeast and if it’s too cold the yeast will slow down. I used a thermometer to make sure that the temperature of the water was perfect (between 100 and 115 degrees). Then I added my yeast into the water and let it dissolve. At this point I was using my paddle attachment on my mixer because I was worried the whisk attachment would be too harsh. Then, I added in sugar, salt, and oil. After that it was time to add the flour. I added in about half of the flour (3 cups). Next, I had to put the rest of the flour in. I switched here from the paddle attachment to the bread hook since the dough was beginning to form. Once all the flour was incorporated, it was time to knead the dough. The recipe and my research said to knead the dough for about 10 minutes, so that is what I started doing. I began to notice, however, that the dough was already very tough and not sticky at all. I began to get worried that the dough had actually kneaded when I mixed in the flour since I used the mixer instead of stirring the flour in. To be sure, I looked up what over kneaded dough would be like, and everything seemed to line up: dough isn't sticky, it's tough, it won’t fold over on itself, and it breaks apart when you pull it instead of stretching. I really didn’t want to continue with this dough because I knew the bread wasn’t going to turn out good. So, I decided to start over with new dough. I started over and did everything the same up to mixing in the last half of the flour. When I added in the last of the flour, I mixed the flour in with a spatula instead of using the mixer. This made a much better dough. I still didn’t need to knead it for long, but it was much lighter and more elastic like. I was very glad I had started over. I came to the conclusion that the first time the bread hook had kneaded the dough, and I probably had it mixing for too long. Here is a picture of my new and improved dough. Once the dough was ready, I put it into a greased bowl and turned it around in the grease a few times. Then, it was time for the first prove. I used my oven to prove my bread with a bowl of boiling water, just like my research told me to do. I proved the dough for 1.5 hours. When the dough came out, it was so much bigger! It was amazing seeing how large the dough had grown. I took the dough out of the bowl and “punched” it down to get some of the air out. I then divided the dough in half and put each half into a bread tin. After that, it was time to prove the dough again, this time for 40 minutes. I used the same proving technique as before since it seemed to have worked so well. After 40 minutes, the dough was done proving and I baked it for 30 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Below is a picture of the dough after the second prove. When the dough came out of the oven, I tapped it to see if it sounded hollow, and it did. The color was a nice brown on top, so I was keeping my fingers crossed that everything looked good on the inside. Once the dough cooled a little more, I turned it out of the pan and cut into it. The inside was perfect! The bread an airy texture and a nice hard crust. I was extremely happy with the outcome! Today was such a big success. I have always been so intimidated with bread, but now I know that I can actually make it. I also tried some and it was delicious, so I will definitely be using this recipe again. While making the bread was a long process, nothing was very complicated. I truly did not think that my bread would turn out so nicely on the first try. This is by far my favorite baked good I have made all intensive. I usually focus on the sweet baked goods, but going outside of my comfort zone was a success. I was also very glad that I had redone my first dough, and I was happy that I was able to identify something was wrong. I don’t think I would have been able to identify this if I had not done my research before hand. Tomorrow I will be going into the bakery for my last day!
Today I was expected to go into the bakery. This, however, did not end up happening due to the icy roads. I started to head into the bakery, but the roads were too slippery, so I decided to turn around and do a baking/research day at home. Since this was not planned, I didn’t really have any expectations. I didn’t even know what I was going to bake! Since I see so many amazing things in the bakery, I decided it was only right to bake something I have seen there. I went back through my old blogs, and decided on petit fours! I worked so much with the petit fours at the bakery that I wanted to actually try to do some on my own. I started researching recipes for petit fours, and discovered that petit four is just a name for a small dessert. This made recipes for small cakes or other desserts come up when I really wanted to make the sandwich cookies from the bakery. After doing some research, I found a recipe that seemed to be very similar to the one at the bakery. I was actually even more excited because the recipe made half vanilla and half chocolate cookies so you can sandwich one of each together! I decided to do this recipe. I started by measuring out all of my ingredients. I never used to measure out the ingredients before starting, but I have found it makes the baking process much easier. Next, I whipped my butter until it was a white color. Then, I added in the powdered sugar After that, I stirred in the egg yolked (one at a time) and my vanilla extract. The final ingredient I added was the flour. I actually only added about ¾ of the flour and then saved the rest for a later step. Once the dough was made, I separated half of it into another bowl. The batter remaining would become the vanilla dough. I added more flour to this dough until it became less sticky. Once the vanilla dough was ready, I put it into a piping bag and piped the cookies! The tip I had was much larger than the one used in the bakery, so the cookies came out a little larger. Once the vanilla dough was piped, I moved the remaining dough that was in a separate bowl back to the main bowl and added in some cocoa powder. Then I repeating the piping process for these cookies. Once everything was piped, they went into the oven for 20 minutes at 300 degrees fahrenheit. Since my oven’s temperature is off, I had to set it to 320 degrees. When the cookies came out of the oven, it was time to top half of the cookies with jam and sandwich the other half on top. Here are some pictures of some of the finished cookies! After this, I wanted to do some baking research. Tomorrow is the day I am not expected to go into the bakery, so I wanted to plan what I was going to make ahead of time. I decided I wanted to attempt a common but difficult baked good: bread. I have seen many people make bread, however I have always been nervous because it seems very hard. Because of this, I decided to research bread making so that I can go in as prepared as possible. If you want to see everything that I researched, you can click the research tab and look under “Third Day of Research”.
Today was not at all what I expected. I woke up this morning ready to go into the bakery, and I ended up having a baking/research day at home. I love these days because I get to push myself in baking something new on my own and research something to help me grow as a baker. I loved making the petit fours and I was so happy that they turned out so good! It was one of my favorite desserts I have made over the past 3 weeks because it wasn’t too rich and it was nice and flakey. Also, doing research on bread was very interesting. I have always been intimidated by bread, but after doing research, I am hoping that the bread I try and make tomorrow will turn out alright. I am also going to spend tomorrow putting together my project for intensive fair. Friday will be my last day in the bakery! I was excited to go back to the bakery today because it feels like it has been so long since I've been there! I went in with the goal of learning how to make a new dessert. I see so many different desserts in the front when I walk in to the bakery every morning, so I was hoping to be able to do something new today. I got to the bakery and refilled the vacant dessert trays. Today this included filling cannolis, which meant I got to make more! I did this the first day, so the chef let me do it on my own since it isn’t very complicated. First you fill a piping bag with the filling (the filling was already made). Then you fill the cannoli shells (I found out today the bakery actually buys pre-made cannoli shells). After that you add sprinkles on both ends of the cannoli, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and put in a cupcake liner. Then I measured out ingredients for a vanilla cake. I was very surprised to find out that the bakery actually uses cake mix for their cakes rather than mixing together their own dry ingredients. I measured out this cake mix, eggs, and oil. Then, we blended all of the ingredients together. The chef making this told me that the order you add your ingredients in and the speed you beat the ingredients at is key for making a perfect cake. While the ingredients were mixing, I buttered and lined a lot of pans. This included 4 6-inch pans, 8 8-inch pans, 6 9-inch pans, and 1 sheet tray. Once those were buttered and lined, the chef put the batter into all of the pans. Next, I measured out the ingredients for the almond filling for a blueberry tart. Once the filling was made, I filled the tarts with the filling and added blueberries and hazelnuts on the top. The last thing I did today was make tea cookies. I have never made these before so I was very excited. This involved using a cookie cutter to cut small circles out of dough. This is actually the same dough used to make tarts. I cut 2 trays of these. Below is a picture of one of the trays. After that, I had to cut the same thing, except after I cut the first cookie, I had to cut a smaller hole in the middle of the first cookie. I also cut 2 trays of this. Once these were baked, I got to assemble the cookies. I started by doing a layer of powdered sugar over the cookies that have the smaller hole inside. Then, I put jelly on top of the regular cookies. Finally, I stacked the cookie with a hole on top of the regular cookie with jelly. Here is a picture of the final cookies! Overall, today was great. I was actually very busy all day. The tea cookies took a while to cut and make, but I had a lot of fun doing something new. Even though I may not be doing the most complicated tasks, I am still doing new things that I have never done before, which I am loving! It’s crazy that I only have 2 days left at the bakery. The time has gone by so quickly. I'm still hoping to learn a thing or 2 during my last few days!
Today I expected to go into the bakery and do what I usually do. There aren’t too many surprises that I run into anymore while I’m there. I was, however, expecting to leave the bakery early because as the day goes on, the roads are supposed to get pretty bad. I drove in this morning and went into the bakery. When I got in, there was no light on in the kitchen. I was a little bit late because the roads were already a little slippery, so I was expecting somebody to be there when I got there. When I walked in though, there was only somebody at the cash register. I asked if the chefs were going to be in today, and he called the head chef to see. It turned out only the head chef was coming in today, and everybody else was not due to the weather. He also said he wouldn’t be in until later in the day, so he told me it was going to be very slow and to just go home. When I got home, I knew I needed to do something for the day. I decided to bake some snickerdoodle bars. There was no real reason behind choosing this, it just sounded like a good idea. I started out by measuring out the ingredients for the bars. Then, I creamed the white sugar and butter together. After that, I added in the brown sugar. Once the butter and sugar was creamed together very well, I added in the eggs (making sure to do it one at a time as I learned from my first day of research) and then the vanilla. Next, I added in all of the dry ingredients in intervals (flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon). Once all of the ingredients were added, I put the dough into a pan and spread it out with my hands. After that was done, I added a cinnamon sugar topping and put the pan in the oven. I made sure the oven was heated correctly using my oven thermometer. I have found that by heating up the oven 20 degrees hotter than I am supposed to gets me to the correct temperature. After 25 minutes, I took the bars out of the oven. After I let them cool, I sliced them and they were all done! Today was not at all what I expected. I expected to go into the bakery to help out, but I ended up having a baking day at home, which I was totally fine with. I really enjoyed making these bars. After my not so successful macarons, I wanted to make something that would turn out nice and everybody would like. I really enjoyed making these on a nice snowy day. I will be back in the bakery on Tuesday.
Today, I stayed home to do some baking. I see macarons at the bakery every day, so I really wanted to try making some. I tried to make one batch of macarons a few years ago. They were very mediocre. They tasted great, but they were not close to technically correct. I hoped to fix that today. To be honest, I still didn’t expect them to be great. When I was in the bakery, I saw the chef make macarons by boiling water and sugar together as part of the process. He added this to the rest of the ingredients. When I was looking for a recipe, I didn’t see any that used this technique, so I was skeptical. However, I found a recipe that also had a video to go along with it, so I decided to give that one a go. I was hoping that these macarons were at least better than my previous batch. I was also hoping to do some more research! I started making my macarons by watching the whole video through once to get an idea of what I was doing. Then, I got all of my ingredients out. Next, I put my almond flour and powdered sugar in the food processor. This was something I also did for the chef at the bakery when he was making macarons. Then I moved the mixture to a separate bowl. Afterwards, I whipped my egg whites until they were no longer see through. Once they were opaque, I added some salt. After the salt was added, I slowly added in the sugar, almond extract, and food coloring while the eggs were whipping. Once the egg and sugar mixture formed still peaks, I knew they were done whipping. To make sure they were whipped enough. I turned the bowl upside down and nothing fell out! Then, I added half of the egg and sugar mixture to the dry ingredients. Once that was mixed, I added the rest of the egg and sugar mixture and continued to fold the ingredients until the batter had a “ribbon” consistency. This means that the batter falls off the spatula without breaking, but also without being too liquidy. Next, I moved the batter to a piping bag. I actually didn’t have the right sized circular piping tip, so I just cut a hole in the end of the bag instead. This actually created a problem because the hole was not perfectly round, but more of an oval shape. That meant that when piping the batter onto the trays, I couldn’t just pipe from the center and let the batter spread, otherwise it turned out lopsided. I had to instead move my bag in a circular motion, which isn’t the correct technique. Once the batter was all piped, I took the tray and hit the bottom of it against the counter. This gets rid of any excess air bubbles. Now it was time to let the macarons sit for about a half hour until a skin formed over the shell. While this was happening, I decided to experiment with the temperature in my oven. Last week, I did research on ovens and found out that most are actually not correct with temperature. To fix this, I got an oven thermometer and decided to use it today. I found out that my oven was much cooler than it was saying. When I set my oven to 300 degrees, the oven thermometer said it was actually only 225 degrees! This is way off and could seriously affect my baked goods, so I turned the temperature up on my oven until the oven thermometer read 300 degrees. After a half hour, I baked one tray of macarons (I had a total of 2 trays of macarons) in the oven for fifteen minutes. Here is where things began to go wrong. As I watched them bake, I noticed that the tops began to crack and the feet of the macarons were spreading out. While they finished baking, I decided to do some research about what was going wrong. If you want to see everything that I researched about macarons today, you can click the research tab of the website and look at the “Second Day of Research”. I found that one reason this may be happening is because the temperature on the oven was too high. Even though I followed the recipe and even used another oven thermometer to check the temperature, I lowered the heat when I put the second batch of macarons in the oven, hoping it would help fix the problem. It didn’t. The tops of my macarons still cracked and the feet were still too big. Here are some pictures of the macarons. I really wanted to know why the tops were cracking, so I looked at my research to see what else may have gone wrong. I think the reason this happened is maybe I didn’t tap the bubbles out of the macarons thoroughly enough. It could either be this or I didn’t whip my egg whites enough. I don’t think this was the issue because I made sure that the egg whites held stiff peaks and didn’t fall out of the bowl when I turned it upside down. Even though they didn’t turn out great, I still wanted to finish them. I decided to fill the middle of the macarons with a little whip cream. So I made some whip cream by mixing heavy whipping cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla together. Then I added it into the center of the macarons. After I finished with the macarons, I decided to do some more research, this time on cannolis. I think next week, I want to try and attempt to make cannolis, so I figured I’d do some research ahead of time. To see what I learned, you can click the research tab on my website and look under “Second Day of Research”.
Overall, I was slightly disappointed with my macarons today. I didn’t expect them to be perfect, but I was hoping they would turn out slightly better than they did. As I baked, I followed the video at the same time hoping that it would help. Though it may not have gone exactly how I wanted, I actually ended up learning a lot about macarons through my research. I know macarons can be very fickle and hard to make, so doing research to learn how to make sure nothing goes wrong for next time was very cool. Part of baking is making these mistakes and learning from them, and today was an example of that for me. Even though the macarons may not have been technically perfect, they were still tasty! Last Wednesday, things were pretty slow at the bakery. So I went in the bakery today thinking that it wouldn’t be the busiest day. I had my same general goals: learn something and find a new dessert. And, I had my same general expectations of what I would do: refill the vacant dessert trays, measure ingredients, do something new. I have fallen into routine at the bakery, so I was hoping something unexpected came along today. I got to the bakery and refilled the trays at the front. I have talked about this everyday, but I have never really showed a picture of what this looks like. Below are two pictures. The first is the tray of tiramisu when I get to the bakery. The second picture is when the old tiramisu have been put on a new tray and new tiramisu are assembled and put on the tray to fill it up. Sometimes, the chef wants only 4-6 desserts per tray, but in the second picture below, we just put the rest of the tiramisu on the tray since the pre-made tiramisu was almost out. The rest of my day I did one thing: work with petit fours. Yesterday, I did get to work with petit fours, and I did some other things too. Today, though, there were so many cookies left that I spent my whole day assembling and decorating these cookies. I started out by putting jam on one end of the cookie and sandwiching it with another cookie. I did this with 8 trays of individual cookies, turning into 4 trays of the sandwich cookies. This totals (very roughly) 420 petit fours. After I did this, it was time to decorate them all. The first type of decoration I did was dipping half of the sandwich cookie into chocolate. The second decoration was coating the entire cookie in chocolate. The third decoration was coating half of the cookie in chocolate and sprinkles. Below are pictures of the decorations. After doing all of these, there was still over a tray of undecorated cookies! I really enjoyed today. It way seem like I didn’t do much today, but this was the first day I can say I was completely busy from the moment I got to the bakery until I left. I may have just done one thing, but I did a lot of that one thing. I have learned that dealing with petit fours is very time consuming, but I loved working solely on one thing all day. It was also very accomplishing to be able to make and decorate to much of one thing. I didn’t get to make anything new today, but I truly didn’t mind because working on one thing all day at the bakery was new to me. After making all of these petit fours, I think I need to try and make some on my own sometime!
After a two day break, I was back in the bakery today! I have gotten into routine there, so I pretty much knew what to expect. I expected to change out the old desserts, weigh some ingredients, and do some cleaning. What I have noticed, though, is that (almost) every day, there has been at least one new thing that I get to do or somehow be a part of, depending on what the head chef wants to make. So, I expected to also do something new, as well. I have begun to compile a list of new desserts I can attempt to make on my own, and today I hoped to add to that list. I got to the bakery, and as I do everyday, I went to the front to change out/refill displayed dessert trays. This has become routine for me, so it is expected that when I am at the bakery, this is my job in the mornings. Today, there were only two desserts left on one tray but no extras in the freezer to replenish with. So the chef instructed me to throw the two desserts away and start a new tray of carrot cake. This involved going through the same process of sticking the dessert to a plastic gold rectangle using apricot paste. I also used glaze to stick plastic tabs to each side of the cake (see third picture below). Second, I measured out ingredients for the chef to make petit fours. Next, I put more pastry into tart tins. This has also become a regular job of mine while in the bakery. After this, I measured out ingredients for white chocolate and chocolate mousse. The chef showed me how to make one batch, and I made the other. This involves carefully watching milk in a pan come to a simmer, pouring half of the milk into a bowl with sugar and egg in order to introduce the heat to the egg, and pouring the sugar, egg, and milk mixture back into the rest of the milk on the pan. This step had to be done very carefully. If you don’t constantly stir while doing this, the eggs will cook. Once that has been stirred for 10 seconds on the heat, the mixture is taken off the heat and poured onto the chocolate. This melts the chocolate and allows you to stir everything together. Here is a picture of the finished white chocolate mousse. The final thing I did today was fill jam in the petit fours that the chef made. I got into a routine of lining the cookies up on a tray and piping the jam onto every other line of cookies. Then I would use the remaining lines of cookies to complete the sandwich. Once I was done with this, I dipped the petit fours into melted chocolate and lined them up on a tray (I didn’t manage to get a picture of this). Overall, I really enjoyed today. I have never made mousse or petit fours before, and getting to help do both was very fun. I also learned how hard petit fours are to make because you have to pipe each individual cookie. I watched the chef do this for a long time, and she let me try piping a few too. I love that not every day in the bakery is exactly the same, and something new is always made. Even just observing the chefs work is very interesting. I can now add mousse and petit fours to my list of new desserts!
I had another day at the bakery today. This morning, I went with the main goal of hoping to work on a wedding cake a little bit. When I was talking to my sponsor before intensives, she said she recommended coming in on Saturdays because that is the day the head chef works on wedding cakes! I was really looking forward to seeing the wedding cakes be created and decorated. I also hoped to do something a little more challenging today that I had never tried to do before. I got to the bakery and refilled the empty trays of desserts displayed in the front room, like I do every morning. Today, rather than just refill pre made desserts, I had to do some assembling of the desserts. I cut up some strawberries, put glaze on them, and added them on top of the cheesecakes. Then I put them on a clean tray and put them back in the front display. Then, the head chef wanted to add a new layer of cream and berries to a fruitcake. So he had me remove all of the old fruit and throw it away. Next, I toasted almond slices for the chef to add onto the side of a cake. I also melted some chocolate. After that, I created bases for a dessert using a circular gold plate, apricot paste, and a chocolate biscuit. The apricot paste is used to make the biscuit stick to the gold plate. Once I created these the chef put the rest of the dessert on the bases to be displayed. Then, it was my favorite part of the day. I got to cut up strawberries and kiwi, put the strawberries in glaze, and decorate the cake with the strawberries, kiwi, and blueberries. Here is a picture of the final decoration. For the most part, today was very slow. All day I did these things and a lot of cleaning, as well. I also watched the chef create some cakes. It was very cool to watch the techniques that he used. For example, he was working on a wedding cake and used a spoon dipped in hot water to create the pattern in the cream on the cake. It was also really cool to watch him assemble the wedding cake because there is a lot of structuring involved to make sure that the cake stays sturdy. He used rods and a large wooden pole through all of the cakes to keep them in place. Here are some other things I watched the head chef create. While today was slow, I really enjoyed decorating the cake with fruit. I also liked learning that the chef always glazes his strawberries which I had never thought of before. I am definitely going to try this in the future! Even though I didn’t get the chance to work on the wedding cake, it was so much fun to watch a whole wedding cake be assembled tier by tier. This was my last day at the bakery for this week. After one week, I have come to the conclusion that most days at the bakery will be pretty slow and will involve me cleaning up after people and washing dishes. However, everyday I will probably also get to do something interesting related to desserts. I wanted to learn how to do new things, so learning how to make truffles, fill cannolis, put pastry into tart tins, and glaze strawberries have been a few of the new things I have learned this week! I will be back at the bakery on Tuesday.
Today I went back into the bakery to help out. I find that I have a constant two goals going into the bakery: learning something new and getting to work with desserts. I wasn’t too sure what to expect today. My best guess was that I would probably get to work with a dessert one way or another, and probably do some more busy work like weigh ingredients or crack eggs. When I arrived in the bakery I went to the front to look for empty desserts. Most dessert trays were pretty full so the chef and I only had to refill two trays. Then I was told that today the bakery had a few orders of cakes to make, so I was put to task with finding all of the cake tins that they needed. I gathered a total of 15 tins. After gathering the pans, I greased the pans with butter and lined with parchment paper like I did on Wednesday. I greased an additional 5 sheet pans later in the day. Next, I sliced strawberries and put them in the buttercream frosting of a cake. After this, people were working and nobody had any tasks for me to do. So while I waited, one of the chefs taught me how to properly level a cake with a serrated knife. To do this, you take the end of the serrated knife closest to the handle and insert it about an inch from one side of the cake. With your other hand on the top of the cake you turn the cake on the cake spinner while keeping the knife steady. This creates an even line to cut through to take the top off. I loved learning about this because I have tried to level cakes in the past and I have never been great at it. After demonstrating how to do it on a few cakes, she let me try. I didn’t get any pictures of this, but the technique she taught me made leveling the cake much easier than when I had tried previously. Once I was done learning this, another chef had me make truffles. This was my favorite part of the day. The mixture was already made (chocolate, butter, and cream), so I scooped some mixture out, rolled it into a ball, and then rolled the ball into cocoa powder or chopped pistachios. Next, I cracked two flats of eggs into a large bowl. Two flats of eggs equals 60 eggs. The last thing I did today was put cut pastries and put them into tart tins. When I did this on Monday the chef helped me out. Today I did all of all them by myself since I had done it before. I really enjoyed today at the bakery. I completed my two goals of learning something new (how to level a cake) and working with desserts (truffles). I also enjoyed it more because the atmosphere was slightly more relaxed since there wasn’t too much to do, and I am beginning to know the workers better. These last few days have made me so much more inspired and excited about baking! While I still enjoy cooking, I think I enjoy baking more because 1) I love the decorating side and how beautiful desserts can look, 2) I love the element of sweetness, 3) people enjoy desserts no matter what and I love sharing my baking with others, and 4) I love the actual steps of combining all ingredients together, and then when the ingredients come out of the oven it is transformed into a whole new thing!
|