Hello readers,
I apologize for the long wait for news on my adventure; it has been quite crazy here! My last post stopped at week three, so I will give you the low down on the what has happened since then:
Week Four:
During our kitchen class we made eclairs, pastry cream, and spritz cookies. Oh my goodness, spritz cookies are so addicting. The bad news is... they are VERY easy to make! We made all of these as individuals versus with our station partners. I love working with my partner, but I am especially excited when we can do things on our own. The spritz cookies were a lot of fun, because I was able to show off my piping skills. My eclairs were generally ok, but I do need to practice consistency in the thickness in my eclairs.
This week we started talking about Group Leader. Every class requires a Group Leader (a student), who is virtually a mediator between the class and the Chefs. The Group Leader makes sure that no one is falling behind in class and the also make sure every student understands all the resources they have if they are having issues. A great benefit to being Group Leader is that it is a great thing to have on your resume, and it is placed on your transcript. Seven students (myself included) ran for the position of group leader, and we had a Q&A session before the voting. We would all vote the following week.
Week Five:
This week we had a theory day where Chef demonstrates what we will learn/do later on. This week was chocolate tempering. I've done chocolate tempering before, and let me tell you... It's not my favorite. For regular class, we produced a genoise sponge cake, a roulade sponge cake (which we made into a jelly roll the next day), a chiffon cake, and lady fingers. This whole week revolved around the foaming method. We did everything with our partners except the genoise sponge. Everything turned out very well in our group. The lady fingers were a little too thin, but not too bad. :)
I was elected as Group Leader, which is very exciting :) Perfect timing too, because finals are next week, so I was able to plan a bunch of study groups for the exams.
Week Six:
We had our Math Final this week (I know! Already!?). I received a 24/25 on my final, so I received an A in the class. My other classmates had their Food Safety Final (I already took Food Safety in Comm. College, so it transferred over). In our kitchen class we made: biscuits, pie dough, and pie filling (Cherry, Blueberry, Pecan). The following day each made an a cream pie (I made a chocolate cream pie), and as partners we made, 1 apple pie, 1 pecan pie (sooo good!), and either a blueberry or cherry pie (Jasmine and I made a blueberry pie). So in all as a class we produced 52 pies! The pecan pie was my favorite but we couldn't take any home because Chef was going to save the pecan pies. However, we DID take home the equivalent of one pie (eight slices).
Week Seven:
This week we started taking Gastronomy (Study of Good Eating), and Nutrition. I have transfer credit for nutrition so don't have to take it. Gastronomy is a very interesting class; a lot of discussion versus lecture which is welcoming for a class at 9am. In our kitchen class,
we learned about Frozen Desserts in our Theory Day, and for our regular kitchen classes, we made puff pastry dough, angel food cake, apple strips, and palmiers! This week was HELL!! Not because things were difficult; not at all actually. The weather, however was like I was in Hell. The temperatures reached to the hundreds and the humidity was almost unbearable. Having to wear your chef whites and pants definitely was adding to the torture. There was a point where I was sitting outside completely covered in sweat, and I just accepted it. That week I took a shower twice a day. I also stopped working out (which isn't positive), but there is no way I could even think about purposefully sweating. and then coming back out to the heat to sweat some more. This week was a terrible week to do puff pastry dough. Puff pastry has to remain cold so the butter doesn't melt. There was no way we would be keeping the butter cold in our bakeshop... Lucky us, our AC was on the fritz so the room itself was 90 degrees. KILL ME NOW!! We baked off our apple strips and palmiers (puff pastry based) and assumed the worst. But, we managed to keep our butter somewhat cold because we still have beautiful layers of dough, and they rose quite nicely.
Week Eight:
We had a VERY long conversation about cannibalism today, which I find to be a funny morning conversation. Also, I would like to say that this woman has ruined me with drinking milk. I will not say what she said because I'm sure you would think twice about drinking it. And to not freak you out, it wasn't anything dangerous, it was just what she called it. I really miss drinking milk :( For theory, we watched chef build and frost a buttercream cake. This was a quick demonstration because we had an
externship* prep seminar we had to go to. For our kitchen classes we produced creme caramels and attempted to temper chocolate. The weather has still stayed up there along with the humidity AND our AC was still not fixed. For chocolate tempering, you must keep your chocolate between 88-90 degrees. That is hard to do when the room is at 94 degrees... So after about an hour of 'tempering' chocolate, Chef decided to call it quits until tomorrow. He wasn't going to be with us on Friday, so invited another Chef to oversee our work. This Chef was rather funny, so I'm excited to have him in the future. We constructed our butter cream cakes ( in super hot conditions) and 'tempered chocolate' again.... We sat there for like two hours trying to temper chocolate when ANOTHER chef walked in and instantly told us we were in no way going to temper our chocolate. So we were allowed to stop and go home at 9:15pm.
*Externship: As a part of our cirriculum during our first semester of our Sophomore year, we must complete an 18 consecutive week externship with a CIA-approved site. So we must go out and find a job in the food industry and work there for 18 weeks.
Week Nine:
Last week before our 3 week summer break! We took a midterm in Gastronomy and had our Midterm in our Kitchen class. This is called a Skills Verification. For the test, we made a Genoise sponge, eclairs, and pastry cream. There would be 2 shifts so everyone would have their own station to work on. I went during the first shift. I wasn't really nervous because I knew that I understood the methods and I knew that my time management was good. All in all, I did well. My pastry cream and sense of urgency/cleanliness were perfect. I lost 5 points for under-folding my oil into my cakes, you could see a slight oil mark, which really wasn't too bad. I also lost 5 points because my eclairs were slightly different thicknesses. So I received a 90/100 on my first Skills, which is fine by me. I was then able to leave and start my Vaca!
So all in all, I am learning a lot and am having a lot of fun. I've gotten pretty close with two of the gals in my class and we constantly go on Starbucks runs. :) The weather is calming down some; much less humidity thank god! I invested in a mini AC unit which has been awesome. Just last night my room finally got down to 69 degrees which was a relief.
That's about it. I have a potential suitor who I very much like, and we are really enjoying each other's company. You won't get much out of me this month because I really am not doing anything. If I do, I'll be sure to inform you :)
-Megan
Skills Verification!
