Petit Fours

Pastry school is roughly a 40 hour week for me, this leaves very little time for blogging. I had hoped that as I became more comfortable with the schedule this would change but it seems there is always something to do, a fact that doesn't really bother me. I'm in bliss.

Recently we begun our section on petit fours. Petit fours are small cakes and other delectables that can be consumed in one or two bites. Last week after doing a few we were allowed to come up with our own.

The first petit four that my brilliant classmate and I designed was a white chocolate mint mousse on a layer of dark chocolate raspberry ganache and flourless chocolate cake.

The flourless chocolate cake is light, airy and offers a nice contrast to the richly decadent ganache. The mint was light in flavor and didn't overpower the sweetness of the white chocolate mousse. It tasted somewhat like a thin mint with an extra kick of flavor.

The second petit four we concocted was my personal favorite.  We named it a Banana Colada. Since starting the programs I've wanted to use the banana puree we had in the freezer. Seizing the opportunity to use one of my favorite flavors we create a banana mousse on top of a Pineapple Mango Jelly. The bottom layer was a thin layer of banana mousse with chocolate crunch pearls on a layer of coconut dacquoise. Quite delicious and refreshing to eat.

Petit fours really allow the creative juices to flow and due to their small size they are quite difficult to ignore eating. Usually I'm fairly good about not munching on everything we make in class but I find that this section I will eat at least one petit four from each of my classmates.

Section 2 Done

I've completed my first section in the kitchen and by the lack of updates I'm sure you can tell I was quite busy.

It's amazing how quickly everything moves before you know it you have everything coming out of the oven and it 1pm.

I just finished a three day final where I had to plan and bake a number of items including: Croissants, Baguettes, Foccacia, Ciabatta, Scone, Pound cake, Brioche de Paris, Croix au Sucre and a few others.

As I become more adjusted to my schedule I hope to keep up with this blog.

Every single day I think about pastries. I wake up at 4:50 am by 7 I'm in my apron prepping dough, writing recipes and thinking about my next flavor combination. I'm in utter bliss, and while I find it difficult to stay up pass 9pm most nights I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Very few people get a chance to follow their dreams and every day I get to make sure there are more pastries in the world.

First Day Back in the Kitchen

Today was the first day in the kitchen at school, no baking yet but it was still fairly exciting. It's nice to be around people who want to create things like you do and getting to know that you're around that much chocolate doesn't hurt either.

Section 1 will be breads which means baguettes, croissants, and all sorts of yummy (read: fattening) things.

Tomorrow begins the real work here's hoping I pass inspection

Homemade Tortillas

When I started this blog I assumed it would be filled with only baked good but this evening I reached an important milestone. My mother taught me how to make homemade flour tortillas, like my grandma used to make in Tijuana, it seems very appropriate that I finally learned to make them the way she did as yesterday was the 5th anniversary of her death. My Mexican heritage is very important to me and my mother agreed that it was important to learn how to make tortillas the way she learned. Not with a recipe but by eying measurements, the way the dough feels, the way it smells when it's ready to flip them.

Darling boyfriend is coming over tomorrow for lunch and after 5 1/2 years of dating I'm finally making him homemade tortillas.

Rolling the dough out I hope he loves them as much as I love making them for him. That is the most amazing thing about food, is the love you put in can really affect the taste.

My grandma's kitchen was always filled with delicious food and she was always feeding people, and her family was always happy as long as we were eating.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Family dinner is every Friday, as I think I mentioned in the Baked Shrimp Scampi entry, and dear brother snorlax comes over. With Business School done and over with and me enjoying my summer days I now have a bit of time to do some baking. So for family dinner I made Ina Garten's Lobster Pot Pie (recipe next entry) and for dessert I thought something citrus would be refreshing.

While browsing the internet I stumbled upon another website with just recipes upon recipes for cupcakes, one recipe in particular caught my eye. Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. So fresh, lemony and adorable to boot! If there is one thing that dear brother snorlax loves it's lemon.

Ingredients:

Cupcakes:

• 1 1/2 cups of cake flour Note: If you do not have cake flour you can mix 1 3/4 cups of AP flour and 1/4 cup of cornstarch to make 2 cups of a AP flour substitute then just use 1 1/2 cups.
• 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 stick of butter (room temperature)
• 1 cup of sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup of milk

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Mix Flour, baking powder and salt.
3. Gradually beat in butter (if it is room temp this will be so much easier), one the butter is well mixed (little clumps will start forming) throughly beat in the sugar.
4. Beat in Eggs, vanilla and milk and fill into baking cups about 2/3 of the way.
5. Bake for 20 min. You'll know the cupcakes are done when a tooth pick comes out clean.

Filling:

• 1 egg + 1 yolk
• Juice of 1 fresh lemon
• 1/2 stick of butter
• 1/2 cup of sugar

I would recommend setting out everything before beginning this process as you want to be beating the mixture constantly so you don't end up with scrambled eggs.

1. Using a double boiler (that is a bowl set over simmering water) beat the egg and yolk, I used a hand held electric beater.
2. Beat in the lemon, butter and sugar.
3. Stir over medium heat until the mixture has a pudding like consistency.

It will look weird at first especially as the butter breaks down but eventually you will end up with something that looks like a lemon pudding. To me this was like making caramel all over again, because you look at the mixture and you tell your self "there is no way that it is going to get thick" and then 5 minutes later it is thick and you wonder how you could have doubted yourself.

Frosting (Meringue)

• 5 tbsp of water
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 1/3 of cup of sugar
• 2 egg whites
• 1tbsp of light corn syrup
• 1 tsp of vanilla

1. Beat water, cream of tartar, sugar, egg whites, and syrup in a double boiler on low.
2. When the mixture reaches 140 degrees beat on high for 5 minutes.
3. Remove from heat , add vanilla and beat for another 3 minutes.

Assembly:

To put the filling in the cupcakes I used a small cookie cutter to hollow out the top of each cupcake:

Spoon a little bit of the lemon filling into each cupcake:

Pop the top back on and cover with meringue!

Summertimes

Oh I have been terrible with keeping up with my blog. This is not to say that I haven't been baking up a storm though. In fact, due to certain factors I didn't seek out summer employment so I find myself baking anything that pops into my head. It's really quite amazing because this is the first summer since I was 15 that I'm not working and the first summer since before I can remember that I'm not at least in some type of summer school.

In an attempt to get out of the house and get in some practice before culinary school my mother suggested I take a cake decorating class. Simple enough, I went to Michael's to check it out and Tuesday I had my first class.

While the first 30-40 minutes of the two hour class seemed like a pitch to see all of the wonderful Wilton products we could buy the rest of the class was pretty fun. I have to admit that I'm tickled pink over the idea that I will be given a certificate at the end of the class, I'm contemplating signing up for the next class which will deal with gum paste flowers.

Since it was the first class we didn't take on anything very difficult, we practiced stars and pressure control when dealing with frosting bags. May I just say that disposable frosting bags are the best thing in the world. I admit cleaning up is probably the one thing about baking that I don't dig so if I can just take off the coupler and tip and throw the bag out I'm a pretty camper. There's just something about getting the left over frosting wet that makes me squeamish.

I digress, I basically ended up just decorating cookies with plain white frosting:

Next week we are actually working with cakes and before hand I'll be needing to bake and crumb coat my own cake. I'm thinking a vanilla cake with Root beer buttercream filling. Yum.

Blueberry Muffins

Is there anything better than fresh Blueberry muffins right from the oven? During my graduation weekend I could not sleep due to the excitement so I actually got up early and made fresh muffins with organic blueberries for my aunt who was visiting from out of town.

I absolutely love baking for people when they come to visit. It's always nice when you haven't seen someone in years to be able to give them a piece of yourself by baking for them.

As for graduation, I received some lovely graduation presents for my future career as baker :D

Anyways on to the muffins! I used a recipe from Paula Dean and tweaked it a bit.

Ingredients:

• 2 Cups of flour
• 2 Tablespoons baking powder
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1 stick of unsalted butter (melted)
• 1 egg (slightly beaten)
• 3/4 cup of whole milk
• 1 1/2 cup fresh blueberries
• 1/2 cup granulated brown sugar
• Splash of lemon juice (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In one bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and sugar.
3. In a second bowl mix the butter, the egg, and milk.
4. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and mix with a spatula until just combined. This is where I typically add a splash of lemon juice, it really brings out the flavor of the blueberries. Be careful to not beat or over mix the batter, it's alright if there are lumps.
5. Gently fold the blueberries into the batter.
   
   
   
   
6. Spoon the batter into a muffin tray filling each cup only about 2/3 of the way.
7. Bake for 10 minutes, remove from the oven and sprinkle the tops of the muffins with the brown sugar and return the muffins to the oven and bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until the muffins are a beautiful golden brown.

Allow to cool and enjoy!