last day of school

This happened a while ago (like two months ago) which shows you how far behind I am on blogging. Oh goodness.

Looking back now, I miss our crazy and silly class. We had so much fun and I miss seeing my friends every day. I'm definitely happy in my internship too so I can't really complain. On our last day of class we all got to make whatever we wanted and then we had a little feast together. It was a fun day of us just goofing around, singing, cooking and baking and having a good old time. I made peanut butter cookies because the rest of the world does not eat enough peanut butter and raspberry truffle brownies. My friend Alvin made his famous, delicious and too-spicy-for-me-but-i-eat-it-anyway curry. Its an amazing dish! Patricia made some amazing Polish dumplings and bread. It was all delicious!

I am lucky to have met some pretty great people here in Paris and wish we still got to play around like this every week. Have you had any fun cooking or baking parties with friend lately? What is your latest recipe?

peanut butter cookies
Oven: 350F/177C

3/4 cup (170 grams) unsalted butter room temperature

1/2 cup (105 grams) light brown sugar

1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated white sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup (185 grams) peanut butter(smooth or crunchy, I use smooth)

2 cups (260 grams) all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Beat the butter, brown and white sugars until light and airy. About 3-5 minutes. 

While that is beating, combine the flour, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl.

Beat in peanut butter to the butter/sugar mixture.

Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix until combined.

Add the flour mixture to the peanut butter mixture and combine. Add nuts, optional.

Let sit in refrigerator for 20-30 minutes.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Roll 1'' balls of dough and place on baking sheet.

Using the end of a fork dipped in granulated sugar, press the fork across the ball to flatten and make indented lines in the dough. Repeat at a perpendicular angle to make the criss-cross pattern.

Bake 10-12 minutes or until the edges are browned.

Pastry School: Entremet

We were lucky to have another week of making entremets which is everyone's favorite! We made Fraisier (strawberries and cream), Sweet Cherie (cherry), and the San Marco (chocolate and pistachio). They were all really nice. Mandy and her mom were here this week so they were subject to me force feeding them. I pretty much brought them a cake per day!

Scary thing, starting tomorrow I will have to be making these cakes in a real Parisian patisserie. I start my internship tomorrow morning! I can't believe it is already here. I'm not going to lie...I am pretty nervous! Wish me luck!!

Pastry School: C'est Fini!!

Today was officially the final day of my schooling at Ferrandi. Five months of pastry school is already behind me! I actually can't believe it. I know after everything ends you think about how time flies but it amazes me every time how very true that really is. Even though the days may seem long every now and then, the weeks, months and years just continue flying by.

I am so grateful for my time at Ferrandi and all the wonderful people I have met here in Paris. We have an incredible group of individuals and I will really miss seeing them every day. We had some really fun times in the lab together, especially with our crazy chef. It was filled with a lot of "TMI"(or TIM or MIT as our chef gets confused), bursting out in random songs (usually Beyonce inspired) and slowing stealing Valrhona chocolate from the cupboard. Oopies! It's too good to resist.

 best pastry class in history

 best picture of chef ....ever.

celebrating at a Ferrandi alumni's amazing restaurant - l'Epi Dupin

As for us students, we are now moving onto our internships. This is the scary part. We are all working in different restaurants, hotels, and patisseries throughout the city and we are all getting pretty nervous. Biggest issue? Um...je ne parle pas frances! The language barrier (and pressure to learn) aside, I am really excited to put my skills to the test. It is a fresh challenge and I am very ready for it! Where will I be working? At the newly established Sébastien Gaudard in the 9eme.

My first day will be July 3 so until then, I will be traveling! Tomorrow our class takes a three day trip to Strasbourg and then I meet my family back in Paris for the weekend (they are now in Berlin). Next Tuesday my brother and I head to Amsterdam and then Germany! It's going to be an amazing two weeks! I will have loads to tell you when I get settled in again.

Did anyone get around to making the lemon cake this weekend? How did it turn out?
Here is the chocolate cake if you are in need of another decadent treat. Bon Appetit!

Line 3 small loaf molds with baking paper.
Oven at 200C/390F to start, then 150C/300F
convert here

140 g unsalted butter
125 g heavy cream
360 g granulated sugar
125 g eggs
200 g flour
7 g baking powder
85 g cocoa powder
240 g milk

Cream the butter, heavy cream and sugar together.
Add the eggs at room temperature
Sift the flour, baking soda and cocoa powder. Add into the butter mixture.
Beat until completely combined.
Add the milk little by little until absorbed and you have a smooth batter.
Fill the molds halfway and bake at 200C/390F for 10 minutes then continue baking at 150C/300F for 40 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.
(To get a nice appearance, run a knife down the loaf when you change the temperature. There should be a light crust that formed but the rest will still be liquid. Run the knife long ways once and put back in the oven. This is form a nice pyramid/dome shape on the cake)

Decorate and serve! Or just dig right in :)

Feelin' popular slash a recipe!

First thing, thank you to Elizabeth for officially making me feel like a cool kid by being my 100th follower! I didn't think when I started this blog that I would really get into it. I figured it would be fun for a little while and then I would drift away from it but turns out, I really enjoy blogging. It is an amazing way to connect to other people. I have learned so much from other people's posts, seen so many incredible photos and I think its such a positive space. People support and encourage each other, share life experience, give advice, discuss real issues and make people laugh and smile. I'm so thankful that I have been a part of it all through this little corner of the internet. Thanks for being here!

My family is here visiting from California this week and it is just amazing. It feels really good to be with my family even if we have been sightseeing like crazy people and my hips feel like those of an 80 year old woman. I will walk until my feet are broken off if it means getting to have them here. They are headed to Rome right now and I will be meeting them there tomorrow. Today, I am headed to class for our final exam! I can't believe this is my final week of school! I am half way through my time here in Paris...so weird! There will be more on that later :)

For now, here is the delicious recipe for the Citron Gâteaux de Voyage. Let me know how this turns out for you! :)

Makes for 2 - 19cm loaf molds
Oven: 180C/ 350F
Convert grams here

375 g Eggs
525 g Granulated Sugar
225 g Creme fraîche
400 g Flour
8 g baking powder
Zest of 3 lemons
150 g Clarified butter 

Soaking Syrup
100 g Water
100 g Sugar
200 g Lemon Juice

Prep your molds with butter and flour.

Cream the eggs and the sugar together.
Mix the lemon zest into the creme fraîche.
Mix the creme fraîche mixture into the egg mixture to combine.
Add the sifted flour and baking powder.
Add the clarified butter and mix completely.
Fill molds 2/3 full and bake until a knife comes out clean.

While the cake is baking, prepare your soaking syrup.
Bring the water and sugar to a slight boil to make the syrup.
Combine with the lemon juice.
Soak the still warm cake in the syrup and then leave to cool.

Decorate the cake with a glaze/fondant or an icing sugar frosting (add lemon juice to taste). You can use candied lemons slices to make an impressive presentation!

Bon Courage! Send me photos! :)

Gateaux de voyage

A "gateaux de voyage" is very similar to a typical American style cake or breakfast bread. Think banana bread or carrot cake. It is considered a "travel cake" because they stay fresh for about a week and are pretty easy to package and handle.

It is simple work but they all turned out pretty nice. My favorites were the pound cake, lemon and of course, chocolate! Some other flavors were: spice bread, mango, earl grey tea cake, chocolate marble cake, hazelnut brownies, yogurt cake, and fromage blanc. These also make great gifts! They are simple to take and don't take too much time but you can decorate them in so many impressive ways that your friends will be amazed.

Leave a comment and tell me which cake you want the recipe for! I will post it for you so you can give it a whirl! :)

playing catch up!

It has been a busy two months. Mike came to visit and a week later my best friend came to visit and now I am prepping for my entire family's arrival in one week! It has been and is amazing. I love seeing everyone and am so happy they have come/are coming. Only problem is, it doesn't leave too much time for keeping up on my blog!

I was just going through my photos thinking.."what should I write about now?" and realized...holy motherload I have a lot to cover!

So I am going to play a game called "lets get you up to speed" and am going to throw together the past few weeks of school...well, bits and pieces.

I am in my final three weeks of classes. Can you believe it? I can't! This coming week we work with ice cream (YUMMM) and then plated desserts and then... c'est fini! It's gone quickly but I am going to enjoy these last few weeks with my classmates and my insane chef as much as I can.

 pate de fruit

 nougat

 mint marshmallows

 painting on pastillage

making praliné ...so good

 the mighty kouglof

 petit brioche

 focaccia

 Pain aux lait

 baba aux rum passion fruit and cassis

croissants

 bostock

almond croissants

All caught up? Phew, thank goodness! :)

i hate chocolate

Thats a lie. I love chocolate...eating chocolate.  I hate molding and tempering chocolate. Holy nightmares!

So here is the thing, tempering chocolate is now an easy-peasy thing that everyone uses machines to do. They put some giant blocks of chocolate into a machine and it spits out perfectly crystalized and tempered chocolate like magic. Think we got to use a machine? Hecks NO.

Lets take it back to pre-historic times when people used to do this thing called "tabling". I'll spare you the details of the "why" but all you need to know is it is probably the most frustrating, time consuming and ridiculous thing ever.

We spent three weeks working with chocolate and molding sculptures. It was a pretty infuriating few weeks but after coming out on the other side, I can say that I will never forget how to temper chocolate and my sculpture wasn't as hideous and I was prepared for it to be.

Even so, I'm glad chocolate week is behind me!

Also, I had to bleach my apron for literally two weeks to get this stain out. Clearly, I am a natural with this business!

 chocolate egg with marzipan roses

chocolate rose garden

roses and lace

 tabling

in progress

C'est Fini!!