Cake pops

I underestimated the difficulty of cake pops. Taking them out of the freezer by two's and dipping them in the always ready and not setting bowl of chocolate and dripping them so they don't set in a puddle of their own skin. My first cake pops failed horribly and I was quite frustrated, so i left over half the cake pops to try another day and these faces turned out well

Awhile back in bakeshop I made this fruit tart. I really liked the bright colors of the fruits.

I think cutting the fruits into the thin layer was one of the hardest thing to do. I was scared I would burn the pastry cream but it turned out pretty good. In my opinion the kiwi was a little sour. The raspberries were sweet, it kind of balanced the kiwi out. Overall I think the fruit tart was really good. 

  Two weeks ago, I got to make my first Danish dough. It was a bit confusing at first, but the dough turned out really well. At first I was supposed to make Danishes, but then plans changed and I got to make Croissants. I had to take a whole day making the Croissants because I had to let the dough proof, and do the four/three folds. To make the final product, flaky and delicious I had to roll out some butter, and fold it in with the dough. Once I had finished the folds, I had to cut them into even triangles, and start rolling them up. I let them rise a little bit, and then baked them. I was really happy about the finished result, and how delicious they were. Next time I would want to add some kind of filling or glaze for the croissants. This week I made another Danish dough, and this time I made actual Danishes. After I cut them into squares and folded them, I added almond filling in the middle. Once I had baked the Danishes the filling had spread all over the Danish. Since that didn't work out I added a scoop of raspberry jam, and drizzled the Danish with icing. I am happy how they turned out but next time I would try to organize my time a bit more. 

Black-box Challenge

Monday morning after we finished the big order for the Katie Care so we slowed everything down and did a fun Monday where we decided to do a Black-box surprise ingredient challenge. The surprise ingredient was Pumpkin purée. I decided I would make cute little cupcakes . I found recipe on the internet and which had the cupcake and the icing in one recipe. There was a delicious pumpkin spice icing that was supposed to go on top to decorate in the end. It ended up being too liquid to pipe on top so I used it as filling for the cupcakes which added a very creamy taste to the cupcake. Instead I topped the cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting and added some of the liquid pumpkin spice just to add some of that same flavor in the toping. It was a lot of fun making them and I would recommend this recipe to others. 

a couple of weeks ago, we had a catering event. We spent most of may testing and making stuff for it, such as puff pastry straws, strawberry tuxedoes, and cake pops. I had a lot of fun and got some experience making lots of macarons. I also helped Mikayla decorate her cake pops.

Catering Event

On May 29 Vern Riemer had a retirement party. We got to cater for it. We made so many desserts. We thought we wouldn't have enough desserts but we had more than enough. I made the cream puffs. I was going to make swans but they weren't elegant enough. So we just filled them with whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate.

Other people made macaroons, mini tarts, cake pops, strawberry tuxedos, parmasean straws, chocolate truffles and apple roses. We had sooooooo many parmasean straws leftover we had to throw them out. All the desserts were delicious.

Photo Challenge

 After spring break we did a photo challenge where we had to pick a photo and try to recreate it. this is what I chose:

It looked like a chocolate mousse with a tempered chocolate disk, chocolate ganache rosette and a chocolate curl. This is what I created: 

I got to temper chocolate for the first time. It wasn't really that hard. I had made mousse before so it was much easier this time. I really enjoyed making this.

Frozen Choc. Hazelnut Mousse

                For the frozen dessert practical I made chocolate, hazelnut frozen mousse. I made the mousse and a chocolate cage to surround it, added some whipped cream and toasted hazelnuts on top and I was done.  The mousse took longer to freeze then I expected but it was just frozen enough to handle when I added the chocolate cage.

                A requirement  for the practical was that we make just enough for two desserts,  so the amount of hazelnuts I needed was very small, too small  to use the food processor. I thought if I used a knife and tried to chop the hazelnuts into small pieces it would work, it didn't. Most of the nuts sunk to the bottom before the mousse froze. Next time I would try using a coffee grinder,  and maybe find a faster way to freeze the mousse. The good thing about making such a small portion was that I could use couverture chocolate, which was great because when I tried making the mousse with regular chocolate chips it was grainy and not as smooth. All in all I think I did okay. 

Retirement Party

            For the retirement party I helped to make cake pops and truffles. It was lots of fun working with all that chocolate. The cake pops were easy, Jasmine made them beforehand, and I had lots of help dipping and decorating them!

Several people help me coat the cake pops in tempered chocolate, while Jane and Violetta helped with the delicate bows and flowers. The decorations took the longest, every flower was cut out one at a time then thinned out and finally shaped and left to dry. Once they were dry a little bit of chocolate was piped into center.

 The bows were made from ribbon, Violetta taught me how to make them. The process was time consuming but I enjoyed making them. Jane made the pretzel, caramel ganache used for the truffles. We flicked gold dust into the molds and poured dark chocolate on top. They turned out nice.

Sugar free sweet potato cake

I made this cake for my practical I replaced the sugar with stevia. I would have need a little bit more in the icing, though cause it is a little bitter.

And this is the final torte I made... I had to practice for my practical and that's how I decorated it. The cake itself is a genoise cake and in the middle is a baked meringue and then the filling and the decoration is Whipped whipping cream and Dulce de leche. The hardest part was making the Dulce de leche, I think I had to redo it 3 times because it had burnt. but this is the end project. 

And this is the last blog for ever... so everyone else have fun in the following years.

2 days ago were catering. And that's what I made these strawberry tuxedos; that was such fail I must say. but I hope they were delicious. For this event we stayed at school and we were catering from 4-7 and it was very interesting seeing those teachers I had in those earlier years. The cute little bear is Molding chocolate but Mikayla Thiessen made it. Good job Mikayla😊

On May 17, we went to a chocolate shop. we tried a lot of different types of  chocolate. The chocolate shop was very cool, because there was a chocolate rabbit made of different types of chocolate.

Photo Challenge

A while ago my baking class had a photo challenge where you picked a photo and tried to copy the dessert the best you could without any recipe or instruction. I made this lemon bundt cake, drizzled with glaze and topped with buttercream flowers. This would probably have to be one of the most enjoyable projects I have done.

Apple Puff Pastry Roses


A little while ago, I made these cute little puff pastry, apple roses made with home made puffed pastry and filled with apple cinnamon flavour. Although the process of making these were very time consuming, they were lots of fun to make.

Boston cream walnut doughnuts

A few days ago I made these delicious Boston cream doughnuts. These doughnuts are filled with Boston cream, dipped in some chocolate ganache and topped off with some coarsely chopped, toasted walnuts. This dessert was fairly easy to make and has a great combination of flavors.

Black Box Challenge

A while ago we got a black box challenge. We were given 3 ingredients that all had to be used to create a desert. The ingredients we got were coffee, almonds and sweet potato. I made a sweet potato donut with coffee pastry cream filling and a vanilla almond glaze. I had to work fast to make sure my dough was ready to fry before 11:25. I barely finished on time.  Next time I wouldn't make a yeast dough that would need to be fried. I had trouble filling the donut with the pastry cream. The pastry cream was really thick. It actually tasted really good even with the sweet potato.

A few weeks ago, we had a customer service assignment. My customer was Mrs. Giesbrecht. She was very communicative with what she wanted, so I had no trouble making her a fruit tart. I got a 19.5 out of 20 on my assignment.

On May 17 we finally drove to the chocolate factory, it was a lot of looking at the different kind of chocolates they had for sale, there were chocolate grape wine bottles, Shoes, white bear and sooo much more. For tasting we got some kind of hot chocolate and they added some kind of spice I don't know what that was but that was quite spicy I would have liked it we they hadn't put some weird spice into that delicious hot chocolate but other than then everything we tasted was delicious even those cocoa bits were delicious. thank you:)

A couple of weeks ago we had a customer service assignment it didn't turn out I wanted it to turn out but this is how they looked in at the end. We had to get to know our customer ask what they wanted and then we looked online and found some cute  key lime cheesecakes and so my customer wanted some key lime cheesecakes. For some reason the dough was very breakable but my customer said they were very delicious so that made me happy. But I must say I really enjoyed this project.

Second Level baking has been so much fun, I have learned a LOT of new things like these cute little flamingos, its the first thing I have learned with Fondants so far and it has been quite fun. I was so happy how these cute little flamingos turned out. First I made the cupcakes I added butterscotch chocolate chips and then I used up the pink frosting we had in the fridge, a couple days before I made the cupcakes I made the flamingo heads and the flowers and the wings and put them in an air dry container and let them harden a couple of days and then I assembled them together.

Back Again

It feels so good to be baking again. The first few days were a little slow as we were all getting back into the routine. I have really enjoyed making level two items. I have made angel food cake, chocolate mousse, 5 minute artisan bread and mousselie buttercream. My angel food cake didn't turn out very well because I didn't cool it off upside down, so it collapsed back into the pan. My mousse didn't turn out the first time because I cooled off the chocolate too much before I added the whipping cream, so there was hard chunks of chocolate in there. it was a lot of fun making chocolate cages for my mousse. it is so hard keeping the mousse frozen but not letting the chocolate set to much that it can't be molded. I also made white velvet cupcakes and added mousselie buttercream for the frosting. I also made roses using Russian piping tips. They didn't turn out as well as I wanted them to but it still worked.

 Making chocolate cages

 White velvet cupcake with mousselie buttercream

White velvet cake with skor bit topping

I used mousselin buttercream icing to decorate next time I will use some color.

Croissants

First time making them, not my first time eating them.

Tomato dough

It's a sour dough made with tomatoes garlic and fresh basil.

Apple pie

black box

🙂Black Box


The three ingredients we had to use were almonds, coffee, sweet potato. It was hard to find something to make with a sweet potato in it that actually looked appetising. Finally I found a cake recipe. I was so glad that the icing on top was one that I always make at home too, so that didn't take up too much time. I added the coffee and ground almonds into the batter and sprinkled some almonds on top of the icing. decorated the plate with the some whole almonds and my cake was ready to presented.

First Black Box!

            Almonds, coffee and sweet potatoes, these were our ingredients for our first black box challenge. I had never tasted sweet potatoes before, so I went with a brownie. I mixed the sweet potato in with the batter and added almonds and just a bit of coffee. For the glaze I mainly used coffee, milk and chocolate chips. The glaze ended up being a bit runny, but after a few minutes in the fridge it was set.

Since I had time left I decided to do a sweet potato latte to go along with the brownie. Everything was good until I added the sweet potato, it was very bad. I redid the recipe, this time with out the sweet potato and added some cream.

If I were to do this recipe again I would add a bit more sugar into the brownie batter, add more chocolate chips to the glaze to make it thicker, and last of all I would bake it in a smaller pan for a thicker brownie.

All things considered I enjoyed the dessert, though it wasn’t the best brownie ever it was still a fun challenge.

Brookies

Even though I have only been 3 weeks in the bake shop I  have  already made yeast products, sweets, and pastry's I enjoy baking because it gives a verity to be creative not only to make different items but also to decorate and expand your  knowledge and learn hands on. one of the many things I made was not particularly difficult but fun and tasted great. they are called bookies it is when brownie and 

cookie dough gets combined I dare for you to try it easy but so delicious.

baking was pretty good over the first few days. I enjoyed baking the carrot cake for the first time it worked out very well. I also learned how to make the yeast products, that I never tried out before.

Fun Day Monday Special

Baking has been so much fun so far. Even though it has only been a few weeks in bake shop it feels like I have learned so much and has given me a chance to get creative in the kitchen. This is delicious, moist, cinnamon caramel monkey bread is one of my fun day Monday creations. I had great time making this simple yet flavourful dessert and is great for sharing with friends and/or family.

Photo credit:https://www.pillsbury.com/recipes/monkey-bread-with-caramel/4a92932f-f795-4813-9800-d6e35e8d5a49

A New Semester

When the semester started, I had no idea of what to expect from this class other than baking occasionally. 3 weeks later, we have settled in and gotten into our routine. We start off in the classroom most days, with a short lesson or a lecture. After that, we go into the bakeshop and bake until we have a tasting with the culinary class. after a 1 hour lunch break, we get back to baking. soon, after that, we have to start cleaning up as it's time to go home. In the short 3 week that we've  been here, I've learned a lot from my teacher and my friends. I learned how to make cake pops properly, and how to decorate them. I learned the process of making croissant dough, from which my friend Melanie and I made Cronuts. This picture comes from  https://www.foodbeast.com/news/raspberry-lychee-is-februarys-cronut-of-the-month/ as we did not take any photos of our cronuts.  

 

  

The End

well as crazy it as it is this semester is over. i really enjoyed my self in the baking and passtries arts program. i have learned a lot of new things about baking that i never new before taking the coures. it was a lot of fun learning new things and improving my skills on things i already new. i am sad to see the semester end but am looking forward to coming back and taking the next level so that i can further my knowledge as a baker and MAYBE one day open a bakeshop of my own.

Last Challenge Monday

Every Monday for the whole semester Mrs. Nikkel gave us a different challenge each Monday. For the last challenge of this semester Mrs. Nikkel  challenged us to use chocolate bars and make a dessert with it we had to come up with a recipe on our own and we had to be creative with what we made. I decide to make a trifle using a coffee crisp chocolate bar, chocolate cake and coffee flavored whipped cream it turned out really well and tasted really good.

 

 

Chef's Table and Goodbye?!

DUN DA DA DA! This was my Chef's Table. It looks great don't ya think? It tasted really good too. I think everyone enjoyed. It's ice cream, why wouldn't they? The one thing that I was really concerned about was about them liking it. Wanna know why? Because me and my friend Hannah, sat in the fridge and freezer for half an hour, constructing these bad babies. It was super cold and I was so sure I was gonna get sick or something, so I wanted everyone to appreciate them. In the end, it all turned out because they all gave me tons of praise for the sandwiches. It was great. Anyways, the semester is almost over-only four more days- which is crazy because it went by so fast but all good things come to pass, I guess. I guess this is farewell. Happy baking!

January 19.2018

Creme Anglaise  

First whisk egg yolks with sugar in a bowl milk in pot until hot. Slowly pour milk in bowl. Not want to cook eggs. Whisk milk in eggs. In other pot. Have boiling water put boiling put bowl with eggs, milk and sugar on top. Stir until thick. Add vanilla. Strain into new bowl. Put bowl in bowl of ice to cool fast. Keep crème Anglaise in the  fridge for 3 days 

Apple Challenge

September 18

I decided to make Apple Slab Pie. It was a hard because it had three different things I had to make . I had to make a crust, an apple pie filling and a crumble topping. Even though it was a bit challenging I liked making it. The best part was eating some because it tasted delicious.

Project Gingerbread House

When the class made the gingerbread house we made a mistake when connecting the sides to the front and back pieces. The side pieces should have overlapped the front/back pieces so the roof pieces would have fit better. The house still looked nice when it was all done. It was fun to decorate it.

Apple Crisp With Ice Ceam

There a lot of desserts I like making and eating. One of my favorites is apple crisp especially when it is served with ice cream. So when I got the chance to make homemade ice cream in class I did it and for my first time making ice cream it turned out really well. I decide to make apple crisp with the ice cream because it is one of my favorite dessert and the two desserts go really well together. I really enjoyed making this dessert because it was simple and delicious.

Reaching The End

There is only two weeks left of this class. This semester has gone by so fast its almost scary. Among the last of things, today is the last chef's table and I am the chef. So I thought that the last chef's table needed to go out with a really good dessert. So I'm making ice cream sandwiches. For the cookies, I'm using double chocolate cookies. And the ice cream is just crème anglaise that will be churned in the ice cream maker. It was actually pretty easy to make. At least, a lot easier than I thought it would be. A lot of people that this would be a good idea. Especially Daniel. He wanted ice cream sandwiches, like, a lot. I just hope that they will suit to his liking enough for him😂. Anyways, I am going to go get them ready, so I will see you later!

Bienenstich

This semester has gone by very quickly, I have experienced lots of different things: How to use stuff in the kitchen, how to use the proper methods and techniques, and how to know when something is done baking. One thing that I made and enjoyed making was Bienenstich. It was also a cake batter that you should not deflate, because first the eggs and sugar get whipped till its tripled in volume, and then you add the rest of the ingredients. The topping of the cake has a very nice sweet taste, it also has sliced almonds on top it gives it a mouthwatering crunchy taste. I never have made this

cake before, but I have tasted it before, so it was my first time trying out something new. Sometimes I like challenging things, because it helps me to learn more things and get further with my baking.

Something Different

I made chocolate soufflé, I was very nervous to make it. There were a lot of instructions and my aunt had said how she had trouble making it. But as I made it I found it wasn’t as hard as I had predicted it would be. If I followed the instructions and did not rush myself (as I often do) I would not fail quite so easily. They sold quickly, but I feel like most of them were bought by the culinary students and teachers. They tasted great, it was a shame to see them deflate.

Team work on an order!

Me and Daniel were paired together to make cow cupcakes for an order. Now in all honesty, they looked more pigs. When we started, we didn’t have a clue what to make (I didn’t at least), so the internet came in handy for this project. There were so many ideas on Pinterest, I could not decide. So, we came to an agreement to make individual cupcakes and shape their faces with fondant. I made chocolate cupcakes and the frosting while Daniel made the fondant. We made two recipes and died the one a darker brown so that when we put them in the cupcake liners it would give them a marble effect. It didn’t, we spent a long time scooping each batter in intervals and it didn’t even make a difference in the final product. We were disappointed but continued. Daniel made the fondant, cut out each piece, the white circle for the face, the nose, the candy for the eyes, and the ears (which took the longest amount of time because of the way they were shaped). I made a simple butter cream and then we assembled the cow cupcakes, or as Daniel called them cow cakes ;) As we went to assemble the cow cakes we found that they were stuck to the pan! Ugh. They looked ugly but luckily the icing covered most of the mess. The cow’s faces were placed on the cupcakes and with that our cow cupcakes, that looked like pigs, were finished. A lot of work went into these cupcakes, despite mine and Daniels disappointment in them, they lady who ordered them loved them!

cheesecake

one of my favorite things to make in bakeshop is cheesecake. I like making it because its really fun and its also pretty easy but yet the finally product looks and usually tastes really good. in bakeshop so far I have learned how to make two different kinds of cheese cakes a unbaked and a baked one. some of the unbaked flavors of cheesecakes that I have done are peppermint, peanut butter and blueberry and I have also made one baked cheesecake that is caramel flavored. They have all turned out really well I was especially happy with the baked one because it was my first time making it and turned out great.


peppermint cheesecake

 blueberry cheesecake

 

 turtle cheesecake