Last Friday was Apple Day.

Everyone had to create

something with granny smith

apples in it so I made the

first apple cake recipe I found

online and iced it with a

batch of PB Icing from home.

It turned out to be quite the hit!

I was so pleased.

Blog number 2

 

After finishing level one starting level two was as easy as it can get. I hope I can get a lot better with baking this year and then bake at home and hope that my siblings will eat what I make. I will try to make something to do with yeast and not just make my favorite things.  With starting level two on Tuesday it was easy because all we had to do was look over some of our recipes and then start weighing out a recipe and then go and help in the kitchen and clean up after lunch and then do the dishes which that is not my best part of being in the bakeshop.  I cannot wait till tomorrow because we get to pick what we wanna make and that excites me because we get to use apples and then I know what to make because I’m going to take a recipe from my sister and that is going to an apple pizza. I am having fun because I get to bake all the things that I have made all last semester and that was so much work but it was great. This semester I’m going to try to have some fun because I get to bake and eat the cookie dough when it is peanut butter chocolate chip cookie then I eat some of it and that is bad but it tastes so good.  

Improved Yeast Skills!

After struggling a bit with yeast breads in level 1, I perfected a batch of bagels on my first try!

Slimy yet satisfying...

I had always been a little grossed out by the technique of boiling bagels instead of steaming them. But I want to learn more about baking and get a taste of the many different (possibly icky) techniques out there, so in short, I boiled my cheese/oregano bagels. You know what? They turned out BEAUTIFULLY! Not too fluffy, a good density and texture and topped with egg wash, they looked amazing!

Congrats to me. J

     (Monica)

My First Day of Baking

          I recently had my first day of level 2 baking. It was great, I am still a little out of it, but I will get the hang of things soon. On the first day back I was surprised that I was going to bake one of my favorite desserts, peanut butter cheesecake. Once I got started I got right into it and it seemed like I wasn’t even gone from the bake shop. Everything was the same as it was when I was in level 1. The next day I cut my cheesecake and drizzled chocolate on it. It has been a great couple of first days. I am so excited for the days ahead, the things I’m going to learn, and the things I’m going to bake.

Blog Start 1

     My favorite thing to make is cheesecakes and crepes. The crepes have to have whipping cream and other sauces because it makes it taste good and it is very filling. The cheesecake has to have peanut butter in it to make it taste very yummy. The cheesecakes has to be baked or you can chose to make a no-bake cheesecake. In the cheesecake there is flour, granulated sugar, brown sugar, melted butter, and salt for the base and for the filling it is cream cheese, icing sugar, whipping cream, chocolate chips, peanuts, and peanut butter. That is what makes it taste so yummy. You bake the base at 350’F for 5-10 minutes then you let that cool before you put the filling into the base. The filling makes it taste very good and very filling when it is ready to be eaten. It is my number one favorite thing to make because it has peanut butter and chocolate chips in it and those are my favorite things to eat. My next favorite thing is cookies because you can pick what kind to make and you can sometimes add whatever you want in the cookies. My favorite cookie is peanut butter and chocolate chip.      

  

    

Elated End Exam

Elated End Exam

            Exams were an exciting time to say the least, and once they were over relief washed through me like a raging river. How do I feel about my end products of the exam? Some I feel I did pretty well on, others I only hoped the platting was enough to distract from the odd flavors and textures of the item, mainly the braided, challa loaf.

            The cookies turned out the best I think, the edges were a little crunchy but the center was still soft. They were a bit larger than I had first thought making the platting a little bit difficult, I served the cinnamon cookies with a cup of hot milk since I prefer to have a drink with sweeter snacks.

            The challa turned out far from what I wanted, I have a strong feeling that I did something wrong in my conversions. The dough rose a lot faster than everyone else's and looked a lot more yellow, there must have been too much yeast and egg yolks. The crust after it had been braided and baked looked similar to tree bark. I plated the bread slices around the plate and put a cube of butter in the center with a knife in the center.

            The lemon tart I made turned out okay. The first tart shell I had made and baked then filled and was about to plate it when it broke, so I made a second thicker one in the remaining hour which I then filled and decorated immediately after it had cooled enough. The filling didn't set well and was not as firm as I would have liked it to be, it kind of looked like a thick lemon soup. I attempted to make it a bit prettier by adding on a chocolate decoration I thought would stay firm for at least the five minutes it needed to be. It melted.

            The éclairs turned out almost perfect, the pastry cream was creamy but still firm, the ganache was smooth, I added on a little bit of icing sugar and topped with a little bit of Chantilly. The pate choux turned out well though looking back I think they could have been a little bit larger and baked at a lower temperature for longer and should have taken them out of the hotter oven sooner.

            All in all I feel I could have done better but I'm proud of what did turn out, and I hope to do more blogging next year.

Donut Expect Success

Donut Expect Success

            On my first attempt at making yeast-raised and cake doughnuts the results varied greatly between the two. The yeast raised doughnuts turned out pretty well, I was surprised by how little time it took to fry them. It took just under a minute compared to the baked items I have made. Once they cooled off slightly I topped them off with a peanut butter glaze and colorful sprinkles.

            The cake doughnuts however did not turn out so well. I made cake doughnut holes that weighed 40g each, when I fried them they did not cook through. After putting them in the oven for a few minutes, they were done. I reportioned the remaining doughnut holes to 20g each, only to have them still not cook through.

            Why did this happen? There are a couple reasons as to why this happened, since I had doubled the recipe there is a chance I could have miscalculated one or more ingredients, second the oil could have been too hot, and lastly 20g might have still been too big.I'm pretty sure that the last two reasons where why the doughnuts turned out the way they did. An interesting fact I found while trying to figure out what happened to the cake doughnuts is that a good percentage of people (mostly older people) like their doughnuts plain, instead they prefer a cup of coffee or milk.

             Aladyresponding to blog on doughnuts summed it all up quite nicely when she said, "It's all about the dough, especially for a yeast doughnut. To be a truly great doughnut, the dough should be flavourful and the topping or filling should be complementary".

        There is a lot more I learned as well, what I thought was just a quick and easy fast food treat(and while it still can be) turns out to be a lot more complicated.

A Mango Mousse Mishap

A Mango Mousse Mishap

                Contrary to the title above the mousse turned out pretty good, the mishap was when I dropped the final product because I thought I could carry two at the same time. Thankfully, there were five other plates still unharmed.

            Up until now I have never had any mousse, I thought it would be a lot softer but it was quite firm after it came out of the freezer. Other recipes I found refrigerate their mousses instead for 1 to 2 hours.I would like to try making mousse again at home but I do not have any gelatin, so I looked up different recipes online and you can make mousse without gelatin or agar agar that acts like gelatin but instead of being a by-product of meat processing it is made of red seaweed.However, you would not be able to use agar agar anyway with red seaweed being endangered and all.

            The easiest recipe I found uses a bit more whipped cream and separated eggs with the whites whipped. Here is the recipe if anyone wants to try it http://www.yummly.uk/#recipe/Chocolate-Mousse-1468621 .It is simple and only needs five ingredients, the website also allows you to switch between US and metric measurements. It is also important not to have any bubbles in your mousse, but some recipes want bubbles in their mousse like this one vegan recipe that requires liquid from a can of chickpeas, also called aquafaba. You beat the liquid until the froth turns into a meringue and apparently it works just as well as egg whites.

            I learned a lot from making mousse and had a lot of fun doing so. Time to start experimenting!