So. Much. Sugar.

Fudge, Divinity, and Torrone

I'm thinking that this might be a lenghty post, but I'm going to start by wishing my Mom a happy birthday! She turned a certain number of years old today  (I won't say how many) :-) Anyhow this weekend at school was a busy one. We did some decorative piping with buttercream, went on a field trip that took us to all sorts of neat places, made a lot of things with sugar, took our first written test, and received midterm report cards.
I'll start with yesterdays class first. We started with a test/quiz and had an hour to complete it. I'm going to be honest here, despite my best intentions, I didn't study... I had all sorts of plans to review everything and ace my test, but I procrastinated as usual and didn't get a chance. I quickly looked over the weight conversions but that was about it. I ended up being the first one done and was feeling like I had gotten a C or at best a B. I got stuck on a couple of questions and was just not feeling super confident. Well, the teacher graded them while we were in class and then we gathered around to get our grades. I was standing behind her so I could see the grades on some of the tests (this makes me sound super nosey...) I saw one test that said 49 at the top, as in 49 out of 100. So being the completely rational, sane, non-anxious person that I am, I knew for a fact that that test was mine. Until she handed me another test that said 94 at the top. Haha So I ended up doing really well and am hoping that I do just as well on the practical exam that will take place in a few weeks. I got my midterm grade today and it was a 98%. Alright enough about how extremely smart and talented I am (please, please note the sarcasm in that sentence, otherwise I sound like a huge jerk.)

After taking the test yesterday we broke out the buttercream and learned a couple of decorative piping techniques. We learned how to do shells, reverse shells, fleur de lis, and rosettes. I have been terrified of piping since before I started school. I am not very artistic and have just assumed that I am not very good at piping either. I feel like I didn't do very well, but the people sitting near me told me that my work was really good. (Truth be told I think I might be a slight perfectionist, so anything that didn't look absolutely perfect made me mad... hahaha) So I'm hoping that it was actually pretty good and that I'm just slightly crazy. The teacher didn't say anything to me about my piping (good or bad) but she was giving pointers to several people around me. This was our first foray into piping so expect many more posts detailing my mental breakdowns over shells that were too high!

After we were done practicing our piping we went on our field trip. This should probably go without saying by now but, I didn't get any pictures... I figured that I would include a link to each place so that you can see where we went. Our fist stop was just across the street to Eataly. Eataly is a huge place that is owned by Mario Batali and Lidia Bastianich and it has like five restaurants inside along with a huge marketplace, a gelatto counter, a cheese counter, an espresso bar, a chocolate bar, I'll stop there because the list could keep going. I would like to go back sometime during the week when it's less crowded. That goes for most of the places that we went, they were all packed because it was a Saturday. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Kayla, it was crowded because it's Manhattan and there are millions of people in a relatively small area"... and you may be right, I'll report back to you after I've gone on a weekday.

Next we went to La Maison du Macaron, where I tried a pumpkin macaron and a croissant, which were both delicious. They had all sorts of baked goods which all looked amazing. I should also point out that the only thing that I purchased all day was that croissant, everything else was paid for by the school. After that we went to The Doughnut Plant. I ordered a cinnamon sugar cake doughnut (I was feeling nostalgic for the cider mills in MI) unfortunately they screwed up and sent out a creme brulee doughnut instead. I decided to just try that one, since I had never had anything like it before, and I must admit that it was delicious. From there we travelled up to midtown and stopped at a little ice cream shop on the way to a bakery. It was called Je and Jo's. They had some crazy flavors and as a class we decided to try cardamom with snickerdoodle cookie dough. It might sound weird, but it was so good! It tasted like a mug of chai tea! After ice cream we moved down the street to Sullivan Street Bakery where we tried pizza bianca, which was also delicious.

After the bakery we went to Rockefeller center where we stopped by La Maison du Chocolat which has chocolate and macarons for an absurd price. (I looked online and for two pieces it was $8!) I got a pistacchio macaron. We swung by Jacques Torres Chocolate and the class tried some sort of chocolate that had caramel brulee in it. At this point in the day I was ready to explode from all the sugar (I hadn't even eaten everything, I saved a lot of it for later or tried just a bite, but it was still a ton of sugar!) We stopped by Magnolia bakery after that. I didn't even go in - it was really crowded. My teacher wasn't buying anyone cupcakes because she says that Magnolia's cupcakes are disgusting lol. It is a really popular bakery though and you've heard of it if you've ever seen the SNL digital short Lazy Sunday (if not, you should because it's hilarious.) After Magnolia bakery we had one last stop which was Bouchon Bakery. They had a crazy amount of selection at this one. Unfortunately at this point in the day my brain felt like mush, and my stomach felt worse so I opted to take home a simple chocolate chip cookie.

This morning our lesson consisted of baking with sugar (this was almost the last thing I wanted to do after our sugar filled field trip...) First we made a simple syrup and then made lemonade with it. Next we made Divinity (I had never heard of this dessert), you can see the finished product in the above picture. Oh I lied, before we made Divinity, we made fudge. It felt really weird that no one mentioned Mackinac Island fudge - instead they talked about fudge from the Jersey Shore - which I can only assume tastes like fake tanner and tackiness. After that we made Torrone (another one I'd never heard of) and lastly peanut brittle. Peanut brittle and fudge are two of my least favorite things, so today was not my favorite day in class. Hence why I'm not elaborating on the desserts and why I only took one picture today (note that the peanut brittle is missing - it mysteriously found it's way into the garbage.)

Ok, I think that's it for now, I have to go to bed soon since I'll be getting up at 4:30 tomorrow morning, stay tuned because next week we're making creme brulee and ice cream! Hope you're all well!
-Kayla

Baking, Sore feet, and hat hair

Whew, it has been a busy few days. I closed at Starbucks on Friday night and then had school the next morning. One of my co-workers asked me to trade shifts with them and work on Saturday night. So, right after school I rode uptown to work and closed and then had to get up bright and early for school the next morning. I thought that my field trip was this last weekend, but it turns out that it will be this coming weekend. So I should have lots to blog about next weekend. We did a lot of baking in class this weekend and even though I only had a bite of all that we made, I went to work on Saturday night with a terrible stomach ache. Too much sugar! Right now we're learning about eggs and such, so on Saturday we made meringues and flourless souffles. We made "ordinary" meringues and also Swiss meringue. Oh I forgot we also made a chocolate mousse as well. The meringue was made into cookies which we sprinkled coco powder on.

This is the chocolate mousse with a meringue cookie in it

After the mousses and meringues, we moved on to our first souffles. The most basic souffles are flourless. First we made a chocolate one - which I didn't get pictures of, but don't worry they did not turn out great haha - and then we made strawberry ones (I should say that my partner and I made strawberry, other groups did different flavors. Here they are pre-baking:

and post baking:

It's pretty hard to get a good picture of a souffle because they start deflating right away. I had never had a souffle so I was pretty interested in trying them. Our chocolate ones didn't look great, but they tasted so good. We added coffee in with the chocolate and it was delicious! That day we also made buttercream frosting, which we again added coffee to and it was the best frosting I've ever had. After our meringue cookies were done, we piped some buttercream onto them. I think that's all we made on Saturday, onto Sunday!

On Sunday it was all about gelatin. We started by making some marshmallows:

You can't see it that well, but that is just a sheet of marshmallow (with a little powdered sugar to stop it from sticking). I put vanilla bean into mine. I made them all by myself because my partner did not show up for class on Sunday. After marshmallows we made panna cotta. I chose to do the vanilla instead of chocolate and the recipe ended up calling for too much gelatin, so it was pretty solid once it set (the other two groups that made the vanilla had the same result). I didn't get any pictures of that either. (Sorry!) After panna cotta we moved on to gelées (by this point I had joined a group, because the rest of the baking was a little more intensive). They're kind of like jello except not as solid. For these and the souffles we made later, we got to use sheet gelatin which was pretty cool. Anyhow, we made champagne gelée with fresh raspberries:

Hey you can see someone else's panna cotta in the background!

These look really pretty but tasted soo boozy it was ridiculous (it might have to do with the fact that there was a whole bottle of champagne in them). Although once we added a quenelle of whipped cream it was pretty good. The last portion of our day was spent making flour based souffles. First we made chocolate (sorry forgot pictures), second was pistachio (again no pictures), and third was lemon:

These had already fallen a bit because I had to wait to take a picture, but they came out perfect!

The lemon were so good! I actually ate a whole one rather than a tiny bite, we even put a raspberry in the bottom which made it even better. So far this is my favorite thing that we've made, I recommend making lemon souffle if you're looking for a new dessert to try. They weren't very difficult to make either. I think that's it as far as school goes.

This weekend I had a revelation that I will never have a good hair day in New York. I have to wear my hair up and a hat at Starbucks and at school. So my hair pretty much looks like a disaster at all times. I'm happy to report that I haven't forgotten to wear my glasses lately so I've actually been able to see, which is nice. Otherwise things are going pretty well, getting a little homesick every now and then but still liking it here. Things are going really well at Starbucks, today my manager asked me if it would be ok to schedule me between 34 and 40 hours every week, which was awesome. I've had a couple of funny interactions with customers this week, so I thought that'd I would share.

Funny story 1:

There is a regular who comes in every day and he is probably mid - late twenties and he's pretty nice. Well last week when he came in there was a horrible construction noise happening which prompted the following conversation.

Customer: "Oh my gosh that noise is horrible..."

Me: "yeah it's been going on for a good hour, it's driving me crazy."

Customer: "It's sounds like robots farting..."

Me: "..."

Customer: "it definitely sounds like robots farting."

Me: "Well, that seems to be the only logical explanation."

Customer: "either that or it's the noise from Inception."

After he walked away I laughed so hard I almost cried. He must have said "robots farting" at least five times. I was dying. haha

Funny story 2 and 3

The next stories actually take place in the same day/shift and both were customers hitting on me in really lame ways. The first customer was around my age and had ordered two drinks. He said that the one was for a girl he liked that probably didn't like him. Then he said that if things didn't work out with her he might have to come back and give the latte to me, which prompted this:

Me: "Well, actually I get drinks for free here, so that's not very tempting..."

Customer: "Well, there's other stuff, like I'm really good at giving hugs and stuff too."

Me: ... (as I hand him his drinks) "Good luck with that girl!"

Weirdly enough this didn't come off as creepy, the guy was really nice/sweet, it just made me laugh really hard. 

The second customer to hit on me that night was some older guy who asked me if I wanted to split his coffee with him... I again had to state that this was not a great offer, since I get all the coffee I want for free. So work has been pretty entertaining to say the least. I think that's all for now, I have to go to bed soon since I need to get up at 3am tomorrow to open :-( Hope everyone's doing well! 

-Kayla

P.s. I got a private mailbox so I can get mail! I don't really want to post the address here, but if you'd like to get it you can email me at kaygriffi@gmail.com

Spotted: Five rats in the subway

I feel like these posts are going to continue to start out with me apologizing for not posting as much as I should, so how about that sentiment is now just implied with every post? Ok? Great... So, I didn't have school this weekend and instead decided to hit up the local mall in Queens. It felt like I was back home in Michigan which was nice. I walked around there for awhile and then went home and watched the Tigers game. They're not doing very well in this series which is pretty disappointing. Anyhow, on Sunday I went into Manhattan and went to Barnes and Noble and also Trader Joe's. Can I just take a moment to say how much I love Trader Joe's? I am able to get a bunch of groceries for pretty cheap. After the weekend it was back to work for me. I worked yesterday morning and then this afternoon/evening. I think that over the next week or so I'm going to look for a second job, so wish me luck! Oh, I should probably explain the title of this post: when I was waiting for the subway train to take me to the mall, I saw three rats... and then the next morning on my way to work I saw two rats. I hadn't seen any rats or bugs up until that point, so that was exciting. I just pretended that they were like the rats from the Disney movie Ratatouille.

I think that's about it, I have to be back to work at 630 am tomorrow, which involves waking up at 5 am. :-( I should have more stuff to post this weekend because of school. I am going on a field trip on Sunday, so I will be sure to let you all know about that. 

Lots of love,

Kayla

(above picture was found on Google :-) )

Don't worry, I'm still alive...

Sorry that it has been so long since my last post. I ended up waking up really early on Sunday morning with a heinous cold/sinus issue so I didn't go to class. (Blowing your nose every 3 seconds does not go well with handling food.) So I ended up sleeping a lot on Sunday and taking allergy medicine. I've been working at 7am every morning this week which means waking up at 530am... So I've been pretty tired. I didn't think that it would bother me since I used to have to wake up at 3am five days a week, but I'm just not used to getting up early yet. Anyways, I came to the realization that I'm pretty much the worst person to be blogging. For instance, I ended up going to the MOMA the other day and did not take a single picture. I didn't even take a picture of Starry Night (which by the way was awesome to see in person.) So, my apologies for not having more things to share. Although I did decide to get off at a different stop before going home the other day. I ended up near Grand Central station, which is beautiful by the way, and just walked around. I went by the NY public library which was awesome and ended up walking through Bryant Park. There is a really neat building right by Bryant Park and guess what? I actually took a picture!

In other news, Starbucks has been going well. I was really quiet my first day because I was nervous, but I have been forcing myself to make small talk and to try and get to know my new co-workers. They all seem pretty cool so I'm happy about that. Yesterday, which was my fourth shift there, they put me on bar (aka making drinks), I hadn't done that since January and was pretty scared. Luckily it went well and when I apologized for being rusty/going slow, they said that I did really well. I think that's it for now. I probably won't post too much the rest of this week because I don't have school this weekend (Jewish holiday/Columbus day). I also wanted to say that I will be going to get a P.O. box tomorrow so I will let everyone know that info so that I can get mail. Hope you're all well!
-Kayla

Day 3 of class

OK, I was going to just make one big post after my classes tomorrow, but then I took more pictures than I thought I would, so here is part one of my post aka my 3rd day of class. The above picture is not from today but actually from a couple of days ago when I went to a different Starbucks. Apparently that is how you normally spell Kayla. I can't believe I've been spelling it wrong all these years.

ANYWAYS, today in class we started out by talking about gelatin and other gelling type agents. Our main project today was to make Pâtes de fruits. Which are apparently super expensive to buy, but relatively cheap to make and pretty simple. Pâtes de fruits are a jelly candy that are made using a fruit puree; we used apricot.

You have to bring the puree to a simmer on the stove and then you add a sugar and pectin mixture and whisk for awhile and then when it's almost finished you add citric acid. Then you put it into a parchment lined baking sheet (as seen above.) After awhile it sets and you flip it out onto more parchment and coat it in sugar! I was pretty weary of it since I hate those jelly candies that you buy in the store and since I haven't had apricot since I was a small child; but I am happy to report that it was quite good! Definitely better than what you would buy in the store. 

 

We also today learned some knife skills and how to slice/cut certain fruits and herbs. I finally tried a fig and I have to say that I actually hate them more than I thought I would. It was seriously gross! Anyhow, we had to skin and segment oranges and then peel and slice some apples and pears. Our instructor didn't want us to waste so much fruit, so we baked some muffins. We got to choose one of two recipes and then add any fruit that we had on hand. So my partner and I made some sour cream coffee cake muffins, with apples and cinnamon. They turned out really ugly but tasted delicious!

After we were finished baking the muffins it was time to go home. I had to stop at a Duane Reade, which is a pharmacy out here - there is pretty much one on every corner, for some allergy medicine, my sinuses have been killing me! Anyhow, I went to pay for the Claritin and the clerk said, "you look really cool in those glasses." Hahaha That pretty much made my week. I think that's it for today, tomorrow I believe that we are learning about eggs, so I will try to post about my day when I get home from class. I thought that I would leave you with a picture of the Flat Iron building, which is right by my school. Hope you're all well!

-Kayla (or should I say - Kala)

P.S. Yesterday I faced my fear and went to a movie all by myself! I had a giftcard to use up and wanted to see the movie 50/50. The movie was pretty good and it was not bad at all going alone. So I would like to officially apologize to my Dad (and for that matter my Mom) for making fun of you for going to the movies alone. Lol