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