Ribbon cakes, cookies, parfaits and being good at balancing...

I have to wear my hair in a bun at school so that I can avoid wearing a hairnet; so at the end of the day when I take the bun down, my hair has dried in a weird direction and gets all twisted and looks pretty funny. I should have started this off by saying that I'm coming home in April. I'll be home from April 5-9, so hopefully I'll see you while I'm there. School has been moving along swiftly and I cannot believe I only have a couple more months of classes. I've been having a good time this semester and really enjoy my instructor. Getting a compliment from someone who is fairly critical feels a lot better than from someone who compliments everything. We've been making a bunch of stuff and I keep surprising myself by doing really well on it and being told so by my teacher as well. Enough bragging about myself though. I have some pictures!

We made tonsss of cookies!

 

We made chocolate ribbon cakes!

The chocolate ribbon cakes were pretty neat, we covered a cake that had a mousse with chocolate "plastic" which was really neat to work with. Today we had our first attempt at making plated desserts. These are the kind of dishes that you would make in a fancy restaurant as a pastry chef. I am not a very creative person so I've been kind of worried about this part of the course, but it went well. My team made a chestnut parfait with roasted pears, candied chestnuts and a wafer on top. I was responsible for the parfait portion and had a mini freakout, but I'll get to that in a moment. First, here's a couple of pictures:

This is the one that I plated myself...

So onto my freakout... So I made the parfait part of the parfait... To make it I had to whip up egg yolks with a hot milk/sugar/gelatin mixture and whip until the yolks were cool, light and fluffy. Well after several minutes it wasn't happening. I ended up tossing it and starting from scratch. Then the same thing happened... I started to get nervous and went to my instructor to ask for advice. He told me to wait and keep whipping it and that it would come together... and if it didn't we would start over and make sure we did it perfect. Well, he was right and it came together after like 10 minutes. I have to say it came out beautifully and it tasted pretty great. I took one to another class and the chef complimented me and said it was beautiful. Next week we have some more plated desserts and then our final is on Sunday. Then the weekend after we move onto chocolate (ugh...) and cake decorating. Also, I've become a pro at making whipped cream by hand, I think I may be the fastest in my class.

On another note, I think I officially became a real New Yorker today... I was able to stand up on the subway without holding on and I didn't fall once. Hahaha I think that's it for now. See you soon.