Promotions, Finals, and Feeling at home

Well, I finished another term/semester/mod at school and am happy to say that I still have an A. The last few weeks of school have been a real test. I had to work with a partner that I cannot stand and have come to the realization that I am an absolute control freak. It's not a very flattering quality so I'm going to work on it. I had my final on Sunday and for the final we had a written portion and then we had to decorate a cake. We made the lemon-scented cake again, but this time we got to choose the flavors and determine how we wanted to decorate it. I chose to do raspberry jam with a framboise (raspberry liquer) flavored buttercream. We practiced our piping skills on Saturday and by Sunday my rosettes looked a lot better. When we finished our cakes we had to sit down with the chef one-on-one and discuss our thoughts on what our grade should be. I kind of hate having to self evaluate and tell someone what grade I think I deserve. I had a class in college where the professor didn't believe in grades, so we each had to meet with him and tell him what grade to give us. I was having flashbacks to that when I went to sit down with the chef. I finished my cake first and volunteered to go get graded first. There were different criteria like how the sides of the cake looked, the top of the cake, finishing details, the layers on the inside, etc. The sides of my cake looked kind of crappy because I had a little trouble with them, so he asked me what I thought I deserved out of 18. I said 13 because I was not very happy with the work and knew I could have done better. He told me that I am too hard on myself and gave me a 16. I ended up with an A (although a low A like a 93) so I was pretty satisfied. Plus the chef said some really nice things to me, which made me feel pretty good. Next weekend begins the chocolate mod along with more cake decorating. So stay tuned. (Oh - side note, I tried my cake before I got rid of it and it was delicious!)

On another front, I got promoted to shift supervisor at Starbucks today. I'll be making about two dollars more an hour which is really nice. I've come to the realization that I love it here. I've made some really great friends and I get to live in quite possibly the craziest place on the planet. I still am surprised sometimes to think that I actually did this; that I actually moved out here on my own without knowing anyone. I feel really proud of myself to be honest, hopefully I can say that without sounding boastful. On a side note: I'm re-reading "The Great Gatsby" and was reminded by one particular passage as to why I loved F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing. So, I'll leave you with that. Hope everyone has a good week. I'll see you soon!

"He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself." 

Relief

YIPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!
Sorry, had to get that out of the way... Today was my written and practical exam. The written portion took place first and I had not studied very much so I was pretty nervous. After the written part we had to make a creme anglaise and then souffles. For the practical we worked by ourselves instead of with a partner. For the souffles we had to time things correctly because we had a window of time in which we were to present them to the chef. The creme anglaise was first and it is a pretty easy thing to make, the only way that you can really screw it up is if you don't temper the eggs properly which makes it so that you scramble them. I finished and the chef came to check it out and said that it was "very good." :-) So then I moved onto doing the mis en place for my souffles. I made the souffles and put them into the oven and was fairly nervous that they were not going to turn out so great. The good thing about this portion of the practical was that we only had to have one souffle turn out perfect to present to the teacher. Crazily enough, all of my souffles turned out lovely. I presented one to her and she stated that it was "beautiful" (!!!!) I was so excited! Then I got to see my grades for the whole exam. Drumroll please... Out of a possible 200 pts I received  198! I missed one question on my written portion, so that was the 2 points. I felt great after that and was thrilled with the result.

I never wrote about last Sundays lesson so here you go! We took the choux (puff pastry) that we had made the day before and filled them with pastry cream. We ended up making cream puffs, eclairs, paris brest and some lovely swans. One pastry cream was vanilla and the other was praline (it pretty much tasted like Nutella - so in other words it was delicious). We took the cream puffs and assembled them into a croquembouche. A croquembouche is a traditional French wedding cake and is a tower of cream puffs bound with caramel. The ones that we made were pretty small - and also not very nice looking. Without further ado here is my personal croquembouche:

It doesn't look great and it cost me a blister and a singed fingernail, but it could have been worse I suppose. We only did one lesson last Sunday because the second half of the day was spent with career services updating our resumés and discussing our options down the road for externships. Well that's it for school, I'll leave you with a couple of funny stories from work.
1. A Jewish lady that comes into my store thinks that I'm Jewish... I think it has to do with the fact that she heard me saying that I don't eat pork and also because I said that I love to bake Challah. Either way it's pretty funny and I'm not sure how to break it to her that I am indeed not Jewish.
2. One of my coworkers thought that I was Spanish... She swears that she heard me speaking Spanish to a customer. I had to break it to her that I indeed am the whitest person imaginable and cannot speak Spanish to save my life...
3. My coworkers keep telling me how funny I am. In my head they're saying "Oh my gosh you're sooo funny - you should be a standup comedian!" While in reality they might actually be saying, "You're so funny... I think you might be mentally ill." I'm going to keep thinking the first one. ;-)

Hope that you're all well. Love and miss all of you!
-Kayla

P.S. I wanted to quickly put all of your minds at ease. I always close with the same shift supervisor at work and he also lives in Queens. So, we get to ride the train together and I get off the train before him - so I'm never on the train by myself late at night, so you can all breathe easy :-)

Yikes, it's been awhile since I posted...

... Don't worry though, I'm still alive ;-) I know I didn't post last week about school, but I ended up being called into work both Saturday and Sunday. So last week I worked all 7 days and 43 hours. So, I was pretty busy to say the least. I can't quite remember all of the things we did last weekend, but I do have pictures. (Hopefully this will make it so that you overlook the fact that I have no pictures from todays class.) Last weekend was all about egg based desserts. Such as, custard, crème brûlée, and other things that I have forgotten about. Oh! Also ice cream! Here are some pictures, (one of which has a guest appearance from yours truly) Oh gosh, I forgot we also made cheesecakes.

You can't tell, but it started snowing like crazy!

We made bread pudding too!

The base for our ice cream - it has coffee grounds in it

Finished bread puddings

Someone let me use a torch...

Creme brulee - not quite burnt enough

Cheesecake! 

So we made all of those things last weekend, on Sunday I got called into work, so I went right from school to Starbucks and closed. I got home around 11:30 and then had to be back at work on Monday at 6am, which involves waking up at 5. It pretty much took until now to recover. Hahaha That brings us to today. Next weekend we have our practical and written examinations for this term. We will have to take a written exam and then make a flour based chocolate souffle and a creme anglaise. So the last 45 minutes of class today were spent reviewing. This morning we made some frozen desserts. First we made static frozen desserts (they are poured into moulds and then put into the blast freezer) and then we made bombes. It was a layer of vanilla bean ice cream, a layer of raspberry, a layer of chocolate chips, another layer of raspberry, and finally a layer of chocolate. It turned out well and tasted quite delicious. Then we made pastry cream - half vanilla and half praline - and then we made choux. Choux is just puff pastry, tomorrow we will fill them with the pastry cream to make cream puffs and eclairs. The second half of class tomorrow is going to be dedicated to career services. We are going to start discussing possibilities for our externships and do resumés.

I had a funny moment at work the other day when I had to wash the windows. The windows are pretty tall and there is a very long window washing tool that you have to use. So there I was outside on 3rd avenue with a long pole trying to wash windows while people were trying not to trip over said pole... The customers inside were pretty much staring at me hahaha. Also my dad called me this week and as soon as we hung up I burst into tears... haha The day to day here is fine and I don't find myself feeling sad or anything, but as soon as I talk to someone from home it makes me feel terribly home sick :-( So, if I haven't called you lately, it's probably because I know that I will immediately begin to cry and not because I hate you :-) I should also mention that it probably also had to do with the realization that I won't be able to make it home for Thanksgiving or Christmas - my store is in a Jewish neighborhood, so it's open on Christmas day.

This week I went and saw a movie (Like crazy) and started reading a new book. The movie was really good and I am almost finished with the book which is also good. The book is called "Is everyone hanging out without me? (and other concerns)" and it's by Mindy Kaling who is on the office. Well, I think that's it for now. I miss all of you and hope that you're all doing well.
Lots of love,
Kayla

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

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