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

A week in and counting

Sorry for the delay in posting, I've had a couple of early mornings the past few days which has left me exhausted. On Sunday I had my second day of school. The first hour was spent hearing from one of the career specialists at the school. She came in and talked to us about volunteer opportunities and how our externships will work. We went around the room and introduced ourselves to her and then said what we would like to do after culinary school. I was the only person who said that they want to be a pastry chef; which was pretty funny. Anyhow, it turns out that it is a possibility that I will get to do my externship with my favorite pastry chef! I was pretty excited to hear that. After we got that information our chef/instructor came in and began the day's lessons. I don't remember all that we did because it was eight hours of lessons, but I do remember that it involved math...

Yuck... Luckily it was some pretty simple math. Although I do have to admit that I always thought that my teachers were lying when they said that I would use algebra later in life. Who knew? After we got done with the math portion of the day we moved onto baking! We made chocolate chip cookies. For all of the baking, you work with a partner. It would have been fine except that I'm a control freak and my partner thought that anything I said was wrong. (Which by the way it wasn't.) Luckily we switch off to a new partner every class. Our cookies turned out alright, but someone didn't measure the chocolate chips before we put them in, so the cookies turned out a little weird, though very delicious. The recipe made somewhere around 36 cookies, I only took a couple home because I didn't really need 18 cookies to eat by myself... (look I just used math again!) Here's a picture of the finished product:

After we made cookies, we moved onto making cornets (aka paper cones), cornets are used to pipe chocolate for decorating and writing. They're made with parchment paper, I forgot to take a picture of them, but if you're curious I'm sure there's a picture on Google. At some point I was told that I needed to go to the registrar's after class. I was then nervous for the rest of class thinking that I was going to be kicked out of school or something. (which is weird since I'm never anxious about anything.) So my chocolate piping was kind of crappy because my hand was almost shaking and all I could think about was getting kicked out.  Well, it turns out that they just needed me to fill out a form for emergency contacts... hahaha. After school I went to the subway to go home and I not only didn't get lost but I gave directions to a foreign couple! I felt so proud.
On Monday, I started at Starbucks. I had to get up at 5am which was not too fun, but I made it to work and back home later without getting lost and without having to look at Google maps! I can pretty much only get to school or the upper west side of Manhattan though; anywhere else and I would probably get lost at least twice. That's about it for now, I have to make a ton of cornets for homework this week and do some reading. Talk to you soon!
-Kayla

We'll call this a successful day...

The subway is where I spent a good portion of my day today. I had a long ride into downtown Manhattan to go to the uniform shop. On my way there though two sets of people performed songs which was pretty funny/entertaining. I would also like to state that I did not get lost once today! That is pretty exciting if you ask me. So I went and picked up my uniform which consists of 3 chef jackets, 5 aprons, 2 pairs of pants (which are black and white checkered...), and a pair of shoes... Now this all sounds great until you remember that I am staying about a 45 minute train ride away. So I got to lug around that heavy bag for awhile. Here's what I got though...

I'm not sure if it really shows up in the picture, but my name is on the jacket! I was so excited, it almost makes up for those horrible pants.

I almost forgot my most exciting moment of the day! I got the job at Starbucks and I start on Monday! I was really excited and cannot wait to be back at Starbucks honing my barista skills. Well, I think that's about it for today.
Kayla