http://oddpairs.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/congrats-tastemaker-winners-spring-2010-odd-pairs/

That's me hiding from the camera on the right there. I can't take credit for the awesome food that won the contest (the soup and savory marshmallows pictured on the top left), but I did spend a good portion of my youth peeling and cutting those marshmallows (garlic, bacon and ginger ones... so effing good).

I suck at updating this lately, I know. I've been working a lot (sometimes even for money!) and I've discovered a new outlet for my OCD:





CAKE DECORATING. SOOOOO SATISFYING

Plated desserts are tricky. Done well, they can be really elegant:



Done badly, they can look like the art deco movement pooped all over your plate. Or like Freud took a shift in the kitchen:



I'll admit that at the start of this class I kind of thought I'd be an instant genius at this shit. I mean, I went to art school! I eat out and make snobby comments about the food all the time! I can make up smart-sounding crap about balance and harmony IN MY SLEEP!

Turns out, like most things, it's a lot harder than it looks. Funny how that works.

Anyway, our final was today and we had to come up with four platings for some surprise ingredients, iron-chef style. We ended up getting pear, dark chocolate, mascarpone, and phyllo.

I made chocolate ice cream, caramelized pears, a mascarpone cream with creme fraiche, and did as little as possible with the phyllo because I hate working with it. Here is the evidence...I wish I'd gotten better shots but Chef was waiting and my ice cream was melting.









Chef's favorite was the one I thought was the goofiest. I guess I'll never be a plated dessert genius. Crepe stand here I come.

I realize I haven't reported anything on school since it started last week-- in part because after a full day of making things and then another couple of hours working on my food portfolio, I'm pretty much over whatever recipes we've been working on; but also because I'm growing new eyes for this stuff but not the skills to match them yet. And now when I look at the pictures of my imperfect cakes I start getting that twitchy feeling that was previously reserved for really poorly kerned type or crooked picture frames.

Pastry chefs have a reputation for being the weird, neurotic, perfectionist OCD types of the culinary world (not unlike, say, graphic designers...ahem). And while it's been pretty obvious since birth that I lean towards this personality, erm, quirk, judging by the number of pep talks my chefs have had to give my class on the subject of "don't give yourself a coronary, you'll get it eventually," it's not just me who wants to flip the table when the chocolate seizes.

So it is with great restraint that I don't delete pictures of things that haven't come out perfectly. And if you promise not to judge my heavy-handed caramel application or my inconsistent rosettes or the piece of cooked egg that ended up in my creme anglaise... I'll share a few things we've been working on:


The beginnings of a strawberry cake with vanilla bavarian cream


Dobos torte (five layers of sponge cake with chocolate buttercream, topped with a final layer covered with caramel and cut into triangles)


Strawberry charlotte

PS: if you know anyone in Chicago that likes cake, send them my way. Seriously. Jesus. I need to get rid of all this cake.

Aaaaand my first semester of pastry school is finished!

I hastily snuck a pic of our final practical exam with my phone. We had to make baguettes, marble pound cake, spritz cookies, and orange chocolate scones.

I can see about 1,000 mistakes every time I look at this photo and it makes me cringe, but hopefully it's all good enough to pass.

Now comes the best part of being a student again... winter break! I have big plans, big big plans... reading, catching up on dexter, SLEEPING PAST 4AM....I'm also hoping to try out some of the stuff I've been doing at school at home, so recipes are a comin!

HOORAY YA'LL

straight baguettes, hah!

This is what happens when you don't load them in the oven correctly, a maneuver that requires, you know, a normal amount of hand-eye coordination. But as anyone who has been near me and a full glass of wine can attest, I am a giant spaz, and so all my baguettes have been looking like this lately.

I have anxiety dreams about these goddamned baguettes: the chef counting to ten dramatically as she steams the oven, then yelling GO! as we all slide them onto the deck together, with only one chance to get them in there without their stupid doughy bodies squooshing up on you. And then everyone laughs and points at your misshapen baguettes, and calls you names, and you look down and realize you've forgotten to wear pants.

Anyway. EFFING BAGUETTES, MAN.

and i had to move to illinois to make my first pecan pie.

Apricot cobbler

Ohhh man, I know it's been a while since I've posted. Life here has been going at breakneck speed, and the amount of information on ingredient functions, costing, sustainability and sanitation that has been funneled into my brain in the past two weeks was almost enough to kill me dead. Almost.

Instead I'm coming down with a nice cold (I refuse to even entertain the possibility that it's the flu). But! Being on my deathbed (have I ever told you I'm a whiny sick person?) gives me a good excuse to lie around and catch up on my internets.

So after "pastry theory" comes "intro to baking," and I get to be back in the kitchen once again. So far we've made biscuits, scones, muffiny muffins, cakey muffins, and then on Friday these:


Rhubarb cherry crisps

Yaaaay rustic fruit desserts! I love fruit crisps, cobblers, whatevers...they are some of the most delicious things on the earth and yet all you have to do is slop some overripe fruit in a pie tin and add some stuff on top. Basically.

If you want more direction than that, I've posted the recipe for those little rhubarb and cherry guys up there on Dessert of the Month Club. DELISH.


Blackberry banana bread. I gave a CTA lady one of these because I didn't know what else to do with it. I am now the Santa Claus of quickbreads

I'm swimming in papers right now, but my trips to the library seem to end up with me forgetting what I went in there for and coming out with things like this instead:







Instead of cookies this Christmas you are all getting reindeer canapés.

Our last class before our exam was based around pie and tart dough. While part of me would like to continue the myth that pie crust from scratch is a laborious and easily-effed-up affair, especially because I over-baked one crust and thoroughly mangled the other, it really is quite easy to make. And even if, like mine, it doesn't look so perfect, it will still taste good. Just call it "rustic" and be done with it. SO DO NOT BE AFRAID MY FRIENDS, GO FORTH AND MAKE YOURSELF SOME PIE:

Pâte sucrée
This crust is sweet, good for dessert tarts, and super forgiving. You can re-roll it, patch holes, even make cookies with the scraps. And no chilled butter required.

7.5 oz softened butter
3 oz confectioner's sugar
1/3 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 oz eggs, beaten
12 oz flour (pastry if you have it)

Cream the butter and sugar to a paste in a mixer. (It should be toothpaste consistency- not til it's fluffy.)
Add the eggs gradually and then add the sifted dry ingredients. Mix just until it comes together nicely.
Flatten the dough into a disk and chill for at least 30 minutes. Then roll it out, drape into your pie tin, and let chill again.
Bake at 350 til GOLDEN DELICIOUS.

Friday was "cookie day," our first real chance at actual baking (unless you count meringues). After a lecture on the purposes of various ingredients in a basic recipe like chocolate chip cookies, we were sent into the kitchen to make four batches: one normal chocolate chip cookie recipe, one normal peanut butter cookie recipe, and two jacked up batches with one ingredient substitution each.

And then we tasted them. All of them. I don't care how much you love cookies, that shit was a test of spirit. You haven't lived until you've eaten so many bites of cookie in one sitting that you are actually high. I ate cookies made with bread flour, cake flour, hi-gluten flour, whole wheat flour; cookies with baking powder instead of baking soda; cookies with all brown sugar, with corn syrup added, with confectioner's sugar, with molasses; cookies with all shortening vs. all butter, all egg yolks... Holy God.

So. Pastry school. The first two weeks here have been a cluster-- I arrived in Chicago the day before I started school, and since then I've been juggling classes, a new city, and an apartment full of boxes.

Class for me begins at 6am sharp every day, and from there it's six hours or so of basic skills-- meringues, knife skills, piping, and an endless stream of information on how fat shortens gluten strands and eggs leaven. In my sleepy state I've already taken several chunks off my fingers, which might beat the X-acto blade damage I did finishing projects in design school (probably at approximately the same time in the morning). It's intense-- I wear a cravat (that's French for "fancy tie that is hot and scratchy") and say "yes, chef" a lot-- but I'm definitely, well, immersed.

here's some of the fun stuff i've been doing while you guys are asleep:


fruit plates-- they came out a little fussy but they were fun despite my utter lack of knife skillz


meringue cups (filled with nutella)


and lots and lots of piping practice.





People keep asking me what we do with the leftovers. Most of the stuff goes to our cafeteria (everything we eat is made by the culinary and pastry students). But the uggos we get to keep, of which there are many. So be looking for your jacked up cookies in the mail.

I'm going to pastry school!



Yep, I'm off to spend a year in Chicago, getting up at 5am and learning to make fancy sweets. Wish me luck. Updates will probably be scarce until I'm settled, but I promise to post as much as I can starting in October.

XO