Monday, February 1st

Today: Pineapple Upside Down Cake:



I received some devastating news today. The talented, lovely, funny, sweet, tattooed artist Justin Mentell was killed in a car accident this morning. I'm reeling and still trying to process. He will be very very very missed by a lot of people, especially me.

Friday, January 29th

Today, along with my racking cough, we had our first practical and had to replicate our Celebration cakes.

This is how we felt about them:



This is what we decided to do with them:




And this is how we dealt with our less than stellar grades:

Have a good weekend - and bottoms up.

Thursday, January 28th

YAWN.

I forgot to mention that in order to try and accomplish everything that we need to in a day, we have been starting class an hour early... I went to meet the lovely Trina for dinner (if you haven't already, take advantage of DineLA! JiRaffe was AMAZING!) this evening and upon arriving early for a change, I locked my doors and reclined to close my eyes for ten minutes. I literally could not keep them open.

Anyway, yesterday we finished our dreaded Celebration Cakes. Tasteless and covered with American butter cream, they were intended for us to get used to cutting even cake layers, spreading frosting evenly, working with butter cream and piping. So here it is...



And yes, before you start making fun of me, we were required to pipe our own names...

But check out my roses!!! Chef said that I went a tad overboard with them, but come on! How could I not?!




Yesterday we also did a Boston Cream Pie. This was SO good. I mean... can we discuss the chocolate ganache oozing down the sides of the cake?!




Yesterday we got a head start on our cake for today, the Triangle Cake with Dobos sponge filled with chocolate butter cream... And just in case you had any delusions about how much butter actually goes into butter cream frosting:



So here is how my day went today... Below is a picture of the Triangle Cake... Its Vicki's...

And here is mine:

A picture is worth a thousand sighs.

Tuesday, January 26th

Greetings from the capital of Complete and Total Exhaustion.

The Cakes module is totally kicking our cake loving arses.

Yesterday we started our Celebration Cake, and worked on it more today... And will finish it tomorrow. Hopefully.

Today we made our Black Forest Cake (below) which is comprised of Devil's Food Cake, cherries (on the bottom layer), cherry flavored liquor sponged onto the layers, and a cherry liquor flavored Chantilly Cream topped with maraschino cherries.

Today we also baked the cake that will comprise the layers of our Boston Cream pie which we are to assemble tomorrow.

This class is so crazy that the Chef called us around at the end of class to explain that in order to be successful in this module, we need to get lots of sleep, make sure to eat a good breakfast every morning, and to focus on being zen.

Zen?

We are a bunch of high strung OCD pastry students! I digress.

I was coming up to my apartment this evening in the elevator, weighed down with grocery bags, obviously in my school uniform, with a mother and her super cute 6 year old (or so) daughter.

The daughter gave me the once over from slip resistant steel toed shoes to frizzy rain soaked hair with her pink fur coat - hood up over her head, and asked:

"Are you a doctor?"

I smiled down at her and said "HA! No. (smile) I make cakes!"

She replied with large brown doe eyed interest: "You're a cooker?!"

Amazing.

Friday, January 22nd

Happy Friday from rain soaked Los Angeles! It has literally rained everyday since Sunday and I have loved almost every minute of it....

Since I have neglected you this week, dear blog, here is a nice healthy dose of pictures and fun...

Apologies, Erin and Jesus... I didn't take pictures of the really good Tiramisu we made on Tuesday... Ill make it for you the next time I'm home!

Wednesday we learned how to use our ice cream machine which was a serious departure from my Kitchenaid here at home. In teams of two we made vanilla ice cream (Vicki and Moi decided to add chocolate chips to ours), and then we got to pick whatever flavor of sorbet we wanted so we went with Raspberry...



Thursday we started our finals... As usual we began with the written which I received... wait for it... 106% on. Just saying. Then we made the Ribbon Sponge cakes again. Here is my finished product below (99%). This time I made a raspberry mousse instead of black currant.



Another pic...




This one is Vicki's. I love the colors she chose to use. Her mousse is mango flavored.



Here is a great action shot of Kim cutting her cake. She used a special stencil to get the circle effect...

The Russian Spy also used a stencil... I think hers came out great...

Here is JM's cake... Poor kid sprained his ankle last week and has been playing a mad game of catch up.

Then, as per tradition, we had yet another pizza party. I want to take credit for the below shot, but Monica took it of Henry showing off...

Today also happened to be Chef Gilbert's birthday so we surprised her with roses...

... and a piece of non-pepperoni pizza (per her request), with a candle in it that wouldn't light.... Regardless, she was touched.

Monica is the designated pizza cutter... Here, she is giving the camera what I like to call... some sass.

Here is Vicki taking a graceful bite out of her famous "suprima" (insert "Italian" accent) pizza.

Never a dull moment, I tell you. So Monday we being class with Chef Mushet again... "Cakes."

Friday, January

Three Chocolate Bavarian Layer Cake: The bottom layer is a chocolate genoise cake soaked with a cocoa syrup. The first layer is dark chocolate, then milk chocolate, then white chocolate topped with a cocoa jelly and piped white chocolate.

And now I'm too tired to type anymore.

Thursday, January 14th

Thursday: A day of Black Currant Mousse Ribbon Sponge Cake.

Here is mine:



Here is Erika's. She said that she didn't like the way her colors came out and I told her, quite appropriately, that she is down right crazy.



Here is Enrique a.k.a. Henry with his Ribbon Sponge. We had the option of putting patterns in as he has done (you can't see it that well... But read on)...




You can see the patterns really well here in Donna's cake. I loved the colors she used. We have to do this cake again for our final so I might gank her colors.

The entire cake is filled with the black currant mousse that we made and topped with a black currant gel. I think they look super cool.

Tomorrow we being yet another test... Brain cake, again.

As a side note... I hear my neighbors rumbling around and I suspect they are getting out their dusty treadmill as they, in broken English, told me to stop giving them the things I make in class...