I know, I know.

I've been a bad blogger. But for those of you who have access to my Facebook, you all know how I've been doing. I've been doing great, actually. :) Cakes went much more smoothly than I thought, and breads so far has been amazing. Thanks to Chef Christophe, the last half of Cakes was a bit more bearable, and I have Chef Lori again for Breads (with Chef Holly, equally as amazing).

So one of the things that have been holding me back from blogging is finding a photo-sharing website that doesn't put a cap on how much MB I'm allowed to upload (like Flickr). I am currently trying to figure out Google's Picasa, so we'll see how that goes. :) Otherwise, pictures, as always, can be found in my Facebook account. But yes. If anything, I will try to write more updates since Facebook can hold my pictures :)

What a week...

The first week of cakes class was...stressful. Also, I had an interview with the Cafe Bistro at Nordstrom, but I turned it down because Kara's Cupcakes also called me to interview with them. Pictures will ensue sometime...

A great veggie side dish!

You need:
some asparagus
some grape tomatoes
olive oil
lemon juice, 1/4 cup (and some zest, if you have a fresh lemon)
Parmesan cheese

Just sear some asparagus in olive oil and garlic (add salt and pepper to taste, if desired), and place 1/4-1/2 cup of water and cover to steam cook to finish the asparagus off. If all the water has evaporated and the asparagus is still not cooked all the way through, add another 1/4 cup of water and let steam again. Drain, and set aside. Next, cut some small slits into your grape tomatoes, and roast in olive oil and garlic until they are soft and are dark in color. A taste test wouldn't hurt, either. :) Drain and toss in with asparagus. Drizzle some extra olive oil and the lemon juice over the veggies, and sprinkle some Parmesan (or make curls out of whole Parmesan, if available) to finish.

Enjoy!!

Hi, my name is Marielle, and I am afraid of cakes.

Okay, there, I said it. Happy now? I felt so ashamed of the relief that washed over me when Bella said she'd take on the petit fours for competition. I was so nervous icing my cake for Pastry 101 (a 101 class!), and even more so when it came to piping simple shells on the edges. I was shaking so hard, you'd think it was a matter of life or death, depending on how perfect the shells were or weren't. I can't say I was intimidated by my pirate cake, since that was just slopping on the icing and smoothing it around the cake, no intricate work of art there. But I will say that I will be shaking in my boots when I remake the pirate cake into a better, more detailed and planned out cake than the first one was (as per request by Chef Renee).

I blame myself for not wanting to put myself out there and keep trying after every cake icing failure at Saiko and Haagen-Dazs, but cakes make me feel so STUPID. Ask me to do a loaf of bread, no problem! Need a pie or tart shell? Easy peasy, Lemon Squeezy! Want me to ice an ice cream cake? Well, man the front, because I'll be in the freezer icing and re-icing that damn cake for God knows how long! My first attempt at an ice cream cake began to melt a little and leak around the edges as I took too long to just slap some icing on and put it back in the freezer to firm up again. Lois, my boss at Haagen-Dazs, ended up just taking over after a long time to save the cake. At Saiko Bakery after the trained baker he hired left us, neither Don nor I really knew what we were doing but Don just assumed responsibilities since he was bossman, and thought it was excusable if the cake was ugly in any way (then we could just blame Don). Do I need to mention that my handwriting, horrible as it is with a pen or pencil, is absolutely HORRENDOUS with icing? After a while, it just was assumed that I would not do any icing duties at neither Saiko nor Haagen-Dazs. I'll bake or pack the ice cream for it, but be prepared to ask the back of my head to ice that damn cake, because I will be running in the opposite direction even before the words come out of your mouth. Maybe it's my search for perfection, for being able to do things right the first time most of the time. But I will say it now and forever again: CAKES ARE THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE.

So call me Crazy if you will, but I still think about interning at Charm City Cakes. Who knows? Maybe my innate ability to win at Sculptorades has something to do with it, but I think that if I can get beyond the icing and get to the cool scupture part of cakes, then maybe (just maybe!) I'll be all right.

Sigh. My quest for knowledge and perfection will be the death of me.

Top Chef NY! Season ender of CSI!! And BAGUETTES!!

Soooo...TOP CHEF WILL BE IN NEW YORK NEXT!! That is SUPER EXCITING. I wonder when it will begin airing?

Also, I know it's four months late, but...I seriously squealed when he got shot (I watched a rerun of it on CBS tonight). I knew he was leaving the show following Ms. Fox, but that is a gruesome (and very open-ended!) way to leave the show. So sad. But my sexy CSI Nick is still there! ^_^

Aaaaand.....breads week is this week, and we made baguettes. :) Too bad that "Glory Walk" took up some of our precious time (students who had their last class before their externships today walked a lap around school while a bunch of people applauded them as they passed by), because at least two thirds of us left waaaay past 8 (thanks to Chef Renee for sticking around!), including me. I only hope that I was able to get Kelly, aka Birthday Girl, home in time for Grey's Anatomy. Haha! Oh well. Although I had to wrap the baguettes while still warm (thus making the crust not as crunchy), Van and I had a very soul-soothing dinner of pieces of baguettes ripped off from the loaf dunked in anything we had on hand: leftover coq au vin from work at Williams-Sonoma and some green beans and bacon that Tin sauteed earlier. Dessert consisted of Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Honey Bee ice cream and some chocolate chip cookies I had made a couple days ago. It took all my strength to fight the food coma and get my butt showered and in bed like a good girl :)


So tomorrow will be chock-full of Safety-Sani Certification goodness, as well as shokupan (Japanese dinner or white bread..I haven't quite decided if i wanna throw in some raisins and swirl in some cinnamon) and either melonpan or pizza dough...I'm thinking the melonpan, though. Oooh, it's a shame I didn't plan this out earlier, because if I'm making melonpan, I could also make anpan. Unfortunately, anko takes a buttload of time to make. Oh well, maybe another time. :)

I feel uneasy.

I'm supposed to be studying for Safety and Sanitation right now (final today, certification exam tomorrow), but I can't focus on anything right now. I keep thinking about my knitting project, about the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend (I know, I know, it's 2 whole months away.. >.<), about what might happen in March, about what to do for my externship...the list goes on and on like the Energizer Bunny.

I haven't been getting much proper rest... I almost inevitably fall asleep on the couch sometime after I get home after 8pm, and then wake up to take a shower any time between 1 to 3am, then either fall asleep right away, or stay up for another hour or two because I'm too wired from my "nap". Then I either have to wake up for work, or just wake up fairly early anyway, since I tend to be a light sleeper in the morning. I don't think things will normalize for me any time soon, though. I guess I need to work on making that happen myself.

Communicating with the one person that matters the most to me right now is very difficult since he is now without cellphone, so whatever healing powers talking with him had is now diminished and made more difficult since all we have now is Skype. And the only way for that to work is if we're both online and ready to talk at the same time.

But, yes. Gripe, moan, complain, repeat. I know. I don't have it all bad. I'm just a little bit overwhelmed right now. But just as one of the greatest movies on earth has taught me, the Universe tends to unfold as it should. It just won't stop me from worrying/being emo all the time. :P

YARRR!!! :D (click to see a great video)

Belated Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day everyone!!! That being said, here is how I celebrated:





































If only Target had that pirate accessories kit, I would have rocked a hook, an eyepatch, and a hat as well.. :) But yes. Bella and I spent most of our time yesterday from about 1pm and whenever class would let us permit up to right about 730pm to put that beaut together. The buttercream was melting pretty fast, probably because of the cocoa powder, orange oil, and rum that we put in there, so we ended up working in the walk-in for the last 30 minutes or so of production..but I am SOO PROUD OF BELLA for the beautiful waves she put together!! She really helped me put this whole cake together and make the idea a reality, so THANKS, BELLA!! :D

Which brings me to my next piece of news. So let's take it back a bit, to two Wednesdays ago. I was standing outside the Student Affairs office, casually looking at the announcements on the boards on the easel when Haley, one of the Student Affairs Officers comes out and asks me, "Are you joining the bake-off?" At first I said no, but Haley somehow was able to work her magic and convince me to take some applications and go find a partner right quick. I went to class and thought about it for a while until class began and pretty much left it alone with the thought that I might ask Dairn, or I might ask Bella (both of whom I sit between in class). I didn't bother with it until the next day, Thursday. Dairn mentioned that he was partners with his roommate, Chris, and when I turned to Bella, I noticed that she also had a blank application sheet. 30 seconds later, we had become partners.

It was rough, because our other classmates who had joined ahead of us had a few days, if not a whole week, on us in terms of practicing and getting their recipes together. We had from Friday to Monday 5pm to turn in our recipes. We needed to come up with recipes for a soufflé with a sauce, a flambé, and a hard candy to turn in for ingredient-ordering purposes, and just to come up with how to decorate our petit fours (the cake, marzipan, and fondant icing was provided for us, all we needed to do was assemble and further decorate the petit fours). Coming up with the soufflé and flambé recipes came easy, but we were stuck with the hard candy recipe. I really wanted to do something with lavender, and I wanted to come up with a Werther's style caramel that was lavender-scented. I was hard-pressed to find a basic hard caramel candy recipe (even until now!), so we tried to think of other things. Bella thought of dipping strawberries in caramel, which eventually evolved into Frangelico-soaked strawberries dipped in caramel. However, this didn't fly with Chef Tim when we asked with him on the following Monday, as it wasn't technically a hard candy (the caramel had to be boiled to hard crack stage, or 300-315 degrees).

I was at a total loss, since we needed to turn in a new recipe the next day. I decided that I would just go with the recipe in our baking textbook for my hard candy, and figured if I could make two different ropes of candy, I could twist them into a candy cane type deal. I finally decided on a lavender-peppermint combination, but I didn't know how I was going to get the lavender into the candy until my friend and fellow competitor, Justin, said that he would bring me some lavender from home and that I could just infuse the lavender into the candy syrup then strain it out later. As luck would have it, he got sick on Thursday and forgot to bring the lavender on Friday. I had already been practicing to make the candy, but Thursday yielded a lump of purple candy. So I ran to Whole Foods across the street, and as luck would have it they carried lavender essential oil, if not at an extremely exorbitant price of $10 for a tiny bottle the size of half my thumb. After 3 practice runs on Friday, I was as ready as I could be for Saturday.

Let me state at this point that Bella and I had everything else down, and were just planning the details at this point.

So...Saturday comes along, and basically I am blown away by Justin's team (he threw cinnamon in his flambé and made it sparkle for God's sake! And those candied walnuts...), Ashlynn and Alison's team (they had pretty homemade Butterfinger candy), and basically just proud of all of us, especially of all of the kids from my class who joined, despite the huge difference in skill set and experience.

So Justin and Alisha win third alongside Vivienne and her partner (forgot her name, last name Ontiveros). Second place is swept by Allison and Ashlynn. Bernard and Shawn take first (unfortunately I never got to see or taste anything they made). But you all should know, that Bella and I tied for first along with them. :)


































































Ashlynn's beautiful petit fours











Justin's awesome candied walnuts were amazing... :)











I taped glowsticks in the top part of the cat's mouth..I think the gimmick would have worked better, had I not put the candies to rest in a wet dish, and gotten them all sticky. :(









































All of Bella's beautiful hard work definitely paid off :)






Not pictured were my flambé and Bella's soufflé. Marga, who came out with Mike (as did Van, my roommate, for most of the competition, anyway), has a ton of pictures, so as soon as I get my hands on them, I will be posting them up promptly. To go along with our Halloween theme, Bella made a dark chocolate raspberry souffle which she turned into a scary face with raspberries for eyes and a couple of mint leaves still on its stem for eyebrows. Chef Lori, one of the judges, didn't realize this until she took the first scoop of the soufflé and made a huge scary grin to match the rest of the face. Also on the plate was a mint pesto ghoul and a vanilla ice cream skull with raspberry sauce eyes and mouth. It was so perfect, because as the ice cream melted, the eyes and mouth started to drip red like blood. I made a Hungarian walnut- and raisin-filled pancake and a chocolate and dark rum sauce for the flambé, and when I plated the pancakes I put a splash of heavy cream on both sides of the plate on the sauce and used a skewer to make eyes and mouths and stretch it into a ghost shape. But yes, more pictures to come :)




The winners with Chef Tim








L to R: Shawn, Bernard, me, Bella, Ashlynn, Chef Tim, and Allison








Marga and Me! I'm so glad she was able to come out and support. It was so fun knowing that they could share in our win!




Soooo there we go. We tied for first, and that rocks. :) I guess you can say that I'm doing pretty well in pastry school. hehe.

BONUS PICS!

At Ambrosia Bakery, on Ocean Ave.:




What a great Sunday morning...Tiramisu and a hot chocolate. :)









Bestie with a latte! It looks like a pre-"ARRR" in lieu of the holiday that was coming up. ;)









A beautiful fresh fruit tart








Princess cake








Delicious-looking cappuccino cake









I was thisclose to trying the pistachio mousse cake until I laid eyes on the tiramisu over on the other end. :) But I promise, that will be next!