project - day 1

so our chef instructors are amazing. both of them are friendly, helpful, excited, eager. they are everything you hope a teacher will be, because what a miss-pairing it would be to group a bunch of excited cake enthusiasts together with anyone that was uninspired. it would be like pairing peanut butter and broccoli instead of jelly. (i could have said something like honey with Chai, rather than jasmine too - which by the way, i wouldn't recommend. i've made the mistake of putting honey in my Chai tea...bleh. nauseating.) i imagine peanut butter broccoli would equally be just that: a mistake. but either way, i'm in love with the chef instructors - they are perfect and excited and talented. couldn't ask for more.

we made a genoise cake and some pâte á bombe butter cream last night. we'll be assembling our cakes tomorrow night, so i'm excited to see how they came out. from the looks of it, my cake looked pretty good, but we won't get to inspect until then, so i'll just have to wait. i can't say i've ever made a genoise cake before. it's interesting because it doesn't use any chemical leavening, but rather a lot of air that is whipped into the egg/sugar mixture. one of the reasons that i love baking so much is because of the physical and chemical nature of the science that is cake. i don't think people realize how much goes into making a delicate, tender cake. of course, you realize this is why i rarely eat cake. i've become somewhat of a cake-snob. so many times i've had cake from bakeries that were obviously frozen (and at times, freezer-burnt), obviously tough and over glutenized, or poorly prepared and therefore, tasteless or greasy or over-infused with a very chemical vanilla flavor. (the list goes on...) well, it's often just a lot easier to pass on the cake altogether. (unless of course it's a family- or friend-made cake! a homemade cake goes a LONG way with me - because THAT is always a treat and there is nothing i am more blindly devoted to, or in love with, than the notion of love that goes into a cake like that!).

anyway, while our cakes were baking and cooling, we began to work on the pâte á bombe butter cream. it's a french butter cream that is made with soft-ball sugar. it made for a luxurious, rich flavor and incredibly smooth texture. it's very yellow in color as well (due to the egg yolk). i think it will be simply wonderful. of course, we had to wrap it all up and prepare for wednesday's cake assembly, so i'll have more details once i'm more well acquainted with the cake and butter cream we made. i'm looking forward to posting pics of my first project!

stay tuned. i'd write more, but i want to get back to studying. cake school homework is actually very intense and involved - and not at all like the baking and eating of said baked goods, that my family and friends would like to think it is. i am very committed to mastering and memorizing all of the new information, and true to FCI's promise of "full immersion," there was A LOT of information imparted to us last night, and you simply have to stay on top of it, or else get left behind, and that is not part of the game plan!

more to come!

xo

m