Chocolate

For the past 4-5 days, we've been learning all about how to work with chocolate. We've tempered all kinds of chocolate in all kinds of ways (the two main methods involve using the marble to cool the chocolate to temper and an alternate, quicker, but not quite as strong, method called "seeding," which involves bringing the temperature of the melted chocolate down by adding bits of already tempered chocolate to it). With the tempered chocolates, we've coated nuts and made ALL kinds of truffles. We made the truffles with the rich ganache centers, coated them in chocolate and cocoa powder, we made filled truffles on Thursday(using candy molds that make really nice shapes) and we've poured the truffle ganache into frame molds, let it set and cut the chocolates into squares, which we then dipped in chocolate (a lot like coating petits fours). We're saving these chocolates for my graduation party next Friday. Today (Friday), we started work on our final project, which is the chocolate showpiece. This afternoon, my management class took a field trip to Rosa Mexicano, a local upscale Mexican restaurant chain. Here's a picture of my favorite girls in class (Nicole, Gabriela and Anastasia). Have a great weekend!

Guest Post from Todd

Well, we are winding down our New York experience and I have been an avid fan of Heidi’s blog. Okay, okay, I am an avid fan of Heidi…period. A month or two ago I had the idea that I wanted to be a guest blogger. No way can I keep up with Heidi on my own blog so I’ll just latch on to hers (thanks, hon!). Where does she find the time to update this thing so often? Anyway, I’m glad she does. I now have some visuals to go with the response to “Hi honey! How was your day?” And as you can imagine, I get to taste some great things every now and then too! I am so proud of what Heidi has accomplished in just a few months. If I practiced my guitar as often as she practices skills for her new trade… maybe I could really play “Fire on the Mountain.” Everyone knows that I am the president and vice president of Heidi’s fan club. (She asked me to be treasurer, but I told her I was too busy for all that – what with work and all.) Anyway, I really admire Heidi for (1) having the gumption to follow her dream; (2) working so hard at everything now that she’s here; and (3) doing it like a pro. There’s a lot more I could say about my favorite person and all of her sterling qualities… perhaps another time. Needless to say, it’s a very exciting time for her and for me! I will post a few more times this summer as a guest with some of my photos and thoughts .

We had a really nice weekend. Heidi captured the "best of the best" in her last post. Last night I experimented with time lapse photography. I think this video (composed of still photos taken every 2 minutes!) is a really neat way to show you what a great view we have of East Manhattan. Enjoy this and I'll post again soon.

Sunny Saturday and Sunday

We spent a lazy Saturday around the apartment, although I got a lot accomplished on putting together my portfolio. One of my final projects for pastry is to put together a portfolio of my work, to be presented at our graduation. I am happy I have been taking so many pictures all along, because I have a nice variety from which to choose. This will be great to have when I go job searching back in NC! Once I had most of the portfolio completed, Todd and I set off into the city to take a Circle Line cruise of the island of Manhattan. We've been meaning to do it since we got here, but I was spurred into action when a friend of mine from the admissions office at school mentioned that she was going on a cruise this weekend. (Well, we ended up running into her on the cruise boat, which was an unexpected surprise!)







The full tour around Manhattan is 3 hours long and narrated almost throughout. We started on the west side, 42nd Street at the Hudson River. The tour starts by going south in the Hudson, circling around by the Statue of Liberty and then going around the southern tip and back up the eastern side of the island in the East River. It was especially fun to pass our apartment and Roosevelt Island. (Todd spends his day working with a view of the river where the boat passes many times per day. It was nice for both of us to see the view from the OTHER side!) The tour continues by heading up the Harlem River and then through the Harlem River Ship Canal, which was built in 1895. The explosion that formed the canal separated one small part of the mainland (called Marble Hill) physically from Manhattan. Today, though, it is still politically part of Manhattan, even though it is a separate island. The northern part of Manhattan island is very green and very beautiful. I took a ton of pictures - here is just a sampling. This is one of our favorite things we've done in Manhattan so far. If you are ever here, or if you live in NY and are reading this, you really should go. It was worth every penny. The tour wrapped up around 7:30 pm, just as the sun was setting. We hopped a bus, then a train to SoHo and had dinner on the patio at Dos Caminos. We finished our evening with drinks at Pegu Club. We tried to play it cool (no gawking), so we're not sure if there were any A-list celebrities there.

This morning, we both awoke feeling rested and ready to go! We decided on an adventure in one of the burroughs - Brooklyn! We took the L train to Williamsburg and spent a couple of hours walking around. Somehow, it was 4:00 when we got home. I had decided to braise the remaining leg of lamb (it's hard for the two of us to eat an entire 5 pound leg of lamb), so I put it on the stove and we went down to the pool for an hour and a half. We had a nice dinner and have been hanging around the apartment ever since. Todd is working on some cool photography experiments. He promises that he WILL be guest blogging soon.

Moving on to Chocolates...

Well, after the excitement of the wedding cakes, we shifted gears a little and worked with pastillage and cast/poured sugar on Thursday. The purpose of the class was just to familiarize ourselves with a couple of other techniques that we can use for our showpieces (which we will present for our final grade). I shaped some pastillage into small pieces that I'm hoping to glue together (with royal icing) to make a chalice. Once painted, I'm hoping it will look very "old world" and fancy. We also played around with the poured sugar and made a few bases and some really cool stuff we dubbed "kryptonite," because it looked like bright crystals. Then, I glued a lot of it together using heat and made it into this structure. Thursday afternoon, we took a field trip with my management class to the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (a very Polish neighborhood). We took a tour of the facility, learned about the history of beer and how it's made and got to taste a lot of their beers.






The timing of the summer solstice (longest day of the year - which was Thursday) couldn't have been better, as Todd and I went to a guided chocolate tasting at Michel Cluizel (arguably the best chocolate in the world)...because what, really, would you want to do with the longest day of the year if not spend at least SOME of it enjoying some wonderful chocolate?!?! It was delicious and enlightening.





On Friday, we learned how to temper chocolate for the first time! Now, we've previously worked with chocolate A LOT, but not ever tempered it. To give a little background, most (if not all) of the chocolate that we/you buy is already tempered. It means that the molecules are all aligned properly to give the chocolate that shine and "snap" that you are used to. It helps it to hold up so that it does not melt in your hand. However, the minute you melt chocolate, it comes out of temper because the different fats melt and re-solidify at different temperatures. If you simply melt chocolate and then allow it to cool, it will no longer be tempered and anything you make (designs, shapes, bands, etc) will melt the instant you touch it with your fingers. It also lacks the shine and snap of tempered chocolate. To temper chocolate, it is necessary to melt it to the degree that ALL of the different fats are melted (about 115 degrees or so), then cool the chocolate uniformly (by stirring, mixing - which take a long time, or by spreading it on a marble and working it with spatulas) to about 85 degrees. At this point, the chocolate is tempered. (To test it, you can streak a little of it on to a plate and wait a few minutes to make sure it sets up. Non-tempered chocolate, if melted, takes a very long time to set, and usually has to stay in the refrigerator.) At this point, you usually have to reheat the chocolate ever so slightly (never past 91 degrees) so that it is not too thick to work with. We made nut clusters with our tempered chocolate, but starting on Monday, we'll be learning to do some very sophisticated and complicated things (I hope!) like make truffles, filled bon-bons, and, ultimately, construct our chocolate showpieces. The theme is "Summer in New York," so I'll have to do some thinking on that this weekend to decide what I want to do.



On Friday night, Todd (my sweetheart) and I went to see a WONDERFUL magician (Steve Cohen) in an up-close magic show in a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria. It was truly amazing. I got picked to go up on stage for this trick he did with my watch. He told me to think of a number between 10 and 20 and the hold my hand up in the air. He held his hands around mine and the "energy" made my watch run exactly 16 (the number I'd chosen) ahead!!?! It was mystifying. After the show, we had dinner at a romantic Italian restaurant called Piano Due. It was a real treat... Have a fantastic weekend.

Wedding Cakes

We finally put the finishing touches on our wedding cakes today and set them all up for display. It was such a great feeling! We all put a lot of time, effort, hard work into these and I think it really paid off. Getting it home on the subway was a real adventure too! We're still digesting from dinner, but I'll plan to cut into it later tonight and then try to figure out what to do with the remaining 58 slices!

Almost Done with Our Cakes

Well, I am still working on flowers for my wedding cake in class. Yesterday and today we made the cakes, filled them, crumb coated them (we call it "spackle") and then covered them with rolled fondant. I did remember to take some photos of my gumpaste flowers, so I'll post them at the end of this entry. Yesterday afternoon, I took part in a recreational (optional) class at the school called "Summer Steak Workshop" with a master butcher, Rudy Weid. It was a fantastic class! Not only did we get to see him effortlessly carve up a half of a cow (well, actually a "steer," which is a castrated bull), but we learned about a bunch of lesser known cuts/steaks that cost a lot less than sirloins and tenderloins, but taste just as good OR BETTER. Lastly, after all of this entertainment, we got to taste all of these cuts of beef after the chefs cooked them up: filet mignon, sirloin, tri-tip (my new favorite), skirt, flank, short sirloin (or coulette), flatiron and hanger steak (a good runner up).




After class, I met Todd in Bryant Park (remember in the winter I said this was one of my favorite places in NYC), which is on 42nd street, a few blocks east of Times Square. On Monday nights in the summertime, HBO sponsors a movie night in Bryant Park. Last night was Annie Hall, which is the old classic with Diane Keaton and Woody Allen. It was a real New Yorker favorite, so the lawn was packed. They don't start showing the movie until "dark," and we had to be there by 5:00 pm to get a seat, so we ended up camping out in the park for a good 4 1/2 hours before movie time. A little picnic, some vino, a good book and a blanket and we were just fine...



Tomorrow we'll put the finishing touches on our cakes and present them to the other people at the school. Then, I'll get the challenge of bringing it home on the subway and figuring out how to get rid of it all! (The cake serves about 60 people, and it's just Todd and I here... I'll probably cut it up and put it in the mail room or lobby of the apartment building.) I wish I could send it in the mail, but I'm afraid that wouldn't work!

Here are the flowers (cherry blossoms, calla lilly, rose and an azalea):

Keeping Busy

Hi again! We are still working on gumpaste flowers for our wedding cakes, which will be completely finished by the end of class on Wednesday. Right now, I've made about 40-50 flowers, all different varieties (pictures coming SOON) and on Friday, we started using petal dusts to "paint" them. They are starting to look very realistic. Here's a picture of Chef Scott showing us how to make the blossom for the azalea.



On Friday in class, we made the batter for the cakes we'll use in our wedding cakes. The girls at my table made a batch of cake batter that completely filled our 60 quart mixer. It made enough batter to make 40+ cakes. The other table used the smaller 20 quart mixers to make 3 smaller batches, giving our class enough cake for each of us to make our tiered final products. The cakes will be assembled on Monday, iced on Tuesday and finished on Wednesday. I'm excited about the design I'm making and can't wait to post pictures when it's done.




I've also been working this week on coming up with an original recipe for a contest sponsored by one of the premium liqueur companies (to benefit an overseas organization that helps young kids off the street become chefs). I finished testing the recipe on Thursday night and submitted the recipe to the judges. The prize is $500! Keep your fingers crossed for me. Either way, I enjoyed the challenge of coming up with a new recipe and LOVED the final product and will definitely be making it again.

Friday evening, Todd and I went out with 4 other couples from my pastry class (girls + their boyfriends) to celebrate the engagement of one of the girls. We went to a place called Lucky Chengs, a drag-queen cabaret restaurant. The so-called "Pan-Asian" food was less than OK, but the entertainment was truly ENTERTAINING and we had a great time. I'll attach a few of the less incriminating pictures...






Yesterday, Todd and I had a low key day at the apartment and, in the evening, joined our friends James and Diana and their 2 boys for a walk through Central Park and then dinner on the West side. It was so great to see them and we're glad the rain moved on so that we could enjoy the evening.

Today is Sunday and we have our eyes on the pool, just as soon as we finish our coffee. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there and hope you all enjoyed your weekend!

I'm back...

I got slack lately and have not posted in a while! So sorry! Just to get caught up, I've posted a few pictures of what we've been doing lately in my pastry classes. We finished Module 3 and moved on to Module 4 - Advanced Cake Decorating, Chocolates and Showpiece Desserts (my LAST module, by the way). The pictures below are of some of the techniques we've learned in Buttercream, Royal Icing, Fondant, and Modeling Chocolate. I also stuck a picture of our chef, Chef Scott, and the girls from my table. We're all going out this Friday for our first "out-of-class" night on the town with our significant others. It should be fun - it is LONG overdue!


Cake Decorating Basics with Buttercream


My Fake Cake


Chocolate Rose Closeup


Chef Scott and the Girls from my class

Todd and I spent this past weekend in Durham, visiting friends and family. We finally got to meet the Jones boys, and enjoyed having dinner with Todd and Kim to get caught up. We also had lunch with our family on Sunday in honor of Lauren's 10th Birthday!! It was great to be home and so wonderful to see everyone.


Us with Carter and Taylor Jones


Lauren's Birthday at Mellow Mushroom

Last night, I volunteered for the benefit at Rockafeller Center called Chefs Gone Wild. I got to work with some great chefs and finished early enough to be able to enjoy some of the party with my friends from school. We went out afterwards and had a LATE night, so I am about to crash early tonight. Hope you are all doing great! MIss everyone!




Chefs Gone Wild