Morning: danish making, afternoon: sweet wine tasting...

...its a rough life, but someones gotta do it.  I must admit as fun as it was to learn to make all kinds of danishes, after the 12th type of danish I was a little bored. Its like watching someone do origami with pastry dough: cut, fold, pastry cream, fruit, cut, fold, almond cream, fruit, cut, fold, pastry cream, fruit...on and on it went for 3 hours! I even have a huge power point packet with all the different ways to fold up danishes. Hopefully I will remember them all for my practical on Friday.

Canapes and dessert wine, not too shabby for a Tuesday afternoon. I have to admit I was not looking forward to this wine lecture, even though no one should really be dreading an afternoon where you get to learn all about wines, but my previous exposure to this experience in Basic was less than informative and bordered on ridiculous. 

My 'wine expert' from basic was very passionate about wine...so much so that he cried over one of the wines we tasted in our class. Ok I am all about the impact and revelation that food and spirits can spur, but come on buddy, it was only a $20 bottle of wine...lets not get carried away here.

Much to my surprise our sommelier for the day was actually a girl from my class last year. That was very exciting because, one, she actually had her sommolier certificate, two, I knew she would be able to 'hold down the waterworks' seeing as she had to sit through last years drowning lecture as well. We had the luxury of tasting bottles of wine from the 9.50 pound level all the way up to the 200.00 pound level. Now if anyone has been looking at the exchange rate lately that would equate to about a $30.00 bottle of sweet wine and a $400.00 bottle of sweet wine, according to a much inflated restaurant wine list.

Now let me give you a little history on sweet wine or vin doux as they say in France.  This wine must contain at least 45g per liter of sugar for this spirit to move up in the rankings from wine to a much sought after sweet wine. The 'sweet wines for dummies' version behind this process is essentially removing as much water as you can from the grape, so that all you have left are the sugars from the grape. There are several ways to do this a few of which are: air drying (like raisins), late harvest (essentially letting the grape die on the vine), Noble Rot (the most sought after grapes in the world, this is when the botrytis mould attacks the grapes and quickly removes all the moisture from the grape), ice wine (letting the grapes freeze and then put all the frozen grapes into a grape press and squeezing only the little bits of sugar substance that hasn't frozen yet out...extremely rare and hard to do, there is also a price tag to match), or add alcohol (this usually turns into port or sherry).

Of course we went through the 'checklist of wines': appearance, nose, and palate. Now this is when things got interesting. I am all for smelling the wine and seeing what notes hit your nose first, but some of these descriptions are a little out there to the point where I would smell a wine 10-12 times to try to smell what my apparently much more cultured classmates where smelling. 'Oak...cabbage...eucalyptus and leather....chemical...stewed...green bell pepper...fig and apricot' people would shout at the first inhale of these sought after wines. I am thinking 'seriously! there is no way you smell leather...apricot?, understandable...but leather?!'.  It was quite fun to hear what crazy 'note' these citizens of the world could smell in these wines.

Which was my favorite sweet wine?? Well, lets just say I have good taste. The $400.00 sweet wine was my drink of choice. The wine comes in a small bottle (7mL) and is from Hungary...its name is Royal Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos, a 2005 vintage. I was told that they are selling it at a grocery store here in London for about $90.00...I will be heading out to the store to purchase one of these little babies! The wine was the drink of choice for King Louis XIV of France and he called the wine 'the king of wines'. It is aged in a 13th century cavernous cellar and is very rare. Of course we had this wine last, as it is very special, and after just one taste it is almost hard to believe that a sip of wine can be refreshing, warm, calming, clean, exciting, and leaves your mouth with the feeling that you just stepped into and orange orchard for just a moment. Now I sound like my crazy classmates, but that is truly the sensation this wine gives. What to eat with this luxurious wine you might ask? An apricot or citrus tart, creme brulee, or a buttery pastry. Our sommelier had us taste it with bitter chocolate, which of course chocolate and citrus is always a winning combination, but the chocolate can over power the taste of the wine a bit.  My second favorite and much more affordable $35.00 sweet wine choice has to be the Seifried Sweet Agnes, vintage 2008, paired with an apple tart, tropical fruit dish, or prosciutto and melon.

...so drink-up my dear friends, because in life the rare special moments with the ones you love should always be cherished and sweetly celebrated.

Evil Oven vs. Prize Idiot

Tonight I decided to bake cookies...nothing fancy, just your run of the mill chocolate chip cookies. On second thought, I was using the Nieman Marcus recipe, so I guess they had a little extra fancy to them. Of course I had none of the ingredients, so I headed off to Sainsbury to get all my ingredients and a baking tray. After spending about an hour in the store trying to figure out the difference between 'self rising flour' and 'normal flour' and then trying to find unsalted butter all proved to be a much more challenging task then I was planning on for my calm Saturday night. I never did figure out the difference between the flours, so I just picked the 'normal flour' and hoped for the best. I came back to my flat to realize that I did not have a whisk or a mixer...just a wooden spoon. The first step of the recipe is to 'cream together the butter and sugar', 'well..' I thought to myself while looking at the block of butter and cup of sugar in my much too small plastic bowl 'this should be interesting'. I smashed, folded, and stirred the butter until I was red in the face, so I moved closer to the open window for some cool air. I decided that I could never achieve the 'until fluffy' stage, so I figured 'eh its mixed together at least'. I added the vanilla, eggs, flour, ect to my semi-creamed butter and sugar mixture until I had everything combined. I pre-heated my oven to 150 degrees C without even giving it a second thought and put in my first batch. In less than 10 min they burned into little black blobs...I have NEVER burned anything in my life. I blame the oven! So I turned the dial towards the left, just in case and put in my second batch. These burned in less than 6 min! 'HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?!' I asked my roommate. 'THIS OVEN IS EVIL!' I shouted. Smoke was filling the kitchen I flew open the window and stuck the entire tray of cookies out the window shielding my face with the window pane, with all of Oxford Street looking up at me and my burned cookie tray. It was a shameful moment. 'I have made these a million times, I don't understand...I give up' and into the bin went the rest of my batter.

Does anyone know that in England everything seems to be backwards including their dials...everything is clockwise not counter-clockwise. In the States when you look at your oven dial the smaller numbers are on the left and they get larger as you move to the right...its true go check your oven. Here in London it is the opposite, so I actually set the oven to 260 degrees C or 500 degrees F and when I turned it 'to the left', what I thought was cooler, I actually set it to 560 degrees F. I wish this story was not true, but sadly I have witnesses.  Moral of my sad little story 1. always look at your oven dial carefully, especially in a foreign country, 2. my oven isn't evil, 3. and finally as they say here in London, I was just a prize idiot!

Butter, butter, butter, butter, butter...

I am currently in a butter sugar coma from having a small slice of each of my desserts today, but I dont care they tasted amazing. Moe, my roommate from Japan, and I just sat at our kitchen table eating in silence, except the occasional 'yum', 'its so nice', 'uhhh this is so good!'. My white fondant dried so fast that my chocolate design didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted.

 

There is actually a girl who went to Baylor in my class...what a small world!

The more amazing thing about these confections is that I was able to get my two huge pastry boxes through the tube. It was getting to be lunch time and everyone was looking at me like, 'oh whatever is in those boxes, I want some!'. Peoples reactions to me carrying all of this stuff is pretty funny actually. I usually get the comment 'oh do you have a cake in there?' or 'I don't know whats in there, but it smells lovely'...usually from men or little old ladies. So ladies, if you need a date for this weekend just carry a cake around for a little while. Its fool proof!

Dance of the umbrellas

Its raining today in London, it rained yesterday, and its suppose to rain tomorrow...big shocker. I unfortunately had to join the not so elegant dance of raising, lowering, and tilting my umbrella and I must admit that I am getting quite good. The real test was today when I was getting on and off the tube and had two bags, my binder, and a cake box with my St. Honore in-side.

I woke up before the crack of dawn this morning, and off into the dark hours of the morning I headed to class. The doors open at 7:30 and there is always a mass of anxious cooking students outside the door just waiting for the click of the door to unlock. There is so much to get done in those 30min...change into chef whites (in a room full of lockers and is about the size of my dorm room...add 30 frazzled ladies and you have chaos), climb at least 3 flights of stairs, prepare your station, get out the tools you need, frantically look over the recipe, deep breath...8:00 ALLEZ-Y! This morning was particularly stressful for me, because I was already quite nervous about meeting my class and getting back into the swing of things. We walked into class, there were no introductions, just instructions and a timer with 3 hours set.  "Alright" my chef said "let's go". In my head all I could think was 'oh my gosh what do I do first, my head is completely blank, what do I do, what do I do!?. Bowls and butter! Just grab the bowls and butter!' I knew I would need them at some point. Then in the short time it took me to grab bowls from the sink and butter from the kitchen cart, I 'got my groove back'. Before I knew it, I had my pate choux finished and in a piping bag, my puff pastry had been cut out, and I was ready to make my puff pastry for tomorrow. Leaps ahead of half of my class, my pate choux was piped onto trays and ready to be put in the oven and I was feeling good. Everything turned out beautifully. Now it was time to boil some sugar. Caramel, gosh that stuff gets hot! To the sugar and water you must add pure glucose to the mixture. In case anyone was wondering, yes it is a clear sticky mess, yes it comes out of a big tub, and yes I did get it all over myself. Minus a few burns on my hands from the hot caramel, no major medical disasters in the kitchen today. I guess the heavens were on my side. 

My puff pastry turned out great and the block of butter incorporated into the dough without a hitch. I got very good marks today, but my piping was a little 'sloppy'...Ill take it considering that is the first time I have ever piped with that saintly pastry tip. 

My roommates are amazing and I have gotten great feedback from my two French roommates, so I feel like that should say something right?! We all were off to a slow start this morning due to the fact that the nightclub next door to us was having an event last night. Hundreds of people were lined up under our window and around the corner until about 2am. 

On the menu tomorrow: pithiviers and mille-feuille aux fraises

Ahhh the pithiviers....almond cream baked into fresh buttery puff pastry that looks like a sunflower before you bake it. Ummm, delicious? Is that the word you are looking for? The pithiviers are traditionally served around the holidays and a little plastic crown is hidden inside. Whomever gets the piece with the crown gets to be king for the day. Sounds like a pretty fun tradition to me. 

The mille-feuille is a stacked dessert with layers of puff pastry, creme mousseline, strawberry jam, and topped with icing and chocolate in a herringbone design. Nothing wrong with that! 

Dont let the simplicity of these desserts fool you, they have many technical components. I can only hope that time will be on my side again tomorrow morning. 

Gateau St Honore vs. my arch nemesis the Pate Feuilletee

First of all let me say a quick apology to all of my readers who know that there should be accent marks in the title of this blog…but I couldn’t figure out how to get them on there.

Does anyone know what its like to sleep in Time Square? Well living on the corner of Oxford Street and another street that shall remain nameless is literally like living 2 stories above Time Square in New York. The location is amazing and SO close to school, but at night I do not appreciate the drunken people under my window yelling, the garbage trucks that seem to come around 5 times a night, the 5 busses that stop and go just around the corner on regular 20 minute intervals. On the up side everything is literally just outside my door. I guess my lack of sleep is worth only having to go 2 tube stops instead of 7.

Today was my first day back to class after a much too long break. My binder has gone from a 1inch to a 2 inch binder filled to the brim with recipes, there are pictures above of my binder with a few pages of my cryptic handwriting and drawings of Thursday's daunting tasks. It felt a little strange walking back into the building considering everyone was looking at me and whispering ‘who is that girl? Is she new?’; however, the humor in it all is that no one asked me if I was new. I was definitely tempted to turn around in class 2 or 3 times and say ‘hi my name is Sarah and yes, I am new to this group’, but I resisted. I guess they will all figure it out eventually when we start cooking together on Thursday. Today we learned to make the ever so prestigious Gateau St Honore. This gateau (cake) is a patronage to St. Honore the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. The gateau is supposed to show many different levels of skills and boy does it ever. To be honest when I looked at the pictures I thought to myself, ‘this is no big deal! I have made all of these things separately, I just have to put them all together now’…well I think that St. Horore is going to have the last laugh on this one. I can just see him looking down on me and saying ‘bahahahahahaha you thought this would be easy!?’. The gateau is a base of puff pastry (pate feuilletee) then a layer of pate choux (cream puff pastry), crème diplomate (pastry cream folded gently into whipped cream), then crowned with a circle of pate choux buns dipped in caramel with a slivered almond, and towering the entire structure is a nest of spun sugar with candied violets. I am exhausted just typing out the basics of the cake! Oh and did I mention that he also has a pastry tip named after him? One of the more complicated pastry tips that most of us try to avoid whenever possible. St. Honore isn’t going to let us out of this one, when that thing was brought out you could hear the moans and groans throughout the classroom.

The spun sugar is definitely the most amusing part of this towering concoction. You start by boiling sugar to a particular temperature, then you take a tool that looks like you just cut a whisk in half and all you are left with is a handle with a bunch of spokes. You dip the cut off whisk into the boiling sugar and then you flail the ‘wand’ about in the air like a ribbon dancer. All the while you must catch all of the spun sugar flying off of it. The spun sugar ends up looking like golden strands of hair, but before you even have time to absorb the fact that you just flailed boiling sugar about, you must roll up the sugar fast, while its still hot. I am definitely expecting an amusing Thursday.

All the while during any breaks in time you have whilst making this saintly cake, a batch of puff pastry or pate feuilletee must be made for our next practical session. Puff pastry must be made at least 12 hours before you need to use it, due to the fact that you must let the pastry rest to make sure it is not overworked. Now we all know that it took me 3 attempts to get my puff pastry correct in basics, lets just pray that I can get my block of butter pounded out to the correct size and that the butter does not seep out of the pastry during all the rolling and folding that inevitably must occur.

PS- I got stuck with a bottom locker…to all my tall fans out there you know how painful that bottom locker can be.

One last though…my singing and dancing ‘friends’ just walked under my window, they now have now accumulated a tambourine.

Whats 8 months?

What’s 8 months? Well not much except for the fact that my favorite boutique shoe store is no longer on St. Christopher’s Street. Not a huge loss, considering I never dare walk into the store knowing that the result of that act would be a workout for my debit card. The window displays were always lovely. I finally arrived to London last night very late. The flight was long, to say the least and with no more battery life left on any of my entertainment I was left to only start freaking out that I just move to London…again! All I could think in my 34 minute decent into London Heathrow was “Sarah what were you thinking! Sarah what were you thinking! This is crazy! Oh my gosh, I am going to London, what am I doing!…”. That feeling unfortunately went throughout the night, but I did get some sleep thankfully. I woke up this morning and just said to my self “Sarah just take it one day at a time…first shower, then lunch”. After I checked out of my hotel I walked around to find something to eat. Its strange that really nothing had changed and I just walked the center streets of London with confidence. The experience was a little dream-like, everywhere I looked there was a memory of last year. The corner I stood at when I met all of my classmates for the first time, the pub that we all went to after class, and a friend’s old apartment building. I feel as though I have never left, but then again just enough is different to where things don’t feel quite as they did.

I waved for a taxi and went to my flat. I rang the front bell and waited…nothing…I rang the bell and waited…nothing…looked around…rang the front bell and waited…nothing. I had my suitcases and bags; everyone was looking at me as they walked past. I called the number on the front of the door and finally got a hold of someone to let me in after waiting outside the door for 20 min. It gets better, there is no elevator, and so I schlep all of my suitcases 3 flights of stairs and finally get to my flat. To my surprise it’s really nice. I have not met my roommate yet, but she is from Brazil and another from Japan. Why do I get the feeling that I am in for a cultural experience?! Shockingly my room actually has two huge windows, so it gets good light. Light is something I have learned is a rare treasure in this city. I have a kitchen, living area, and a nice big bathroom…with a shower this time! After unpacking, I went across the street to grab a sandwich and much to my surprise I also found these little mango cups with a wedge of lime. Of course I snatched one of the few left on the shelf to try. Crazy as it is, I never thought to squeeze lime on mango, but let me tell you it is a ‘hello, good morning moment’ and the epitome of sweet and sour.

As for my homesick feeling, it is getting much better now that I am unpacked and a little more settled. I guess I forgot how this whole moving away thing works, even if it is a place I know well. I realized that I left a bag of my cooking utensils at my house, so I need to go buy those tomorrow before class starts Monday. I cant wait for reception to open up on Monday, so I can get my internet password…for now I am just using my phone whenever I can get wifi.

On the agenda for tonight is meeting up with old friends at the Royal Opera House for a ballet and dinner to follow. I cant believe it has been 8 months since I saw them last!

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The Beatrix Potter ballet was wonderful. How could dancing bunnies, frogs, and pigs, not make a person happy…or at least laugh a little. After the ballet we went to an Italian restaurant, delicious as always and just as I remembered it. Around midnight I decided to turn in, because jet lag was hitting me. I am very lucky that my flat is on one of the most central streets in London; however, I now know that on Saturday nights the drunks like to come out and mingle directly under my window. There is also a religious ‘band’ that walks up and down the main street during all hours of the day singing in a language that I don’t understand. I saw them today when I was on my way to the store and almost wanted to stop them and let them know that A. at night people like to sleep in quite B. singing the songs in English would probably benefit their cause seeing as they are in England C. excessive drum playing at 2am will no longer be tolerated by a certain American student. Even though I had the perfect argument I refrained from making more of a scene.

Nothing too much going on today, just getting ready for class tomorrow morning and going to the grocery store. Once I saw the size of the kitchen in my new flat (that I am sharing with 4 other people by the way) I instantly called my friend Kelsey and told her that I would be at her flat cooking quite often. We have two mini fridges between all 5 of us and the oven is so small! No joke the opening is the size of my computer screen…ok it’s a little bigger than that, but you can imagine how difficult it will be to fit a cake pan inside of that thing. My roommate and I had a good laugh about that one. She joked that I would have to make my cupcakes individually because the oven is so small! My roommate and I tried to figure out the washing machine today with the help of our other roommate from France, who is learning to speak English. The fact that I am trying to speak my VERY limited French in England is one of the many quirks of my living situation and a sign of many adventures to come. Well that’s student housing for you I guess.

I am very anxious to meet all of my new classmates. I can only pray that they will be as awesome as my last group. Now I am off to Kelsey’s for dinner…why do I get a sneaking suspicion that I will be the one doing the cooking?

Fondant Madness

Birthdays...is there really anything more fun than celebrating birthdays with friends and family? In my short year of making cakes on a professional level I have realized that, while there is fun in making the cake, the reaction and joy that the cake brings is the real fun. It makes me feel like I have added a little bit of magic and surprise to someones day. I decided that my gift to my friend Shay for her birthday would be a cake made to look like a gift. I bought all the ingredients for a double layer Devils Food cake with chocolate and honey butter cream frosting. I told myself that I had 5 hours to finish the cake from start to finish...and at 8:00pm I was off! I whipped up those cakes and got them into the oven as quickly as I could, next came mixing up the buttercream frosting, and finally I got to start the decorations. First came the pink fondant that I rolled out and cut strips to make the ribbon that would act as the bow on top of the gift. After that I laid them over rolled up computer paper sheets to get the shape. I then dove into my moms 5 jars of cookie cutters to find just the right flowers for the 'wrapping paper'. Thankfully I found what I was looking for after only 2 jars. With powdered sugar in my hair and chocolate dribbles on my feet from making the ganache in the buttercream, I pulled the cakes out of the oven to let cool. I then assembled the cake and decorated it as quickly as I could, because the fondant was drying very quickly. I was so proud of the end result I emailed a picture of it to just about everyone. I could not wait for the reveal of the cake the next day...I felt like an anxious kid on Christmas Eve night waiting for Santa. The cake was a success and most importantly I made it in 4 hours...hopefully a good sign that this hobby could actually become a side career. At midnight I headed off to bed with a very calming sense of accomplishment. Shay loved the cake which made the whole process special. It wasn't just a cake, it was a symbol of celebration for a very special friend.