Baking and Pastry: Week 3

Once again I am posting one super long post based on the entire week. While I wasn't sick this week, I was pretty busy. This last week the Catersource convention was in town, and one of the guys in school let me know that a few extra people were needed to help out a couple of weeks ago. I went down to career services and signed up, well this was the week that I was actually needed to work. Monday morning bright and early I headed down to the newest casino on the strip, The Cosmopolitan, and searched all over the fourth floor looking for the banquets kitchen so I could help out. Once I found where I was supposed to be I discovered that we were needed an hour later and that The Cosmopolitan was also having its first health inspection since opening so the small group that was there with me all headed out into the banquet area and relaxed until our day was really supposed to start. Once the health department finished their inspection we headed back into the kitchen and we got started on our project, tying green onions onto plastic cups. You probably think I am kidding, but I am not, and I actually have photographic evidence of such.

Once we finished tying almost 900 of these little cups we were done for the day. I headed home and proceeded to relax until I had to go to school where I had my first practical. During the practical I had to make 2 french bread baguettes, 1 bâtard loaf, 6 jalapeno cheddar biscuits, and 12 peanut butter cookies. Overall I did horrible on my first practical scoring a 75%. Thankfully though this one didn't count towards much on my grade so I still have an A in the class. Now I just have to make sure I do better on the next practical.

On the next day I was working again at The Cosmopolitan and I didn't have to be there until 10:00 in the morning. I was thrilled I got to sleep in too because it was going to be a LONG day. Once we all arrived we found out that we were going to be at the Marquee Night Club and Day Club helping with setup for a huge party that was going on that night. From 10:00 AM till 3:00 PM we were setting up flowers, moving furniture, and just generally getting things ready for the party.

Once 3:00 PM hit our relief showed up and we boogied. I had to be at school in just a couple of short hours, and instead of heading home only to leave again I just headed straight to school. I still had a couple of hours before class so I decided that would be a good time to relax a bit. I am glad I did too because class was super busy that night. We made a bunch of different doughs and we made a key lime pie. My favorite.

The next night we baked off all the doughs we had made the night before. We made apple pie, quiche Lorraine, and a pear tart. I only got a picture of the apple pie though so the rest are pics I grabbed from the net.

 Apple Pie

Quiche Lorraine

Pear Tart

Tonight was another dough making night, however we did have some fun as well. Raul grabbed my cell phone and snapped a few pictures. First up is what will eventually be eclairs. 

Raul, Daniel, and another guy from class decided to have some fun with my eclairs later on. 

While all of this was going on I was actually rolling our some dough and Raul snapped a pic of the two of us. 

By the way it was really hot in class tonight, so I look incredibly pink and red. Anyways, that brings us back up to date again and next week is another fun filled week in baking and pastry.

Baking and Pastry: Week 2

Ok so the last week I haven't been updating because I have been deathly ill since Friday before last. Which means I didn't post what happened last Thursday either. Thursday we made 2 French baguettes, 1 bâtard bread, and 4 French dinner rolls. I didn't get any pictures though because of being sick.  All of this week  I was awake long enough to suffer through class and then I came home and passed right back out. Thankfully we didn't have any school on Monday because of President's Day, so it was a short 3 day week. Tuesday we made a bunch of different doughs that we baked off through the remainder of the week. On Wednesday we baked off our brioche dough and made three different things:  1 galette, 3 à têtes, and 2 nanterres. Sadly I didn't get pictures of any of it because of how sick I was, so I am just going to grab some pics off the net so you can at least see what it is I am talking about.

Galette: Only mine was plain and had a little hand made whip cream in the center

à tête

Nanterre

The other thing we made Wednesday was one of my husbands favorites, cinnamon rolls. This I did manage to get a pic of while I was in class because I knew once I wrapped it, it wouldn't look as good.

Then on Thursday we had a pretty short day. First we took a quick quiz that I am almost positive I got a 100% on, and then we baked off our croissant dough that we made three different things with: danish, croissants, and chocolate croissants.

Once we finished that up we made our sourdough bread that we actually started on the first day of class. I haven't tried it yet but it looks pretty good.

Once class ended I swung by the Aria and picked up my husband so we could go home and go to sleep. Sadly we didn't get much sleep though because I started having a VERY hard time breathing and after a heated debate (I didn't want to go) my amazing husband took me to the emergency room . I spent the remainder of the night there getting chest x-rays and breathing treatments. Around 5:30 Friday morning I was released and had the joy of trying to stay up long enough to get my prescriptions filled. Then Jon and I passed out until he had to go to work. When he got back home I passed back out since we had to be up early this morning to help his parents move.

Some other exciting news. I received my score on the certification exam I took a couple of weeks ago, and I passed with a 96%. Hopefully in a few weeks I will actually get my certificate so I can add it to my portfolio. Anyways, I think that brings us all up to speed, so goodnight everyone.