A Thousand Pounds of Cake

This week I literally, well maybe not literally (HIMYM fans, I am Robin with this statement), made a 1000 pounds of cake.  This week is still cake building and tasting and we still have the awesome chef that I had last week.  He seriously is so great.  He's only 35 and after he graduated from high school he worked in his uncle's pastry shop until he got a job at the Ritz.  Then he opened up his own shop so he has so much knowledge about how to save money when trying to do this and what to do for this and that.  It's an unbelievable resource for all of us and he has been so helpful.  With all this talk about starting your own business, I began thinking about what I wanted to do at the end of this program.  The thing is I have nothing holding me to any location.  I've loved moving my entire life and I want to move again and again.  Owning my own shop does not allow me to do this since not only will I be tied to that location, but I also will be very short on money since it costs so much to start up a business.  I've decided that I wanna be on the move and see as much of the world as possible.  This basically means that I want to work in a hotel of sorts such as the Four Seasons or the Ritz so that I can find a job in so many different cities.  I'm already starting to talk to people to see how I can make this happen so keep me in your prayers for finding a job and making my dream come true.

     As far as baking goes though, this week we made some pretty baller cakes.  We made a chocolate biscuit (again not a biscuit but a cake) with a chocolate mouse and caramelized pistachios with pistachio nougat.  It is pretty darn delicious even though it so much chocolate.  Another cake we made was a really dry chocolate biscuit and then you soak it in a orange caramel soaking syrup and it becomes really spongy.  It is a very European kind of dessert and very few of us liked it because its just kinda soggy.  It also had a layer of orange marmalade in it and chocolate ganache.  Again, way too chocolaty for me.  We also made a strawberry cake that has a layer of almond genoise (just another term for cake basically), really rich buttercream, strawberries, caramelized almonds, and then another layer of almond genoise.  It was also covered in marzipan which is almond paste and sugar but basically has a similar texture to fondant.  The English use it because they think fondant is stupid since it only adds a negative or neutral flavor and has no function as most people end up peeling it off.  Marzipan though has a very nice almond flavor only adding to the cake rather than taking away from it.  As you can see, we made some delicious cakes.  Basically I should have gained a 1000 pounds but fortunately I don't have a scale here so we shall never know.

     Again it has been another busy week with stages and I've been getting sick so that made it even worse.  As you can imagine, my stomach is not really thanking me for eating all this gluten but how tortuous is it to have a gluten allergy in a pastry program.  My stomach will just have to endure for another week of cake baking and tasting and then I guess a whole lifetime of more baked goods.  However, I do try to eat as much gluten free stuff as I can outside of class.  I have been really trying some new baked goods.  I've made gluten-free doughnuts, snickerdoodle cookies, and bagels.  All absolutely delicious.
     As you can see this post is a week old so continue reading about the last week as it has been quite awesome and full of pictures.  Then again, what week hasn't been awesome?