Dessert-o-licious

We had been warned that this would be one of the toughest classes in the entire curriculum, so I entered lesson 56 with great trepidation. The almond cakes were already baked and filled with raspberry jam and the class was about to begin. As I looked around the kitchen, everyone seemed as nervous as I [...]

After a fairly successful icing day in lesson 54, I came to lesson 55 ready to decorate. We were going to ice the chocolate cakes we made in the first lesson of this mod and right away I knew I needed my cake to have a Ganache beurre praline filling, a filling made from one-and-a-half [...]

Lesson 54 was one of the scariest lessons to date. I’ve always found the thought of icing a cake to be completely daunting. Nevertheless, I entered this class with an open mind and got to work creating the lemon buttercream that I was going to use to ice my lemon-scented white cake. This was the [...]

Lesson 52 introduced us to the two-step, or high-ratio, mixing method. For this class we were making a fruit financier, high-ratio pound cake, and a high-ratio fresh ginger pound cake. A high-ratio cake is easy to recognize from its list of ingredients. The weight of the sugar will always be equal to or greater than [...]

Before the Mod 2 practical, I picked up my binder for Mod 3, which was to be the cake mod. So far in the program we had yet to bake a cake, brownie, cupcake or cookie (other than the 1 gingersnap we made the second class). As I looked through the binder my excitement was [...]

Next up, we tackled classic puff pastry. One of the most important lessons to learn when making puff pastry is that everything must be kept cool, including yourself! You are trying to create distinct layers of dough and butter and if the ingredients get too warm, you will be unable to do this. If at [...]

In lesson 42, we attacked the scary strudel. To make strudel, you make the dough and then stretch it until it is transparent and takes up an entire table! This requires the help of many people and the dough often tears a bit along the way. But do not fear, this happens to everyone and [...]

The next two lessons were huge baking days! We made biscuits, scones, linzers and Bretons! I had never heard of a linzer before and just assumed we were making linzer cookies – sugar sandwich cookies, filled with jam, and dusted with powdered sugar.  But there is actually a linzer tart as well, which I have [...]

In lesson 39, we finally got to make one of my favorite desserts, pies! Unfortunately, I also learned a sad lesson. Blueberries are the potato of pastry.