For the first two mornings of the level, I would bring chef his coffee from the machine. I could have sworn that he said no cream and a little sugar. Today chef confronted me and asked why I stopped bringing the coffee. To be honest, I didn’t think he even realized and I thought he was pouring his own. Anyways, today marks the day I re-start pouring chef’s coffee every morning. The first time I added sugar with no cream. He took one sip and spit it out “this is horrible”. He said no sugar eh? I took that the wrong way and added MORE sugar thinking that I didn’t put enough and he wanted some more. Bring him coffee #2, this time a little cream and A LOT of sugar. He said I did it wrong again! “Terrible”. I blame it on the French accent! I can hardly understand what he is saying! No sugar and a little cream is the way that he likes it! Well at least I got it right on the third try! Third times the charm! (Guess Stephen didn’t turn out so bad).
We stepped into the world of pastries today! We made crèmes and custards- yummy. If I may say so myself, I am really rocking it in level 2 (besides for chef having to remind me that we were in a kitchen when I broke out into a song—oops, I did it again!). We first started with our caramel crème sauce or desert (aka a FLAN). I didn’t know that what I was making was called a Flan until it came out of the oven and we flipped it over onto our plate. We first melted sugar and water in a pan until it boiled and changed into a brown color. We poured the caramel into a little mold and then added our crème sauce to it (it was pretty thick). Then we put it in the oven to bake until it was firm. When it came out—I almost freaked out because on my plate was the beautiful little masterpiece of a FLAN and ALL of these years my Baba has been trying to teach me how she makes her Cuban flan, but I just never got around to learning. Sorry B that you didn’t teach me, but aren’t you proud!
We then learned how to make a Vanilla custard sauce (crème Anglaise). This sauce is typically the base of ice creams and fillings. You have to bring milk and heavy cream with vanilla bean extracts to a boil. In a bowl, you whisk egg yolks and sugar together. Once the milk is brought to a boil, turn the heat off and let it cool. Continue to whisk the yolks and sugar together until it is a pale color. Then bring the milk back to a boil again and add a little bit of it into the yolk/sugar mixture to temper it. Then add the mixture into the milk and mix that until it thickens over heat. Then you have to immediately strain the sauce and put it in an ice bath. Well, while I was in the middle of doing mine, my partner Daniel and I ( by the way- I was totally wrong about my first impressions of him- he isn’t slow… even though he called me fast… and we worked SO well together. I would one hundred percent work with him again) we only had ONE ice bath and we were both making our sauces at the same time. Chef came over to us and almost had a heart attack because we were going to ruin our sauces. I ran so fast to the ice machine, dumped ice in a bowl and made it back in time before my eggs curdled (I could have won the INDY500 running around like that with all that speed). For some reason the crème reminded me of the scene from Mrs. Doubtfire when the child services lady comes over and Robin Williams sticks his face in the cake pretending as though it was his daily moisturizer! HAHAHA Well, I decided I would try some too!
(I really wanted to spread it all over, but I knew Chef would REALLY YELL at me and I wasn’t trying to make him go all ape Sh**!?! on me)
We then made a lady finger cake filled with Bavarian crème (we left those in the fridge over night- so we won’t try them till tomorrow… I’m excited!). We used gelatin sheets to thicken our sauce, which was pretty neat. Chef did a demo on crème brulee as well! He also showed us some funky artwork you can make out of caramel!
Tomorrow we are working on ice cream, frozen fruit soufflé, sorbet, and meringues. I’m jumping for joy thinking of all those sweets. We got to choose which flavors of ice cream we would make. Lashandra almost ruptured a valve when I told her I’d choose Ben and Jerry’s over Bluebell when she asked me. She told me she wants to take me on a field trip to put some bluebell in my system! When and where can I sign that permission slip! Give me that dotted line and I will John Hancock it like no one has ever seen!
Creamy kisses!
Eliana the Pastry Profession-ahhhl