The one-hundred and one chronicle! Hot damn—would you look at that. I can’t wait to go back an reread my experiences from day 1-30 and what an comical time that was as I took on the personas of Dumb and Dumber, Mrs. Doubtfire, and someone with two left hands who couldn’t locate where the refrigerator was. Yup- that was ME! Now look where I am… still causing havoc wherever I go, except for today making the chocolate gingerbread cake. Uh—I take that back, by the end of the day I had to throw out my apron because it was completely covered, correction completely drenched in chocolate batter, from my pastry escapades.Not sure what it was about the chocolate batter, but today it was as if I was in kindergarten learning how to finger-paint for the first time. I first made chocolate truffle balls that are stuffed into the chocolate gingerbread cakes. Those have to be frozen and then scooped into balls. For the chocolate batter, I first creamed the butter and sugar together. Once it was creamed, in went the baking soda, shaved ginger, and salt. Here comes my fingers/rubber spatula to clean off the excess batter around the rim of the bowl and blade. Fingers get wiped on my apron. Apron gets its first taste of chocolate. Then I added the wet ingredients to the batter such as molasses and eggs (I believe that was all). Clean finger goes in to try the batter once everything was incorporate. The minute my taste buds got a little ration of batter, they were screaming for more! More! More!
The batter addict in me couldn’t resist licking the blade (before taking it to the dishwasher) and the bowl (once all the batter was out and put into a pastry bag). Putting the batter into the pastry bag was a mission in itself. A quarter of it got on my apron, a quarter got all over the counter, and half made it safely inside the bag. I then piped the batter into the foil molds. Originally, I forgot to put pam spray down before adding the batter, so I had to take ALL the batter out and refill new molds (don’t ask!). After the second try, into the oven they went for seven minutes to partially bake. Once the seven were up, I dropped a chocolate truffle ball into the center and then back into the oven it went for three minutes. This dessert is similar to a chocolate molten cake because the inside is gooey and oozes out. The plating is simple and classic. We have to use hot melted chocolate for the decorations. The chocolate looks like it is spelling out my name “el”, but it is really supposed to be two l’s, but shhhhh…. Bet you can’t guess who plated this dish that says ‘el’ hehe.
Our special dessert of the day was a pecan bar with coffee ice cream. Level five created that dish and had fun with chef coming up with a chocolate design to use. Chef came up with this checkered chocolate ordeal that turned out really beautifully. Here I am downing the leftover mango that we didn’t use for the fruit plate! I remember the good old days when my baba used to take us around the neighborhood scouting out the mango trees so we could pick the fresh fruit. No, it’s not legal to steal fruit from other peoples trees!
Sweet Monday!
Eliana Wittels