Good Day, Better Cupcake

Well, the pate de fruit was not a total flop, but it wasn't a total success either. The mixture gelled but it definitely was not as firm as the other students, and the lack of an acid, in this case, the lack of the cream of tarter (the ingredient that was mistakenly forgotten) produced a much sweeter pate; the other student's pates were much more balanced and no so sweet-tooth-y. Oh well, there will be other days and other pates. Until then, the question of what to do with all these sweet little cubes is another story. Pate is meant to be eaten as an after-dinner treat with chocolates and sweet wine but we have enough pate here to feed about 40 people...

A Little Jelly


A Whole Lotta Little Jellies

Today, the bulk of our day was focused on fruit identification, tasting and basic cutting skills. We used our Big Daddy knives and our wee paring knives and I had a pretty good day with the cutting. I'm not sure what's going on with the majority of the students in my class but it seems as though most of them don't ever use knives outside of the class. I mean, it's scary how terrible some of the knife skills of my classmates are. Scary like someone is going to cut off a finger. Scary. However, the only thing scarier than people not knowing how to use knives, it people not even knowing how to use a vegetable peeler. In our tool kits, we have what I have called for years the 'world's best peeler', and really, there couldn't be a better peeler (seriously, kuhn rikon vegetable peeler, it's like $5.50, finish reading my blog and go get one) or an easier peeler to use; however, a lot of them had a really rough time with them. We peeled apples and pears and then we sliced the apples into 1/4 inch slices, the type of slice we were told that we would use for a fruit tart; and the pears we sliced into wedges. I found the slicing and dicing to actually be pretty fun, especially since I had a cook's tool revelation. I have never used a melon baller before today but I will never not use one again. If you don't know what a melon baller is, it is a small tool that has two different sized circular scoops on either end and it is used to make melon balls (duh!?) and to remove the seedy centres of apples and pears and other like fruits. It was so easy to use and so fast and so perfect. I really delighted me. Truly. In fact, I think you should probably pick up a melon baller when you go out to buy your peeler.

After the apples and pears we supremed oranges, another of my favorite things to do, and we also supremed lemons. If the term is not familiar, supreming is just a term for segmenting citrus fruits -- you cut the top and bottom off of the fruit and then remove all the skin and all the pith off the fruit and then simply follow the membrane lines with your paring knife, removing the fruit in segments. I love this technique because it makes oranges look so pretty in salads and desserts but today was the first day I had ever tried it with lemons and it was equally delightful. I was one of the only students who had ever tried this technique before and it feels good to know things and be good at something when I know that eventually, I'm going to be so clueless it hurts.

After the cutting, we went through a series of dried fruit tastings that ended on a very crystallized ginger-y taste that not even a maraschino cherry could tame and then we piped chocolate for what I felt like hours. I do feel like I'm getting better at the cornets and the piping though but it is going to take A Lot more practice to be able to write on a cake.

Tomorrow I'm not sure if we are going to commence our work with eggs or if we are doing to continue with the fruit preparation by starting to poach, dry and sugar different fruits. Whatever we do, I will be there, freshly sugared up by an enormous cupcake that my new friend brought me in today. It "was" (and I have to say was because I already ate it) as big as Maude's head, was as chocolate as chocolate can be and was so full of sugar that by 1pm tomorrow, I promise you I will still be vibrating!

As a total sidenote that is WAY off-topic (sorry, Dad, I had a totally hilarious New York City moment today. I saw a Fed Ex package sign on the door into our building that read, and I kid you not: "I left ya package at ya door". Sigh, don't ya just heart NY?