the bi-monthly post

If not tri-monthly. It seems as of late that the blogosphere has not drawn me in as much as I wish it would. There are a million things that I constantly want to blog about and I just never get around to it for one reason or another.

In any event, I'm here now and I'm on a bit of a baking kick.

Yesterday I spent most of the hours past midnight formulating a red velvet cake, which to my surprise was incredibly delicious. Everything from scratch. Cake, red velvet, and frosting.



Waking up in a blaze of glory from the red velvet success, I decided to finally use that matcha powder I had sitting around and made some green tea mini muffins for the girlfriend's mom (and for us), which just as the previous, came out spectacularly.



I would get more in depth and write down recipes, but my current state of laziness prevents me from doing so. Instead, should you need the recipes, I'd be happy to send to you.

Missing All the Fun

So, I've been absent for a minute. Again with the time restrictions and the trying to balance everything in my life. I've got quite the number of things I have to blog about so check back tomorrow for some more fun. I haven't even updated gone through my RSS in at least a week. EEK!

In the meantime, check out my sweet pastry work here. Heh.

Coincidental Baking

By strike of luck, or maybe my sub-conscious alertness to these things now, I found a post through GRS on making some quick and easy bread.

Mark Bittman's No-Knead Bread Recipe on youtube video, and a recipe adapted from Sullivan Street Bakery's Jim Lahey for a 1 1/2 lb. loaf on the NY Times.

Try it out!

From the office, with love...

Dearest Blogosphere,

I have not been neglecting you out of malicious intent. I have been quite busy taking care of life. Or not taking care of it, I suppose is also a safe assumption. Needless to say that the new school-after-work schedule is limiting my spare time.

It is, however, for the good of mankind.

I have been making simple breads during Week 2 of Intro to Baking. This week there will be more yeast breads. On that note, the progress gallery and current "beta-portfolio" can be seen at my flickr site.

Week 3 begins today, I really should be doing my homework.

Love,

Me.

First Week. [Culinary School]

It is now Thursday and I have completed my first week of Intro to Baking and Pastry, and although I could have done better, it was not a complete catastrophe. We took our first quiz, it was (thankfully) an open book quiz. Following that it was production time. We got to make a few items and this time we worked it a bit differently. Instead of making every recipe a group effort, we each took one recipe and worked on it. First we had the Strawberry Shortcakes. (I ate almost all the left over strawberries). I had nothing to do with these, other than the fact that they were done by one of my teammates, I had no hand in their making. They ended up having too much baking powder due to a recipe miscalculation. The taste was not very tastey. Overall appearance was great though.

Then there were the Popovers. Also made by the same person who worked on the aforementioned shortcakes. They appeared to be good upon being removed from the oven, but once out in the open, they flopped. They were bit floury in taste.



Then came my Sour Cream Muffins with Streussel Topping.These were entirely my creation. The taste was on point. The appearance kind of sucked because: 1. I overfilled the cups with batter 2. My streussel butter was too soft and didn't bake well and 3. I didn't let them sit and cool for long enough so they fell apart upon removing them from the tray. Overall they were delicious and they're in a bag at home waiting for me.

Then last, but not least, were the Ham and Cheese Scones. Also not my creation, but part of my team's effort to bake. Not exactly what went wrong here, but the dough was very pale and bland, and it took forever to bake.


This week my team was responsible for Sanitation and we made sure the place was spotless at the end of class. Next week, we're Sous Chefs. Can't wait to see what all that's going to entail.

Missing In Action. [Baby Steps]

Apologies for the lack of posts lately, but it has been definitely a full couple of weeks. Between the job, the school situation, and a few other personal issues, I have been lacking time, if not anything else.

I spent last week undegoing the admissions process at the Art Institute of Washington for the Culinary Arts Management program. amazingly I was accepted and I was able to finance my education, something I thought that never in a million years I would have been able to accomplish. I acquired some Sallie Mae loans, which are great and all, but all the media-infused paranoia sets in when I think about all the horror stories about them.

This week, I actually started classes. Due to my current 9-5 situation, they were awesome enough to accomodate me in an evening class schedule. This quarter I'm taking Intro to Baking, an 8 credit course, and tonight will be my third night at it. The class is beyond interesting. The people are great. My Head Chef is amazing. It's proving to be a great experience already.

I get to wear a sous chef uniform and my knife kit is rolls 51 pieces deep. The lectures and bookwork is awesome, very much unlike the accounting classes I took at NOVA.

Our blueberry muffin recipe was missing butter, which was removed in the mixing process because it coagulated too fast. The taste was definitely good, but the appearance and texture lacked.


Yesterday, although I came in a little late due to some expectedly unexpected situation, I gave an oral presentation on Eggs. That's right, eggs. Love them. Shortly thereafter, we began the lab production part of the class in which we got to bake some country muffins and blueberry cupcakes. Considering some of the atrocities I saw in the classroom, we didn't do so bad. although not perfect. Our biscuit recipe lacked a bit more butter and salt, but my eeg wash was purrrfect. And the appearance and texture were on point. They layered real pretty like.


Tonight, if I'm not mistaken, we make sour Cream muffins!