An Update and Back to School!

*PHEW* Finally, an update! Despite the fact I am no longer employed (a.k.a. jobless), I've surprisingly remained constantly busy. I have, however, managed to squeeze in some baking and dessert making inbetween.

A few weeks ago, we visited a family friend, who owns a cherry tree. The cherries were quite tart, meant to be used for pies only. She gave us several pounds of them; both Mom and I spent a couple of hours pitting the cherries and canning them.

Was it all worth it? Well.....

Maybe. I made cherry tarts with them...it was OK, nothing to die for or rave about.

Then, my friends from Culinary School got together for a BBQ to celebrate the end of summer vacation/start of new quarter.

On the grill: Shishkabobs and chicken wings.

One can definitley expect some quality dishes at Cooking School Students' potlucks. I took my banana coffeecake for dessert. The casserole in the lower left is a creamy imitation crab and spinach casserole. It was so good!

Then my friend M brought a marble cake she made at work!

We chatted and just had good times while watching the sunset from the balcony.

Then a few days later....

I jazzed up the banana coffeecake leftover from the BBQ for family dessert. I know, both Mom and I have been so busy we've been putting off some of the housework/cooking/etc...things would be a little less hectic if my Dad will help us. But alas....
And then...School started! It's been a while since I've been this stoked to go back to school. This quarter, I have Purchasing & Product Identity and Intro to Baking Science and Theory.

Purchasing & Product Identity is an online course, but we learn the basics of how to purchase, what to look for in determining product quality, what's available in the market, etc. It's an 11-week course condensed into 5 weeks, in spite of the class being online, it is still pretty intense.

Then the Baking class...wow.

First day of class, we got assigned into groups. Again, sometimes, people in the group is the determining factor in how the products turn out.

We baked Buttermilk biscuits, Lemon Bread, Blueberry Muffins, and Chocolate Chip Cookies. The biscuits turned out good, Lemon Bread fell apart, but tasted delicious, muffins were also OK, and our cookies...well...it spread pretty badly. The person in my group misread the recipe and didn't put in brown sugar. He didn't even realize it called for brown sugar until I pointed it out. By then, the dough was already ready to be baked. He hurriedly creamed in the brown sugar... so yes, it got overmixed quite a bit.

But I don't feel too bad, since other groups' cookies didn't turn out too well either. Apparently, the recipes we used were written in the East Coast. In other words, here in Utah, the recipes would need to be adjusted to account for the higher altitude.

So that was the first day of Baking class. Next time: Shortcakes, Sugar Cookies, Coffee Cake, and Peanutbutter Sandies!