What I do for a living Part I

After quitting Scheels in December, I got the job as an assistant pastry chef at Pierre's Bakery...which happens to be a two-minute drive from my house.  The time and the gas money saved has been tremendous and I am eternally thankful for that.

We make everything from scratch--which is exactly what I went to school for.  I've been working here only four months, but I'm loving every minute of it.  Here are some of the stuff I've been making.

When I applied for the job, the owner called me a few days later and asked me to come in for a "test/audition".  They are going to have me make something on the spot and see how I do.
So on the first day of the job, they had me make a 10" fruit tart...from scratch of course.  Other than not knowing where the ingredients and equipment were, the "test" was a breeze.
Here's the finished product...

 

They were impressed, and hired me on the spot! :)

 

The next few weeks were super busy, being Christmas season and all.  We had tons of orders from hotels and restaurants.  We made gingerbread boys...

Mini apple tarts....

....and Mini triple berry tarts.

 

While filling orders are important, keeping the shopfront well-stocked is just as important.

Here are the Pear-Almond tarts--tart crust filled with almond paste, pear slices, then baked.



 

Oh. My. Goodness.  I made a carrot cake.  For the first time.  Seriously.  Carrot cake is a very American dessert--there's nothing even remotely similar to it in Japan anyway.  Since my family isn't a big carrot cake fan, I never really had the opportunity/incentive to make one in the past.  Well here it is...my first carrot cake!  Ours have shredded coconuts and bits of pineapple for added moisture and flavor.

 Our bakery doesn't just do sweets.  We also have savory stuff, like soups, salads, sandwiches, and quiche.  As an experiment, we made some savory tarts.  The ones in the back are sun-dried tomato & goat cheese;  the ones in the front are mushroom & asiago.  The mushroom ones were more popular than the goat cheese ones.

I will keep posting some of the pics I take at work, to keep record and for future reference...and for your enjoyment. :)

Belated Easter Pics...

Happy belated Easter everyone!  And of course I had to make something Easter.  But with every store adorning their aisles with bunnies, eggs, chicks and lambs, I was ready for a change of scenery.  I mean really...Easter isn't about bunnies and eggs and chicks.
So behold...

...Easter Cupcake.  Complete with a moai statue.  For those of you non-geography nerds, a moai statue is a monolithic figures carved out of rocks, made by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island in the Pacific.  The island was so named when the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen discovered it on...you guessed it, Easter Sunday.  The island is famous for the aforementioned moai statues dotting all over it.  So, just like putting a Christmas tree on a cupcake instantly turns it into a Christmas cupcake, perching a moai statue on a cupcake turns it into Easter cupcake.

But for the heck of it, I made the other version as well.

Bird's nest Easter cupcakes.  Chocolate candy eggs, toasted coconut nest, on chocolate cupcake.

 

Granted, these are way cuter than the moai statue--those statues were erected to honor the inhabitant's ancestors and by no means designed with aesthetics in mind to make the island look cute.

 

Anyway, happy Easter!

I'm finally back!!

I'm back to blogging!  It's been so long...oh have I missed blogging...
Due to my laptop getting infected with a bunch of viruses, I was unable to access my account.  For 4 months.  Yeah I know, I probably shouldn't have left the problem unresolved for THAT long...

Anyways, I am back, and have so many photos and materials that I gotta upload.
But first things first.

Today being St. Patrick's Day, I wanted to make something green and/or Irish.  All I had was half a bottle of Irish Cream liquor...and I really wanted to make something using Guinness stout, but didn't have the time to go get some.

So what to make?  I thought about chocolate Guinness Cupcakes with Irish Cream Frosting...but that's getting kinda cliche, I thought.  Most bakeries and specialty cake shops deck their shelves with these anyway.  I wanted something different.  Something unique.

How about...a cream puff instead of a cupcake?  Green cream puffs filled with Bailey's whipped cream?  Wait, wait.... Matcha Green Tea Cream Puffs filled with Bailey's whipped cream!
That way, I can honor both my Japanese heritage and celebrate St. Patty's Day!
So behold...a Jap-Irish Dessert!

 

 

The cream puff shells didn't turn out as green as I wanted, but it tasted good, with earthy, grassy green tea flavor.  Filled with whipped cream flavored with Bailey's, dusted with a mix of matcha green tea powder and powdered sugar.  Yum!

Second of Fall Desserts: Caramel Apple Bread Pudding

We had a potluck dinner at our church to welcome new members and to celebrate the coming of fall!

I made a salad and a dessert.  We had a decent harvest from our apple tree this year.  I had turned them into apple compote, and it was time to utilitze them.

 

I used the Tartine bread pudding recipe--I definitely like the bread-to-custard ratio in this recipe.  Where most bread puddings are mostly, well, bread, this one has pockets of custard here and there.

 

With this variation of the recipe, I stirred in the apple compote and rum-soaked raisins into the mixture of custard and bread.  Incidentally, I used King's Hawaiian sweet bread that I snagged at a discounted price.  I think bread puddings turn out better if softer, sweeter breads like brioche or croissants are used instead of the regular white bread.

 

I finished it off with my homemade caramel sauce.  Now off to potluck...
This was our dessert table...

Wow.  A smorgasbord of desserts!
There were cookies and brownies and some marshmallow rice krispy treat things....

Some sort of a berry pie, pecan pie, mincemeat pie...

 

There was a pumpkin streusel pie in a glass dish there.  And then lastly, my bread pudding.  Someone had already gotten into it...

...And this was the aftermath.  Just one lonely piece left.  Well, I'm glad people like it.

This one my parents ate for dessert the next day.  Even my mom, who normally doesn't like bread puddings, thought this was delicious.

I've been on a baking withdrawal lately, to tell the truth.  Contrary to what the original job title and description stated, I don't get to bake much at work--and I miss baking!  Hopefully with things starting to settle down, I get to bake a bit more often.

The first of fall dessert

Last few months have been insane!  My workplace had our grand opening on the 29th of September and all of us have been busy.  I've been working anywhere from 10~14 hour shifts, 6 days a week.  Yeah.  So when I get home, I just did not have the energy to do anything other than grab a bite to eat and getting to bed.  But things have started to settle down, and I'm down to about 9 hour days now.

 

Work itself has been...well, it's been complicated.  It's my first managerial job, and my lack of experience have been frustrating both to my peers and myself.  I didn't know firsthand what this "managing" thing consisted of.  I thought I was going to be the baker of the crew, but we've been so busy there hasn't been the time to prep anything.  The job description that I applied for kind of went out the window.  So now what?  I can't use my baking skills, so what do I do now?  Where do I fit in?  The whole thing was very overwhelming.  I literally felt like I got tossed into the middle of the Pacific ocean and was told to "Swim."  So I lagged behind others, trying to navigate through this.  Thanks to input and pieces of advice from my (very) patient co-workers, I'm finally starting to figure things out, and what I really need to be doing.

 

First off, managing involves "delegating"--i.e. pretty much telling and asking others to do things, get things done.  This is a very new, foreign concept to me.  I tended to do everything by myself--it's the whole OCD thing.  That and I feel bad asking others to do things for me, when I can very well do it myself.  But as a manager I need to ask others to get tasks done.  And to do that, I need to be very aware of my surroundings--what needs to get done?  Are there any problems that need to be addressed?  Finally, I need to know why these tasks have to be done. 

 

These need to get done to make the restaurant/deli better, the best deli, and keep it that way.  For the customers.

 

It was as simple as that.

 

Now that I finally started to focus on prioritizing, things at work have been a little better the past few weeks.  Unfortunately, the baking situation hasn't changed much.  I've been continuing to provide treats for my church, which has been a great therapy for me.

Yesterday, I wanted to make something pumpkin--it's that time of the year when pumpkin show up on everything from cookies to soups to drinks.  But I wanted to make something a little fancier than the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies that your average grocery store carries.  So this is what I came up with...

 Pumpkin Brownies!  I used a brownie mix to make this, topped it with pumpkin cheesecake batter and baked it.  I marbled the top and it turned out very pretty.  The cheesecake part can be thicker, so I'll double the batter next time.  They were devoured in less than ten minutes!

 

My kitty has been very happy and doing quite well.  She is a very hyperactive kitty, so we let her outside as much as we can to burn off all that energy.

"...!!!  I...I didn't do it!"



She's quite mischievous as well.  She gets into everything, kinda like human babies, so we have to almost baby-proof our house.
That's it for today.  Hopefully things at work will settle down a bit more, so I can update more often.

Summer Bounty: End of summer peaches. And a new kitty!

Summer just isn't the same without peaches.  With a huge box of farmer's market peaches, I got to work right away... poaching all 15 lbs. (maybe it was twenty.  I just did the entire box) into jars.

With this much peaches on hand, I was set with peach desserts for the rest of the year.  To start off, I made something refreshing...

 Almond Tofu, with farmer's market peaches, lychee, grapes, and mango.  Of course, there are tons more stuff I can do with the peaches, like pies, tarts, coffee cakes, muffins, scones, sorbets, mousse, etc.  But more on that later.  Now onto our newest family member...

 

 

Introducing Tiramisu!  Here she is, exploring her new surroundings.

 

So just to recap what's been happening in my life...

My dad got discharged from the month-long stay at the hospital, and was recovering for about a month at home.  The doctors then decided to start chemotherapy on him.  It was just a lot of stress on both me and my mom--we desperately needed some sort of healing, something to take the load off our minds, something furry and cuddly and cute... Yes.  This was the time for a cat.

We've been talking about getting a new cat for a while now, though dad has been against it.  But we decided to ignore his wishes.  WE NEED A CAT AND THAT WAS FINAL.

 

So with the help from my friend who knew about an animal shelter with free cats, I went in, not knowing what to expect.  There were several rooms, each with about 6 or 7 cats.  One cat, a scrawny brown tabby/calico mix named "Lottie" came up to me...and immediately jumped into my lap, begging to get petted.  I thought I was there to pick a cat... the cat picked me instead.

So I took her home that day.  We still had the litter box and the food/water dishes from Tanu, our late cat, so getting our house ready for a cat was not a problem.  Dad was pretty mad...but we figured he'll get over it in no time at all.

 

As for the cat, she indeed, had no problem settling in.

Nope.  No problem at all.  I picked the name Tiramisu, because:
1. Her color ranging from white to dark brown
2. I'm a pastry chef.  It's a given that I name my cat after a dessert.
3. "Tiramisu" means "pick me up" in Italian...just what my mom and I needed.  A pick-me-up to cheer us up during these tough times.

Summer Bounty: Rhubarb

Man, this summer just flew by!  With my new job being 7AM~5PM (sometimes close to 6PM) there really hasn't been much time for me to cook or bake...or anything else for that matter.  But whatever time I do have I've been using to utilize fresh, tasty summer produce.  I made a delicious dessert with apricots last time.  This time, I used summer rhubarb that my friend gave me.

 



 Rhubarb can range from bright red to celery-green.  He gave me a half red, half green mix, although most were green.  I cut them down to separate the reds from  the green, since mixing them would turn the product unappetizingly brown.

I haven't had much opportunity to work with rhubarb, so this turned into a bit of an experiment.  I decided to make jam out of them, one red, one green....

 I added raspberries to the red rhubarb to intesify the color and to add flavor.  I added vanilla to the green one to make it fragrant and sweeter.  The jam turned out nice, with charasteristic tang of the rhubarb paired with aroma of vanilla.  Both my parents got hooked.

I ended up with several jars, so made a pastry out of them...

Rhubarb Crumb Bar (aka. Rhu-bars).  The tangy rhubarb paired very nicely with the sweet, buttery crust.  Incidentally, when I took it to church, I caught one lady eating the crumbs out of my baking pan.  Glad she liked it, but come on...