What I do in my spare time... Part I



So what does a baker/pastry chef do on days off?  Well, I don't know about others...but I end up doing what I do at work...make desserts and pastries.  I think it's cool that my hobbies and my career matches.  Unfortunately, this career has turned me into a monomaniac, which makes me almost always turn the conversation back to food.  Hence socially awkward.  But what I make in the kitchen is well-accepted by others, so I guess I make up for it...?

 

Anyway, here are some of the things I do at home, on my days off.  Most of my days off are devoted to culinary experiments, gastronomical exploration, and every now and then, cleaning.

 

I had a bunch of dried fruits and nuts leftover from the holidays, so to utilize them, I made...



 A Mendiant Tart.  A mendiant is a chocolate confection composed of a disk of chocolate embedded with bits of dried fruit and nuts, each representing the four monastic orders of Dominicans (raisins), Augustinians (hazelnuts), Franciscan (figs) and Carmelites (almonds).  Over time, the traditional recipe for this has changed to incorporate other fruit and nut combination.  Here, I used pistachios, almonds, hazelnuts, cranberries, golden raisins and apricots.  It looks almost like a jewelry box.
 

 This is the sugar cookie I made for Valentine's Day.  I wanted to do a Japanese theme, and came up with this design;   a design seen in Japanese lacquer (i.e. urushi) jewelry boxes.  It turned out too pretty to eat.

Key lime and lemon bars.  If I had some tequila, I would've turned those key lime bars into Margarita bars.

Tarts galore!

Last week, we received orders for a bunch of tartlets from a fine dining restaurant.  They are...

 

Key Lime tartlets.  The tart shells are ready-made.  I know, at first I felt like we were "cheating"  but considering the time and labor that can go into making these shells from scratch...it's just easier on all of us.  The key lime tarts are topped with whipped cream and fresh lime zest.

Quadruple-Berry Tarts.  Filled with vanilla pastry cream and topped with four different kinds of berries.  I made extra for the shopfront.  Outside orders have kept us so busy we haven't had the time to restock the front...which looked a bit empty.  The fruit tarts sell very well.  They're usually gone within a day or two.

 

Lemon Meringue tartlets.  I would've used Swiss or Italian meringue, but we were pressed for time.  They were going to get served within 24-hours, so it was OK.

Milk Chocolate tartlets.  Filled with 37% milk chocolate ganache, topped with chocolate whipped cream and chocolate shavings.  Also another one of our popular items.

This one I made last month, when we were a bit slow and had time to play around with different tarts.  It's filled with pistachio-flavored pastry cream and topped with poached apricot slices and chopped pistachios.  It sold OK.

What will I make next???

What I do for a living Part II

Once Christmas is done, Valentine season keeps us extremely busy.  The shopfront need to have Valentine cookies, cakes, and goodies.

 Here are some Valentine cookies...

Our products aren't limited to baked goods either.  What's Valentine's Day sans chocolates??

Chocolate dipped strawberries, 75 of the 290 that was ordered from a hotel.

No, this is not a scenery from ancient Egypt.  These are chocolate truffles, filled with several different flavors of ganache.

 

We also get orders from individuals (of course).  Someone ordered a bunch of sugar cookies for a baby shower.

 

 

...Did I mention sugar cookies are a pain in the butt to decorate?  Our backs were killing us by the time we were done.

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.