Red Butte Garden and Mom's Birthday/Mother's Day

 Over the weekend, my family went to the Red Butte Garden (local botanic garden) with our family friends who are members there (i.e. discount entry fees).  The warmer weather definitely gave a boost to the garden's flora.  But before we went to go look at the plants, we browsed the gift shop there...

...And spotted these cutest fairy gardens!  It's basically like a fairy-themed terrarium that's set up outdoors I guess.  I have an obsession with houses shaped like mushrooms.



 

 Now I want a terrarium...

Then it was Mother's Day...and also my mom's birthday.  They both fell on the same day this year.  I planned to make a cake and get her something she had always wanted...

A fig tree.  Yep, she wants a fig tree.

A few online searches came up with a nursery in Ogden, which was a good 40-minute drive.
It was HUGE.  I'm talking like a mall-sized nursery.

 This is the trees and shrubs section.  Mind you, this is only a quarter of the actual nursery.
They also had a bunch of greenhouses with more fragile plants, like roses, flowers, vegetables, and Japanese maple.

...Another fairy/gnome garden spotted.
On the day of , upon her request, I made my mom a Japanese-style strawberry shortcake.  In America, a strawberry shortcake consists of biscuit-like shortcakes stacked with whipped cream and strawberries.  In Japan, instead of the shortcakes, a vanilla sponge cake is used, and the entire cake is decorated just like a regular fancy cake with whipped cream.  This results in the melt-in-your-mouth cake accentuated with freshness of strawberries.

I finished it with chocolate decorations and pistachios.  Happy birthday mom!

Shenanigans at Work Part III

My last few posts have been about some stuff I made that didn't turn out well.

The following week, I redeemed myself (somewhat)...

 

Here are the Orange Poundcakes I made and glazed...

The sides definitely arent' as dark as the ones I made last week.  I've been careful to check them by poking them with a knife so make sure they don't overbake.  These turned out perfect.

 

As for the Napoleons, I really wasn't sure what caused the last ones to go berserk.  I ever so carefully made the pastry cream;  I didn't put in as many folds in the puff pastry, so it won't puff too much.  I baked the sheets off, putting extra pans to make sure they're weighed down, and baked them longer than the last time.

After assembling them, I covered the sides in plastic wrap so they won't dry out, stuck it in the freezer...and crossed my fingers.

 

The next day, I sliced them up, and had my boss and supervisor taste test it.

 

...It tasted fine.  He even said it's like "Napoleon ice cream" since it was still frozen.

I'm glad these turned out fine, but that's so bizarre.  I wonder what happened with the last batch?  The only thing I could think of was that with the last batch of pastry cream, I whisked the sugar and the cornstarch together before whisking it into the yolks.  This time, I whisked them in separately.  Hmmm....

 

This week, with the upcoming Mother's Day, I made sugar cookies for the occassion...

"#1 MUM"...you know, the flowers.  Pun intended.

My supervisor, K, still seems kinda cold to me.  Yesterday, I made mini-fruit tarts for an order.  These were super small, 1.5" in diameter tart shells, so I could only put three kinds of fruits (a blueberry, a quarter of a strawberry, and a teeny slice of kiwi) on it.  After I finished, I put them in the fridge....well, sometime later, without saying anything to me, K takes them out, and puts a slice of orange on each of them.  Sure they look more colorful and better, but goodness, if they needed to be fixed, why didn't she just tell me?  It just feels like she's avoiding me, like she's constantly mad at me for some reason...

Shenanigans at work Part II

It's Tuesday and things have been a bit slow so far, although I'm pretty sure we'll get busy towards the end of the week.  My supervisor had me make three kinds of chocolate truffles...

 

From the back: Peanutbutter, Coconut-Almond Caramel, and Raspberry-White chocolate truffle.  I sprinkled red powder food color on the molds for the raspberry ones.  These turned out quite nice, with the shine that's characteristic of well tempered chocolate.

As I've mentioned in the previous post, I was having issues with the Napoleons.
Here are the ones I've made a little over a week ago...

 

They look fine on the outside.  But notice that the middle pastry is still underdone :(  And the pastry cream?  It was very stiff, glue-like, the texture was just weird, and even the taste was a bit off.  I freeze the half-sheet sized cake, then cut it once it's completely frozen.  I'm wondering if freezing the pastry cream posed a problem?
As an experiment, I froze a dollop of pastry cream overnight, then thawed it to see if that changes the texture.

It did.

Although still soft, the texture was grainy and not creamy at all.  The freezing process probably broke down the cornstarch.  As for the cream getting unusually stiff, I'm guessing maybe the pastry themselves sucked the moisture out of the cream?

More research needs to be done.  I've looked up recipes online, browsed through textbooks...and none of them instructs the napoleons to be frozen before slicing.  The only ones that do use diplomat cream or mousseline, which are basically pastry cream with whipped cream or whipped butter (respectively) incorporated into it, which will help stabilize the cream.

I've noticed that my supervisor has been acting kind of cold...I dunno, she rarely smiles around me and is extremely nitpicky only to me.  She's probably not happy with me.  Last few weeks have been bad...the lemon bars cracked badly, then the Napoleons, the Cherry poundcakes, the lemon madeleines were apparently overcooked as well.... *sigh* Feels like I can't do anything right these days...

Shenanigans at work

Work has been quite hectic.

 

We're collaborating with a fairly high-end hotels/restaurants, and we were making TONS of products for them to sample.

We made several different kinds of mini cupcakes.

Caramel cupcakes.  Vanilla cake with caramel frosting, and drizzled with caramel.

 Blueberry-Maple cupcakes.  Blueberry cakes with maple buttercream, topped with a fresh blueberry.

 Blackforest cupcakes.  Chocolate cakes with ganache filling, vanilla buttercream, and topped with a maraschino cherry.

And macarons.  They had me make six different flavors/colors in the course of two days: pistachio (green), blueberry (purple colored), cherry-almond (pink), plain almond (white), raspberry (dark pink), and orange (pastel orange).  And they wanted them overstuffed.  I've noticed that Americans like their things overstuffed, whether it be Oreos, turkeys, or themselves.

After making so many different flavors/color macarons, my skills for making these have improved considerably.  I've figured out how to make multiple color shells in a single large batch, and how to mix and bake them off so they come out perfectly every time.

The next topic...Napoleons.

Epilogue from yesterday

In yesterday's post, I've mentioned about my failed Cherry-Almond poundcake.  When I asked my supervisor if I should redo them, she said no, she'll redo them.  So next morning, she redid them, and here they are...

 

...very flat poundcakes they are.  

 Here's mine from yesterday, for comparison.

...Hers aren't much lighter than mine.  And mine's actually nicely domed. :P

And here is the cross-section of her poundcake...

 

...Again, VERY flat.  At least it's pink.

And here's mine from yesterday.

 

 ...I dunno.  Which one looks more appetizing?

Maybe these are supposed to be flat.  I guess they should be all pink.  Hmmm....next time (if there is a next time) I'll see if I can make them pink AND nicely domed.

What I do in my spare time Part II

My sister just had a baby (a boy!)...and as much as we wanted to go visit her, we couldn't, due to dad's health.  So we decided to send her goodies instead.  We had some sweet adzuki beans, so I made some adzuki buns....

 

...And shaped them into Anpanman, Melonpanna, Doraemon, and Kogepan.  The faces are made from shortbread cookie dough; the eyes, mouths, and markings with chocolate-egg glaze.  Kogepan is sulking in the corner, as usual...
We packaged them up along with Earl Grey poundcakes.  Few days later, she sent us a pic of my little niece happily chowing down Melonpanna :)

The church that I attend had our 50th anniversary (since its establishment) potluck dinner.  The strawberries were on sale that week, so I made...

A Strawberry Tart, with chopped pistachios for color and a nutty crunch.  This one disappeared fairly quickly.

Work has been OK, we have both busy days and slow days.  I'm still learning things, making mistakes every now and then...like today for instance.
There was an order for a Cherry-Almond poundcake, so I made it.  When I put the cherries in, I didn't mix them in too much, since I didn't want to crush them, and thought the marbled effect looked pretty.
I checked after an hour, and they were still gooey on the inside, so I left them in for additional 15 minutes.  After glazing them, I left.  Well, an hour later, my supervisor sends me this pic...

 

...saying that "These are BURNT and the cherries aren't mixed in well enough, the cake should be pink."
...?  I understand the cherry part, but "burnt"?  They were underbaked otherwise...little things like these greatly stress me out (although temporarily), not only because I just messed up, but because I just wasted precious ingredients, cost the business money, etc. 
It's been four months since I started working here, but of course, there are still lots of stuff to learn.

What I do for a living Part III ~ March of the Cupcakes

In previous posts, I've showed samples of tartlets that I've made at work.  With tarts, we (for the most part) stick to the standard staples, like the chocolate tarts, pear-almond tarts, lemon and lime tarts, etc.  Cupcakes, however, are a different story.  Every time we make cupcakes, we try to get as creative as possible.  My supervisor actually instructed me not to "make boring cupcakes"...by that, I'm assuming plain vanilla and/or chocolate.  So these are some that I came up with...



 Key Lime Cupcakes with lime curd filling and creamy coconut frosting, topped with toasted coconuts.  This one sold pretty well.

 Pistachio Cupcakes with apricot jam filling and orange-honey buttercream.  Topped with orange zest and chopped pistachios.  There's no actual pistachio paste/nuts in the cake batter, just flavoring.  I know, it's kinda sorta "cheating", but let's face it, pistachios are FRIGGIN' expensive.  They still tasted good though.  Let's see how this one sells...

These are the ones my co-worker made.  The ones in the back are what she named "Banana Split";  roasted banana cupcake, chocolate ganache filling, strawberry frosting, caramel sauce, and maraschino cherry.  The ones in the front are Blackbottom Cupcakes, basically chocolate cupcakes with ricotta cheese filling baked into it, almost like a cheesecake.

...Have I mentioned how much I love working at Pierre's Bakery??  I get to fully utilize all the skills I learned at school, get to come up with my own creation, learn from whatever mistakes I make and thus improve my skills.... I mean, this is what I went to school for!  To whoever is reading this post... if you hate your job, leave it.  Don't stay because "it pays well".  Go for the job/career you've always wanted to do, even if it mean less pay (unless you absolutely have no choice but to stay...).  Trust me, you'll be glad you switched. :)