Friend Rhee's wedding!

We did the kitchen cleanup last Friday...it took maybe an hour or two, a refreshing change from the grueling (but very fun and educational!) four-hour class.
We get one week off before the next quarter starts. In the meantime, I have a personal project going on...my friend Rhee's wedding! She's having a very small wedding, and was thinking about baking the desserts herself...but decided to just pay me, a pastry chef-in-training, to bake the desserts instead--I was flattered when she said that she's confident they will taste better if I make them :)
Her wedding theme is...Alice in Wonderland (the Disney version); lot of whimsical, colorful characters, which would allow me to play with a lot of ideas! The first thing I came up with was the "EAT ME" cookie.

Remember those scenes where Alice grabs a cookie (in the book, it was a cake instead of a cookie) that says, "EAT ME"? The Disney animators did a pretty good job of making those cookies look tasty. I browsed through the web looking for shots of those pastries. Found a few...

(Copyright of Disney, for entertainment purposes only. Please don't use for commercial or for- profit in any way!!!!!!!!!)

I figured the easiest way to do this would be the sugar cookies. They can be cut into any shapes and decorated in any way. The shots from the movie showed some star-shapes, frill-edge, rounds, and maybe a heart?

So I set about baking sugar cookies. At first, I used the recipe in the school textbook. I thought about using the one we did in class--which is different from the textbook version. But since we already did the recipe provided by the Instructor (which, incidentally, produced a sad product...check out the Intro to Pastry Recap Week 3) I wanted to try the textbook. Well...

(Sorry, no pics) The dough spread. A lot. So much that the shapes were (almost) beyond recognition. I did a quick fix--just re-cut the shapes out from the baked cookies, which actually worked pretty well. I ended up with crispy, yet chewy decent-looking sugar cookies--with rough, jutting edges, lacking the rounded, smooth edges characteristic for these cookies.

Hmmm....they tasted OK, but nothing spectacular. But I still had time to experiment with different recipes, so I just decorated them for sampling.

I really like the Cheshire Cat one.

Next, I wanted to make cookies that look like playing cards (if the theme was Through the Looking Glass, I would've made chess pieces...) To do this, I made the dough for Black & White cookies, a type of icebox cookies. Once chilled, they can be cut into any shapes, rearranged, and baked to make stripes, checkerboards, etc. I used a small fondant-cutter to cut out a heart shape from the center of a rectangular piece, one from vanilla, the other from chocolate dough, and switched the pieces...

...and baked them. Again, these spread a bit, so I had to cut the edges to create that sharp, straight edges...then dipped them in chocolate to hide them. Besides, no one EVER complains about a little extra chocolate.

Next, I thought about the game of croquet that Alice had to play, using flamingoes and hedgehogs. Then I had a brilliant idea--if cream puff swans exist, then why not cream puff flamingoes?? As for the hedgehogs, I got the idea from a chocolate cake shaped like a hedgehog from a local bakery--how about hedgehog truffles?

I used a recipe for buckeyes for these cuties. Buckeyes are basically truffle-like candy, with creamy melt-in-your-mouth peanutbutter filling coated with chocolate. Here, I shaped the balls of peanutbutter so they're pointed on one end. Then I stuck a few shards of crisp wafers for the spikes, and let them freeze overnight. The next day, I dipped them in melted chocolate, and used toothpicks to dot the eyes and the nose. They turned out very cute...and delicious, too. Even my Mom who's not a big fan of really sweet candies, like them.
Then the flamingoes.... I've been baking choux pastry since high school, so I was able to whip those up no problem. I added a few drops of red food coloring for the pink, and piped out the flamingo heads.
For the assembly, I cut the top third of the puff, and cut the top in half. After piping whipped cream (OK, Cool Whip dessert topping...) into the shells, I stuck the top part into the cream for the wings and then the heads.

Cute! Maybe I'll dip the 'beaks' of the flamingoes for a more realistic look.
Rhee squealed in delight when I showed her the samples; she loved them! Right away, she ordered...uh...5 dozen Playing Card Cookies, 5 dozen 'EAT ME' and Cheshire Cat cookies, a dozen hedgehog truffles, and a dozen flamingo puffs... It's going to be a looooong weekend...

Every time Alice eats or drinks something, her body either grows or shriks. Which makes one wonder if Nintendo stole this idea of eating mushrooms that cause sudden growth spurts and incorporated it into Super Mario...

Intro to Baking Recap: The Finals Part II

Intro to Baking Recap: The Finals Part II ~ the actual final

The day of the final...

As a group, we are to make Peanutbutter Cookies, Blueberry Muffins, and Soft Dinner Rolls. Individually, the Cream Pie.

The Cream Pie takes about 2 hours to chill completely, so all of us started making our own pie crusts right away. Thank goodness for the practice at home! The result would've been disastrous if I hadn't...
All of us wrapped our dough and put them in the fridge. I got started on the Dinner rolls right away, while the others started working on the Peanutbutter Cookies. The other girl in our group had a brilliant idea of adding molasses into the dough. As for me, I added a little extra butter and reduced the amount of shortening juuust a bit for the rolls.
While the rolls fermented and the cookies chilled, each of us shaped our pie crusts.

Even with the practice, I was still clumsy at shaping the dough into the pan. With the upcoming fall (THE season for pies!), hopefully I'll get plenty of opportunities to practice making pies.

I fluted the edges on my crust, put the pie weights on, then put it in the oven.
I checked on the rolls--they were ready to be shaped. We marked our own sections on the baking sheet, shaped, and rounded them--that way, Chef can check our shaping techniques.

I put the rolls in the proofer (to proof them of course) and checked on the crusts. They were nice and golden!! I took out mine and put it on a rack to cool.

In the meantime, the other girl sectioned the baking sheet and started shaping the cookies on it. Chef wanted to make sure that each of us have the skills to portion the dough so that they all look the same. The other two worked on the Blueberry Muffins. I started making the cream filling for the pie. For variation, I wanted to do something interesting, so opted for the Peanutbutter & Chocolate Cream Pie (which I dubbed the "Reese's Cream Pie")
The muffins were now in the oven, and the others either shaped their cookies or started on their cream filling. Chef wanted to see the crusts before we filled it, so I showed her mine. She looked at it, touched the bottom part, mumbled, "...Good job..." and walked off.

......I dunno, but I keep getting this notion that she doesn't like me...either that, or she's just really, really, really tired.

Then a disaster struck while I was making the cream. One of my teammate checked on the muffins--only to discover that the batter had spread all over the muffin pan! The pan was overfilled, and we had to start the muffins over!
Fortunately, we still had plenty of time. The others hastily mixed the batter for the muffins while I continued to work on the cream. I divided the cream in half, added chocolate to one and a dollop of peanutbutter to the other. After I poured the chocolate cream into the crust, the peanutbutter cream was carefully spooned on top. I wrapped it and put the finished pie into the fridge to chill.

We put the muffins into the oven. Phew. That was close....
All of a sudden, I remembered that the rolls are still in the proofer. I looked at the clock--it's been 45 minutes. CRAP.

One of my teammates grabbed the rolls out. Oh my....they looked VERY puffy. We used the egg whites leftover from the cream filling to do the egg wash on them, and hurriedly placed them in the oven.

By this time, our muffins were done!

There was a little bit of tunneling, but still nice blue-white marbling. We did pretty well on the muffins despite the mishap.
The colorful muffin cups were contributed by the other girl in our group.

Then our rolls were done. As you can see, some of the rolls are misshapen (due to improper shaping & rounding...) and rather flat, due to overproofing. The picture on the right are the ones I shaped. I'm surprised mine didn't deflate like the others did.

Chef said that they taste great, but the texture is too airy due to overproofing. All of us tasted the rolls...and agreed that we actually like our rolls light and airy (one of my teammates stated, "I don't care what she says, I like my rolls overproofed!").

Our peanutbutter cookies turned out great!

Aren't they lovely? The molasses definitely enhanced the peanutbutter flavor, and made them moist and chewy!

Then it was time to present our pies. I piped whipped cream on mine.

When I told Chef that it's Peanutbutter & Chocolate Cream Pie, she said that we were supposed to use the variations from the textbook and not come up with our own.... (that way it'll be fair for everybody, which makes sense)

But upon tasting it, she said that the crust is nice and flaky, the filling is smooth, creamy, VERY rich, but good. Relieved, I took the pie back to our group's table. Others in the group tried the pie, and stated, "This pie is (expletive) phenomenal!!" Yay.

Overall, we did very well, I think. I wrapped up the leftover cream fillings, cookies, the rolls, and the muffins to take home. As for the pie, since there was no way my family can eat it, I took it to my previous workplace.

Once home, I made special desserts for my family:

PeachesN'Cream Pie using the vanilla cream...

Chocolate Creme Bun, (sort of like the Pain au Chocolat) using the chocolate cream filling.

Next week...the Kitchen cleanup!

Intro to Baking Recap: The Finals Part I

Intro to Baking Recap: The Finals Part I

Well, it's here at last--Intro to Baking Final!! I spent the days prior practicing the recipes at home. We are supposed to individually make Cream Pies...and while I have the cream filling down, I know I need to work on the pie crust; my last several attempts have resulted in tough, chewy, almost-leathery crusts.

So I strictly followed the recipe--kept the butter cold, the flour cold, the water cold; cut the butter into the flour, mixed the water into the mixture, being EXTREMELY careful NOT to overmix it; rolled it out, put it the pan, and baked it.

After about 10 minutes at 400F, I carefully removed the pie weights. The crust looked fine at this point. So far, so good. I put it back in the oven to bake it for 7 more minutes.

At the end of 7 minutes, I peeked in through the window of the oven.

HOOOOOOOOOLY SHIITAKE!!!

The bottom part of the crust was foaming. Seriously. There was a layer of froth covering the bottom. I took it out of the oven then, and put it on the rack to cool...I was a bit relieved when the foam subsided as the crust cooled...but one taste and I knew I screwed up big time. It was just like my previous attempts, tough and leathery. I had to toss that out and start over.

Second time, I followed the recipe again, this time even more carefully, and baked it.

........It foamed again.

I was baffled. What was I doing wrong?? I still had the next two days to figure this out, so I emailed my classmate who had made the crust for the Apple Pie a few weeks earlier to find out what she did to make that lovely crust. Did she use a pastry cutter? Added more liquid? Less liquid? We emailed back and forth, to no avail. All she told me was, "I just followed the recipe...I don't know what I did..."

What can I do but keep on going? I decided to just wing it this time. Apparently that's what my classmate did, and the crust came out perfect. Feeling rather sad, I took another stick of butter and started rubbing it into the mound of flour. One and only thing I hate about baking is that, unlike cooking, most of the damages and mistakes that occur are generally irreversible and unrepairable. If the product is a failure, it must be started all over again--in other words, it must be done right the first time, or I would've wasted a whole batch of ingredients. That's what I really hate--wasting food.

This time, I rubbed the butter into the flour a lot more than I've done previously--if I keep repeating the same procedure, I'll end up with the same disastrous result. I worked the dough, rolled it out, put it in the pan, and baked it.

........HOOOOOOOOOOLY SHEET PAN!!!

The crust came out perfect. Flaky, tender, and buttery. Wow. That was my problem. I was so zealous in preventing the overmixing of the dough that I've been undermixing it. So, the way to the perfect flaky crust is: "Mix it like a biscuit." (say that ten times very fast)

*SNIFFLE* After three tries, finally, a flaky crust...I've wasted two sticks of butter and 3 cups of flour at this point. Thank you Mom, for sending me encouraging smiles without saying a word to my failures and growing pile of pie dough carcass... Sorry, no pictures of the foiled pie crusts; I couldn't bear to take such gruesome, grotesque pictures.

Now that the perfect pie crust is baked....what to fill it with? My eyes rested upon the huge box of organic peaches purchased at the farmer's market just a few days earlier.

We've left them to ripen a bit, and they were now at the peak of their flavor, juiciness, and aroma.

....Peach Pie.

I saved a few for the pie and canned the remaining peaches. I peeled the ones I've saved, sliced them, and tossed them in a sugar syrup thickened with cornstarch and flavored with almond extract. The filling was poured into the pie shell, and chilled.

Fresh Peach Pie. Using good peaches is a must. It made a delicious, refreshing dessert.

Then later the same day, I baked cookies for my sister's birthday.

Sesame wafers, Lemon-Poppyseed, and Mocha Cookies. My sister loves mocha, but is currently staying away from caffeine for the baby (she's due in three months!!!). So I used decaf coffee for the Mocha Cookies. They were packaged and shipped that day!

So those were the days leading up to the Baking final. To be continued...

Intro to Baking Recap: Week 9

Intro to Baking Recap: Week 9


One week before the finals! And one day after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. They celebrate the holiday with challah, a sweet, buttery bread that's braided, and topped with sesame or poppyseeds.


Our project for the day: Challah Bread, Pumpkin Muffins, Spiced Banana Bread, Peanutbutter Cookies and Linzer Cookies.

I got started on the Peanutbutter Cookies while the other two started on the Banana Bread and the Challah Bread. After I mixed the Peanutbutter Cookie dough, I covered it and stuck in the fridge. The person doing the Challah Bread had to leave to take an important call, so I took over.
The dough was pretty heavy and didn't rise much, but that's to be expected from a fairly rich dough that contains butter and eggs. Chef showed us how to braid the bread two different ways: the straight way, and the turban. The turban looked really cool (I regret not taking a picture of the other group's bread), but the straight way was easier to cut into slices.
After braiding, the bread was proofed, brushed with egg wash, sprinkled with sesame seeds, and baked....

...Our lovely Challah. It was buttery and eggy, but not as rich as Brioche. I think I like Challah better than Brioche.
For our Banana Bread, we sprinkled on some brown sugar, chocolate chips, and cinnamon streusel topping...

....and the middle sank. This is what happens when one goes overzealous with the toppings. But it tasted excellent, good texture and flavor.
We put the chocolate chip streusel on the Pumpkin Muffins too. Chef really liked it--the other groups' had too much chocolate chips, which made the muffin too "chocolatey" and overpowered the pumpkin flavor.

Surprisingly, we ended up with extra time today (this is VERY rare), so Chef told us to bake Spritz cookies as well. Those are fairly easy to make, so we made the dough, and used a pastry bag to pipe the cookies into a cute spiral.
Our Linzer Cookies on the other hand, got pretty annoying. We used cookie cutters to cut out the shapes, but the dough got soft very quickly, and difficult to handle. We had to put the dough back in the freezer repeatedly.

Once baked, the Linzer cookies were filled with jam. They tasted great, even though they were a pain to deal with--great almond flavor, and the jam was a nice complement.

So here are all our products. We got a very good critique on Peanutbutter Cookies, they were nice and crisp, good peanutbutter flavor.

Everything went very well today. No mishaps, no culinary fiasco, no burned products...today was a good day.

Next week...the final.

Intro to Baking Recap: Week 8

Finally, an update! So much went on last week...we had a Bible study at our house with three adults and two preschool kids. But more on that later...

Intro to Baking Recap: Week 8

Our projects for the day: Bagels, Fresh Berry Tart...and Sorbet and Ice Cream!
Yep, we made frozen desserts today. I've been checking out those ice cream makers that can be used at home. All of them states, "easy, home-made ice cream in 20~40 minutes!", so I assumed it won't take very long. Got to class, and the Instructor says, "Be sure to get started on the Ice Cream and Sorbet right away, those take at least two hours to churn!"

....eh??....

Apparently, the industrial/professional-grade ice cream and sorbets are churned for at least two hours in the said grade equipment. Shouldn't be too bad though--we just need to make the ice cream and the sorbet base, throw it in the machine and forget about it for two hours. In the mean time, we had plenty to do.

First up, Bagels and tart crust for the Fresh Berry Tart. I started measuring out the ingredients for the Bagels, while one person in our group started on the Ice Cream and the Sorbet bases, another started on the crust...and one (I'll call her 'J') just sat there. Literally. She just sat there looking bored. She finally started doing something when I gave her a task: separate 5 eggs. Getting back to the bagels, I mixed the dough, kneaded it, placed it in a greased bowl to ferment the dough. I turn back, and J was just barely finishing up on separating the 5 eggs I gave her. I looked at the clock.... 30 minutes!?? It took her 30 minutes to separate 5 eggs!??

I was a bit weirded out by her behavior.

But by this time, the tart crust was finished. The dough needed to be portioned out to the other groups in the class, so I asked J (since she was, again, just sitting there) to get me a pastry cutter. She stammers out, "I...I don't know where that is...".

We've been in class for 8 weeks and she doesn't know where the pastry cutter is...?

Puzzled by her remark, I point to the shelves and tell her it's in the middle rack. She goes over there, and stands there looking baffled. I go over to see what's taking her so long. She stammers out, "Um...I...don't know what that looks like...what is a pastry cutter?"

EX......CUSE....ME....????? WE'VE BEEN IN CLASS FOR 8 WEEKS AND YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE PASTRY CUTTER IS!!????

Fed up with her ineptness, I ended up mostly ignoring her the rest of the time. We're all supposed to work together, which means that she needs to take the initiative and find things to do to help others by herself...not wait until someone gives her a job.

Anyway, back to the projects. The bagels were punched down, shaped, and proofed. I poached them, put them on the baking sheet, and popped them in the oven.

Our tart crust was baked to perfection--it just needed to be filled with the Pastry Cream. One person in the group started on the pastry cream while another cut up the fruits for the tart. By this time, we had 1 1/2 hours to finish up everything (our ice cream and sorbet were still churning).

Our bagels! I forgot to sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar before baking them...and also added a littletoo much cinnamon to the mixture. Otherwise they turned out pretty good.

Then a mini-disaster struck.

The person making the Pastry Cream accidentally curdled it. Unsalvageably badly. We had an hour before the tart needed to be filled, cooled, and the fruit arranged on top.

I jumped in right away. While heating the milk and cream, again, I put J to the task of separating the eggs. This time I watched her. She slooooooooowly cracked the egg open, gingerly put the whole egg into her hand, allowed the white to sloooooooowly dribble out, then caaaaaaaaarefully put the yolk into the bowl. I think it took her 5~6 minutes to do one egg.
...OK, that explains it....

But phew! We managed to finish the tart on time! Isn't it pretty?

We checked on our Ice cream and Sorbet. We added raspberry to the sorbet, and coconut puree to the ice cream.

I actually liked the Coconut Ice Cream--and I'm not a fan of coconuts. It had such complex flavor; it starts off with the regular vanilla ice cream flavor, then as it melts in the mouth, the coconut gradually sneaks in, and finishes with the intense, creamy coconut. It was pretty good.

That was Week 8. The following Monday, we had the Bible study at our house. While the adults studied, I provided fun activities for the kids....baking cookies, of course!

The night before, I had mixed up a batch of Sweet Tart Dough--the same recipe we used in our class--and kept it chilled in the fridge.

After we washed up the kids and dressed them up in aprons, I handed out the huge tub of cookie cutters. They were stoked!

Some of the decorated cookies and others ready to be decorated. One of the kids was obsessed with number 5 cookie cutter for some reason...

This is when a mini-fight broke out.

Boy: I'm gonna do the sprinkles!

Girl: But it's my turn to do the sprinkles!

Boy: NO! You do the icing! I'M doing the sprinkles!

Girl: But I wanna do the sprinkles too!

Boy: NO!! You suck at doing sprinkles!!

Me: Hey!! If you guys don't stop fighting, I'M gonna be in charge of the sprinkles!!!

But after about two hours, we finished baking and decorating the cookies. The Sweet Tart Dough made simple, yet buttery cookies that were quite good.

I used to have enough stamina to teach 30 first-graders how to fold paper cranes. Now I can barely bake cookies with two very energetic preschool kids for two hours. Alas...I'm getting old...

Intro to Baking Recap: Week 7

Intro to Baking Week 7 Recap!! ....But before that, some baking pics from few days prior...

I had some leftover egg whites on hand, so I decided to "practice" making egg-foam cake. Egg-foam cake, as the name implies, is a cake leavened with whipped egg whites. This category of cakes include the genoise, spongecake, angel food cake, and the chiffon cake. The key to success is in the proper whipping and the handling of the eggs. Simple enough, right?

...Not really. There are a lot of techniques involved in incorporating air into the eggs. Then, once whipped, the egg foam mixture must be gently folded in with the flour mixture. It's the air in the foam that acts as the leavening agent--destroying that by vigorously stirring results in a deflated cake. The only way to bake these very temperamental cakes perfectly is practice.

And so I did. I whipped the egg whites (or so I thought I did...) until stiff and glossy, veeerrrrry carefulllly folded them into the flour/egg yolk mixture, poured the batter into the tube pan, crossed my fingers, and waited....

Oooooooh la la!! The cake rose beautifully, with a lovely golden exterior!! Excited, I sliced a piece for a sampling.....

....then my heart sank.

...Deuce. Coarse, bread-like texture, and a HUGE tunnel reminiscent of the Cave of Caerbannog. Terrible. Well, at least it tasted good. I gave it away to a friend, whose entire family (including her two children) have a ravenous appetite for anything sweet.

So that was my battle with the egg-foam cake. I now have a new Archnemesis I must conquer.

Now, ten days before this, we received an Amish Friendship Bread Batter from a lady from our church. Yep, that pastry equivalent of a chain letter. We have received one in the past from our neighbor some 15 years ago when we first moved into our house. We did make the bread, just out of curiosity--can't remember what it tasted like, but it apparently wasn't tasty enough to be deemed worth remembering. So what to do? Upon online searching, I discovered that this batter is almost identical to a sourdough starter. Why not use it to make sourdough bread? That, and I wanted to try out the new baguette baking pan purchased for $2 at a thriftstore.

I used the San Francisco Sourdough Bread recipe in the school textbook.

The bread came out pretty (other than the little overhang on the side). Crispy, golden crust with a nice sheen. But let's see what the inside looks like...

Meh. Not quite baguette-like. I was hoping/expecting for a coarser texture with large air pockets characteristic of this type of bread. While it tasted excellent--the crispy crust was awesome--it was more like a regular loaf of bread than a baguette. This is worth experimenting...

Now, onto Intro to Baking class Week 7!!

Projects for the day: Poundcake, Cream Scones, Carrot Cookies, Morning Glory Muffins, and Lemon Bars.

We unintentionally change groups every week, which is fine--we get to work with different people. It's interesting/funny how the products turn out depending on the people in the group. I fortunately ended up with an awesome group.

Those are the Poundcakes in the back, and the Morning Glory Muffins in the front. The muffins have shredded carrots, apples, coconuts, and chopped nuts. Took me a while to shred two pounds of carrots and apples....

Our finished products. Clockwise from left: Lemon bar (baked in a tart pan), Carrot Cookies/Whoopie pie (with cream cheese frosting sandwiched in between), the muffin, and the Cream Scone. Everything went very well today. One group made a chocolate variation of the Poundcake. It would've been great except they kinda forgot about it and ended up burning it pretty badly. Another group put rum in the Lemon Bar/Tart, which explained why one of them was acting a little tipsy.

So that was class. Back at home, I baked the Green Tea & White Chocolate marble cheesecake that a local Japanese restaurant wanted to implement in their dessert menu. My family sampled it...Mmmm. Pretty good...the green tea flavor was subtle, and the white chocolate ganache definitely added some oomph to the sweet-factor. I took the cake to the restaurant that night. Upon tasting it, the owner said that it was delicious! She claimed that she would pay for this...and immediately served it to some Japanese customers who happened to be there. I was both delighted and bewildered at the same time... I mean, maybe she should have the workers sample it first before serving it to the actual customers?

She said she'll email me and leave a feedback...and it has been a while. Eh. She probably wasn't as serious about the menu as she said she is. But hey, I had fun making this and my family had a great dessert.