Saturday, October 2, 2010

Baking

Baking baking baking. Ugh. It is a big love-hate relationship. A few months ago, I was dying to make my delicious Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies. I never got a chance to because I do not have a fancy-schmancy Kitchen-Aid mixer (maybe for Christmas?). I love making cookies, cupcakes, cakes, anything fun and easy. So I am in a Breads class and Individual Fancy Desserts class. I was super excited because I though it would concentrate around those items more...boy was I wrong. Baking bread is one of the most tedious things in the world! Don't get me wrong, homemade bread is one of the best things in the world, but I don't want to spend 4 HOURS making just a couple of loaves. In my Desserts class, it's all about using different sauces, decorative sugars, petite cakes, flans, pears, eclairs, and desserts in martini glasses. Sounds great, right? WRONG! I am having the hardest time with this class. You see, with cooking I am creative with making sauces, sides, vegetables, and meats. I love being creative with cooking. I really like being creative with desserts, however I am struggling in this class. I want my plates to look sophisticated, and not piled on with 20 different elements. I stand at my station, staring at my plate, hoping that an idea will strike me, and then at that time I am time crunched, and I just through stuff on the plate. A couple of weeks ago, we had to make desserts with pears. My teacher told us we could bake them in phyllo or pastry dough. I prepared for this lesson, and cooked my pear in honey, white wine, thyme, and of course, butter. I made a cardamom whipped cream and paired it with the pear. Was mind blowing. So we have little competitions, and they are judged by other teachers. Really liking mine, I thought I would at least place. Nope. She said it needed more. No it didn't. It had the perfect amount on the plate. So annoying. I take the time to look for something to make, and it back fires.
So these classes have been stressing me out, and I decided to take the week off from them. I feel a lot better, and I have been doing research, and FINALLY I feel more confident. I need to push through this semester, and get it over with. Ha wish me luck, right?

Wanna see the picture I took of my pear? Let me know what you think.

Oh and everyone should check out this awesome website for food decorations, it's mostly for cakes and such, but they do a lot of fun, different foods. It's http://cutestfood.com/ so check it out. It's very inspiring.

So for this post I could not choose between these two quotes, so I decided to share both of them with you.

"There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love chocolate, and communists." -Leslie Moak Murray
"Stressed spelled backwards is desserts. Coincidence? I think not!"
-Author Unknown