It's kinda crazy that I'm writing the last post in this series. I don't think it's quite sunk in that I'm done yet.... though it's starting to, as it's now Tuesday and I haven't set my alarm in days. I find myself BORED during the day and looking for things to do to keep myself busy. This usually involves cleaning or baking, though I'm getting pretty good at avoiding the cleaning... that master bathroom, yikes.
Week 15 was a good one. I'd say the previous week was probably the most stressful in the program, and I was happy to end on a less stressful note. Though I suppose the stress level really depended on who your partner was for the last big menu dev project... I was lucky enough to be with Lindsay again, so the week went pretty smoothly.
DAY #68
Monday started off with a 3-hour Final Theory exam. This did not go well for me (or so I thought). I'd spent so much time on the weekend working on the menu dev project that I didn't start studying until about 7pm on Sunday night and I was freaking out about how much I didn't know/remember. Ryan can attest to the freak out.
Writing the exam on Monday reinforced the fact that I should have studied more. Somehow, I completely forgot how to make a chocolate mousse. Even though I'd done it a million times, I forgot the steps and ingredients. What the hell?! For the record, there are ingredients other than chocolate and whipped cream in a chocolate mousse...
I was in a shitty mood after the exam, as I thought I'd bombed it. And by bombed I meant I thought I'd be lucky to get 80%, which to me is bombing it. I actually ended up getting 93% on it somehow.
Anyway, after the exam we were treated to lunch by culinary, as they were working on their final menu dev project as well. There were a variety of different menus laid out, and each of the groups had their own. This was the one I sat at.
And pics of the dishes!
It was a delicious break to the day and much better than the crappy sandwich I would have had otherwise! The afternoon was spent practicing for our own menu dev project on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.
DAY #69
Tuesday was a production day for us, which meant we were prepping most of the elements of our own 3 desserts that we would be serving tomorrow. Things didn't go quite as smoothly as we'd like, and we had to make the gingerbread cake and shortbread cookies TWICE! And they still didn't turn out quite the way we wanted. I won't go into details, but I will say that Lindsay baked TWO additional batches of shortbread cookies at home to try to nail the recipe. It's possible that she's crazier than I am :). Since when is shortbread so difficult?? It's one of the easiest recipes ever...
This was the big day! We had to plate up our final desserts for friends, family, and pastry chefs from the industry who would be judging us. The morning was spent creating final elements of our desserts, things that had to be done last minute, and setting up our station for service. It didn't get stressful until we were done setting everything up and essentially ready to go. When you finally have time to think is when it gets real.
Here's our station setup. Each tray had elements for each of the 3 desserts.
And the drawings I did of the 3 desserts Lindsay and I came up with. As you can see, we had a very "Holiday" theme going. Of course we did.
The menu of our "restaurant" placed and ready to go.
Here are the pictures of our plated dessert creations!
Rum & Eggnog Mousse
Gluten-Free Gingerbread Cake
And the final showstopper... the Chocolate Pate.
We got such great feedback on this last dessert! It was honestly an afterthought and we were making changes almost until the last minute. We love how it came together though, and are glad we ended the menu tasting with it.
We had Chef William as our pastry chef judge. We'd first met him during sugar week where he spent the day with the class showing us gumpaste flowers. After the tasting, our family and friends left and the judges came back to give us some feedback. Chef William gave us some great tips about each dessert and told us what he liked and what we could have been done better. We agreed with most of his feedback and it was great to have someone from the industry critique our food.
We also had to create mini-versions of each of our desserts called mignardise. Some of these were served at the end of our dessert tasting and some would be used for the end of the culinary class's tasting the next day.
A shot of a couple of our minis with some from the other teams as well.
That's a wrap, the last official thing we will bake/make in the pastry kitchen (almost). The day went by so quickly, and overall the service went at a slower pace than previous ones we'd done, which was nice. Everything went pretty smoothly, and we were really happy with the dishes we created.
The day before grad means a HUGE cleaning day for the entire school. We had to clean the pastry kitchen from top to bottom, literally. Clean every single surface, every single container. You don't realize just how dirty something is until you give it a good cleaning. Those ovens were shining by the end of the day! Thankfully the guys took this task on.
Amidst the cleaning, we also made pizzas for lunch for the whole school. It was a nice break from the theme of the day, and everyone was so starving!
Lindsay, Sophia, and I on our last day in the kitchen.
Pizza prep.
Yum!
After lunch, we cleaned up the pizza mess, packed up our drawers and lockers, and left the pastry kitchen for the last time.
Grad was on Friday morning at 10am. It was nice to have my parents and Ryan there for the big event. I won't go into a lot of detail here and leave it mostly to pictures.
Chef Tony kicked things off by introducing each of the instructors....
Then Sophia gave a speech that made everyone cry! I wish I had a good pic of her speaking. She was elected as valedictorian for pastry for being the hardest working person - maybe on the planet. I mean, I worked hard, but I'm still not convinced that Sophia actually sleeps. On top of school work (which she often stayed after class to practice), she also took on multiple baking jobs for friends, and did countless hours of research. She deserved this more than anyone in the class, for sure.
So now I'm barely composed from Sophia's speech and it's time for the diplomas to be handed out. I'm already a mess and then I find out I got the top marks in the class. It was all over then - major waterworks. I really put everything I had into the past 4 months, and I was so happy to be recognized for it. Ryan can attest to the meltdowns and craziness that he had to put up with (but also the delicious baked goodies that came with that). He was incredibly supportive through all of that and I couldn't have done it without him.
Chatting with Chef Jonathan after the ceremony. Wish we'd had more time with him in the pastry kitchen!
With Chef Warren who we had about once a week in Pastry.
And Chef Stacy who was our main pastry instructor.
Lindsay and I. We were so happy to both get honours!
The girls (minus a couple).
After some goodbyes we all parted ways, and I wondered if I'd ever see any of them again. Funny how that is, you spend so much time with people and then all of a sudden you don't.
~~~~~
It's now a week post-grad (it's Saturday now and I'm getting back to actually finishing this post). Remember how on Tuesday I said I was having a hard time relaxing? Well I DID clean that master bathroom that day and did 6 loads of laundry. I'm happy to say that since then I've slowly become accustomed to the slower pace of the days, and have managed to sleep in and only clean one thing per day.
For those of you who have followed along with the Pastry Diaries from the start, I hope you've enjoyed the journey as much as I have. It was challenging and stressful at times, but I'm so glad I did it. I would never do it again mind you, but I'm glad I did it!
Now it's time to figure out what the future holds. It will definitely involve baking in some capacity, but how much depends on a number of factors that Ryan and I need to figure out. In the meantime, I have a major backlog of baking posts to write and publish, so stay tuned for those!
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