Bring thankful for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a time for being thankful and I have so much to be thankful for this year.  My wonderful family and friends who have been so supportive of me and my journey to becoming a pastry chef and this awesome opportunity that I have to learn at Bittersweet Confections just to name a couple.

This was a very busy time at Bittersweet Confections.  This week not only did we have many of our usual cakes and confections to make, but we had pies to make.  Lots and lots of pies to make.  We offered three kinds of pie for the holiday, as well as a couple of different cakes.

Pies
As for the pies we made both 9 inch pies and 3 inch individual pies for people to pick up.  We had a few orders before we even began, but of course there were many, many drop ins looking for something delicious to add to their Thanksgiving spread.  I was very proud of my pies thank you very much!  :)  We had a bourbon pecan pie, dutch crumb apple pie, and of course, pumpkin pies.  I don't even remember how many we made, but it was a lot!

Cakes
We had a few orders for cakes and I was able to make one of the red velvet cakes that was ordered from start to finish.  I pretty much make all of the cake for the shop, but I rarely get to ice and decorate them.  The head pastry chef Eric takes care of most of those so needless to say I was very excited to show a little skill.  We also had an order for an eggless carrot cake.  It wasn't vegan so the customer still wanted the cream cheese icing.  He just wanted to make sure there were no eggs in the cake.  I have to say I was very surprised at just how moist and delicious this cake turned out.  I wasn't able to get a picture before he picked it up though.  :(  We also went ahead and prepared a few of our chocolate mousse cakes that are coated in chocolate ganache (uh, can you say YUMALICIOUS!) and they were ready to be decorated with a cute turkey for the holiday. 

Thanksgiving Day
This was by far my favorite day of the week because I got to see my boys!  I have missed them so much and I can't believe it has been a month since I have seen them.  They arrived on Wednesday night with my mother in law for the holiday.  Even though it was just the four of us we had quite the feast.  I baked a nice little turkey, cornbread dressing, mac and cheese, collard greens, green bean cassarole, rolls, and of course gravy.  I have lots of leftovers.....lol  It was a busy week with working every day and then prepping for Thursday in the evening, but it was so worth it.  I was also able to squeeze in some delicious desserts.  We had spice cake with cranberry filling, chocolate silk pie, apple pie, and pumpkin pie (duh). Even though this paragraph wasn't actually about what I did at work, I thought it was a great lesson in multi tasking and making the most of your time.......not to mention it was about all of the cooking and baking I did too! 

I hope you all had a wonderful time with family and friends and took a moment to reflect on all of the things we should be thankful for in our lives. I had to say goodbye to Lane and Brandon again this morning and it was a tough morning for sure.  I will be counting the days until I see them again. 

Instead of my usual "Keep it sweet" sentiment I will leave you with another in honor of the holiday.

May your bellys be full and your hearts be stuffed with love!

See you next week! 

Filling up the case!!

One of the most important things that Cheryl stresses to us is to always be aware of the case. This would be the front display case where the customers see all of the deliciousness that is Bittersweet Confections!

There are always many, many items in the case at any one time and let me tell you when a couple of things are missing you can really tell. This is such an important part of my job because if there are no items in the case, then there is nothing to sell.

The left side of the case is full of all of the beautiful truffles that we have to offer. Each truffle is hand made and there are so many flavors to choose from that are all delectable.  Look for more delicious details in a future post.  lol

 The right side of the case is our domain, meaning Grace (my co-worker) and I. We help with the truffles too, but the right side of the case is where we shine. :) The top shelf is always full of cupcakes that we prepare each day. There are both filled and un-filled cupcakes and there are of course flavors that are there every day and some that make special appearances, but talking about the amazing cupcakes will be yet another post.

This week I also prepared some peanut butter cups, cheesecakes, and petit fours for the case. The peanut butter cups are not exactly what you would imagine. We first create a chocolate shell by painting chocolate into the wax paper cup and then pipe the peanut butter ganache into the shell and decorate with a couple of macados, a white chocolate/ chocolate striped decoration. The painting of the shells can get quite time consuming so this week we are trying out some premade chocolate shells ordered from the same swiss chocolate company. So, same great chocolate, but a little bit easier for us. Win, win if you ask me!

Cheryl had me try out a new recipe for personal sized cheesecakes that turned out to be so easy, but delicious and creamy all the same. We baked the cheesecakes in muffin liners for the personal size and then tried out a couple of different ways to serve them. First we prepared a sweetened sour cream sauce to spread on the cheesecake and then topped that with some fresh fruit. They looked a little small that way so we then decided to try something similar to the way we prepared the cupcakes for the Music in the Park series from last month. (see previous post) We took the clear plastic cup and spooned some fruit compote in the bottom of the cup, placed the unwrapped cheesecake on top and then spooned on some additional compote, topped it with a dollop of fresh whipped cream and a strawberry half. We decided that was a little too much compote so we changed it up a bit. The cheesecake is baked with a graham cracker crust so we came up with our final winner (I think). I used the same plastic cup and spooned some graham cracker crumbs into the bottom, placed the unwrapped cheesecake on top and spooned some compote on top of that, piped a little whipped cream and placed either a strawberry half or a few blueberries on top. When I took my break later in the day I noticed a man had ordered one and the next thing I knew I saw him licking out the cup! Winner!!!!

I also prepared some petit fours for the case this week. Most people think of a petit four as a small bite sized cake, but it can actually be any small dessert that is about two bites. Petit fours can also be savory, but most consider a petit four to be something sweet for a dessert. Our petit fours are made of simply of almond cake that is covered with a poured fondant and decorated with a buttercream swirl and a little fondant decoration like a flower like in the my picture below. Grace and I are talking about making little snowflakes or ornaments for the petit fours during the holidays. Other petit fours that I have made in the past have a thin layer of raspberry jam between two layers or on the top of the cake before the fondant is poured over, but this is not always done.

I am learning so much and even though I am missing my Tallahassee family I am having a blast just soaking up all of this pastry chefness.  Is that even a word????  Well, it is now!  :)

You know what comes next........Keep it Sweet people!!

 

 

 

Cake!

This week at work I finally had the opportunity to decorate some cakes! Everyone who knows me, knows I love to make cakes........and cupcakes of course. Each week I have baked lots and lots of cake that has been used for birthday cakes, grooms cakes and of course, wedding cakes.  All of the cakes and cupcakes at Bittersweet Confections are made from scratch which does take a little longer, but the results are well worth it and I know the customers appreciate it too. 

Well, this week I finally was able to actually decorate some of the cakes that I baked. Eric, the pastry chef, was out of the shop on Tuesday and we had two orders for cakes so Grace and I finally got to decorate. :)

 

Red Velvet Birthday

Our first cake was a joint effort and was a 6in. red velvet cake that I baked the day before. I iced the cake with some of the yummiest cream cheese icing I have ever made. I masked the sides with cake crumbles and Grace wrote the message in chocolate. Grace is wonderful with writing in chocolate and I can't wait to learn more from her. She has worked in the industry in different New Orleans hotels for a few years now and said they all of them write in chocolate so she has had a lot of practice with it. I have more experience with writing in buttercream icing than she does so we make a pretty good team.....lol

Petite Cakes

In the shop we have what are called petite cakes. They are small approximately 3 inch chocolate cakes that are filled with chocolate mousse and covered in chocolate ganache. These are very popular in the shop and would be a nice little personal sized birthday surprise for a friend or co-worker. They really are the perfect size for a good chocolate fix or you could share if you really wanted to and both people would be satisfied. I have tasted these cakes and personally I'll keep mine to myself thank you very much.

Obama Cake

On Election Day we had an order for a 6in. vanilla cake decorated with the Obama symbol. Since Grace had already left for the day I got to do this one all by myself! I made this cake from start to finish, the baking and the decorating. :) The vanilla cake was a chiffon cake that we make from scratch. We make the base cake batter with butter, sugar, flour and leavening ingredients and then a meringue is made and folded in. It can then be flavored accordingly and baked into a cake that is so fluffy and absolutely delectable. It was decorated in buttercream and I piped the design in stars (appropriate for Election Day don't you think???) I kept waiting for a Romney order to come in too, but nope. I thought it would be fun to take a picture of them side by side. 

Eric makes all of the wedding cakes, grooms cakes and really most of the orders that come in.  I am hoping that as Grace and I have opportunities to decorate cakes he will let us help with some of the orders.  He is very talented and I am really looking forward to learning from him.  A couple of weekends ago he made a grooms cake that looked like a red and white popcorn box.  I wish I had taken a picture to post, but that was a very busy day and there was no time to stop and take out the phone and snap a pic.  The fake cake that is on display now (pictured below) is one that he made and it really a neat design.  I can't wait to learn more and get some more experience with fondant. 

More to come later.  Keep it sweet folks!

Amenities

First, just in case you are saying.......What the heck is an amenity?  An amenity is just a little something that someone (usually a business) provides to their customer or guest as a little something extra.  For example, at my old job I planned a meeting at the Grand Bohemian hotel in Orlando, FL and when I arrived and checked into my room there was a beautiful fruit and cheese platter with a very nice bottle of red wine waiting for me as a thank you for booking the meeting with them.  Chocolate covered strawberries or an assortment of chocolates is another common amenity.

There is an upscale hotel here in New Orleans that Bittersweet Confections provides the amenity boxes for the hotel's special guests.  The hotel colors are red, black and silver so the amenities are prepared using boxes that are a combination of those colors.  We place some shreds of black crinkle paper and silver strands in the bottom of the box, and place little bags tied up with ribbon of items that are either a nice treat or are indicative of New Orleans.  Each box is then tied up with a pretty red ribbon and is ready to go.  We usually prepare at least 100 of these boxes each week for the hotel.   

Some examples of things that I have learned are well known in New Orleans are:

Cheese straws are something I had heard of before, but really wasn't all that familiar with.  They taste similar to a Cheese-It cracker.  They are piped into short "sticks" with a star tip so they have ridges and baked until crispy.  We actually used these in the box lunches we made last weeked instead of chips.  These are probably better for you than chips anyway........maybe.

Pecan roca is yummy deliciousness in your mouth!  Roca is basically a nut brittle with chocolate on top and can be made with several different nuts.  Each time I have helped with boxes it has been pecan roca, but we also have almond roca in the shop.  Cheryl (the owner of Bittersweet Confections and a confection queen) explained to me that when making the roca you can tell if you have it right if it is shiny when you pour it out to harden.  If it looks cloudy then it is going to be too soft and you want it to have a nice snap and be crunchy when you eat it, not chewy.

Amaretti cookies sweet little almond flavor cookies that are made with almond paste, sugar and eggs and are piped onto a cookie sheet to bake instead of scooped.  Once they are baked and cooled we dust them with powdered sugar before bagging them up for sale.  Although they can be kind of expensive to make because of the almond paste, they are well worth it!

The Fleur de Lis is seen all over the city.  Almost everywhere you look you see a Fleur de Lis somewhere.  We make some molded chocolate Fleur de Lis for the shop and they are very popular.  We pipe the tempered chocolated into the chocolate molds and let it set, then once the chocolate has set we pop them out, dust them with silver dust and place them in individual clear bags.  They really are pretty and Cheryl uses quality chocolate so you know they taste good too!

Hmmmm, mental note.........this is definitely a little nugget to tuck away for coming back to Tally and the some of the nice hotels there that may consider amenities for their special guests.  I just need to come up with treats that represent Tallahassee.  Any ideas?

Until next time......Keep it sweet!

I survived my first week!

My first week of externship is over and I have lived to tell about it. This week was amazing! I am exhausted and ache all over, but it was so worth it!!! You not at a desk job anymore Dorothy......LOL

With my parking dilemma solved I was ready to get started. Oh, and to make it better there is a parking lot directly across the street from the one I was using that is the same price for an hour longer of parking. This may not seem like a big deal, but for me this is a Win! :)

Wednesday was my first real day. I left the house around 7:00am thinking this will be plenty of time to get there by 8:30........wrong, well almost. I parked in the lot at 8:25 and ran to the shop and made it just in time, so now I will be leaving at 6:45.  I met Eric the pastry chef and then it was off to the races. We didn’t use the commercial sized mixers much in school so I got a crash course in commercial mixer 101 (which really is pretty easy). We started with a big batch of buttercream icing which I felt pretty good about since I have made this TONS of times. Then he had me make a batch of chocolate cake batter for cakes later in the week. We had several cakes for this weekend so we made a few batches of different batters. Chocolate cake, red velvet cake, white cake.....etc.

My days for this week kind of run together, but I really got to make a lot of fun things. We made bagels, brioche dough, chocolate chip cookie dough, Oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookie dough, Amaretti cookies, chocolate dipped strawberries, muffin batter, buttercream icing, cake, cake and more cake.

I have learned so many little things to keep in mind for when I come back to Tally and get ready to open my own place. Some of them seem like common sense, but I just haven't really thought about it before. We made huge batches of cookie dough and scooped them out, flatten them a little and then froze them for later. They only bake a few for the day so that we have fresh cookies for sale every day. With the cake batter we always bake whatever is left after measuring out the cakes into cupcakes. The cupcakes that aren’t needed for the case right away are tightly wrapped and frozen for the next day or two.  When they are thawed later they are just as moist and yum-o as when they were frozen.  Bagel dough is also made in a big batch, shaped and frozen before the dough starts to rise; then each evening we take out enough bagels and croissants for the next day to thaw in the cooler overnight and be baked fresh the next morning. Can you say YUMMY! Again most of this is common sense for shop/bakery/restaurant owners, but you and I really don't think about it.  In my mind it was everything made from scratch everyday........what a mess that would be, I would have to get in waaaaaay too early.

I also had fun making "cup"cakes for the Wednesday in the Square event where Cheryl has a booth set up.  The picture below is of the chocolate caramel "cup"cakes.  I piped a little caramel buttercream into the bottom of the cup, placed a chocolate cupcake in the cup, then piped a little ring of the buttercream around the top.  Some caramel was piped on the top and sprinkled with mini chocolate chips and then finished off with another drizzle of caramel.  I thought this was such a great idea both for transporting and for serving at events like this one. It's like a little cupcake parfait.  :)

 

 

Cheryl doesn't normally serve sandwiches, but she had an order for some box lunches that we prepared and delivered on Saturday.  The picture is of the veggie sandwich with sauteed portabella mushrooms, roasted red peppers, sprouts and a cream cheese spread.  We also make chicken salad sandwiches and roasted turkey sandwiches.  Let me tell you, I have had box lunches before and I only wish mine were as good as these.  Each box had a sandwich on a fresh brioche bun, a little bag of cheese straws, and a chocolate dipped strawberry.  Mmmmmm!

 

I do miss everyone back in Tally, but I am having a blast learning and spending time with my parents.  Well, what little time I am home.   LOL 

Until next time.........Keep it Sweet!


Have a HAPPY HALLOWEEN everyone!!!!!

My First Day.......well sort of

Ok, so I am finally getting started.  Well, sort of.......yesterday I told my boys good-bye and went down into New Orleans to Bittersweet Confections where I will be completing my externship.  I met with Cheryl, the owner, and got my official job description and went over company policies, etc.  I also got to meet a couple of my co-workers Grace and Andy. 

Grace is sort of a newbie like me, but she has been there for a little over a week and already looks to be having a great time.  She is a baker like me and looking at the schedule it looks like we will be working together a lot.  We already chatted a little yesterday and she is super sweet.  :) 

Andy is in the front of the house and seems to be one of Cheryl's key people.  I remember meeting him when I came to visit in July and he seems to be a pretty cool guy.  He is going to be teaching Grace and I all about the front of the house and the coffee/ espresso machine.  Oh boy!  You know I love coffee so I am really excited to actually learn the right way to make all of those yummy drinks.

Eric is the kitchen manager and will be my direct supervisor.  I'll get to meet him tomorrow on my first real day.  He writes up the schedule and since today (Tuesday) is my scheduled day off I thought I would go ahead and catch everyone up to speed.  (Hense, the My First Day.......well sort of) 

My biggest challenge thus far is parking.....lol  Since I am from little ol Tallahassee where pretty much every business has a parking lot, I'm not used to having to hunt for parking.......or parking on the street........or getting a contract for a parking lot......or just flat out paying for parking.  Anyway, everyone thinks its funny that it is the parking that is stressing me out.  Alas, I have found a lot that is a few blocks down on the same street that is $6 a day so that is where I will be shooting for getting a spot for now.  I have been told that there is a lot 3 streets over that is $4 a day, but while the walk would be great I just dont feel comfortable enough with the city yet.  I know, I know, quit being a weenie.  :)

I'll let ya know how the espresso machine tutorial goes.......keep it sweet!

The time has come

Ok, so I know I have been completely MIA.  I have no excuses, just life and the craziness of it.  :)

I'm here and this time I can't fall back on my promise to keep everyone posted of my adventures in pastry.  Yesterday I moved to Slidell, LA to complete my externship in New Orleans at an awesome place called Bittersweet Confections on Magazine Street.  Seriously, this place is great!  If you are in the area you would be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't stop in and have a little something and if you are not in the area then you should at least check out their website at www.bittersweetconfections.com. 

I will be living with my mom and dad and I am super excited to have some time with them!!!!  My boys (husband Lane and son Brandon) are on their way here now for the weekend and I can't wait to show them where I will be working.  Anyway, my point is because I have now begun my externship I will be keeping up my blog on a regular basis because now not only will I actually have some things to share with you all, but keeping a journal is also a requirement for school.  :)

I have had a couple of adventures since my last post such as TWO WEDDINGS!!  As soon as I have some good pictures I will blog about the weddings. 

So, without further adieu.......the time has come!