Day 38 - November 13, 2009

Day 38:

Today Kacean came to school with me. Rex had asked her to come and do a demo for the high school kids on something she learned while attending the Western Culinary Institute in Portland. She got an associates degree in Baking and Pastry. Her favorite thing while studying there was chocolate, so she did a chocolate demo. She tempered chocolate and made French and Swiss truffles for the class. She also showed them a few plating designs she does at work at Elements. She was cute, I think she had a good time. She was really nervous but warmed up after a few minutes.

Rex and Kace:

Tempering:

Filling molds with ganache:

Rolling truffles:


Coating the rolled truffles with a tempered chocolate shell:

After the demo we both headed into the kitchen to start baking a wedding cake and 150 cupcakes for her friends wedding next Saturday. The plan is to make a devil's food sheet cake to be the grooms cake. I guess he wants a giraffe with a superman badge on his chest and when you cut off his neck, it will look like it's bleeding when raspberry coulis comes pouring out. I'm not sure what I think about that, except that I'm not a fan of it...

The actual wedding cake is a 2 tier lemon cake with a raspberry mousse filling and then we are going to have 150 cupcakes as well. The stupid thing is going to be decorated with butterflies. I hate butterfly wedding cakes...They never end up looking very good, at least I've never seen one that I like.

We started with the devils food sheet cake, everything seemed to go pretty well without a problem. That's surprising as I stink at baking ... I was super nervous to actually have to make a wedding cake for some girl I don't know. The only reason I thought I would be fine is because I would have Kacean do all the actual baking.

When the devils food was finished we started on the lemon cake. We were going to be using a gold cake recipe of Rex's that she had never made before and just adding lemon flavoring to it.

We had decided to do a double batch to make sure we had enough for the 2 tier cake as well as 150 cupcakes, so I weighed out 10 pounds of flour and 7 pounds of shortening and added it to the biggest mixer we have.

Our huge mixer:

And now for Kelsie's Blonde Moment of the day:

Once I had the flour and shortening in the mixing bowl Kace asked me to turn it on speed 1 and just mix the two together for 4 minutes. In the back of the room, we have the same mixer just smaller and the settings are backwards. The ball on the arm is facing away from the number, and in the front on the huge mixer, I guess it's the other way around. I set the mixer to what I thought was speed 1, which ended up actually being speed 4.


I pushed start and there was a huge cloud of flour that came flying out of the mixer and covered me from head to foot and made probably a circle that went at least 5 feet out from me on both sides. I looked up at Kace and Adrienne and just started laughing. After we all started laughing for a minute, I ran to get the broom and get it swept up before Rex came over and saw it and started teasing me about it.
As soon as I put the broom away, he came over. Good timing. :)

We ended up getting all the cakes baked, and the lemon cake was delicious! We packaged it all up and put it into the freezer to wait until next week when we assemble them.

Day 37 - November 12, 2009

Day 37:

Today was my prep day for the Lee's Food Show on Saturday the 14th. I spent the entire day making ginormous batches of spinach artichoke dip and artichoke green chile dip. After getting it all made I was super worried that I wouldn't have enough of the artichoke green chile dip so Dallan and I headed back to Lee's and bought more ingredients to make a second batch. After getting all of that made and packaged and put in the fridge I had the dreadful task of toasting 3500 slices of bread! They brought me giant french bread loaves so we didn't end up using even close to all of them. I think we had 5 or so people slicing the bread and once we had them all sliced I started toasting them all. I ended up with about 35 full trays with an average of about 100 slices per tray. The bread was for me and Amy both so I had to make sure I would have enough and not run out.
I was very surprised that I was able to get everything done in one day and that I wouldn't have to worry at all about it tomorrow. All I would need to do Saturday is warm the dip up and start serving. The bread was all ready to go.

Day 36 - November 11, 2009

Day 36:

This morning everyone who would be participating in the Lee's Food Show was to meet at Lee's in Logan at 7am to shop for all of our ingredients. We ended up with so much stuff! After we finished there, we all headed back to school.

When I got to school I felt so much better than I had the last couple of days. My stomach ache was mostly gone, thank goodness.

Today my job was to remake my pie crusts and bake off my derby pie. This time I used the same measurements for both the flour and butter, but ended up cutting it in half instead of doubling it. I used 1 1/2 pounds flour, 1/2 pound butter, 1/2 pound shortening and 1/2 pound of water. It ended up so much better! They were much easier to roll out and making the edges on them was so much easier. I baked them inverted again and this time when we flipped them, the shells came out just fine! Yay!

I filled one of them and started to bake it. I only had about an hour and 10 minutes before the lunch we were serving so I was nervous it wouldn't get done fast enough. I put it in the convection oven which was a huge mistake. It browned the pie way too fast while leaving the inside super gooey and not cooking it fast enough. I switched it to the floor oven and by the time we took it out the top was all sorts of dark and starting to burn. I was so disappointed. I have never EVER burned a derby pie of mine before and of course it had to happen while I was at school for a lunch we were serving. We cut it open and I was so upset, it just wasn't right so I tasted it and all I could taste was the burned part. Everyone else tasted it and said it was fine, not fantastic but not horrible. Rex would have served it, but after seeing the look on my face pulled out Meghan's Boston Creme Pie she had made that day and we served that instead.

After all was said and done, Rex told me that he wanted me to remake the pie again. I asked him if I could just make it at home and bring it in and he told me no. I had to make it there. I asked him why and he told me it was so I could have confidence to cook in any kitchen and have it turn out anywhere. Sucky.

I'm not very anxious to start that again, but I'll be doing it sometime. Next time I will be using the floor oven for the entire cooking.

Day 35 - November 10, 2009

Day 35:

Yesterday I was sick so when I woke up today I was determined to go to school sick or not. I woke up today with a crazy stomach ache instead of a headache which was good, so I headed to school. I decided to take it easy so that I wouldn't pass out or anything. Today Dallan and I made pie crusts. Rex had given me the recipe for a pie crust. 3,2,1. 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, 1 part water. I decided to make mine with part butter, part shortening. Because I was still sick and a little bit out of it, I mixed measurements a little bit. I doubled my recipe because Rex told me I needed to for 2 pie crusts. I added 6 cups flour, 2 pounds fat and it didn't even look like it needed water. I hoped it would be alright in the end so I tried to just work with it. I got my pie crusts and chilled, rolled out, chilled again and again and again...etc, I finally got it all into pie pans and partially baked.

While the crusts were baking I made my derby pie filling with a little bourbon added in to try it out. When my crusts were ready I pulled them and out. I had cooked them inverted so they wouldn't get any huge bubbles and shrink majorly. I went to flip them and they just crumbled to pieces. They were definitely messed up and to the point I couldn't use them at all. I just threw all the crumbs in a bowl in hopes that somebody would end up using them as bread crumbs.

After that giant mishap, I didn't have any more time to make them again and just headed home. I will try again tomorrow.

Day 34 - November 9, 2009

Day 34:

Last night I went to bed with a pounding headache and when I woke up this morning, my head was pounding. I felt awful so I sent an email to Rex telling him I wouldn't be there and went back to bed with hopes of being better tomorrow. So today was a Kelsie sick day.

Day 33 - November 6, 2009

Day 33:

Today is Mart's Birthday so I today my goal was to make him a delicious birthday cake! A few days ago Adrienne had made a hot chocolate layer cake with home made marshmallows that they found in a magazine. Not only was it pretty, it was really a good chocolate cake. When I got to school that day, Rex suggested that I make that cake for him.

I was crazy nervous to spend the entire day baking, so I told Adrienne that I was going to just have her hold my hand the entire day. She helped me all day long and didn't complain out loud once. I was so grateful for her help and because of her help, the cake turned out so good. I couldn't have made it any better.

Hot Chocolate Layer Cake with Homemade Marshmallows

For the cake:

6 oz (3/4 cup) unsalted butter; more for the pans

13 ½ oz (3 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour; more for the pans

¾ cup canola oil

4 ½ oz bittersweet chocolate; finely chopped (I used chocolate chips)

3 cups white sugar

2 ¼ oz (3/4 cup) natural unsweetened cocoa powder (If you use Dutch cocoa powder, don’t use any baking soda. Use baking powder instead and double what it should have been for the soda. i.e. 1 tsp baking soda = 2 tsp baking powder instead)

3 large eggs, at room temperature

¾ cup buttermilk, at room temperature

2 Tbs. vanilla extract

2 ½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp. kosher salt

For the frosting:

2 ½ cups heavy cream

3 oz (6 Tbs) unsalted butter

2 tsp vanilla extract (originally called for 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and seeds scraped out)

6 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (I used chocolate chips)

2 cups white sugar

6 oz cocoa powder

½ cup corn syrup

¼ tsp kosher salt

Position racks in the bottom and top thirds of the oven and heat the oven to 350 F.

Butter three 9x2” round cake pans (springform works best) and line each with a parchment round. Butter the parchment, then dust with flour and knock out the excess.

In a 3 quart saucepan, combine the butter, oil, chopped chocolate and 1 cup water. Heat over medium heat until melted.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar and cocoa powder. Pour the hot chocolate mixture into the sugar mixture and whisk until combined.

Whisk in the eggs, one at a time, then whisk in the buttermilk, vanilla, baking soda(powder), and salt. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared pans.

Set two pans on the top rack and the third on the lower rack. Stagger the pans on the oven racks so that no pan is directly over another. Bake, swapping and rotating the pans’ positions after 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of each cake comes out clean, 35-40 minutes. Cook on racks for 10 minutes. Invert the cakes onto the racks, remove the parchment paper and cool completely.

Make the Frosting:

In a 4 quart saucepan over low heat, combine the cream, butter and vanilla and stir until the butter is melted. Whisk in the chopped chocolate until melted (completely melted! Don’t leave any little tiny chunks). Whisk in the sugar, cocoa powder, syrup, and salt until smooth. Be sure the cocoa powder dissolves completely. Pour into a 9x13 pan and freeze until firm (about 2 hours) or refrigerate overnight.

Remove the frosting from the fridge or freezer. Transfer to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on medium for 2 minutes to soften. Change to a whisk attachment and beat at medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.

Make the marshmallows. (Adrienne made some for her cake so I just used her leftovers). I'm sure you could use store bought as well, but it won't be quite as cool.

Assemble cake.

Here is my cake all frosted after Rex and Adrienne showed me different ways to pipe the edges. I'm very proud of how the piping turned out.




Here is my finished cake with the homemade marshmallows piled on top and dusted with some dutch cocoa powder!





It took me all day long, but I was so proud of my cake and really excited for Mart to see it and taste it. He loved it and it was by far the best birthday cake I have ever made.

Day 32 - November 5, 2009

Day 32:

The Bridgerland Culinary Arts class was invited to participate in the Lee's Food Show that is held every year around Thanksgiving. Today was the day we decided to do our test run. I had decided on doing artichoke dip, so I had 3 different recipes to test run and have everyone vote on. The first was a normal spinach artichoke dip with mayo, the second was a spinach artichoke dip with cream cheese and the final dip was artichoke and green chile dip. Everyone who would be participating prepped everything and set it out for the class to sample. We also had Tim the frozen foods manager from Lee's who invited us come out and try everything as well. In the end, I decided on making two different dips for the show. I ended up making the spinach artichoke with cream cheese and the artichoke and green chile dip. Both were very very good.

I ended up deciding to make dip for several reasons. The first was we were going to be serving around 1500 people. I wanted to make something that was easy enough to just throw together and not spend 4 days prepping for. Also, dip is a universal people pleaser...just about everybody I know loves a dip of some sort. I also know tons of people who love artichoke dip and not everybody knows how to make it. It's also something that you can stretch a lot further than other things by just spreading it really thin on the toasted bread slices or crackers and last of all...dip is good hot and it's also good cold. If my dip happened to sit out on my table too long, I knew even if it was cold it would still taste good. That way I wouldn't have to worry about keeping it hot the entire time.

The food show is November 14, I now knew what I was going to be making and was comfortable with my decision.

Day 31 - November 4, 2009

Day 31:

Today I was feeling a little sick and I wasn't sure if I would make it through the day or not. Before I headed to school we had caught and killed a mouse in my house. Being allergic, it did all sorts of wacky things to my body before I left. By the time I left my house I was itchy and getting a bit of a headache. Halfway to school I was having a hard time breathing so I used my inhaler, which made me so dizzy I couldn't see or focus for a minute and made me super sick. That has never happened to me before. After that I also had a major headache. I got to school and just warned Rex that I might not make it through the day and he said he would help me but if I needed to leave then I was okay to leave. I got started on my chicken fried steak lunch. I made some mashed potatoes, Dallan made some pepper white gravy for my potatoes and for my veggie I decided on some corn. We roasted and diced some red peppers and tossed them with corn which was sauteed in a little butter and then roasted in the oven for about 30-45 minutes. It looked really good. Rex helped me out by frying the steaks for me and with his help I was able to get everything done on time despite being sick. I was worried part way through the day that I'd have to go home, but I made it through and was okay.

Day 30 - November 3, 2009

Day 30:

Big surf and turf lunch for president of ATC colleges, breaded chicken fried steaks

Today was the huge lunch for the president of the ATC's. (Applied Technology Colleges). I started the day by plating up some salads. I had some mixed baby greens, so they were light, crisp and sweet. I added some diced roasted red peppers, a piece of melted Parmesan and we made some candied grapes. The grapes were so delicious, I loved them! To make the grapes, we lightly whipped up some egg whites, dipped the grapes into the egg whites and then into a bowl of sugar and shook off the excess sugar. After they set up and hardened a little they were so good. I am going to try making them at home and freezing them. Anyway, my salads were then served with a vidalia onion vinaigrette.


My salad:


For the steak we served a new york strip marinated in worchestershire sauce, salt, pepper and garlic. I made a huge mistake and put granulated garlic on it instead of fresh. I didn't know he meant fresh. It freaked me out that I might have messed up the steaks. Luckily, we caught it in time and wiped them off and put more worchestershire sauce on them. He said they were good and turned out okay even with my mess up.

To serve with our steak, I made shrimp scami, carrot sticks and roasted potatoes.
I had a choice on the carrots between a sweet maple glazed carrot or a savory carrot. I am not always a huge fan of sweet foods so I picked the savory carrots. We lightly steamed them and tossed them in fresh horseradish (it was like a sauce), sour cream, salt and pepper. They were so good!

The roasted potatoes were first steamed and then coated with butter and roasted until they were golden. They were really good as well.

As for the shrimp scampi, it's pretty much the easiest dish alive. Melt butter, add a ton of minced garlic, add the shrimp and cook until they just barely turn pink. Season with salt and pepper and top with chopped parsley. Yum!!

We wanted to top the steaks with a demi glace. It's a sauce made of stock that has reduced down until it thickens and has a little bit of tomato pasted added at the end. Ours was veal stock with beef base to make it beef flavored with the tomato. It seemed to go well with the steak, I didn't try any. It was a bit runny, it could have reduced more to make it thicker for sure.

This picture shows the process of plating up our meal. We line everything up in the order we put it on the plate and the last step is to put it onto a serving tray.



Our finished plate. The food was delicious but I wasn't happy with the actual plate. The colors are all too similar and that bothered me. It could have used some green. Oh well, at least it tasted good. :)


For dessert we served a brownie cheesecake with some raspberry puree and a chocolate ganache. Rex slaughtered the presentation of the sauces, it almost looks like a smiley face. The raspberry had a hard time coming out of the piping bag and we were in a super hurry. Hopefully next time the desserts look better.




When the plates came back the waitress we had for the day said they were all really happy with the food and that we did a good job. I'm so glad it went well. :)

After the lunch I breaded 48 chicken fried steaks for lunch tomorrow. We coated them with egg and then coated them with seasoned flour. After that, they went in the freezer.

Day 29 - November 2, 2009

Day 29:

Today I was in charge of taco salad. After last weeks flank steak fiasco, Rex tried really hard to keep me stress free. It was awesome. I got there and Rex had already assigned everything I had to get done out to all the high school kids and left me to supervise. Once all the kids left, all I had left to do was make the taco meat. It was all browned and ready for me to season it up. We also got a new kid in our class today, Paul. Paul spent the day chopped all my veggies for my taco salad. We were all set and ready to go for the line and for a lunch we were catering and we had everything set up buffet style for the lunch. The group rolled in about 10-15 minutes late and had 7 extra people! We hadn't prepared for so many people and ended up having to cook 5 extra pounds of meat and chop more veggies. What a pain. But even after all of that, it turned out good and everyone seemed to like it.

At the end of the day I asked Rex if there was anything he needed help with and he asked me if I wanted to make shrimp scampi the next day for a really important lunch we were serving. The president of all the applied technology colleges in Utah or Northern Utah or something like that was having a meeting and we were serving him lunch. I told him I would help. It seemed like he was nervous and wasn't very anxious to let anyone help with the lunch so I thought it was pretty cool he decided to let me participate. After he asked me that, I asked him what we were serving and he said a surf and turf. We were serving steaks with giant shrimp scampi. I asked him who was cooking the steaks and at that point he assigned the entire meal to me! I'm glad he trusts me enough to cook and prepare such an important lunch.

Day 28 - October 30, 2009

Day 28:

Today when I got to school I started my day by doing some price sheets. When I finished my price sheets I helped with a lunch we were catering. Adrienne and I plated up some salads and when we were finished we served the group beef tips with mushrooms, broccoli and potatoes with gravy for lunch.

It was a pretty mellow day.

Day 27 - October 29, 2009

Day 27:

Today ended up being a really laid back day. When I first got to school I drained all my stock, chilled it and put it all in containers. In the end, I ended up with just over 21 gallons of stock and I still had a small pot left out that needed to sit and let the fat gather on top so I could scrap it off. That's a crazy amount of stock!

After my stock I just went to the cafeteria and helped serve Craig's prime rib sandwiches.

That was pretty much it for my day.

Day 26 - October 28, 2009

Day 26:

Today I made my dough nuts. They ended up being easier than I thought they would be. I rolled out my dough, cut all the dough nuts out, let them proof (rise) and then it was time to fry them. While the dough nuts were proofing, John showed me how to drain and clean out the fryer so we would have clean oil.

The doughnuts were all proofed and ready to be cooked. Frying doughnuts can be tricky, you don't want the oil the wrong temperature or they will end up greasy and gross so you have to be careful. You also don't want to break up the doughnut by squishing it with tongs so to flip them over you use two dowels cut down to about a foot long. It was pretty easy and everything went really well. My doughnuts were perfect and not greasy at all!!


My doughnuts fried and ready to be glazed:


To finish off my doughnuts I made a maple glaze instead of a frosting. They ended up really good.



When I was finished with my doughnuts I started prepping to make chicken stock. I had to chop and roast a huge pan of mirepoix and pull out 80 pounds of chicken carcasses and roast those as well.

My mirepoix getting ready to roast:



A couple of my trays of chicken carcasses:



After everything was roasted and I had made a huge sachet of herbs to put in the stock, I filled up a huge steam kettle with all the bones, covered it to about 3 inches above all the bones with cold water and let it sit for about a half hour. After that I brought it up to a simmer, removed all the crap that floated to the top and then added my mirepoix. It was ready to simmer overnight.

That was it for my day!

Day 25 - October 27, 2009

Day 25:

Today to recover from being so stressed out yesterday I was put in charge of a luncheon party we had again. We were serving a turkey dinner with roasted turkey chunks, potatoes, gravy, stuffing and a roll. Rex wanted me to make up some salads for the lunch as well. I plated them all up and was debating what to put on top of them so I asked Kendall what she would want on a salad if she were to eat one. She gave me some ideas, such as shredded carrots (made with a peeler so they were ribbons), tomatoes, cheese, etc... so a guy in my class I've only ever seen like 3 times overheard her. I guess Rex told him I was in charge of salads and he was supposed to help me. I had decided to just do a red pepper ring on top with some croutons and some parmesan cheese. Boring I know. I went to the back to check the vegetable tubs we have to see what we had available, I went back to my salads and the guy was laying carrot ribbons on top of the salads!! They were in a plaid type pattern and looked awful! I was thoroughly annoyed. I then handed a red pepper to a high school kid and asked him to cut me some rings, walked to the walk in to grab some cheese, went back and the guy was putting my pepper rings on top as well! I could not believe it. I was so annoyed at that point I didn't even want to finish my salads, but kept going anyway. Rex told me later that I should have just told him to go away and taken the stuff off and did it my own way.

Anyway, after the salad fiasco I helped plate up the turkey dinner and serve it. After that, I got started on my yeast raised dough nut dough. I decided to make the dough in advance and let it sit overnight. That was pretty much it for my day.

Day 24 - October 26, 2009

Day 24:

Today was a nightmare of a day! I was in charge of lunch and a luncheon that we were catering. I had prepped my flank steak last Thursday, so at least those were ready to go. I bought one of the flanks and made it for dinner Thursday night to try it out. The pictures I have of the steak on here are the one I made at home, not the ones I made at school. Same with the squash soup...I just didn't have time to take any pictures at school.

We decided to make twice baked potatoes, soybeans with roasted red peppers and a pureed squash soup with an apple, onion, cranberry relish on top. The day just started off bad and got worse as time went on. We had to wash and bake 46 potatoes, so I had Dallan get to work on those. I had preheated the oven but there was some mis-communication and the potatoes didn't make it in the oven for quite some time. They took FOREVER to bake all the way through and pushed me way far behind schedule. Also, John and I decided to make edamame (soybeans) for my vegetable. When we pulled them out of the freezer, John saw that they still had the shell on but said to just leave them like that and serve them with the shell. I took his word on that and didn't do anything with them until 10 minutes before they should have been served. That turned out to be mistake #2. My soup was made and left sitting over the burner to stay warm, but on low it kept it boiling...mistake #3. Luckily the soup was okay and very tasty! I was under so much pressure to get everything finished in time that I again misread the recipe on the soup and didn't do it all the way. On the bottom of some recipes there is an optional garnish, well I thought this was one of those recipes. I saw a list which included apples, onions, cranberries...but I didn't bother reading the rest of the list. I just picked apples for my garnish and diced them up all pretty and small and put them in lemon water so they didn't turn brown. Mistake #4.

The closer it got to 11am, lunch time in the cafeteria the worse things got. My potatoes weren't cooking fast, so they finally got close enough to finished about 10:30. I still had to hollow them out, mash the insides, flavor them, refill them and rebake them. Adrienne finally stepped in to help me and saved me on the potatoes! She filled them all and put them back in the oven. I pulled out my soybeans to start cooking them about 10 minutes before like John told me to, and Rex decided that they shouldn't have the shell! The shell was way too chewy and not good so we had to start shelling them like crazy. It took forever to shell 9 pounds of soybeans! I had planned portions based on soybeans in a shell so I ended up way too short on the veggie. My steaks were cooked in the convection oven, which was a lifesaver, I could cook them all at once instead of one at a time.

I know this doesn't even begin to explain my nightmare of a day, but I have never heard my name yelled out so many times in a kitchen or any other room in my life. Things just kept going wrong one after another and John and Rex started to just pick on me. They wouldn't let up at all either. They like to tease me and pick on me because they know I can take it, but at the end of that day I had been pushed far enough. I was so tempted to just throw in the towel and leave for the rest of the day. It was so crazy stressful and I vowed to never again be in charge of an entire lunch by myself again.

My last straw for the day was when were were plating everything up and Rex told me to go get my soup and my relish. I looked at him blankly and said I'd go get my apples and be right back. He looked at me blankly and saw my bowl of apples and asked where my remaining relish was... The recipe hadn't given optional toppings, they had given a recipe for a relish topping! I had only done one of the ingredients! I think Rex was on the verge of giving me a hard time again when he saw I was probably close to tears so instead he told me to grab a whole bunch of ingredients and meet him back there in like 30 seconds. I swear he whipped up the rest of that relish in less than 1 minute and we topped the soup and sent it out. What a relief to be done with that day. The good news at the end of that day was everybody loved the soup and the steak!

It ended up being a really hard and trying day, full of time crunches which I didn't make, being harrassed so hard that I almost couldn't take it anymore, but having some really good food in the end.


My relish that topped my butternut squash pureed soup:



The soup and topping:


My flank with the marinade right before I started cooking it:


Finished and resting:


Perfectly cooked! You don't want to cook a flank over medium.