Almost Crazy

Couple of weeks ago, my supervisor's daughter got married, and for the rehearsal dinner my supervisor asked if I could make a cake for her. A slow week for my classes and some imbalance of chemicals in my brain led me to agree to make the cake for my supervisor.

I never stopped to consider I make everything from scratch. Why couldn't I be the "cake from the box type" and just give her a two slabs of cake held together by frosting? So this is what I agreed to make: green tea fraisier.

This cake required three separate components: the green tea sponge cake, the mousseline, and the green tea whipped cream.

The measuring of ingredients took me half an hour, and removing the pots and baking sheet from the oven took another ten minutes. This situation doesn't help that I have a tiny kitchen. The only counter space available is about the size of school desktop.

The sponge cake required two different batter: one egg yolk based and the other egg white based. The mousseline needed a custard that has to be heated and cooled. Plus, I had to wait for the unsalted butter to soften before mixing it in the custard, then this has to cool in the refrigerator for another 2 hours. This entire process took 5 hours, and I started at 6:00pm Thursday night.

The next morning killed me. I almost cried when the whipping cream would not hold shape. Not matter how long or at what speed I was whipping it, the damn cream remained a bubbling pool. This forced me to run out to the store to get ice and a new carton of whipping cream, since I believed my house was too hot for the cream to form. After an hour and a half, I was able to pipe the cream on top, toss them in a box, and ran to work with a box of uncut strawberries in hand so I can decorate it later.

From this experience, I learned never to promise anyone I would deliver one of my creations in less than 24 hours. Probably a good choice to not go to culinary school.

Yuck, yuck, yuck

Some readers might know about the limited options for food at UMass Boston. Today, not feeling so hungry, I decided to just get a fruit cup. I mainly hate the fruit cup because they tend to have an enormous amount of honey dew melons, and I feel like I'll cough a lung out if I eat it. Seeing a cup with about two pieces of honey dew, I fell for the trap and bought a fruit cup for lunch.

I never knew that cantaloupes could be sour. I've had unseasonably bland cantaloupes, but a semi-rotten sour taste was new to me. I'm not sure if I even want to eat the pineapple chunk. Lunch ruined. Thanks UMB. 

 

Many Merry Choux

This past weekend, I decided to try my hand at making cream puffs. I've heard from various bakers that this is one of their biggest challenge. It's not tough to make. The process just requires sifting flour, heating up butter and flour, add eggs then mix it all together. See, it's so simple.

The minute I added the eggs to the heated butter and flour, I can feel that there is something wrong. It's too liquid, not thick enough to hold the shape of a puff pastry. I thought, "What the heck?" and popped it into the oven. Sometimes when things don't seem to work, they probably won't work out. Thus the first batch was a complete failure.

The second batch yielded a different result. The batter was thick enough to hold the shape. Half way through I checked the oven (without opening the door) and the pastry puffed up. By the time they were ready to come out of the oven, they were golden on top with a light sizzle (the effect of having so much butter). They looked perfect, but the true test is the inside. Would it be hollow? Or would they be perfect?

The world decided to give me perfect puff pastry....and thus the final creation.