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Sweet Pursuits

The quest for finding simplicity and joy in the kitchen and home, in a crazy/full season of life.

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September 19, 2008 by Amanda 3 Comments

second term finals – complete!

It’s the halfway mark – term 2 of 4 is finished, which means I’m halfway completed my diploma. So far, it’s been an interesting ride, and I’ve learned a fair bit, but have high hopes for the second half. Way more lecture classes than anticipated, which hopefully will help us out in the long run. Next term, I’m taking an Artisan Breads class, European Tortes, and 2 lecture classes (clearly am v. excited about the lecture classes, I can’t even recall what they are called!!)

Finals were fine. Predictable, rather long, but just fine. Pastry was interesting – 2 intense days, 3 hours each, where we had to make a birthday cake (of white genoise, which is a light whipped egg sponge cake, Italian buttercream, 8 rosettes on top, and “happy birthday” written on top in chocolate), lemon sabayon tarte, croissants, and eclairs/profiteroles. It was tight timing, but fully do-able.

Post-finals was even better 🙂 Five of us girls went for post-exam bellinis at 11am….it was still patio weather, so 3 bellinis later, it made for a fun afternoon. We did some window shopping, checked out Williams Sonoma (my new place of work – new post to be made on that note!!!), and later went for a super yummy dinner at one of the city’s finest restaurants. A bit too $$$ for student budgets, but they have an amazing deal every night from 5-6pm, where you get a 3 course meal for $30 – and considering mains are all $30+, it was a steal. I had the heirloom beet salad with hazelnut vinagrette and homemade cheese ‘canneloni, then the braised beef short rib over onion parmesan orzo (OMG amazing!!) followed by a deconstructed cheesecake of some sort. I’m a bit over the whole ‘deconstructed’ phenomenon. Sometimes it’s kind of fun when each component is essentially a dish in its own (ie. if you did deconstructed strawberry shortcake, don’t just serve Whipped Cream on it’s own. It would have to be like a vanilla mousse or something else that satisfies the whipped cream quotient of the recipe, but be entirally edible on its own. You know what I mean? This cheesecake was a bit awkward to be deconstructed, as the cheese was quite soft so it was sort of pooled in the bowl, with a pile of graham crumbs. I don’t know – I wasn’t sold, but the heavenly onion parmesan orzo made up for it entirelly.

So now I’ve got 2 weeks off till next term – the break is always very, very much appreciated. I could get used to this ‘2 weeks every 3 months’ deal!!

Filed Under: Self Employment Tagged With: final exams, save room for dessert

September 7, 2008 by Amanda 5 Comments

Pastry 101: final exam

my friend just emailed me the photos she kindly let me take on her camera – here’s how plated dessert week went:

day 1 we made our garnishes, etc. Day 2, we had an hour to get set up before plating began. Here is me at my station, with i beleive was a spiral of pulled sugar. 

warm chocolate cake with chocolate sauce, raspberry coulis, creme anglaise, chocolate wafer, cashew brittle, and blackberry sorbet. My bonus ingredient here is the chocolate-dipped gooseberry.  

(*was not thrilled with my chocolate sauce application. it was a bit too warm so it ran. should have looked tidier!)

lemon suncake with honey ice cream, lavender tuile, fresh blueberries and candied lemon zest. My bonus ingredient was creme anglaise (and a strawberry garnish for colour). 

sorbet with chocolate sauce. I added the rest of the components. 

i was so impressed with our entire class, so many of the plates were so inspired and most amazingly, everything turns out so different even though we all start out with the same!

Filed Under: Self Employment Tagged With: final exams, save room for dessert

June 15, 2008 by Amanda 4 Comments

blackbox competition

Our skills class had our practical exam on Wednesday and a written exam on Thursday, and once we finished that test, we got to do a black box competition. Black box is similar to Iron Chef where we have a mystery ingredient and a set time frame in which to create something.

We had two hours, and our final dishes would be judged on taste, appearance, creativity, use of special ingredient, and cooking skills. It would be judged by our chef, two other chef’s from the school, and the president of the BC Chef’s Association (who is in our textbook!)! Our mystery ingredient was pork tenderloin and fillets of sole (white fish) – we only had to use one. Not exactly a black box then (because in the true black boxes there are usually all sorts of other ingredients which you had to use) but definitely no complaints! Apart from those two proteins, there were an assortment of vegetables, plus we had flour, oil, etc.

I decided to use the pork, as it is less delicate than the fish, and honestly, I couldn’t think of anything to do with the fish. The hardest thing was deciding what to make, so as I planned out some ideas I started prepping a few ingredients. In the end, I decided to make a meditteranean-style pork roulade. For some reason I equate pork to heavy fall/winter dishes, especially German dishes where you’d eat it breaded or with sauerkraut. So, I decided to make a German dumpling called Spaetzle (kind of like pasta, but the dough is runnier and is boiled) and do a roasted red pepper sauce with it. For the pork, I roasted garlic and tomatoes, and I smacked the pork really thin, covered it in the garlic, tomatoes and basil, rolled it up and secured it with butcher’s twine, and grilled it before popping it in the oven. It looked really pretty when it was sliced up. Too bad it was still semi-raw on the inside, so I had to grill the individual slices to cook them through. Ended up with grill marks I didn’t want, but hey, at least it was cooked. The spatzle was awesome….in class we’d made it sauteed in olive oil and topped with cheese, but this was a much lighter way to enjoy it.

In the end, my friend Leslie (who made this amazing spaghetti squash ravioli with sole on top) and I tied for first place! She won overall in the end (there could only be one winner) because her pasta was incredible, but I was still pretty happy with the overall results.


This was our class at the end, minus four people who weren’t there that day. Next time those whites get worn is in pastry class! (However, for Father’s Day today I made the best cheesecake ever – a S’Mores cheesecake, with graham cracker crust, rich chocolate filling, and marshmellowy-merienge like topping. It is incredible – recipe is in the current issue of Bon Appetit if you’re inclined to do a little baking!!!)

Filed Under: Self Employment Tagged With: final exams

May 13, 2008 by Amanda 2 Comments

homework follow up

It sounds like you guys were hoping for a real ‘official’ winner….I wish that were the case to find the best ever type of chocolate. I was actually doing a comparison between the different levels of cocoa solids (the 70%, 85% and get this 99%) types. I actually really like the 85%. The more cocoa solids, the better. Haven’t tried the 99% though, just found it yesterday and at $4/bar  my class gets to be the guinea pig on that one, I’ll just sample it at the same time they do.


As for my personal favorite, hands down, Ritter is also my favorite. I found out about ritter in high school on my Germany exchange, and I think Ritter alone was to blame for about 1/2 of the extra 10lb or so that I gained there. So good. (The other half was due to the pastries – I didn’t speak German but did learn how to order pastries and learn the different types, so I felt better about my lack of language skills in the pastry shop. “Die eine mit die kirche, bitte” (don’t quote me, but you’ll get something delicious with cherries 🙂

My fave Ritter of all – the biscuit one, with the cookie inside. Oh, and the cornflake one is also awesome. And the coconut one. Oh man, now I want chocolate.

Filed Under: Self Employment Tagged With: chocolate

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Welcome!

Hi, I'm Amanda:
Mama, baker, farmer, professional cake maker by choice, budding minimalist by necessity.

Sweet Pursuits is a journey towards finding simplicity and joy in the kitchen and home, from a working mama of two.

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