A Culinary Weekend

This past weekend I took a one day class at The Culinary Institute Of America. Do I even need to say what the class was.....Baking At Home - The Desserts. We started in a classroom on the 3rd floor of the beautiful Greystone building at 9:30am sharp. After a short introduction we were split into teams and assigned the desserts we would be making. Team 1: Sour Cream Streusel (sour cream, gross), Team 2: Chocolate Souffle Cake (two words chocolate and cake, perfect), Team 3: Warm Lemon Pudding Cake (sounds mushy, I will pass), Team 4: Strawberry Frozen Yogurt (you know how I feel about strawberries, and I don't like yogurt either), Team 5: Turtles and Rustic Fruit Galette, which all teams would make as well.(turtles I like, fruit galette rustic or not sounds a little too healthy). So can you guess which one I got? Or the better question, which one I didn't get? I didn't get the Chocolate Souffle Cake (originally), I got the double whammy Strawberry Frozen Yogurt.

We went into the enormous kitchen, all the way to the back, past all the poor souls in the other "real food" classes, and found our table. In my group was a semi-local couple with a limited amount of baking experience, but hard workers and really nice too. We were told at the beginning our frozen yogurt probably wouldn't be finished in time because of its preparation time, so our team got to work immediately. We work really well together, reading the directions and multi tasking between all three dishes. Since I had more experience (TOOT TOOT, tooting my own horn) I tried to help more verbally and let my other two teammates be more hands on.

We had our galette dough made and in the refrigerator in no time, and moved on to our more time consuming Strawberry Frozen Yogurt. After my teammates hulled and sliced the strawberries, we let them soak in the lemon and sugar solution and moved on to the turtles. We toasted our pecans, made our caramel and our turtles started to come together. I do believe the exact quote by our instructor was "you guys are awesome":) While the Turtles were cooling we went back to working on our Fruit Galette, rolling out our dough, preparing the apples, and then finally putting it together. Our galette turned out beautiful, even becoming a sample for the other students.(TOOT TOOT) :)

We worked so hard and so fast we were able to choose another dish to make. Thankfully we were all on the same page and wanted to make the chocolate souffle. While working on the souffle, we finished making our Strawberry Frozen Yogurt, even though it wasn't expected to be done. We did it, we finished all three of our assigned items and had our "extra credit" in the oven just in time for our lunch break.

Lunch was pretty impressive. All of the classes displayed their food at the tables in the center of the kitchen for everyone to try. There were soups, rice, vegetables, big chunks of meat, something that had veal in it, and tons of other things that I wouldn't eat. I did try our Strawberry Frozen Yogurt, and I have to say it was really REALLY good. (Then I got a seed and was over it.) The galette looked so good it tricked me into trying it, not so good. Apples are bad enough raw, then you make them mushy by cooking them, no thanks. Then there was the Chocolate Souffle Cake, another trick on me. I have never tried souffle before, it's always sounded suspect, and I was right. Even with the words Chocolate and Cake in the title it was beyond gross. I can't even describe the funky texture, but at least I have now tried souffle, and I don't have to do it again. The best thing we made were the Turtles, chocolate, caramel, and pecans, you really can't go wrong. (Unless you added fruit)

After everyone finished lunch, we went back to the classroom to wrap up. We talked about measuring in oz/gr compared to cups, now I have seen the light. Yes, I knew using a scale gave you more precise measurements, but it has always seemed like such a pain. Somehow in that moment it just made since, a cup of flour on Monday might have more or less flour than a cup on Tuesday. (Kind of like my jeans, always the same size but some days they fit different than others.) Maybe if I had used a scale when making my chocolate chip cookies so long ago, I would still be getting the same results. The instructor's real passion was more bread than desserts and it really rubbed off on me. I am not going to stop making desserts any time soon, but he really got me thinking about how wonderful bread is. I hope you are ready to see some bread recipes in the future.
When the class was over I took home some of our Turtles, Fruit Galette, and the Chocolate Souffle cake, a Baking at Home cookbook, and a C.I.A apron. I had such a good time, I am thinking about going back for more....maybe the Chocolate Class.

A Sweet Weekend

I have been so busy lately with baking, classes and weekend trips that I haven't been able to blog. That means that I have a bunch of junk to write about and will be bombarding you soon with all of it, probably all at once, and in run on sentences. :) The latest trip I took was with a group of girls to Bodega Bay California, by way of Napa. It was a fantastic getaway with a lot of laughing, a fair amount of drinking, and of coarse plenty of sweets to eat.

Our first stop was something I have been wanting to do for a while, a chocolate tasting at the Culinary Institute of America Greystone just outside of Napa. The only "tasting" I am somewhat familiar with is wine tasting, and I loathe wine tasting. More than not liking the taste of wine, I detest pompous wine tasters.  I went into the chocolate tasting pessimistic, ready to be irritated by some fool who thip thip thip's the chocolate in their mouth and then says something like, "I love the bouquet... this would pair well with veal".

I am happy to report the tasting was amazing.  I thought I knew the difference between chocolates and the different processes chocolate goes though but I found out I didn't really know much. I have done my own "scientific" taste tests in my kitchen between high-end chocolate and chocolate compounds,  I have even compared brands, but I really didn't know what made them taste different other than the "quality", and price.
We pulled up a seat at the Flavor Bar and were given labeled trays of chocolate, two crackers, a cup of water and a set of head phones to watch the instructor on a large flat screen TV.  The 15 minute tasting video took us step by step cup by cup through the different tastes of chocolate from the cacao bean, nibs, cocoa powder, cocoa butter, unsweetened cocoa, bittersweet and semi-sweet chocolate, and compound chocolates.  The end of the tasting was the most interesting, when we learned about the terroir. (I am using an accent in my head while writing "terroir" and I have my nose in the air) Terroir refers to the region the chocolate came from, which influences the flavor of the chocolate. It sounds pretentious, but you can really taste the differences between the Venezuelan, Ecuadorian, and Madagascan (sp?) chocolate. Each had a very distinct after taste (I am pretty sure that's not the proper term), Venezuelan (my favorite) had a fruit flavor, Madagascan was very citrusy and Ecuadorian was floral (yuck! but not bad enough for me not to eat it).

After the video was over I purchased a 8 piece box of Greystone Chocolates as a more informed connoisseur :) The chocolates I bought were just OK, but with my all time favorite chocolates just down the highway at Woodhouse, I probably won't be buying any of these chocolates again. The chocolate tasting on the other hand, I would do again in a heart beat.

We made one more stop on our way to the coast at the Korbel Champagne Cellars. I am not the right person to review champagnes, I am sure they would be delicious in a cupcake:)

When we reached Bodega Bay we almost immediately headed to the cutest shop in town, Patrick's Taffy Shop. Love it! How could you not love the ocean weathered pink and white striped candy shop. The shop is literally filled with taffy and a few shelves of retro candies too. I probably wouldn't care if it was filled with fish, I would still loiter in front of the shop because it is just so damn cute.

It was such a fun trip and I can't wait to do it again soon.