Someone had faith in me

I had a lady come in one day with a tiny picture of a baby Winnie the Pooh and Tigger hugging. She said she came to the bakery before and the cake decorator was able to draw Winnie the Pooh pretty well. So I took on the challenge. It didn't really take all that long to do. People walked by me and told me I did a really good job and it looked precious. I'm hoping it was OK to do this since our store does have the right to sell other Winnie the Pooh novelty cakes.

Continue reading...

I got a hold of a Wilton book

After awhile I felt like I was running out of ideas, always doing the same borders and flowers. When I found a copy of The Wilton School I took a look at it and went off to try some new things. I wanted to learn the basket weave. Even though it can be pretty time consuming, I figured it would be something people would appreciate if they wanted something special. The basket border on this isn't the greatest, but I like how the cake turned out overall. I keep working on the basket weave and understanding how each part comes together.

Continue reading...

Blogger turned my picture sideways

I'll be honest, I don't know much about flowers. Sometimes when people as me to put flowers other than roses on a cake I have to ask what they're talking about. I was given a picture of a pink something, I think it's a daisy, and told to make the whole top of a round cake that flower.

I think it turned out pretty well. I didn't want to take too long on it, so many of the petals cake out rippled when I squeezed too hard on the icing bag. I certainly think it was a nice idea for a cake.

Continue reading...

A personal cake

I made this cake for my boyfriend's church. The cake says Bless Shiloh Apostolic. My writing was still a little suspect at the time. I sprayed the body yellow and added a slight bit of brown over that. I piped on a bunch of grapes and vines over the edge. It's a chocolate cake with some cherry filling.

Continue reading...

I was trying to show off

For the opening of the baseball season my boss told me to decorate a full sheet cake for an in-store promotion. Make one side for the Chicago Cubs, and one for the White Sox. She might have just meant use their colors, but I took it further and drew their logos on each side of the cake.

However, I got the coloring on the Cubs logo wrong. There should be a blue ring instead of a red one. I don't know if this will get me in trouble, but I'll say that I did not create these logos, I just used them for a cake that was not sold to anyone. And people enjoyed it and ate it up. The Sox side was gone first.

Continue reading...

Cupcake cake

At Meijer the bakery offers cupcake cakes as a fun alternative to rectangular cakes. Cupcakes are arranged on a board, frosted, and decorated to look like something.

I did a caterpillar cake for a group of school children. I had an image to work off of to arrange the cupcakes right and how to decorate it. I made it look a little cuter and added sprinkles as well.

Continue reading...

Stir the imagination

Meijer has a pretty good selection of baked goods, but when it comes to cakes it can be pretty straight forward. With our cupcakes we only have chocolate and yellow cake to choose from. Most people just want white butter cream and some sprinkles. A mother came in one day with her smart and talented little son, ordering cupcakes for a party. They wanted me to be creative with the colors, and I was compelled to do something special for them.


I made bags of striped icing just for their cupcakes. Red and pink, yellow and orange, green and teal, blue and violet. And colorful sprinkles topped each cupcake. I was very happy with these and thought they would certainly appeal to little children.

Continue reading...

Copyright issues

As a cake decorator I get plenty of requests for designs and concepts for cakes. Most of the time people will just point at a novelty cake in the book and say they want that one. Some people will be vague and only tell me what colors they want, or they want flowers. People have also given me pictures to use with our Edible Images scanner and printer, or asked me to simply draw certain things. I am pretty good at drawing, and it's easy enough to use the scanner and printer. But it has come up recently at work that I need to be much more careful about what I let people put on cakes. It's unlikely to be much of an issue with cakes that will just be taken home and enjoyed by a small family. But you just want to protect yourself wherever you can. I've made cakes in the past that used images from cartoons, logos of sports teams, and also designs on napkins or paper plates. I've taken pictures of these, but I've decided not to post them if I believe there will be an issue with copyrights.

Continue reading...

Out of school

When I was finished with school it took me a little less than a month to get a job. Unfortunately it had nothing to do with food service. I worked as a pricer at a Meijer superstore in Michigan City. I applied for jobs in restaurants all over the city and surrounding areas. Most places either wouldn't consider me, or they only wanted me to be a waitress or hostess. At some places I probably could have earned a decent amount of money through tips, but I've found that being a server makes me incredibly anxious. I like to think that maybe I could learn to enjoy it and deal with customers, but for now I won't go near it. I took the job at Meijer, despite the low pay and crappy hours. I figured maybe at least being in there would give me a better chance at a better job later on.

And lo, about 4 months later I was able to transfer into the store's bakery as a cake decorator...

Continue reading...

Birthday pie

When I made a cake for my mom I also decided I wanted to make a pie for my boyfriend's birthday. The bakery technically offers pies but they were rarely bought. So they got me some blueberries and looked for a decent pie crust recipe. We didn't have anything as far as pie fillings went, so I had to wing that.

I did a simple lattice design with a fresh blueberry filling. The pie is sitting in 2 deep dish pie plates, because to this day my pies over flow and make a mess on the tray they're sitting on. I was told, fill it up, the filling will bake down! More like out and over. It was really good, the berries held their shape and flavor well. It was so good I was asked to make another pie later for the bakery's display. I'm not sure if that tasted as good as the first one I made, but I was glad that I was given something to do besides bake more cookies.

Continue reading...

Mother's Day

At the bakery I interned at I wasn't allowed to work on cake orders. I had very little experience and couldn't be trusted to mess with a cake that somebody had high expectations for. I figured the only way I would be able to practice decorating was if I ordered a cake myself, and I made one for my mom.

I made her an orange cake with ganache and butter cream decorations. I made the cake myself, and I tried my hand at layering and crumb coating. I was told to put on a base of white butter cream and let it chill for awhile. One of the decorators helped me pour warm ganache over the cake. Once that set then I tried drawing some sort of vines that crawled up the sides of the cake. I did the orange roses on top too. I had been taught previously how to make them and caught on quickly. Even though I was the novice I made roses better than the decorators.

I thought the way we did the ganache was a bit awkward and it wasn't until recently that I learned how to pour icing over cakes properly. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to try and put butter cream as a base, because it did end up melting a bit and making the ganache uneven. Either I should have done a better job of evening out the cake, or we could have covered the cake in sheets of marzipan. That's something else I could try to learn if I ever get to work in a professional bakery.

Continue reading...

Internship

Toward the end of my culinary arts program I was required to do some sort of internship. I could go just about anywhere. I was having a hard time finding someplace to go, but I ended up at a small new bakery. I won't say where I went.

I wasn't really sure what to expect to gain from my internship experience. And perhaps my boss didn't know either. I felt like for the most part I was just being used as free labor. I wanted to learn, and I guess I did learn a few things. They made custom cakes and I wanted to learn how to decorate, but my boss was reluctant to let me practice. I mostly helped the bakers, and the cake decorators would sometimes talk to me and explain what they were doing and why. Luckily I can learn just by watching, so what little I gleaned I managed to hang on to for later. I also learned to tolerate 10 hour shifts. Now I get paid to do that!

I'll also say that I learned that nobody is perfect, and inevitably you'll end up working for somebody who, for no reason, hates you. About halfway through my internship my boss became increasingly erratic in their behavior toward me and lashed out when I messed up. Like I said, they treated me as a regular employee, but I wasn't paid. I began to wonder how the other employees could put up with it. Maybe they learned to toughen up. Maybe they can handle angry people better than I can. Maybe they enjoy their jobs enough that even a poor boss can't dampen their days.

I was able to stay for the full internship period. I took some pictures of what I did, but there are a couple of note.

Continue reading...

Irregular croissants

This was the last thing we worked on before finals. Unlike the danishes, we did take our time to make croissant dough completely from scratch. We made a simple dough with flour and then folded in slabs of butter. Our school had a sheeter to help us quickly roll out the dough and layer the butter. We rolled and chilled the dough a total of 4 times, if I remember right. Maybe even more. I wanted to make smaller croissants so I could have more of them. The shapes are kind of awkward, but the flavor and flakiness was all there.

Continue reading...

Laminated doughs

The last segment of our baking and pastry class was based on laminated doughs. In the past the bakery class took up more time in the week, meeting 3 times per week. Our class only met in the kitchen twice per week. Our teacher decided we would not have enough time to make certain doughs, such as danish dough, and just bought frozen sheets. Although we didn't get to make the dough, she wanted us to learn how to work with it and how it can be used.

This is just a small assortment of danishes. We had some fruit fillings, such as apricot and raspberry, and we also made cream cheese icings. We were given packets on different ways to fold, cut, and fill danishes. When they finished baking we also made a simple white icing to pour over the top. I don't like danishes much myself, I think they taste bland and cheap. But it was fun to experiment with folding and fillings. I can apply that to other foods as well.

Continue reading...

Eh or Ee?

We used the profiterole batter in longer strips to make éclairs. To this day I struggle to figure out how to pronounce éclair (hard or soft E?) We made a simple Bavarian creme by combining whipped cream with pastry cream. We made a chocolate icing that hardened into a shell, as well as a smooth caramel sauce. These éclairs weren't as soft and donut-like as I assumed éclairs are supposed to be like. They were thin and chewy, and luckily the creme wasn't too sweet. That's my least favorite part of filled donuts and pastries, an overly sweet filling.

Continue reading...

This is when things got trickier

Toward the end of our quarter in bakery and pastry arts we finally started getting into very unfamiliar territory. The kinds of things that most restaurants don't even bother making because they're so labor intensive. When you do take the time then you have the chance to customize and make yourself stand out from your competitors.

We made batter for profiteroles. We did several things with them, baked the batter in different shapes. These were left hallow. We were also taught how to make ice cream. We all made a vanilla creme anglaise, and from there our teacher taught us some different flavorings and how to incorporate them. My group wanted to make strawberry ice cream. It turned out very weak, like pink vanilla ice cream. In this picture I put some of the ice cream on a few broken profiteroles, and poured on some store-bought chocolate syrup. Note: Nes-Quik syrup is awful, stick with Hershey's.

Continue reading...

My favorite bread

I adore this focaccia. It might not be as tall as other focaccias, but it was crisp and chewy and bursting with flavor. There are large bits of baked garlic and herbs on top, and I loved cutting off a strip for a bite to eat. I only wanted to eat it by itself instead of trying to make a round loaf for sandwiches, like other students did. I also made this focaccia for one of my bakery exams. We had to choose randomly what type of bread we had to make. I picked Challah. But behind our teacher's back I traded with a girl who got focaccia but wanted to make Challah. I like how that works out sometimes.

Continue reading...

Quit making fun of the name

This is Challah. Or, as my less mature peers liked to say, HOLLLLLAAAAA. Whatever. I wasn't familiar with the concept of knotted bread, but I liked braiding the Challah and letting it bake free form. The dark color it gained and the sesame and poppy seeds make it look bold and delicious. This was denser than I thought it would be, but I liked making small sandwiches out of it with pastrami.

Continue reading...

A loaf of bread, with a twist

This is cinnamon swirl bread. Our teacher taught us there are some things that can inhibit yeast growth, and cinnamon is one of those things. Instead of mixing cinnamon directly into the batter, we made a buttery paste and spread it on to the bread dough. We rolled it up and pinched the ends, and put it in a loaf pan. Our teacher forgot to inform us that perhaps splitting the top would be appropriate for this bread. It split on its own but it didn't look very good. This bread was kind of dry, and the cinnamon made it taste bitter. I think it would have been nice to just try our hands at a regular loaf of sandwich bread.

Continue reading...

Bread came late in class

Our teacher had informed us that the curriculum for the bakery class had changed somewhat since quarter's past. Breads used to be one of the first things students learned to do. For our class we started with quick breads and proceeded to cakes. Breads don't have to be hard but they require patience. I have several family members that own bread machines, but even those are too much of a hassle for them.

These are parkerhouse rolls. They're basically dinner rolls. They are excellent. I ate about 6 of these before I even left class. They're soft and fluffy, and they're baked on semolina. When people want a small soft roll for mini sandwiches, I'd suggest these, but like I pointed out earlier, who's going to take the time to make something so good themselves?

Continue reading...

Another pie!

Another type of pie we made was lemon meringue pie. We used the same crust as the apple pie and lemon curd, like what we used with the tarts. I made a meringue but it looks like it turned out kind of runny. I tried to fluff up some spikes on top but they laid down. I got a nice toasty color on top with a small butane torch. I did not get to taste this, instead I gave it to my mom. I had too much else to eat at the time.

Continue reading...

Pie!

I should have added this sooner, since we made tarts and pies at about the same time. We made apple pies, and our teacher let us decided how we would top our pies. We could put on a whole piece of rolled pie dough and cut vents into it. We could cut dough strips and make a lattice design. Or we could do a streusel topping. A lattice would be the most attractive choice in my opinion, but I love streusel. The flavor of the pie was excellent, and the bottom crust was crisp and buttery. I think the way I sliced my apples was a little awkward, but they appeared to cook through.

Continue reading...

Baking experiment: gluten-free flours

About halfway through my baking and pastries class we had to come up with an experiment where we'd take a regular recipe and change something about it to see what the results were. One person made sorbet with Splenda instead of sugar. One person tried making cheesecake with mascarpone instead of cream cheese. I decided to take a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe and replace the AP flour with gluten-free flours. Some people in my family have some degrees of intolerance to wheat products, myself included, but usually the reaction is fairly mild. I did some research on recipes for Celiacs and how people have been experimenting with mixtures of different flours and binding agents. I believe the normal recipe called for 2 1/2 cups AP flour, so I replaced it with an equal amount of a mixture of 3 different gluten-free flours. I think I chose rice, potato, and tapioca flours. I also used xanthum gum for binding the dough together. I could have gone even further and tried to track down gluten-free baking soda or chocolate morsels or vanilla extract, but I didn't want to overburden my school's stock room manager as he tried to look for the items I needed.

The day I got to make my cookies I followed standard procedure for making creamed butter drop cookies. When it came time to add the flours I noticed right off that they were much finer than regular AP flour, and no matter what air movement occurred it would stir up the flour into a small cloud. It was a bit of a challenge trying to incorporate the flours. The appearance of the dough was of something lighter in color and even grainier than the regular cookie dough. I over baked the cookies a little. Overall the flavors were not hindered, and they tasted as good as the regular recipe cookies. The main difference was the texture was more sandy instead of soft and chewy. I did take some pictures of the cookies I made, but it was blurry and didn't show anything different apart from a normal chocolate chip cookie. I remember my teacher was interested in knowing what my results were because she was unfamiliar with gluten-free cooking, and she was glad that my results were edible.

Continue reading...

The tiny tart is happy to see you

For one day in class we made a bunch of tarts. We made various sizes of shells and filled them with custards and cremes and fruits. I made a large 9 inch tart but it didn't hold up well on my way back to my dorm. But the small ones were OK.


This is a tartlette with lemon curd and some fruit, brushed with a little apricot glaze. Something you might see in a fine bakery store front, but with better arranged fruits.

Continue reading...

Rolled up cake

This is a jelly roll made with a sheet of spongecake and raspberry preserves. I was sick for the class where we made these but my teacher let me make it up. Despite not having much supervision I did a pretty good job. If I had the time I would have made a white glaze for this. Much better than any other rolled cakes at supermarkets.

Continue reading...

Linzertorte?

Some sort of torte. All I remember is, it had lots of raspberry preserves and it got me into drinking coffee again. As long as I had this linzertorte I ate a wedge in the morning with a cup of coffee before class. I would definitely make it again if I could gather my recipes. Or something resembling it.

Continue reading...

Baking cakes

Continuing with baking and cakes, here's something that's supposed to be a black forest cake. We made devil's food cake from scratch, which turned out very moist and dense. We trimmed rounds and made a filling with dark tart cherries. I didn't care much for the filling myself. The cake was iced with some sort of whipped topping, I think we might have stabilized it with gelatin. It was iced rather awkwardly, but decorating and icing wasn't a very big issue in this class.

Continue reading...

More baking

We started doing cakes early on in class. Here's a pineapple upside down cake.


I didn't think to take a picture until after I took a sliver out of it. Despite the fact that my teacher pretty much made the sauce for the bottom of the cake it still broke. But overall I was fine with the taste of the cake. Too bad we couldn't use anymore pineapple rounds to fill out the bottom.

Continue reading...

Baking continued

I don't quite remember the exact sequence of our lessons, but I do remember early on we made plain pound cake.


Here's a slice drowned in strawberries and whipped cream, which I bought at a store to accompany my pound cake after I brought it home with me. The pound cakes took upward of an hour to finish baking, so it was one of our first challenges of time keeping. There was only one large oven we could use and we had to be careful about opening it all the time. My pound cake came out fine. There was at least one person who burned their pound cake into a brick red clump.

Continue reading...

The beginning of baking and pastry arts

Like I said, not very many pictures from my first couple of classes at school. I remember though, all the dishes I did well, those I liked, those I didn't do so well with. I had the most fun working with beef and fish. Shellfish weren't that great. Chicken was always pretty easy, although for one of my exams I accidentally undercooked my chicken. So, for my third quarter I had baking and pastry arts. We made a lot of stuff in this class. I remember always asking my non-culinary friends if they wanted anything I made but they usually declined. I'm not sure why, I was very good at baking. For our first class we made blueberry muffins.


I think my teacher would agree with me when I say I had the most attractive muffins in the class. They came out clean, with good color, and I had even forgotten to add melted butter. After putting the batter into the muffin pan I remembered and spooned a little butter into each muffin, and stirred. Other students either over-mixed their batter, added too much flour, over-mixed the berries (resulting in greenish muffins), or over-baked them. I'm happy to say I was able to strike a balance, and that day I especially learned the significance of knowing when to stop mixing batter.

Continue reading...

The earliest picture I have

I told you they wouldn't always be photogenic. This was made in my second cooking class. I called it Food Production, they called it American Cuisine. This was a plate of black bass fillets, pan seared, with rice pilaf, asparagus, and carrots.

My very first cooking class at IIAC involved fundamentals like knife cuts, simple cooking techniques, sanitation. Food Production kicked things into high gear. Our goals every day were to make up 2 or 3 plates of food that were balanced appropriately around whatever proteins we worked with. We progressed from chicken to fish to beef, pork, lamb, shellfish. Each plate had to have portions of vegetable and starch side dishes of our choosing. It was a challenge to prepare for each class and pretty much everything we did was new to me. I spent many nights awake thinking about the next class, plotting my course of action, making alternate plans in case we didn't have certain products. It forced me to think outside my comfort zone of Midwest cuisine, such as fried potatoes or plain green beans. It was a struggle, and sometimes it got the best of me, but I cooked pretty well. And I ate very well.

Continue reading...

A precursor to pictures

Despite the fact that I had my own camera to take pictures at my leisure I actually didn't take all that many pictures of my work at school. Why? It didn't always occur to me to take my camera to school. If I brought some of my work back home it wasn't very photogenic, and I'd end up eating it quickly anyway. Many of my pictures were taken during my baking and pastry class, since the things we made held up well in travel, and we made large quantities of almost everything we learned. I also enjoyed that class the most, as I have an affinity and skill for baking that most people lack. I'll post pictures in a time-line as chronologically accurate as I can figure.

Continue reading...

The journey to school

I'll begin this blog by explaining why and how I came to the decision to go to culinary school. I had been interested in making cooking my profession since high school. I took cooking classes and went to a vocational school for culinary classes during my senior year. Toward the end of my high school career a man from an art school in Chicago came in to class and cooked with us and shilled for his employer. I filled out the information card he gave me and turned it in without much thought. A couple months later after I graduated I got a call from an admissions rep from that same school. She told me all about the school and what I could achieve there and she sent me more information. I was hooked, but I couldn't afford to get to school at the time, so I put that idea aside.

About a year and a half later I was convinced to look into going to school again. But where to go? What should my major be? At that time I remembered the school in Chicago. I emailed them asking for more information. I also emailed another culinary school, just for a comparison and to see if they were any better. The first school, the Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago, called me back within a couple days. The other school, Kendall College, didn't respond to my request until 2 months later. Within a month I applied and was accepted into IIAC.

Before my journey to the expensive private school in the big city I acquired a few items I thought would be handy for the road ahead. A camera, to record visually my work, my friends, my inspirations. A jump drive, to take my pictures and documents anywhere with me, without overburdening my email in-boxes. And the strength to go out on my own, to tackle these new challenges and grow as an individual. I was painfully shy and quiet before I left home. Now, I'm still a little shy and quiet, but I know I don't have to be afraid of the world around me.

Continue reading...