Grand Salon

Obviously I'm ridiculously late with this post, but October 2014, I finished up school with my Grand Salon. My table showcased what I learned throughout my time at school.
The theme I chose was nautical because I love the beach, boats, and what anchors represent.

After my Grande Salon, I started my externship at NC State. It was quite a challenging but amazing experience. I learned a great deal during my three month externship and was offered a full time position at the end of it.

So as of now, I'm working at NC State and truly enjoying my time there. I learn something new everyday and have a great time baking and working with everyone.

I definitely can't wait to see where this road takes me and to continue down this amazing path!

More pictures of my Grand Salon:

Opera Torte

Wedding Cake

Opera Torte

Italian Rainbow Cookies

Lemon Shooters

Mini Pistachio Cupcakes

Cream Puffs with Orange/Vanilla Pastry Cream!

Sugar is HORRIBLE!

Sugar showpieces....
I came into this section of the term knowing that this was going to be the most difficult. It was going to be hot (not to mention, we were doing this term in the middle of July...SO HOT), it was going to be crazy, and it was going to SUCK!

Sugar isn't easy. Sugar is hard. But it was an amazing experience. I've never worked with sugar in the ways that we worked with it. I've never blown sugar (SO COOL), I've never pulled sugar. I've never made sugar flowers and sugar bows! It's such an amazing technique to be able to use. Sugar items can be used on cakes, which is such an awesome addition (and expensive too).

The most difficult aspect of this section was watching our sugar pieces melt, no matter how well we packaged them up. It was incredibly humid and incredibly hot and it was a royal mess sometimes! But I accomplished something that I never thought I would be able to accomplish!

Final Sugar Showpiece!

Practice Showpiece

w/ Blown element

The BEST part about sugar ... is when we were done with it. I know I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief to know I was DONE with sweating like crazy over a hot stove waiting for my sugar is come to the proper temperature.

I've officially entered my last term of school! Our final term ends with a HUGE showcase of all of our hard work from beginning to end. Each of us, (8 in all) will have a table full of desserts that we will showcase to friends, family, and potential employers. It's going to be A LOT of hard work, but it's also going to be quite an amazing experience! 

Stay tuned!

-B

Marzipan and Nougatine!

Oh man, this practical was my absolute favorite. I picked a great theme and ran with it. I truly enjoyed making marzipan vegetables and a nougatine vegetable stand!

 

I made peas, tomatoes, cabbage, and carrots! 

Goodness they're incredibly adorable (if veggies can be considered adorable)!!!

Onto SUGAR!!!! (ugh)

-B

Chocolate Showpiece

I love boats.
I love anchors.
I love the ocean.
I love nautical everything.
Therefore, when it came time to do my chocolate showpiece, I chose to do a sailboat. I was definitely not a huge fan of chocolate this term, however, my chocolate sailboat was probably my favorite piece!

 

Chocolate boat!!! I really liked my waves, they were my favorite part of the boat! As much as I enjoyed doing this boat, I definitely don't want to have to do it again!


Cocoa painting!
Apparently you can mix cocoa powder and vodka and make beautiful cocoa paintings. Now let me tell you, I can't paint. AT.ALL. I'm such a bad painter. I would much rather bake or decorate cakes than paint pictures. But, alas, I made bamboo for my cocoa painting:

It didn't come out too bad considering I'm a sucky painter. It worked for me though! :)

At this point in term, we were finished with chocolate and we moved onto Nougatine, Marzipan, and sugar showpieces!

Stay Tuned: More to come!

Chocolate Box

Goodness gracious, its been quite a while. But on my last post I promised a chocolate box, so here's my chocolate box! Inside, there are a few chocolate goodies!

box of chocolate! 

Dark chocolate candies

Inside of my chocolate box

Next up: Chocolate Showpiece

Chocolate

Hello!

As a child, I loved chocolate. After being in school, I've grown to dislike chocolate...immensely. Well this term, my 5th term, is ALL about chocolate (and sugar). Our first week started with learning how to temper chocolate, which was completely new to me! I've never really understood why chocolate is tempered and how to do it, but once I learned, it makes a lot of sense and it's incredibly easy to do!

The first week, we made chocolate covered strawberries and little tuxedo strawberries that were absolutely adorable.

SO PRECIOUS! These are great as party favors at weddings or as dessert at weddings!! They are so much fun to make.

As the term progresses, we are going to be making a chocolate box, a chocolate showpiece that has to be at least 12 inches tall. We have to make pastillage showpiece, a cocoa painting, sugar showpieces, and marzipan fruit! 

It's definitely going to be a very long and very stressful 10 weeks!!!  But I'm excited to learn new tricks and ideas that can for sure be incorporated into desserts and cakes! 

Next up: Chocolate Box! 

Umi-Zoomi Cake

Hello all,

I recently did a Team Umi-Zoomi birthday cake for someone's daughter.

This was an interesting cake for me because I had never really worked with fondant before, so this was a first (well besides my ACF cake) but this was FOR someone who was PAYING me. 

I made marshmallow fondant because of the taste and because it is way easier to make than regular fondant! 

I started with making the characters, Milli, Bot, and Geo. They ended up coming out pretty accurately. And I realized that the green guy (without eyes and a mouth) could be made into a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, which I thought was awesome for future reference. 

Once I had my little people made, I continued on with decorating the cake: 

For this, I added a ruler across the bottom of the cake, as a border, and I added shapes to the sides to give the cake some texture and visual interest (and because Umi-Zoomi is all about shapes).

The shapes and the ruler came out WAY better than I could have imagined. I was beyond excited with how they turned out. So then, I moved on to the top of the cake: 

I added Milli, Bot, and Geo to the top of the cake and then had to write Happy Birthday Sophia on it..like so:

I was definitely quite proud of how this cake turned out. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed being able to make a cake that made a little girl's birthday that much more special! 

-B