Hi everyone.  It certainly has been awhile, but the time has come to direct you to my new adventure.  Since coming home in November from culinary school, Seth and I have been working on opening a bakeshop in Minneapolis.  I have made countless cupcakes, a few macaroons, and some brownies in my quest to find the perfect ratio of butter and sugar goodness.  I have found most of those ratios and recipes to call my own and to use at Sweets Bakeshop.

I am now taking orders through my website and sell at Local D’lish in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Saturdays.  Visit our website for more information.

Sweets Bakeshop

www.sweetsbakeshop.com

So…Lisa and I ventured to a few bakeries in the city…Boulangerie on filmore street and Tartine Bakery in the mission district.  The Boulangerie was amazing.  The store was so cute and their pastries were outstanding.  They had samples of their cream cheese danish out…seriously..the best danish I have ever had!  It was so buttery in flavor and crispy but still light.  Yum!  I tried their macaroons also..which I wasnt so impressed with..and brought home a palmier…which didnt have enough sugar on it..but…I guess you cant be the best in everthing:)

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Next we went to Tartine Bakery and we met up with Jen and Gaby there.  They got a lemon tart and something else that escapes my mind(must not have been that good!).  We got it to go and went to the park just up the block to enjoy.  There were SO many people there…and they were all so different.  It was great people watching…which I love!  We hung out til it started to get dark..and then went to delfina for pizza.  Their pizza was amazing!  It was crispy neopolitan style pie…with a great flavor and charcoal crust.  We were sitting outside along the sidewalk..and seriously…everyone that walked by said “this place has the best pizza in the city” as they walked by.  I ordered my own margharita pizza and took leftovers home! I definitely recommend visiting brite market just up the block from the park and next to delfina.  They are a local, family owned market specializing in local products.  They also opened an ice cream shop across the street that had the best salted caramel ice cream I have ever had!

So…the last class was all about gelatin…well mousse cakes.  They are actually pretty tasty and refreshing cakes, but not my favorite thing.  We also worked with ice cream cakes…which everyone loves!

This was our first cake.  It is made of coffee flavored cake, hazelnut mousse, coffee bavarian…and a few other textures and flavors.  I decorated it with a bit of chocolate decor….going for the circle theme:)

Next we made a pina colada cake…with pineapple cake, pina colada creme brulee, and coconut mousse.  The mousse recipe we were given was not so good…so we ended up with a not so beautiful cake.  Our last cake was an ice cream bomb with three layers…starting with a Calvados parfait with pieces of ginger cake, a spiced apple sorbet, and finally caramel ice cream.  It was pretty delicious!

And finally….we ended the class with a contemporary cake with 5 different textures and 3 different flavors.  I went with a snowflake and hot cocoa theme.  My inspiration started with creating a depression of a snowflake on top that would be filled with ganache.  This idea was a bit difficult and venturing into foreign territory….as I had to figure out how to create the depression and get the bavarian to release from the board it was on.  All in all…I was pretty happy with my cake.  I had a layer of spiced cognac bavarian with chocolate cake and a crispy florentine cookie then a layer of vanilla marshmallows suspended in  chocolate mousse.  The sides were finished with chocolate decor.

In our last class, we had a day dedicated to cheese.  We each chose a cheese and gave a presentation to the class about it, then we tasted them.  We tasted 22 cheeses in all….wow!  It was quite a day.  I have tried many of them, as I worked at the cheese counter at Dean and Deluca when I first got here, but it was a nice revisit.  I chose the Nordhollander, a Dutch aged gouda.  I discovered it while working at Dean and Duluca.  It has a rich butterscotch flavor and a somewhat crunchy texture due to the crystallized proteins.  I highly recommend it.

I found this picture from last week and thought I should post it.  On this day we were assigned different countries and had to create a dessert based on common ingredients from that country.  Our country was Thailand so we used ginger, sesame seeds, tofu, coconut and soy sauce.  Yes, I know, sounds like a crazy combination…it was, but they were all subtle enough that they worked.  We made a ginger infused pannacotta on a ginger cookie crust and mini coconut milk infused tofu pieces coated in coconut and sesame seeds then pan seared.  In the center is a soy sauce gelee to round out the dish.

Lemon grass, Pineapple, and Buttermilk…oh my.

These were our three ingredients to base our dessert on.  We had fun with it and made an upside down pineapple buttermilk cake paired with a lemon grass granita with lemongrass infused pineapple.  We plated with the inspiration of a beach scene in mind.  The cake was pretty delicious…it had a good flavor and was incredibly moist.  The sugar that we used with the pineapples gave the cake an extra delicious flavor.  I have been experimenting with white cake recipes and think I finally found one that I like.

It was one of the girls birthdays today, so after class we went to the dorm and surprised her with a princess pinata and cake…yes I said pinata!  It was quite hilarious as we watcher her beat it open all by herself.

Tomorrow we are having a class dedicated to all things cheese.  We each choose a kind of cheese and have to give a brief presentation about it.  We are also each making various accompaniments for our cheese such as cherry and walnut bread or semolina breadsticks…then we will sit down and taste about 20 kinds of cheese.  It should be interesting.  Til then…

These past few weeks have been packed…I recently finished up an intense plated desserts class, returned from a trip home, and now am in the second week of an easy contemporary cakes and desserts class.  We went through the frozen desserts such as ice cream, sorbet, semifreddo, and sherbet, which Seth and I played around with when I was home making pumpkin an vanilla ice cream.  For the first plated desserts class we made two plated desserts everyday and served them to those enjoying dinner.  This seems like an easy task, but each dessert generally consisted of two or three components that we were trying for the first time.  We finished the class out with a restaurant that we created a 5 course dessert menu based on an assigned theme.  Chef invited four guests and we(I was on a team of 2) were able to invite 1 guest each.  My partners parents were in town from NY, so she filled both spots.  Our theme was California Luxury Inn, so we could basically do anything we wanted.  It was a lot of fun to develop our menu, though time constraints didn’t allow us to test everything out before the opening night, so we had a few stumbles along the way.  Below is our menu:

It was so much fun and we learned a lot.  Unfortunately, the day of service, I didn’t really have time to think about taking pictures of our dishes, so I only got a few.  These pictures are of the Bourbon Cream and Caramelized Banana dish.

Just after class, I sped to the airport with Julie and Chris to get on a plane to MN(they were going to PA and we carpooled to the airport).  It was so great to be home again, especially since I hadn’t seen Seth since our anniversary in mid August.  We had a great time…did a few business things, baked a bit and cooked dinner together on Friday.  Saturday we ran the TC Marathon 5K then went to Golden Fig in St. Paul.  I absolutely love that store.  It is owned by a woman that sells her own items such as spice blends and oils and also sells other local, small merchants items.  Everything is local and delicious there.  Then for dinner we went to Craftsman Restaurant with friends.  The food was okay…I think the highlight of my meal was the pork rillettes appetizer and bourbon old fashion drink.

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Sunday we met up with the Steinbach family to celebrate October birthdays.  It was good to see everyone..especially the little one who is growing so fast:)

Now, I am back in Napa and just finished the first week of Contemporary cakes and plated desserts.  This is a big change of pace from our last class.  We serve only one dessert at dinner and have been given a lot of freedom and free time to experiment.

This weekend, I went on a trip to a few bakeries in the area for cupcake sampling.  It was fun and we found some amazing cupcakes and one not so amazing cupcake.  Sift, a Cupcakery in Cotati, CA had the amazing cupcakes.  The cake was moist and delicious with a large variety of flavors.  They opened earlier this year..a husband and wife team…sounds familiar:)  We were there later in the afternoon on Sunday and there was a steady stream of customers the entire time we were there. Lisa and I also attempted to visit Muir woods, but the windy roads and fading sunlight, only allowed us to get half way to the bottom.  We stopped along the road for a quick look.  The air smelled like pine and the view was pretty amazing.

So…off to class.  It is market basket today…we are given a basket of three ingredients and need to create a plated dessert based on those items.

As stated before, we finished this class up with a three tier wedding cake.  We worked as a team with Gaby finishing up the gum paste flowers that we worked on the night before for the top and with me covering the “cake” with fondant and adding the texture and ribbon.  We used foam, instead of cake, as we have cakes coming out of our ears from our work this past few weeks.  It was easier, since we didn’t have to worry about filling and coating the cake and could therefore focus on the decorations.

I also wanted to thank everyone who has followed and supported me throughout this journey.  It has been fun to get your comments and feedback.  Nine more weeks and I will be back in good ole’ Minnesota.  I can’t wait!  But I am also looking forward to learning and experience so much more while I am here.  Have a good weekend everyone!  Cheers.

Today I finished my first carved, fondant covered cake…a gigantic strawberry and little ladybug.  The strawberry is white cake soaked with strawberry syrup with layers of strawberry buttercream enrobbed in fondant.  The bottom layer is chocolate cake with a layer of fudge frosting and strawberry buttercream also enrobbed in fondant.  They tasted pretty delicious once you pulled off the very sweet fondant.  Though I would have liked it to have a more crisp look, I learned a lot by working with the fondant for the first time.

I thought I would also share the cake of one of my classmates…the heat was not friendly to the woman jumping out of the cake..but…it is still pretty…cute:)

Tomorrow we finish this class with a three tier wedding cake and written final.  We are keeping our cake pretty simple and elegant with minimal decorations and some textured fondant.

Cakes have always been one of my favorite things to bake.  I love the creativity that you can impose on a simple cake to make it whimsical.  Below are the cakes that I worked on last week.  Today we made a two tier wedding cake for our practical/test.  It was so much fun to make! We had a few requirements such as the topper that was made out of pastillage and royal icing, the modeled roses(made from marzipan), and piped borders.  Though there are things I would do differently, I am happy with the final product.

We worked with marzipan for the first time on this cake.  Which is very easy to use…it is almost like working with play dough.

The next two cakes are from working with chocolate flood-work.  Not my favorite application for cake decor, but at least I got the experience of working with it. The football cake I made especially for my nephew who just started his football season.  Good luck D-man!

And thats all the pictures for now.  This week we are starting advanced cake decor using such things as rolled fondant.  This should be a lot of fun…I going to make my first carved cake on Wednesday.