almond irish coffee bites and job training

this past week i've been training for work, and it's just been busy busy busy lately. it's hard to imagine how busy and rushed we'll all be once the restaurant actually opens! there are quite a few things i learned from training, though. for one thing, a lot of times prep cook = slave. okay, maybe that was a slight over exaggeration. but you know how slaves do the same menial tasks over and over again? that's kinda what i was hinting at. okay, maybe it's not really AS BAD as slavery, because we get two days off a week, we don't get physically harmed or anything, and at some point we'll start getting paid for doing this! so i take that last statement back, because i like money! and i also enjoy not wasting away at home all day hahaha.

so let's move on. another thing i learned from training: always, ALWAYS wash the vegetables! ESPECIALLY if it's organic! no joke, dude. because some of the things i saw in there are just NOT pretty.

one more thing i learned: quality over quantity (or at least while it's still training time)! i learned this after making tray after tray of shitty-looking ravioli. i don't know why the HELL i thought i had to rush, it's not like they told me to make a certain amount or anything. once i finally slowed down and put more care into each ravioli, they actually started to look pretty decent :)

anyway, onto this week's dessert! it was actually a result of two ruined sheet pans of biscuit jaconde (siiighhh). basically they just decided that they did not want to separate from the paper, so after scraping piece after piece of the cake off and deciding i didn't want to waste any of it, i crumbled it all and combined it with some irish coffee buttercream that i whipped up, compressed them into a large square, and cut them into cubes. it's basically the same principal behind cake balls, but i just got tired of making them round.

i know i know, they look like rice krispy squares. well they're not, so cut it out!!

my original plan was to dip them in white chocolate ganache so that you couldn't see the sides and then just decorate the top. well, as you can see here, that didn't work, as my ganache turned out to be too runny. well, EFF YOU, white chocolate. why do you always have to eff things up for me?!! pfft. what i ended up doing was just brushing the tops with some thick, glossy dark chocolate sauce that i had left over, which was also thick enough to pipe a little design on top too. see that, white chocolate? dark chocolate will ALWAYS be better than you. don't even think you're better, you supremacist jerk!


things i learned from this experiment:
1. i officially HATE white chocolate. YOU'RE NOT EVEN REAL CHOCOLATE! what percentage of cacao do you have? that's right, zero! get out of here, FAKER!!
2. apparently coffee and chocolate are a winning combination for my dad, who seemed to enjoy these more than some of my other experiments...
3. i found an egg with 2 yolks in it! okay, maybe i didn't learn anything from that, but it's still cool in my book! they're like twins!!! :D

mango charlotte royale and the HOTTEST DAY EVARRR

today was a fun (although HOT) summer day and night; the friends and i had a picnic at the Fullerton Arboretum (free!), we went around Brea mall where i bought some white tshirts for work and some black sandals which i was in DIRE need of because my last pair broke, then we explored and took pictures around IKEA, and ended the day by playing in the park in the dark and cooling off in the grass. all in all, one of the funnest days i've had this summer :) it was a good end to my so-called "break" because next monday i start job training! WOOT!! i'm excited and nervous and just anxious all over about this. hopefully it won't be too bad!

lately the weather has not been kind, staying among the 100's (my car said it was 108 degrees today -___-) and i heard that tomorrow won't be any cooler. and AND lately there has been flash flood warnings around the LA county area...? so i really don't know wtf is UP with alla that nonsense. SOO, because it was so hot, i decided it would be nice to have a fruity chilled dessert to have on hand. i present to you: the Mango Charlotte Royale. yes yes yes, i know the last post i promised a layered jaconde cake, but that dream was swiftly taken away when i realized that i was ONE OUNCE short of the amount of almonds i needed :/

it's mango bavarois lined with genoise mousseline, garnished with mango slices, strawberries, and chocolate. originally i was going to make a little chocolate fence around it just to cover up the sides, but apparently it was so hot that after the chocolate set up in the fridge, it would immediately melt once i took it out. siighhh. anyway, it was the perfect little pick-me-up for this afternoon: cool, smooth, creamy, and deliciously fruity, with just the right amount of subtle sweetness :p

soooo... things that i learned from making this dessert:

1. i need aluminum cake rings! i didn't have any on hand, and so instead i used ramekins lined with saran wrap (which explains all the ridges along the top). "well why didn't you just cut up some cans and use those instead like Alton Brown did?" you ask. well i already tried that, and to tell you the truth, i'm just scared of cutting my hand. so i mean, which would you rather have, a ridged-y sided dessert, or no dessert at all because it was covered in blood? i rest my case.

2. sometimes it's just too hot for chocolate :( unless you want it super melty-like. then it's alright.

3. according to my baking book, the name "Charlotte Russe" is actually the name of a dessert! who knew? it's just another version of the charlotte, just like the Charlotte Royale. it makes me feel slightly better knowing this, so that i won't always have to associate it with just a cheap clothing store :)

4. fruit Bavarian Cream (or Bavarois) is RIDICULOUSLY easy to make :)

strawberry and white chocolate cake and a breezy summer week

i've decided to take full advantage of summer and this week was basically all about sleeping in, hanging out with friends, and pretty much doing whatever i want :) i also came up with what kind of design i wanted for this cake that's been sitting in my freezer (although that didn't really turn out the way i planned... still pretty, though!)

vanilla cake filled with strawberry whipped cream, topped with strawberry slices and surrounded by white chocolate shards. this was basically my attempt to utilize whatever i had in the pantry and the fridge (i just saw an episode of Chopped last night, and i was thinking i should be a little more inspired by what i already have on hand!)

things i learned from decorating this cake: white chocolate doesn't melt the same way regular chocolate does... actually, i already knew this, but THIS time it was being a total bitch. WHATEVER, white chocolate. i OWN you. nomnomnom.

also, making the chocolate shards requires a lot of measuring with a ruler, so make sure when you measure that you can actually SEE the marks you made! sighh. grey pencil mark + grey sheet pan = invisible marks! who knew?

since i'm getting a little bored with circle cakes, next time i plan on making a layered jaconde. wish me luck! :)

4th of july feats and flops!

happy (late) Independence Day! my independence night was spent at a party at my uncle's house, and i had my first go at making american bbq beef (feat!) and i attempted to make mini chocolate pound cakes (flop). the beef was SOOOO goood and i actually got to cut a good amount of hours cooking it by just using the pressure cooker instead of the slow cooker or oven. the chocolate pound cake on the other hand, well, just keep reading.

looks pretty, right? yeah NO. i thought they looked good when they came out of the oven too.

a cross section... it turned out to be really dense, but REALLY dry. also, the recipe i used was SO deceiving! the picture they provided made it look like it was really dark and moist and chocolatey, but i KNEW that it could never get that way without any actual chocolate!! (the recipe only uses cocoa powder).

another problem i came along while i was mixing it: I RAN OUT OF SUGAR. WTF. so not only was it dry, it was barely sweet. siighh. i thought i could make up for the lack of granulated sugar in the batter by just mixing in some powdered sugar and then topping it with powdered sugar later, but that just made it only somewhat bearable. oh well. i brought it to the party anyway, and the kids seemed to like it! so at least i didn't have to bring a full pan of that back home :)

so, just to recap: no sugar in the house. this means, no baking until i go grocery shopping on wednesday :( hopefully the next thing i bake won't make me so miserable!

black and white cake balls, a.k.a. what to do with leftovers

since the bombes i made only used a little cake for the bases, i was left with a whole sheet pan of leftover chocolate cake with no clue as to what to do with it. sure, i could have just eaten it plain, but what kind of aspiring pastry chef would i be if i did that? no, they must be dressed, and they MUST be gorgeous.

so i remembered what we did for Honors Night when we had excess devil's food cake: Bakerella's cake pops, except i didn't really have the time (or money) to go out and buy lollipop sticks to make pops so i opted for the cheaper version and just made cake balls... besides, this way they look prettier, and a lot like chocolate truffles :)

i used just plain semisweet and white chocolate to coat the cake, and i took the leftover almond praline i had, crushed it, and topped half of the cake balls with it.

i remember one time when i was in middle school, i went out with my friend and her family to a chocolate shop that they frequented and they had something that was exactly like this, except their version was freakin' gigantic, almost the size of my fist! it's good to know that i can replicate a bite-sized version of such chocolatey goodness :p

mint ice cream bombe with almond praline and a gluttonous (but good) father's day

today was father's day, and my sister and i had to wake up early (and by early i mean 7:30 hahaha) and help my dad start building the storage shed in the backyard. when it got too hot to continue, we all went out to Grand Buffet for a late lunch and endless amounts of crab legs and sushi :p

after a GLORIOUS food coma and then after church, we decided that we were all still too full to eat dinner after that buffet, but we still wanted to eat the dessert i prepared last night:

mint ice cream bombe with almond praline and a chocolate cake base :)

just making the ice cream was almost a full-day procedure on it's own, because for SOME reason, every time i want to make ice cream the freezer seems to poop out :( BUT once all that nonsense was over with, it wasn't too bad. i used up a lot of the mint leaves growing in ze garden because that's the only herb i have there that seems to be growing out of control...

a cross section so you can see the chocolate cake base. i guess the ice cream was a little too runny when i put in the cake in so it kind of soaked in, but it didn't have an effect on the taste so at this point i don't mind it hahaha.

i like the fact that it didn't turn into a freakishly green color, but instead had a creamy yellow-green hue (even though in these pics it kinda looks like a block of butter but ANYWAYS) i think it looks slightly more elegant this way :)

moist cherry brownies and bonfires

yesterday we celebrated my cousin's 20th birthday party at Corona Del Mar beach, and since she decided to hire someone to bake cupcakes for her (-___-), i decided i still wanted to bake a little something just to contribute. what was funny was that people were telling me how great the cupcakes were that they thought i baked haha.

anyway, onto the brownies! *drool* they were sooo gooey and chocolatey. also, instead of using dried cherries like the recipe suggested, i bought some fresh cherries and used those instead, because i wanted them to help make the brownies extra moist :) and and and i pitted each individual cherry BY HAND, because THAT is how i like to include the looove that was needed in baking this! :)

soooo good :p it's kinda hard to see the cherries in here cuz they were so dark, but i didn't care because you could TASTE them :D also, apologies for the terrible lighting in these pics, but i finished baking them around 11:30 the night before, so you can imagine how late it was when they actually cooled down so i could cut them and take the pics. if you can't tell, that's supposed to be a fresh cherry in front of the brownies, but you can see how dark those cherries were...

right out of the oven. the only problem i had with this recipe is that it didn't specify how big of a pan was needed, and it said that it only makes 12-15 brownies. all i have to say to that is GOOD LORD how big do you cut your brownies, woman? i would say i got AT LEAST 24 fairly-sized portions out of there (and when i say "fairly-sized," i mean HUGE).


the bonfire! my god we had to work hard to get to this point. and i'm not just talking about making the actual fire, but some people actually came there at 4 pm saying it was their bonfire pit, and the arguing and raising of voices ensued. i swear, this happens every time i go to the beach! apparently people are really defensive about their fires...

dark chocolate raspberry and marzipan truffles

the first half of yesterday was spent trapped in the house, as construction workers were fixing the asphalt outside my house. the SECOND half was spent exploring the West Covina Mall and looking for work. by the time i was done i had applied to 7 different places, both in food and retail. hopefully this will result in a callback! i didn't even really finish going around the mall, as i realized there were a bunch of restaurants in the surrounding area that i didn't visit.

today i used this morning to continue my workout plan, which basically just reminded me that i can't do a proper push-up -___- siiigghh. i hope that by the end of the 6 weeks, i'll at least be able to do that! after taking a shower and eating a late and somewhat healthy lunch, i began to work on these babies, which tasted soooo decadent. :p what? i can't eat desserts when i'm trying to work out? WELL EFF THAT. don't bring your negativity in here!

dark chocolate truffles with fresh marzipan-stuffed raspberries. yummm.

right after i decorated them. i love making truffles because they are so surprisingly easy to make and very easy to make them look pretty :)

cross-sectional of one truffle. it's basically a raspberry stuffed with marzipan and double dipped in dark chocolate ganache, then decorated with that same ganache. easy, right? and so so so cute :D

tomorrow i plan on going back to the mall and going around to other places i didn't visit, and maybe bake something as well...

chocolate chunk blackberry sour cream ice cream: flop of the week

it seemed like a good idea when i saw it! i saw a recipe for blackberry sour cream ice cream, and seeing as how i had blackberries AND sour cream i thought "what the hell, why not." probably bad judgment on my part because

a. blackberries are sour
b. sour cream is SOUR

PROBABLY should have opted for the custard with eggs in the recipe, but at the moment we didn't have any eggs in the fridge (but just as fate would have it, yesterday my mom bought 5 DOZEN eggs, LORD KNOWS WHY, and now i have no idea what to do with them -___-)

at least it looks good right? the color looks really good too. i garnished it with some fresh blackberries and mint leaves, and also one of the tuile cookies we made in class on ice cream day. it tastes like a waffle cone! :D

blackberries simmering away... one thing i should have done after blending all this stuff is strain it, but alas, our fine mesh strainer is about the size of my fist (probably meant for tea leaves) and also i was feeling lazy that night.

the mixture before i put it in the freezer...

a close-up of it all. since it was so sour, i served it after the BBQ today and pitched it as "blackberry frozen yogurt" since it tasted more like yogurt than ice cream :/ one thing i DID like was deciding to put chocolate chunks in it, even though some of the chunks were honkin' HUGE and some were really small. but still good! chocolate never seems to fail me :)

blackberry ganache tartlets, almond biscotti, and reasons i don't study for finals

last week was elaine's birthday, and as part of her gift i wanted to bake her something, as per tradition. last year it was a strawberry tartlet, and this year it's chocolate galore! eee! the other part of her gift was a very embarrassing picture of us at prom that i had blown up and printed to almost poster size, and i would show that here too if i didn't find it so ridiculously horrifying haha (in retrospect i probably should have had someone else do my makeup for prom -____-)

but ANYWAY, here it is: almond biscotti that i brushed with chocolate and mini blackberry ganache tartlets. sooooo good :p
gettin' nice & golden in the oven. before i put chocolate on it my brother said he thought it was garlic bread -__- i GUESS i could understand that assumption just based on the pictures, but did it SMELL like garlic? huh?!
after i brushed them with chocolate :)
i guess it's berry season? i went to HMart this weekend to buy some bulgogi for my mom (which is RIDONKULOUSLY good btw) and guess what? 6 oz packages of blackberries there were 2 for $1!!! my first thought when i saw this was "WTF? WWHAT IIS THIS?!!!" mainly because Fresh & Easy was selling the same amount for $4, which at the time, i thought was a good deal. WTF kind of shieet are you trying to pull, Fresh & Easy?! also, raspberries! how i long for you so! HMart was selling 12 oz for $1.79!! Stater Bros. sells the same amount for $8!! so since i obviously stumbled upon a treasure chest of some sort, i grabbed as much as i could get, and now my refrigerator is chock-full of berries. "but what are you going to do with said berries, elaine?" WELL, i plan on making something delicious. that's what.

as for school, right now i'm kinda crawling along finals week. i had a 3 hour period between my classes today so i could study for my Anthro final, but i just COULDN'T do it. i really tried. basically i opened up my Nonverbal Behavior book and immediately fell asleep. i tried this twice, and fell asleep twice. it's boring; go figure. this morning i took my menu planning final (which i only somewhat regret not really studying for haha) and i have my Baking 2 final tomorrow, which i don't really need to study too much for since it's open note/open book; i figure since i did pretty well on the previous tests and quizzes that it shouldn't be too bad this time since i have the notes right in front of me.

finals always seems to come along when i feel totally drained and sooo so so much over it, whatever "it" is. i've noticed that every semester is pretty much like that. so i'll study at the beginning and throughout the semester, but once it's coming to an end i pretty much just lose interest. sighh. maybe someday i'll find a lecture class that can keep me attentive throughout the entire semester. but until then, i probably won't ever do anything more than cram sessions for finals :p

raiding the library and an update on moving

on saturday my sister and i went to the Walnut library for the first time in FOREVER, and they had a bunch of books out in the front for their april book sale. guess what my new source for cookbooks is? $1 a book? hell yes. as i didn't have any cash on me at the time, my sis agreed to get me one book and after looking through every single page and picture, i finally decided today on what i wanted to make first.

flourless chocolate cake :p

a close-up of the magnificently rich and chocolatey goodness, dusted with cocoa powder and topped with caramelized sugar. when we ate it, the inside was still warm and gooey, just as god intended chocolate cakes to be :p

all six cakes, with random sugar designs. i baked them in little ramekins this time instead of the regular 8" pan the recipe asked for, not only because i thought they would look cuter, but also because i can't seem to find my cake pan... this seems to be one of the disadvantages of moving and packing things: i can never find what i need when i need it :/

oh well. smaller things look cuter anyway :)

i'm so glad we just happened to have all the ingredients for this. plus, it totally made up for my partial disaster when i tried to make Lengua yesterday (must find grandma's recipe!)

as for how things are going with the moving: we found a place! yay! it's further from my school! WHAT? dammit. yeah, that's kinda how things have been going lately. i wasn't really fussing with my parents about the whole moving thing in the first place, and all i really asked for was a place that was somewhat closer to my school. so of course, the opposite ended up happening, and now i have 10 miles added on to my 28 mile commute -___- at least my parents seem to be confident in the new house, and they said it was better than the one we live in now (it's in north west covina).

so far i haven't actually seen the place (i've only seen pictures), but i've been trying to look on the brighter side of the whole situation (like how i'll finally have my own room again teehehee). plus, i guess i shouldn't be complaining too much about the distance. i know a girl who goes to my school once a week and lives in Riverside, and last semester i met a guy who goes there and lives in Chino. so i mean, it could be worse.

for now, i just want this all to be over with. we'll start actually moving our stuff in the new place on the 23rd, and my school semester is over at the end of may. it was raining this morning, and now i just want it to be summer already :)

movin' on up + spring break

saturday was my cousin's going away party, and we pretty much spent the whole day just cooking and preparing for it. she's going to teach english in japan for a whole year! i'm just thinking about how weird it will be to go and do all that and then return back to cali; whether things will be the same as before and you'll feel at home again, or whether in the span of one year things end up changing dramatically. we all seem to be at a point in our lives right now where it's hard to maintain a level of comfort because of the lack of stability with all these things. but that's life i guess; change is inevitable, and in the long run all we can hope for is that it will be for the better.

but ANYWAY, i spent thursday and friday making a cake for her goodbye party, even though they ended up eating it the next morning (i would rather they eat it sober than drunk anyway haha).

an aerial view of the cake. it says "sayonara stacey" in japanese. it's layers of vanilla sponge cake and a raspberry/strawberry mousse, all covered in chocolate ganache and then dusted with powdered sugar :) i wish i had a better picture of it, but oh wells. pictures never do my work justice!

i made a little diagram of the cross section of the cake to show the layers, just so you can see all my hard work haha. yay for free imitation photoshop!

anyway, i didn't actually get to eat the cake, but i was snacking on the scraps while i was making it haha. it didn't disappoint! (or that's what i thought at least).

as for my family moving, we still haven't found a place yet! what?! yeah. we've visited quite a few homes, and all the ones that seem like a good deal always have some sort of catch. we have even less time now that someone bought our house last week. they have a couple days left to back out of the offer, but that still doesn't give us much time. sighhh. i wish all this stuff wasn't such a big hassle! all i can say is, thank god for spring break. the first thing i did today was sleep in. it wasn't as delicious a sleep as i was hoping (my sis ended up waking me up early because she had school and she was getting ready) but at this point, just being able to stay in bed beyond 8 is still pretty awesome. i've already made a couple of plans for the coming days, and so far spring break seems fairly promising :)

one to be trifled with

today my dad took us to see the house they were considering getting in pomona, and geebuz that place was GHE-TTO. and not even ghettofabulous. just straight-up pitbulls in every yard, with an old tire place right behind it. people also seemed to get the impression that they could dump their stuff there, so in the back of the house there were piles of junk, including some old lumber and a baby carriage! really? the place wasn't even done being built. how can we expect to move there soon if they're not even done building it?! sighhhh.... here's hoping we move somewhere that i actually feel safe.

on a slightly less frustrating note, my baking midterm is this wednesday, and we'll have to make buttercream icing, dark chocolate mousse, lemon bouches, and write "happy birthday" in chocolate (and hopefully that's it). so in preparation for that, i practiced writing with chocolate today (even though for some reason it seemed that the more i practiced the worse it got) and then later used that chocolate to make the mousse.

since i had all this chocolate mousse, plus a vanilla cake from class that i kept in the freezer, plus a bunch of berries that i had to use for fear of them getting bad before i could, i made a faux-berry trifle (did you like my little pun in the title of this post? haha).

raspberries on top, a.k.a. the fruit that never fails to make my desserts look elegant (even though they really aren't haha)
really need to work on my layers, especially since i've never made a trifle before (who knew it would be so hard?). layers, from bottom to top: chocolate mousse, vanilla cake, mousse, strawberries, cake, mousse, raspberries.
note to self: don't put mousse in the fridge if you plan on working with it later! it stiffened up in the fridge because of the chocolate and was too hard to spread a smooth layer of it, hence the oddness of the layering here. also, apparently i forgot to soak the cake in syrup/coffee/whatever, so that part was a little dry. at this point, i don't care! it tasted bomb, and i wish i could eat more of it without feeling ashamed of myself.

on another note, this whole thing with me trying to lose weight is not really working out :( since we basically had to clear everything out of our house, that also meant that we had to take out all the exercise equipment, AND the weighing scale. and even with that gone, i can LITERALLY FEEL MYSELF GAINING WEIGHT. definitely not a good sign. dammit. why is food so tempting? why am i so weak?!! i need to work about a million times harder now at the rate i'm going.