The End is Near: Cakes and Double Dipping

you know you want me to make you one

Today really should have been a better day.  We didn't bake, so there was no scaling ingredients or lengthy lecture.  All we had to do was decorate our cakes.  I don't know why I was such a stress ball about this particular adventure, but I was.  I'm telling you - there is something wonky going on with the planets or the moon or maybe I just need another cocktail.  Who knows.  Either way, everyone has been in a funk this week.  I can't cut straight layers for a cake to save my life.  Seriously, did I fail cutting in kindergarten or something?  Needless to say, I was nervous about this whole thing.  Sure enough, my cake had extremely uneven layers.  I survived the cutting only to find out that the giant million pound bucket of ganache I made yesterday for my partner and I had too much chocolate in it.  Now, I know you are thinking, too much chocolate?  How can that possibly be a bad thing?  Let me tell you - ganache with too much chocolate is basically just chocolate - hard chocolate.  This is perfectly acceptable for eating, making truffles, whatever.  Not so much for spreading.  I don't know what happened when I was scaling the 5 pounds of chocolate yesterday, but it was too much and our ganache was ruined and unusable.  I actually had to throw it all in the trash.  So, I was feeling like a giant, nervous stress ball and a failure.  Fortunately, we had plenty of ganache in the class, especially because 2 people didn't show up for class - again.  Anyway - the whole layering the cake and spreading a crumb coat wasn't so bad except Chef kept yelling at us to stop being OCD and just leave the cake alone.  After that we glazed the cake with warm and melty ganache.  That part was actually kind of fun.  Then we had to write on the cakes.  I hate writing on cakes.  I have really nice handwriting that DOES NOT translate into beautiful writing in ganache on cakes.  We also made a border that looked suspiciously like something you might find on a bachelorette cake....
I was not at all happy with my writing, but chef said it was fine and that you can read my letters, which is important.  She also said we did this to learn the technique AND so that we could look back one day and realize how far we've come.  I think she's right.

I didn't have faith in my layers and even though they actually turned out pretty good, chef frowned for the picture.  The cake did taste delicious, so that's a good thing.  It was the orange chocolate chiffon cake from the other day, yesterday?  I can't remember that far back.  Nice.  P, the boy and KG (previously know as my organized friend) had very nice letters.  I was a little jealous, so I'm sure I will be practicing and practicing.

We also received our ServSafe certificates today.  That is the 3 out of 11 of us that passed did.  One person took it 2 years ago and already has a certificate.  My friend KG and I were SHOCKED that only 3 of us passed.  Not expecting that.  We got a certificate, which I promptly framed and put on the wall and will get a food manager's card in the next few weeks.  Awesome.  Everyone else will take a class and a quiz for a food handlers card, but we are managers.  Yay us.

I also need to add a little blurb about double dipping in honor of my friend KG and P, the boy*.  On what planet or in what country is double dipping ok???  Today we traded cakes for fried food.  YUM.  That was an excellent trade.  Fried mushrooms with horseradish sauce, calamari and onion rings.  Only, I didn't get to taste the onion rings because Crazy Lady decided to take her lip smacking self over to the onion rings and pig out while double and triple dipping.  TOTAL GROSSNESS.  Anyway, that's enough about that.  I don't want to putt you off your dinner.

Well, I'm writing this, really, to procrastinate just a little more.  I should be studying for Exam #2 which is tomorrow.  I just really don't want to.  I feel like my brain didn't absorb any information this week and that it just doesn't want to.  I blame the planets or the moon or whatever.  Oh well, hopefully I will survive the test and live to bake another day.  Until then, ciao!

-The Queen of Tarts-

p.s. *P, the boy, will be referred to as P, the man from now on.