Swans and Naming the Baby

Friday we made more pastry cream, but chocolate this time, pate a choux and Creme Chantilly (whipped cream).  These ingredients turned into eclairs, cream puffs and swans.
Those swan necks are a little tricky and overall, too time consuming for a glorified cream puff.  I could eat cream puffs all day.  They are so simple and delicious.  My new partner dipped the eclairs in the chocolate fondant, so I will have to try that out at home.  I'm also pretty sure we will be making versions of these again in more advanced classes.

We also made the baby - a lovely concoction with grapes (unwashed, skins on, stems attached), flour and water.  It will be the starter for sourdough bread during our bread block.  I am so excited about making and feeding the baby in a controlled environment.  I have always wanted to start one because sourdough bread is one of my favorites and I would love to make it with my own starter at home.  I have always just been a little nervous about growing one.  We are the proud parents of little Doughlton Brown.  We will feed him (and talk kindly to him, according to Chef) for the next few weeks.  I can't wait to see how he turns out!  This is also a lovely shot of me in my awesome uniform.  Sadly, you don't get to see the fabulous pants because I am wearing my apron, but you get the idea.  You know I just love that hat....

Monday is teacher in-service, so I have a holiday from school.  This is a good thing because the house is a disaster and I need to get to work.

It was a great week and I look forward to the week(s) to come.  Here's to surviving my day off and living to bake another day.  Until then, ciao!

-The Queen of Tarts

First Test

 I treated myself to these lovely celebratory flowers Wednesday night in anticipation of doing well on my first test.  And I did do well.  I got the maximum amount of point on both the written and practical,  including the bonus points.  I was the only student with a perfect score and I'm pretty excited about that.
The written test was pretty lengthy and the math was not fun, but overall not too bad.  My cookies and biscuits turned out great - Chef even said my cookies were gorgeous.  I was more nervous about the test than I thought.  I really wanted to make a second batch of biscuits, but decided against it.  When I went to present my products to Chef, she said those cookies are gorgeous.  YAY!  I said I really wanted to make more biscuits, but decided not to.  She didn't say anything.  She just stared at me with her poker face.  Then she peeled the top off one biscuit and ate it.  Poker face.  She handed the biscuit for
as well.  I tried it and said it tastes like, um, a biscuit?

Still, with the poker face.  I was kind of starting to sweat.  Then she smiled and said, I'm just messing with you.  These are great!  But she wrote a 60 next to each item on my grading sheet.  I was confused.  Actually, I started to panic a little in my head.  After stewing for a bit, I asked my organized friend if Chef was going to explain our grades and what she wrote on our paper.  She said, well didn't Chef give you feedback and tell you when you presented your items?  I was like, well yeah.  She messed with me and then said it was good.  My friend said, well then you probably got 60's.  I DID get 60's, I said, and that is not ok!  My friend just laughed at me - the grade is based on 60 possible points, silly.  Oh.  Whew!  So, a perfect score on the practical exam.  Then we got our written exams back and I got a 105.  The only perfect score, plus 5 bonus points, in the class.  Yay me.  I am going to enjoy this while I can, because the rest of the year won't be quite so easy for me.  Right now we are just learning the basics - meaning I have made all of these things on my own before, so nothing is brand new.  I celebrated with a nice glass of Zin and some pasta for lunch.  Then I passed out.  Good thing I survived and lived to bake another day.

Coming soon:  Eclairs, Cream Puffs and Swans, oh my!  Until then, ciao!
-The Queen of Tarts-

Whip, Whip, Whip

Dear Readers,

I apologize for not posting yesterday.  I had a mini emotional break down yesterday after school and decided to work and bake.  I am back on track and will cover Tuesday and Wednesday today.

Thank you for understanding,
QoT

So, another 2 days of baking awsomeness.  I love being in the kitchen.  Tuesday was pretty low key in the drama department, we had a number of items to produce.  As always, my young friend was an excellent partner and we were able to get everything done well.  It was the first day to use the stoves, so we were all a little nervous - it was funny.  I was the first one to the stove and was glad when my happy Houston friend came over just behind me so I didn't have to go it alone.  Those are some hot stoves, I want one at home.  We made pastry cream for the first of many, many times.  Mine came out better than it ever has before but I'm not sure what I did differently, but it was perfect.  I think the real trick is to whip the heck out of it.  While I was doing that my young partner was pressing in the tart dough that we made the day before and making scones with orange zest and dried cherries.  Then I scaled the ingredients for pie dough and started pulling the dough together.  At home, I make all butter pie dough, but at school and probably in the industry, we use half butter and half shortening.  Let me tell you, a giant box of shortening with a little scoop in it is just kind of nasty to me.  Really.  I just hate shortening, but understand the benefit of using it.  It is less expensive than butter and doesn't melt as fast, so you have more time to work the dough without it melting all over the place.

Tarts and Scones

Fresh Fruit Tart with Pastry Cream
and Scones with orange and cherry

After freezing the tart dough in the shell, we had to blind bake them.  That means you are basically blind to the bottom.  We have this cool food grade cling wrap that can actually be baked.  I was a little freaked out by that, but it is heavy duty, unlike the stuff we use at home.  We have a giant container of rice to use as weight for the dough which is nice because the rice gets in all the nooks and crannies.  After blind baking until the edges were brown, we took out the rice and finished baking the tart shell.  One the pie dough was in 2 discs, wrapped and safe, we re-whipped the pastry cream and filled the tart shell.  Then we got to slice strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and cut orange supremes to decorate the tart.  My partner and I are perfectionists (imagine that) and it took us forever to decorate the tart.  At least we weren't the last ones finished.  It turns out that by having the strawberries point in rather than out, we made out tart look small - rookie mistake I guess.  Now we both know you want the fruit to look like it is exploding from the tart.

Chef was pleased with both items and other than the strawberries pointing the wrong direction, it was a good day.  I got home (pretty tired) and was barraged by all the disasters of manfriend's day without any "how was your day" or "how was school".  Now, I know who I am dealing with and he isn't a big question asker, but for some reason it really got to me and I started crying and crying and crying.  I couldn't even talk about it and feel like a bit of a wuss.  So, if you ever talk to me after school, please ask how my day was or what I made!  Thanks.

Wednesday was another full production day.  There was also a little drama with she who must not be named, but not too much.  I really don't know how Chef does it, but I think she feels about ready to lose her petunias.  I'll talk about that a bit later in the post.

My partner rolled out yesterday's pie dough for Key Lime Chiffon pie and Blueberry Pie with a Lattice top while I made the blueberry filling and scaled the key lime ingredients.  Once the key lime dough was in the oven and the blueberry pie was filled, topped and in the oven, we made buttermilk biscuits on our own - they will be on the test.

When making a lattice for a pie, it is best to create the lattice on a cardboard circle, chill it, then fill the pie and flip the lattice onto the pie.  Easier said than done as we were a bit nervous about it.  My partner did a great job flipping!  We trimmed the edges and popped it in the oven to bake forever.  Blueberry pie takes awhile to bake, especially since we have really been making items that bake pretty quickly - everyone was obsessively checking the pies.  Once the key lime shells were baked, we just let them cool.

We used shortening again for the biscuits - half butter and half shortening and I was grossed out again.  Biscuits are so easy, I love it.  The more difficult part was making them all the same size and perfectly round and smooth.  I like rustic biscuits, so that is what I make at home.  For school, they have to be perfect and over baked (according to me), just like the cookies.  Luckily, my organized little friend is on the same page, so we commiserate about the over baking on everything.  Not the best biscuit recipe, (even Chef agrees) but they came out nicely and up to standard.  The important part was learning the method.

Biscuits, Key Lime Chiffon, Blueberry Pie
of course my pretty biscuits are at the back,
so look at those.  ;-)

We made the Key Lime Chiffon pie filling with out partners and got a shoulder work out while doing so.  I used gelatin sheets for the first time today - they are pretty nifty if you need to use gelatin.  We made a mixture of lime zest, condensed milk and boiled lime juice with gelatin mixed in.  Then we had to make merengue - by hand with a balloon whisk.  Soft peaks, add sugar, medium peaks.  My partner and I switched off and got it done pretty fast.  My arms are tired.  After gently folding the merengue into the lime mixture, we filled and smoothed the pie shell.  Pretty easy really.  I learned more about folding today, especially that it is important to start in the middle of the mixture and fold out, then turn your bowl and go back to the middle.  Our filling came out nice and fluffy and Chef was pleased with all of out production items for the day.

Tasting.  The Key Lime pie was not very limey, the biscuits were ok, the Blueberry filling was DELICIOUS and I will be making that pie at home soon.  Tomorrow is our first test and we are all a little concerned about she who must not be named.  She didn't really carry her weight today and my happy Houston friend had to do most of the work.  Chef lit into her pretty well about that, especially after she told her partner that she was being lazy about something - at least we think that is what she said, but are hoping that her comment was just lost in translation.  She who must not be named has not made one thing on her own with out asking a billion questions and we aren't allowed to talk during the test (Chef reminded her many, many times today).  I guess we'll see what happens.  I'm not too nervous about the test, just a little because it is the first one and I don't really know what to expect, and I want everything to be perfect.  So, I'm off to work on FancyPants and then to practice making biscuits and to study my notes.  It feels really weird to be studying notes again.

Hopefully I will survive my test and live to bake another day.  Until then, ciao!
-The Queen of Tarts

I LOVE SCHOOL!

I do love school and I finally don't feel like I want to die from exhaustion at noon.  I guess my body is starting to adjust to my new schedule.  Before I talk about an awesome day of baking, I want to show you all my fantabulous tool kit.  We received our tools in a not user friendly tri-zip pouch thing.  At Chef's suggestion I went to The Home Depot to do some SHOPPING!  I loooove a good excuse to go shopping and I love The Home Depot!  I found heavy duty rings for my measuring spoons and cups, fun violet electric tape and a nifty Husky tool holder.  I also got a new grill, but that's just for me at home.  Sadly, the grill that my sister got for me many moons ago has finally bit the dust...literally.  Anyway, I already lit up the new grill last night and I really like it.  It's red.  Very fun.  But I digress....  My new and improved tool kit looks like this:

Super Fabulous Tool Kit

You will notice that I have made my violet electrical tape and baroque black and white duck tape mark on everything.  In the kitchen, everything we use and wear looks alike, so we have to mark all of our items in some way.  I like my way, I think it looks like me.  I spent a good amount of time taping everything and putting a little -k- on things that can't be taped.  It was fun.  I re-watched Eat, Pray Love while working and really wanted to eat a giant plate of spaghetti when I was done.  Maybe tomorrow.  Manfriend said "Wow, that's a lot of stuff.  Do you really need all that stuff??"  Indeed, I do.  Even more came in the kit, but that will just stay at home.  My knives are super sharp and everything is shiny and new.  Like new pencils and notebooks and paper for school.  I love that stuff.  I haven't felt this excited about starting something new in a long time.  I bought the baroque duck tape at Target and got a new 3 ring binder for my notes (it's pink too (-:).  I love Target, but that's another topic.  I also decided to invest in a pair of good kitchen shoes.  The pair that came with my uniform had no arch support, were lace up and just all around uncomfortable.  At the end of baking on Friday my feet were in full protest.  My new shoes (and super squishy socks) made all the difference today!  I won't lie and say my feet don't hurt, but it would have been a lot worse.

With Biscotti

Syd w/ Brysselex &
Strassburger

So, I got to school pretty early this morning and was able to start scaling out ingredients for 2 of the 3 doughs we made today.  That gave my partner, my young friend Syd, and I a bit of head start that was nice.  She made Strassburger cookies with raspberry jam and I made Biscotti with lemon zest and almonds.  I will probably say this a million times, but it is so weird to cream the butter and the sugar and add the eggs by hand.  It just doesn't look right.  Thankfully, it turns out just fine.  The biscotti was crazy easy and we got to slice it in the slicer, so no struggling with a knife to cut through crunchy dough and whole almonds.  After that we had to put our Brysselex doughs together to make the checkerboard cookies.  Luckily, Syd was on the task of making the checkerboards - she has a bit more patience for these things that I do and they turned out great.  We made marbled cookies out of the scraps.  While she was making the checkerboards, I scaled ingredients and made pate sucree for the fresh fruit tarts we are making tomorrow.  YUM.  I can't wait to eat that one.  It will be my first official tart for the Queen of Tarts!  Very fun.  After cleaning the kitchen and putting everything away, Chef graded our cookies and we did great!  She said they were perfect.  Then we got to eat them!  Warm biscotti is delicious.

There was some drama in the class today.  A before mentioned classmate suffered a cut bad enough that she had to go to the hospital and get 2 stitches.  It was suffered at the knife of another student, but the knife wielder was not at fault.  She survived and made it back to class before it was over.  The end.

Another photo of my awesome tool kit, before I bought the S rings.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow and am so glad that it is President's Day.  No USPS means no packages go out today.  I get a tiny break!  Yay me.  That should ensure that I will survive and live to bake another day.  Until then, ciao!

-The Queen of Tarts-

Chocolate Chip Cookies

 The first day of baking finally arrived!  Before we can even enter the kitchen, we have to line up outside in the hall for inspection.  Our uniforms must be in place with neckerchief, hat, thermometer and Sharpie in place.  Chef even checks out fingernails - clean, very short and unpolished.  The first hour or two of class is lecture.  We go over the recipe, history of the item and very thorough demonstration, including the method used to mix the dough, in this case the creaming method.  Today we learned how to make chocolate chip cookies.  Yes, I know - I make chocolate chip cookies all the time, so I learned how to make industry standard chocolate chip cookies the way that the school wants me to make them.  I'm so glad that I'm such a nerd and am already used to using a scale to measure ingredients.  We wrote our ingredients on a piece of parchment paper and went to work.  It is weird to work in a kitchen alongside 11 other people with Chef watching over it all.

Once all of the ingredients are scaled, we head over to the production area to mix the dough.  There are quite a few shiny white KitchenAid mixers around the kitchen - that we did not use.  Yes dear readers, we mixed these cookies by hand - wearing gloves of course.  Thankfully they even have latex free gloves just for me!  Mixing by hand includes creaming the butter and sugar  with fingers.  It was a little different and interesting.  My dough came together well but I over creamed the butter and sugar.  We got to use the convection ovens, which was fun and new for me.  It really is annoying to share the oven because everyone is constantly opening the doors and letting out all the heat.  We are learning to go by look and feel and not by time.  Chef gave us a "perfect world" time, but we don't work in a perfect kitchen.  We have nice big scoops and the idea was to evenly space our identical cookies - chocolate chips and nuts evenly distributed, same perfect size for each.  They also have to be overcooked for my taste - this is going to take a little adjustment on my part.

While our cookies were baking, we started on our group project in teams of 2.  This week I am with my young friend who sits next to me and I am happy to have her as my partner.  We made chocolate dough and vanilla cough for Brysselkex cookies.  They are the kind of bland checkerboard cookies.  Not my favorite cookie, but a good thing to learn I guess.  I am going to struggle working with and relying on another person at times.  My partner wasn't remembering to hit the tare function (zero out) after putting the container on the scale, so I think the weight of the container was included in some of our ingredients.  We aren't making the cookies until Monday, so I guess we'll see.  The dough came together ok, so maybe we are alright.  One lady just could not get her chocolate dough to come together and every time she went to roll it out, the dough would just kind of smear everywhere.  I tried to help her, but she was so frustrated that she was very grumpy.  Chef made her do it 3 times and helped her the 3rd time, so it came out.  Mother-in-law (aka crazy lady mentioned in previous posts) just could not get it.  I felt so sorry for her partner, my jolly friend, who had to basically tell her what to do every step of the way.  I think Chef is about to lose her mind with this one.  Nothing sinks in.  Nothing.  It is pretty frustrating and really has the potential to slow the class down.  Lord help us the week that I am her partner.

My cookies were finally done but I wasn't really very happy with the way they looked.  I thought they spread too much and I had some kissing cousins because I refused to waste and of the dough.  Of course we didn't get to eat them right away because we had to finish our Brysselkex dough and clean the whole kitchen.  Our lab is the kitchen that is coded by the health department, so everything has to be perfect.  Every day we will wash all the dishes (4 step process), put them away, sweep, scrub, squeegee and mop the floor and wipe down all the tables.  At least it isn't too bad with friends to chat with while we work.  We just really need some music, but I don't think that is going to happen.  Maybe I can work on Chef.
FINALLY we lined up the cookies for the moment of truth - grading.  My organized little friend made, of course, the most perfect looking cookies.  Chef was pleased with mine as well and didn't have anything negative to say.  I thought they spread too much and was disappointed, but Chef thought they were fine, which is what matters to me.  The only guy in the class had some very unique cookies due to some scaling mistakes.  I'm glad that I can look at a cookie a know what probably went wrong.  After the grading we got to eat them.  I have to say, not my favorite recipe.  I like my recipe better but this one is a good base for sure.  All the cookies we didn't eat went on trays to share with the other classes.

All in all, it was a good week.  I am really excited that we are finally baking and cannot wait to bake some more.  I haven't really learned many new things yet, but I know each lesson is a building block for the next.  I can't remember the last time I was so excited for the weekend.  I'm off to sleep for as many hours as I can.  We bake again on Monday, so I hope to survive and live to bake another day.  Until then, ciao!

-The Queen of Tarts-

Is it Friday Yet?

bjftplbttffpfhgrt.  That's me, drooling on the keyboard.  I can't stay awake and need some toothpicks to keep my eyelids open.  For those of you wondering what happened on Wednesday - we learned more about sanitation, I found out some more stuff I won't ever eat at restaurants again, discovered I will really never eat from any kind of buffet again and I drank a lot of coffee.  I didn't write yesterday because nothing new happened and I went to the gym instead. I also had to study for my Servsafe test.  I'm meeting a friend for dinner and will write more when I have some calories in my stomach.  If I can stay awake that is.

Dinner at Chez Zee was delicious.  They have this pretty tasty Lemon-Rosemary cake, but I think the lemon mascarpone layer cake is better.  ;-)

The Servsafe test is over and I hopefully never have to look at that book again.  The test was 90 questions online and took me about 15-20 minutes to complete.  I passed, yay!  fortunately we were in the computer lab, online, so I was able to get some work done on fancypantspet.com while I waited, and waited, and waited.  Almost everyone within the next 30 minutes or so and they didn't look depressed, so I'm assuming they passed as well.  There was one certain individual (who has been mentioned before) that took almost the full 2 hours to complete the test.  So I had a lot of internet time that I really would have rather spent baking or sleeping.  Oh well.

They took our ID badge photos today.  Luckily, I had a feeling they were going to do that today, so I wore some makeup and didn't look totally scary.  They keep spelling my last name like it is an M name and not a Mc name.  They don't capitalize the L.  This annoys me, so I asked about it.  I wanted it to be correct on my name badge.  They all looked at me like I was crazy for requesting it, but my name badge is correct and that makes me happy.  I am really washed out in the photo - overexposed according the the person who took the photo, but at least we got your name right, they said.  Hmm.

Once testing and photos were done we got our tool kits.  This was VERY EXCITING.  It is two bags of tons of great stuff.  Oddly (or not), I already own about 85% of the tools, but these are shiny and new.  I forgot how awesome a brand new Microplane can be.  We went through the whole tool kit and talked about what everything is used for, how to handle the knives, what we will actually use for class and what you, my readers, will probably be getting for Christmas - re-gifting at its finest.  There are a number of things in the kit that Chef said to never bring to class because we won't use them.

Once we took our tool kits apart we got to practice some knife skills.  Man I love good knives.  We zested, peeled and learned to supreme (segment) an orange.  For those of you who don't know, orange supremes are just little orange segments with no skin, pith or membrane.  As Chef said, when you pay $25 for a fruit place, you get supremes.  It is always a speed challenge on chef competition shows.  Ours was not about speed and more about technique and mine looked pretty good!  It helps to have a really sharp paring knife.  It was also probably one of the most delicious oranges I have ever eaten.  I made it through the whole process without getting anything on my white coat.  Then I picked up my cutting board and spilled fresh juice all down the front.  At least class was over.  Another girl in my class was laughing at me, until she looked down and saw the same thing on her own coat.  We had a little giggle about that one.  We also learned how to properly wash, rinse and sanitize our dishes.  There is a whole process for washing and air drying the dishes as a team.  It should be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Our class is pretty small and will evidently get smaller over the next few weeks.  I think we are at 12 people right now and will probably end up with 8.  That is really nice for space and Chef time.
I am really excited about baking chocolate chip cookies tomorrow and can't wait to really get in the kitchen.  Hopefully mine will turn out great!  Stay tuned for photos.

May I survive tomorrow and live to bake another day.  Until then, ciao!

-The Queen of Tarts-

Day Two

So, I survived another day of sanitation.  The crazy comments were kept to 2 again, which was nice, but there was a lot of mumbling, etc....  I'm not sure how much I can take.  I was also really grumpy by about 10:30 from lack of sleep and it is only day 2.  I really cannot wait for my body to adjust.

The class next door started classes before we did, so they just began their cake block. Today they made croquembouche, so it was fun to watch them come together through the windows during our breaks.  They worked in teams and had to carry their "cakes" to the "judging table" without dropping them.  A dropped item results in a 0 for the day!  It was pretty fun to watch and we got to taste some of the unused profiteroles.  Free tasty snacks are always good.

I can hardly wait to start baking and am glad that I only have about a day and a half to go until we make cookies!  I don't have much else to report, other than the fact that I feel pretty brain dead.  I have to read some more of the Servsafe book so I can find more things I don't want to eat in restaurants.  And I have some daily quests to complete, but that's another story.

Hoping I survive tomorrow and live to bake another day.  Until then, ciao!

-The Queen of Tarts-

Day One

Being somewhere other than my bed at 6:30 in the morning is just wrong....  But I was so excited about my first day of school that I didn't really hit the wall until about 10:30.  Luckily our chef instructor made loads of coffee, so I got the IV started and survived the class.  We have to learn about sanitation and take a test first, so no baking until Thursday.  It kind of stinks, but I totally understand and am glad that the culinary side takes that class for like 3 weeks.

The crazy person from orientation is, of course, in my class and was up to the same shenanigans again today.  Even our instructor was stumped by one of the questions.  I don't mean stumped as in she didn't know the answer, I mean stumped as in -what is this person asking me and why are they asking it??  At least today it only happened twice in a five hour class.  If we can keep it to 2 nonsense questions per every 5 hours, I might be ok.

While most of the sanitation information is common sense, we did learn something about potatoes that has made me question whether I will ever eat a baked potato in a restaurant ever again.  We also talked a lot about FBI (Food Born Illness) and what physically happens when someone has food poisoning or even worse problems from mishandled food.  Let's just say it's a good thing we didn't cook or bake today.  That's just nasty stuff.  And we talked about it all.  A lot.  That's all I have to say about that.

On a personal note, manfriend has never been a fan of February 14th.  Every year I buy him a gift and make something nice for dinner and he's kind of annoyed by the whole thing (though he does like the gifts).  This year I just didn't have the time or energy to do anything and he doesn't really like it anyway.  Ironically, he decided he should probably do something this year!  We were going out to dinner, but after 5 early hours of class and an afternoon of working on the business (www.fancypantspet.com) I wanted to lounge around in my pj's.  I was happily surprised with Chinese takeout, some yummy coffee beans and a new coffee maker!  Brownie points for manfriend this year.  All in all, it was a good day.  I hope I adjust to the new schedule soon as I really felt like a zombie all afternoon.  Going to school and running a business simultaneously are going to take some getting used to.

Yes, it is 9pm and I'm off to take a bath and go to bed.
May I survive tomorrow and live to bake another day.  Until then, ciao!

-The Queen of Tarts-

5:45 am

Dear 5:45 am:

You are not my friend.

Sincerely,
The Queen of Tarts

The Adventure Begins

I have been researching and visiting Patisserie and Baking programs all over the world for about 2 and a half years now, so I guess it is about time to just get started.  About 2 weeks ago, I decided I should just stay put and attend school at home.  While not the most romantic and impulsive decision, it is the most logical and practical.  I have no idea what the next year truly holds for me or if reading my thoughts will be even remotely interesting to you.  I do hope that writing here will help me process all that I can imagine and that you might be a little entertained along the way.

School starts at 6:30 every morning.  I haven't woken up before 8 am in about 2 years.  I don't mean be at work by 8am or jump out of bed and be functional by 8am.  My usual day entails waking up at 8am, snuggling the puppies for about 30 minutes, stumbling to the kitchen for coffee and doing crossword puzzles until 10am - while still in my pj's.  At least my school uniform is almost like wearing pajamas - really crisp, clean ones, anyway.  The pants could give MC Hammer a run for his money, but at least they are comfortable.  I started practicing going to sleep earlier in an attempt to wake up earlier and really only made it to waking up around 7am, so tomorrow morning is going to be painful.  I have a checklist of all the things I need to do tonight so I can stay on schedule and be asleep by 10:30pm.  This blog was not on the list, so I guess I am already behind.

I am a little nervous and very excited about starting something new, especially something that I am so passionate about.  I am also very hopeful that I will like at least one person in my class.  There were a few at orientation that I am not so sure about, but they may be in Culinary (let's hope).

Since the only people reading this will probably be friends and family, I want to say thank you to those who have been truly supportive of me following my passion.  I can't wait to make you tasty treats!!  Hopefully I will survive tomorrow and live to bake another day.  Until then, ciao!

-The Queen of Tarts-