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-