Culinary School: Week 8

Making it to week 8 means that I am half way done with my first semester of culinary school. Which is awesome...depending on how you look at it. This week in baking and pastry we left yeast breads behind and moved on to quick breads and cookies. Because we are no longer working with yeast we are able to whip up many more products per class. With yeast we had to wait for the dough to proof and ferment for long periods of time, making it impossible to cover a lot in one class. This week we made blueberry muffins, raspberry coffee cake, scones, biscuits, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, savory muffins, and banana bread. All in just two class periods! It was fun making things that I am so familiar with, it was almost like a nice break from having to think too hard. Let's be honest I could make chocolate chip cookies with my eyes closed and my arms tied behind my back. :) All of the products were really good this week but I think my favorite thing I made were the scones. We were given permission to flavor the scones any way we wanted. I made orange walnut and dusted the tops with granulated sugar. They were dreamy. I also really loved the banana bread, it was a great recipe, I'll have to share it here sometime. In my cooking skills class this week we had an event to cater so on Wednesday we prepped everything and on Thursday we finished the meal and served it. Going in to culinary school I was sort of bummed when I found out how many catering events we had to participate in just because I didn't want it to cut into precious time I could be cooking and learning. But now doing it now I'm realizing now that sometimes I'm learning more doing these events than I would be otherwise. I really don't mind them and I'm getting good experience. It was another fun week, and now just 8 weeks to go!