Second Week of Classes

In our second week of classes we continued learning everything we never wanted to know about safety and sanitation in the kitchen. After this class I doubt I will ever look at any restaurant the same! This coming Friday we have a certification exam, which will be a valuable tool in pursuing a career, as every kitchen is required to have someone a certified employee on the premises during hours of operation.

I won't bore you all with the details of my food science class, but we are learning things like when making meringue, we add cream of tartar to the egg whites because it helps speed up the beating process. The sugar should be added after you have beaten the egg whites and its function is to stabilize the meringue. Never knew all the technicalities of making a meringue did you? It has been interesting learning what ingredients do and why we have to do things in a particular order. I hope that this will help explain those experiments that have gone wrong!

In our skills classes, we have continued to practice piping chocolate, working on consistency. We added piping buttercream (some of my better attempts above) and knife skills, where I am learning how to successfully supreme an orange!

After a full week in the classroom I am really itching to get into the kitchen and BAKE! One more week in the classroom and then we will be baking cakes! In the mean time I fulfilled my baking itch by making cranberry scones. I usually use cream in making scones, but I used 1/2 and 1/2 and was very happy with the result--perfectly tender, not too dry and less fat too!

Cranberry Scones

2/3 c ½ and 1/2
1 Egg
3 c Flour
4 t Baking powder
½ t Baking soda
½ t Salt
8T Unsalted butter, cold and cubed
1 c Fresh cranberries
½ c Granulated sugar
1 t Orange zest

Heat oven to 375°F
Beat in egg into ½ and ½ and set aside
In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt
With a pastry blender cut in butter, until the mixture is fine granules
Add cranberries, sugar, and orange zest and mix
Add ½ and ½ mixture, stir with a fork until a soft dough forms
Turn out dough onto a lightly floured board and knead until well mixed
Form dough into a disk about 1” thick and place on an ungreased cookie sheet
Cut into 8 wedges and brush with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar
Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until medium brown
Remove to wire rack to cool

And then the week came to a close with this beautiful image of the sunset at Civic Center Plaza as I walked to the train on Friday afternoon.