A Not Just Cakes Day

On the third day of class, besides Chef Tim's sanitation class with his awesome sense of humor, genoise cake had a new twist to it: chocolate. The fragrance of cocoa reminds me of externing at The French Laundry, plating chocolate trays in a small room that filled with the smell of Valrhona dark chocolate. Then there was the white cake; a simple recipe that's great for a basic layered cake. What is interesting to me was the make up of this particular recipe. It is a high ratio cake without using any kind of fake fat, such as shortening, liquid shortening (fluid flex), or other hydrogenated fat. Thanks to Chef Cynthia for finding this amazing recipe as I am not a fan of anything that last Forever, if you know what I mean...

Between baking cakes, Chef did demos on creme brulee and creme anglaise. Both crazily full of fat, or should I say, happiness? Too bad I don't have an ice cream machine, because homemade ice cream is really that much better!

2nd Day of The Class

How do you serve your delicious creations without knowing how to safely handle food? For the first two hours of class, we had Chef Tim giving us lecture on sanitation. That makes you, future guinea pigs, safe to eat everything we make and not to worry about getting sick. :)

After we had our family dinner, which once again, was another amazing dinner, we assembled our genoise cake with the buttercream made on Monday. A great cake assembly lesson 101: Evenly slice the cake layers, soak with flavored simple syrup, add filling, stack cake layers, crumb coat, cover the cake, decorate, and of course, EAT. May I just tell you how amazing the cake tasted after soaking with dark rum simple syrup? Simply, W.O.W.

Here are some photos from class. Chef Cynthia putting extra buttercream and simple syrup away and cutting her demo cake to share with the class.

First Day of School

First day of Cake Design class at The French Culinary Institute was fantastic! For a class of 12, we are very lucky to have two chef instructors: Chef Cynthia and Chef Judy. They were very patient and knowledgeable; extremely involved with students' progress and learning ability. I feel so spoiled there! When 8:30 came around, we got family dinner too! Salad, pork tenderloin, sweet potato, and vegetables... We didn't have to go home hungry after we end our class around 10:30pm. I have to say, though, walking into that class room and first person there to greet us...Chef Ron Ben Israel, was extremely exciting! He was so cute and as excited about the class as rest of us. When he was leaving, he certainly left with style! A cute messenger bag and a hat. Nice...! Chef Ron!

Check out the photos from first day! http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150590984945019.682015.168777155018

Finally, First Day of School Is Almost Here

What a great and adventurous weekend I had before class starts on Monday. My friend Nami and I went to Brooklyn for the first time. We were heading down to Brooklyn Museum to visit the Mummy Exhibition and also to be inspired by the art works there. I Googled the address via my phone, got off the subway train stop and realized that we had to walk for a little over two miles! How was that possible? Well, apparently it was leading us to the Transportation Museum, on the other side of the town... Oh boy, did we do some walking exercise. By the time we got to the Brooklyn Museum, we were exhausted. Seeing the mummies were, however, so worth it. We finished off the weekend by having a nice dinner with friends; pizza at Olio and gelato at Grom.

Until next time, exciting blog about our first day of Cake Design & Technique. :)

A Little Vacation Before Class Starts...

After the orientation, there are about four days of free time before school begins. I am fortunate to room with my fellow Cake Design classmate, Nami, and we have been adventuring New York City together since day one. I must say that we have been doing quite well; the fact that in the past three days, we visited Chinatown three times, tried quite a few good hole in the wall restaurants, found a tailor for uniform alteration, learned to take and switch subways... I am also lucky to have another roommate who arrived a day earlier and was able to take the train with her for the first time, getting some great tips from her about how to get around town. Some really good tools that I used were the map provided by school, my Android phone with Google map and Yelp application. One important thing was also to make sure that we had an idea of what we were going to do for the day, Google local businesses, addresses, research good restaurants reviews, etc. A big thanks to my roommate Karen for telling me about the Unlimited pass for subway train rides; if it wasn't for it being unlimited, I would be spending hundreds from getting off the wrong stop.

Now the weekend comes, tomorrow we will be visiting a farmer's market across the street from our apartment. Then museums for the rest of the day. Perhaps a nice brunch on Sunday at our school restaurant L'Ecole. Until next blog...!

NYC

Coming to New York City to learn from Master Chef Ron Ben Israel is to further my education in the art of cake making. However, this five months experience is going to be much more than just school. There are so many places to visit, people to meet, food to eat, and everything else. I'm extremely excited about sharing my journey with everyone.

We had our orientation yesterday, and it was very informative. The exciting part was how helpful and resourceful FCI's career resources are. The volunteering opportunities, internships, and networks... I love how well managed and organized this school is. I cannot wait to get it all started!