Adventures of Pastry Boy
"In the Sweet Kitchen"
April 2005: After an outstanding semester at Northwest Culinary last year and an equally fabulous time in Vancouver BC, I'm back at Northwest for their Baking and Pastry Curriculum.
It's quite a different experience from the culinary curriculum... read on if you're interested. [If there are no hyperlinks in the link column -- it isn't finished]
Title/Link |
Topic |
Date |
| Introduction | Starting new... again | ~4/13/05 |
| Meet the Class | A less diverse group than culinary, but a very good one | 4/20/05 |
| Dough Boy | Puff pastry, croissants, small pastries, Danish, doughnuts, brioche, scones! Breads. Breads. Breads. Photos | 4/25-5/6 |
| Bouncing Muffins | Quick breads, cakes & cheesecakes | |
| Cookies | I started out not especially liking cookies. Now I believe I despise them. | |
| Entremet cakes | Five days, up to 6 products/day. Cakes 'R Us. Food photos here. | |
| Midterm Jitters | 2 1/2 days of testing | 6/3/05-6/6/05 |
| Chocolate | Sensual. Caloric. Frustrating | 6/7/05-6/15/05 |
| Sugar | It's hot! At least, the blisters on my fingers would suggest that. The end of it? Now that's sweet. | 6/16-6/20/05 |
| In the Weeds | A colleague is left to fend for himself | |
| Plated Desserts | Putting some of the components together, with a dash of classmate intrigue thrown in for extra flavour | 6/24- |
| Dessert "Exam" | Two days to produce two desserts. Seems like a piece o'cake. no? | ~7/5/05 |
| Showpiece | Two more days of testing; we put together a dozen chocolates and a "showpiece" of our choice -- chocolate, sugar, marzipan... | 7/22-7/23 |
| Final Week | Three, or is it four, more days of tests. Getting to be a bit much, methinks. Then we get to cater our own graduation sweets | 7/25-7/28 |
| Moving on | Relief and sorrow set in as the course -- and our time in Vancouver, come to an end |