At Home with the Passionista and Raspberry Vanilla Cupcakes

Today showed the culmination of my year of schooling. I am finally home, and very much enjoying my first full day of summer; keeping in mind that if I were in high school, I would be in school for another 5 weeks. I''m now officially a sophomore, I'm out for the summer, and I still have not graduated high school.
Amidst all of these realizations today, I created some tasty treats. Out of the oven came some "raw" chocolate raspberry macaroons that I dehydrated overnight, and out of the drawer came fat free chocolate brownie cookies so that i could give them the "next day" evaluation. Then, I set to work creating cupcakes to serve the team at Relay for Life, going on tomorrow. But always spinning with ideas, I could not just make ordinary vanilla cupcakes. No, I had to make my favorite vanilla bean cupcakes, and then I had to make them low fat. Therefore, I had to make half of them raspberry.
 In the end, i made 8 vanilla bean cupcakes, and 8 raspberry cupcakes, made by replacing the milk (not the butter, as I was originally going to replace, as the method used in the formula would be severely impacted), then spread white chocolate Italian buttercream though you can't taste much white chocolate or other flavor) over top and decorated them with shell borders and a piped "cancer ribbon".
Now, if only I could have presented these cupcakes for my practical!

In the next few days, I will be experimenting to hopefully find the perfect, innovative, creative fat-free cake recipe that describes my personality and culinary point of view. For now, indulge your eyes and salivate over this photo of the raspberry cupcakes. Summer is finally here!

The end is near!

8 days until school is done and I get to go home! Yay!
i mean, let's face it, culinary school can be very tough. Sure, it can be fun, like the class I'm in now, where all we do is experiment with healthy ingredients in ordinary products. There, it doesn't matter if the products we make come out well. We taste it, take our notes, and move on, hoping that the next product will be better and will be something we can use in the future.
Then there are the classes that just want to throw you off balance. The chocolate, petit fours, and cakes. If only we all like our cake unfrosted, uncut, and undecorated. "Frost your own cake" should be a store, don't you think? Cake frosting and decorating is an art; from start to finish. Making the cake, deciding on the flavors to be used for the filling and frosting, and pairing the components is easy and definitely my forte. When it comes to the assembly... well, let's just say it still isn't a piece of cake.
What does pastry school teach you? Sure you find out how to make cookies, pies, cakes, puff pastries, viennoiserie, ice cream, chocolates, breads, sugar and plating. More important than that though, it makes you realize your strengths and weaknesses, finds you new people, and test your boundaries. During every day I've been in school this year, that's what has happened. There's been surprises, uncertainty, shocking introductions to reality, and some unforgettable lessons and memories.
But now, I'm ready for summer! Maybe I'll have time for some more posts then!