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!

Ok. I can't believe that it's only been a week since I was happily baking in my own kitchen at home and enjoying spring break. Two days before that I was falling in love with a little place known as Charlotte, North Carolina. Now, I'm back in he dorm room and while I'd definitely take this over high school, where I'd be taking a bunch of worthless classes and be bored and sad with no friends. So I'm very glad, thank you, to have just finished my high school requirements and to officially be a college freshmen. Plus, I'm in the new culinary arts building, and the state of the arts chocolates lab for my Chocolates and Confections class. And I have no extra classes. Done for the day at 1:00. But I'm usually exhausted. Dehydrated, frustrated, excited, hungry, exhausted. After a day of cutting peanut and mocha squares that have to be cut in 13/16" squares and make my mouth water, I'm so glad it's the weekend. Wish I had more andy to enjoy, but unfortunately we can't take much home. So, instead I'm filling my time looking at recipes I can't make right now. I mean RIGHT NOW! I want to step into my own kitchen and have my own agenda making things I can keep. And eat as much as I want without any guilt, exercise or whatnot. Anyone with me? Well, if you are, take a step into dreamland, and take a look at one of my favorite recipe destinations. Tastespotting.com. all It's a place that gathers information from countless food blogs and depicts a glorious, mouth-watering array of pictures for your clicking fancy. I'll try to make that help me this weekend, but... why is it that dorms in culinary school don't have kitchens? Enough for now.

Blueliciousness! What you discover when you take an ice cream class

So I know I said that I was trying to make cookies that represented each state in the country. I might still continue with that (I mean I've made like 10 or 15 of them already so why stop now?). But I've got more ideas. Which is probably a bad thing. It springs from a class called Hot and Cold Desserts and, so far, we've only done the cold side of things. In other words, ice cream. I know, dangerous. Anyway, in the midst of trying to find new and interesting flavors, my partner decides he wants to make blueberry ice cream. Loaded with vanilla, whole and juice blueberries, and creamy flavor that any French-style ice cream should have, it is heaven. And, it's sitting in my freezer. Oops! How did that get there? Between the occasional spoonfuls of this heaven, and thinking about the Baked Alaskas we will be making with it, a new idea has surfaced. State ice creams. Yum! A new project is in the works. If only now I could make a deal with the ice cream man at the beach. Who needs snoopy pops when you can have soft serve blueberry, maple, or brown butter ice cream. Yes, I said brown butter ice cream. Smooth, fruity, sweet creamyness hitting the tongue. It almost makes up for the glares I get from my classmates. There are nearly too many options. It's a good thing that I'm going away for Spring Break, as there wouldn't be enough room in the freezer.

Tough cookies. Literally

So, I just finished Day 6 of my Cookies and Petit Fours lab. Mind you, I'd had a very relaxing weekend and hadn't gotten much homework done so I had gotten up early to work on my cookbook, the major project for this lab and biggest part of my homework, with only 6 hours or so of sleep. I was crossing my fingers that today would be a relaxed, easy day. Not so much. It turns out, that those nicely decorated, fondant-covered, bite-sized morsels that come in boxes by the dozen and cost $30 something dollars per dozen... well... let's just say their worth far more than $36 in the effort that goes into them! First, you have to make the frangipane (almond pound cake) batter, using the creaming method but being sure to get all the lumps out for best results. Then you bake the cake, coo/freeze it, then cut it and spread with raspberry jam (a see-through layer, mind you). Then you stack the layers and drape with colored marzipan. Then, you flip the cake over and cut it into 1" squares. If however, you forget to put parchment or powdered sugar underneath before you begin cutting, good luck removing the squares in one piece. Then comes heating and thinning the fondant, which likes a temperature between 98 and 102 degrees. Then you pour on the fondant, clean it up, put them in paper cups, and decorate with classic chocolate designs. Whew. And all that has to be repeated in two days, for the practical. And I thought I knew everything there was to know about cookies (I mean, 11,337 Swedish butter cookies seemed like a good enough explanation for this). Oh and we had homework.
Luckily, that wasn't as bad as I thought. In fact, the worst part about it was that it ruined my plans for getting my homework done this evening. But, I think they turned out pretty well. They are marzipan flowers. Take a look for yourself.
Sorry for the period of no posts... if there's any viewers out there that is. Had a busy week and a fun-filled weekend of baking with friends.
More coming soon!