Okay everyone, this is going to be a short post today. I mostly just wanted to get on here and let everybody know that I finally reached my 400th hour at the restaurant! Which means.......I've satisfied my internship requirement!!! YAY!
I'm going to stick around a few more weeks and continue to work. I think my last day in the restaurant will be August 6th but I talked to one of the cake decorators and she said I could come in a few days and do some decorating with her. So the 6th will probably be my last night on the line...at least until Christmas break.
While I have everybody's attention, I would REALLY appreciate it if my followers (you know, all 6 of you that read this on occasion) would take the time and help out the restaurant I work in...I just need you to take a survey or two! And give us a glowing review! Just copy and paste these addresses into your browser and go...thanks! My next blog will be about our new summer menu...
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g54359-d497871-Reviews-Croissants_Bistro_and_Bakery-Myrtle_Beach_South_Carolina.html
http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/229/1099584/restaurant/Croissants-Bistro-Bakery-Myrtle-Beach
OH and how could I forget...HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUNT BETH!
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Sabayon Method
Okay everyone...time to take a brief break from my Harry Potter marathon for a little blogging!
Most of you know that I spend a lot of my time at Clemson making and selling ice cream. I also did an internship last summer working at Boulder Ice Cream in Colorado so I think it's fair to say I'm pretty experienced in the ice cream field. Every time I've made it though, I've always used base mix. All ice creams start with a basic mix, basically eggs, cream, sugar and stabilizers, and then flavorings and variegates are added to get whatever type of ice cream you desire. We get ours sent to us at Clemson using the original Clemson recipe and at Boulder I got to help make our own base using holding tanks and pasteurization equipment. But never did I get to make ice cream base at home or in a kitchen! It was SO easy, too (thanks to my make-shift double boiler).
This recipe was made using the sabayon method...everything you do in a kitchen sounds so much cooler when you use the French term for it. It was really simple because it only used three ingredients: egg yolks, sugar, and heavy cream. I may have also added a little vanilla extract...actually, I probably did.
Okay, first I should start off by saying I do NOT look cute when I go into work. Wearing a little makeup would be useless because it would melt off before my shift was halfway through and there's no point in doing my hair if it's just gonna hide under my hat (nobody likes hair in their food!).
So, this sabayon starts off by whisking the egg yolks and sugar together over a double boiler. In a separate bowl, I heated the cream to scalding. You just keep whisking and whisking and whisking until the yolks are cooked. You'll know when you've reached that point when they start to get thick and lighter in color.
They should look like this! You can kind of see how they are falling back in ribbons into the bowl and they've gotten a little lighter in color.
Once the yolks are cooked, the mixture is ready for the cream. I took the yolk mixture off the double boiler so they wouldn't continue to cook and placed the bowl over a towel for balance. When I started doing this, I felt kind of like an octopus because I was ladling cream, whisking eggs, balancing the bowl, and trying to take pictures for the blog...
Once all of the cream was added, I sent the mixture through a strainer to make it really nice and smooth. You can see how much lighter the mixture has gotten but my sabayon was actually TOO EGGY still! The recipe called for 12 egg yolks and I, trying to out- smart the process, used liquid, pasteruized yolks that they use in the bakery (the bakers told me 1 yolk is approximately 1 ounce) instead of separating out whole eggs on my own. When I finally turned this into ice cream, it was more like frozen custard but it was still delicious. I probably raised the kitchen's cholesterol levels a good bit that day.Rookie mistake.
Most of you know that I spend a lot of my time at Clemson making and selling ice cream. I also did an internship last summer working at Boulder Ice Cream in Colorado so I think it's fair to say I'm pretty experienced in the ice cream field. Every time I've made it though, I've always used base mix. All ice creams start with a basic mix, basically eggs, cream, sugar and stabilizers, and then flavorings and variegates are added to get whatever type of ice cream you desire. We get ours sent to us at Clemson using the original Clemson recipe and at Boulder I got to help make our own base using holding tanks and pasteurization equipment. But never did I get to make ice cream base at home or in a kitchen! It was SO easy, too (thanks to my make-shift double boiler).
This recipe was made using the sabayon method...everything you do in a kitchen sounds so much cooler when you use the French term for it. It was really simple because it only used three ingredients: egg yolks, sugar, and heavy cream. I may have also added a little vanilla extract...actually, I probably did.
So, this sabayon starts off by whisking the egg yolks and sugar together over a double boiler. In a separate bowl, I heated the cream to scalding. You just keep whisking and whisking and whisking until the yolks are cooked. You'll know when you've reached that point when they start to get thick and lighter in color.
They should look like this! You can kind of see how they are falling back in ribbons into the bowl and they've gotten a little lighter in color.
Once the yolks are cooked, the mixture is ready for the cream. I took the yolk mixture off the double boiler so they wouldn't continue to cook and placed the bowl over a towel for balance. When I started doing this, I felt kind of like an octopus because I was ladling cream, whisking eggs, balancing the bowl, and trying to take pictures for the blog...
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Since the cream was hot, I had to slowly add it to the eggs using a technique called tempering. It basically just means adding a little at a time to bring the eggs up to temperature so they didn't become scrambled...that would've sucked.
Thankfully, one of my line cooks stepped in to take pictures for me! Check out this action shot...
The last thing I did was put the mixture over an ice bath to cool it down. This was the finished product! I was pretty proud of myself for making homemade ice cream base.
For those of you wondering, I used this to make Cap'n Crunch flavored ice cream. It was all gone before I had a chance to get a picture though ;)
Bon appetit!
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Let them eat cake...
Okay everybody, I know it's been a while since my last post but the truth is, you'd probably get bored if I just kept writing about me making salads and chopping vegetables.
Which is why when I got to do something exciting at work, I grabbed my camera and jumped at the opportunity to blog about it. I haven't had the chance to do any cake decorating at work yet (though I'm hoping it'll come soon, mise en place is getting a little mundane) but I did get to deliver some cakes. The first two were going to the same hotel, on the same day at the same time...to two different brides. I drive a Toyota Celica (more fondly known as Cecilia, for those who don't know) and although the trunk is relatively spacious in terms of width and depth, it's not really made for super tall cakes. Fortunately, these were pretty small so I didn't have any problems with getting them in my car. No, my problem was with getting the cakes there. It was probably about 100+ degrees in Myrtle Beach at the time so my boss told me to make sure I had the air conditioning cranked to full blast. As soon as I hit the road though, I realized MY CAR WAS OUT OF GAS. Literally, as soon as I got on the highway the gas light came on. And I was following somebody else who was supposed to show me how to do this whole cake delivery thing and I didn't have his number so I just had to keep my fingers crossed that Cecilia had it in her to make it all the way to North Myrtle Beach and keep these cakes cool. I made it there no problem, thankfully, and the brides were very happy with their cakes.
This is what they looked like!
Fondant covered, with a big fondant bow and the newlywed's new monogram
A sandcastle! This was the groom's cake. Pretty cool, huh? We used brown sugar to be the "edible sand."
Which is why when I got to do something exciting at work, I grabbed my camera and jumped at the opportunity to blog about it. I haven't had the chance to do any cake decorating at work yet (though I'm hoping it'll come soon, mise en place is getting a little mundane) but I did get to deliver some cakes. The first two were going to the same hotel, on the same day at the same time...to two different brides. I drive a Toyota Celica (more fondly known as Cecilia, for those who don't know) and although the trunk is relatively spacious in terms of width and depth, it's not really made for super tall cakes. Fortunately, these were pretty small so I didn't have any problems with getting them in my car. No, my problem was with getting the cakes there. It was probably about 100+ degrees in Myrtle Beach at the time so my boss told me to make sure I had the air conditioning cranked to full blast. As soon as I hit the road though, I realized MY CAR WAS OUT OF GAS. Literally, as soon as I got on the highway the gas light came on. And I was following somebody else who was supposed to show me how to do this whole cake delivery thing and I didn't have his number so I just had to keep my fingers crossed that Cecilia had it in her to make it all the way to North Myrtle Beach and keep these cakes cool. I made it there no problem, thankfully, and the brides were very happy with their cakes.
This is what they looked like!
Confetti cake!
I got to do a second cake delivery this past week and I think it was probably the coolest cake I've seen thus far at Croissants...
Pizza and breadsticks! They did different pizza "toppings" using fondant and the parmesean cheese was shaved white chocolate. The breadsticks even came with marinara dipping sauce, a chocolate cupcake with dark red frosting.
Now that I've gotten to spend some time with these kinds of cakes, I'm eager to get to do some decorating of my own!
Bon appetit,
JoAnna
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