Pastry Skills Course - May-June 2007

Pastry Skills Course - May-June 2007
As my reward for finishing my dissertation, I signed up for a 10-week pastry skills course at the Culinary School of the Rockies in Boulder, Colorado. Chef Shan Siebert led a fast-paced, information-packed, and really fun course. I learned the most about chocolate, baking at elevation, the pastry business, and the pastry personality type. Definitely better than a Ph.D. Definitely.

Chef Stan demos piping royal icing onto wire. Our class got to work in the professionally stocked commercial kitchen. Awesome! We had one or two dishwashers too - so we never had to wash our dirty bowls, pots, and utensils - except for knives, we washed our own knives. I loved our dishwashers. They were the sweetest people and our class always divvied up some of the leftover pastries for them.

We started with candymaking which I've always considered my least favorite aspect of pastries. We learned a lot of helpful information that rendered the process a lot less intimidating and a lot less frustrating, but still - a lot of work! We made fondant, caramels, and played with a lot of caramelized sugar - like making these sugar baskets.

Next we moved on to chocolate, tempering chocolate, truffles, caramels, enrobing, luster dustering, decorating. Good thing I like to work with chocolate and not necessarily eat it! Shan knew how to make everything look amazing.

Petits fours were next. A petit four is anything you can eat in one or two bites. Here, Allison decorates her buttercream petit four with candied orange and lemon peel. We spent time making different buttercreams, pastry cream, mousse, candied garnishes, pâte sucrée...

And then we made frozen desserts like semifreddos (pictured here, my white chocolate espresso semifreddo), tortes, ice creams, bombes, and glazes.

We finally got to cakes in the second half of the class - my favorites! Here is a lovely lemon mousseline torte that Lynda and Carmen made.

We also made a several varieties of non-frozen bombes. My partner and I made chocolate peanut butter bombes, and this is a cross section of Carmen's lemon bombe (they were delicious too).

The last weeks of the course were spent on decorating cakes, tiered cakes, and overall design and assembly. On our last night, we all presented our final projects. Alli's and my cake is the silver and white one in the back right. The other cakes are a casino cake, a bodice cake, and a hat cake. I guess ours looks like a hat cake too, but that wasn't the original plan... It's chocolate with almond soaking syrup and chocolate almond buttercream. I didn't have the heart to split it, so I made Alli take it home. She shared it with her office and reported that it was really good!

	Chef Stan demos piping royal icing onto wire. Our class got to work in the professionally stocked commercial kitchen. Awesome! We had one or two dishwashers too - so we never had to wash our dirty bowls, pots, and utensils - except for knives, we washed our own knives. I loved our dishwashers. They were the sweetest people and our class always divvied up some of the leftover pastries for them.
	We started with candymaking which I've always considered my least favorite aspect of pastries. We learned a lot of helpful information that rendered the process a lot less intimidating and a lot less frustrating, but still - a lot of work! We made fondant, caramels, and played with a lot of caramelized sugar - like making these sugar baskets.
	Next we moved on to chocolate, tempering chocolate, truffles, caramels, enrobing, luster dustering, decorating. Good thing I like to work with chocolate and not necessarily eat it! Shan knew how to make everything look amazing.
	Petits fours were next. A petit four is anything you can eat in one or two bites. Here, Allison decorates her buttercream petit four with candied orange and lemon peel. We spent time making different buttercreams, pastry cream, mousse, candied garnishes, pâte sucrée...
	And then we made frozen desserts like semifreddos (pictured here, my white chocolate espresso semifreddo), tortes, ice creams, bombes, and glazes.
	We finally got to cakes in the second half of the class - my favorites! Here is a lovely lemon mousseline torte that Lynda and Carmen made.
	We also made a several varieties of non-frozen bombes. My partner and I made chocolate peanut butter bombes, and this is a cross section of Carmen's lemon bombe (they were delicious too).
	The last weeks of the course were spent on decorating cakes, tiered cakes, and overall design and assembly. On our last night, we all presented our final projects. Alli's and my cake is the silver and white one in the back right. The other cakes are a casino cake, a bodice cake, and a hat cake. I guess ours looks like a hat cake too, but that wasn't the original plan... It's chocolate with almond soaking syrup and chocolate almond buttercream. I didn't have the heart to split it, so I made Alli take it home. She shared it with her office and reported that it was really good!