Hello!
I just had my first week of classes this term and I think its going to be a good one! I’m taking Garde Manger and European Cakes & Tortes; garde manger is defined as “keeper of the food” and refers to the preparation of many cold dishes, hors d’hoeuvres, appetizers, canapés and pâtés. European cakes and tortes is basically what it sounds like — a whole lot of cake making!
In garde manger we’ll be making salads, sausages, pâtés, terrines, cold seafood dishes and putting on a ‘Grand Buffet’. Last week we made a variety of cold soups – vichyssoise (leek & potato), roasted tomato, carrot with toasted coconut and almonds, cucumber, avocado, and gingered melon.
I’m not gonna lie, I’m not a huge fan of cold soups; I definitely prefer my soups to be hot. These weren’t bad, however and if cold soups are your thing I’d recommend looking up some recipes for these. {Disclaimer: the melon soup tastes like a margarita!}
In my cakes class, we’ll be focusing heavily on icing skills and piping techniques. Each class period we’ll be decorating a cake and getting graded on how well we ice and decorate them. We started off with a pretty easy cake this week – a Sachertorte. Apparently a Sachertorte can only be called that if the word “Sacher” is piped on top, so that’s what we did. Each of us made an individual cake, iced it and piped on the word. I’ve got some work to do, but I’m looking forward to the challenge and learning different techniques!
I had big plans to have a recipe for you all this weekend, but it hasn’t turned out the way I want it to yet so I’m tweaking the recipe, testing it again (third time’s a charm, right?) and I’ll hopefully have it for you soon so stay tuned!
