chefpeon

I hear you Ted.....and everyone. Low hours=tiny paycheck-HUMUNGOUS heating oil bills=negative bank balance. Right now, I'm just working to prevent the hole from getting deeper. I won't get out of it til Spring at the earliest......

Whether you do cakes or plated desserts or breads or danish or whatever it is.....man...you gotta take pics! Having a portfolio of my work....even stuff I considered run-of-the-mill basic items probably got me employment in a bigger way than my resume did. Plus it's a great way to look back at your work and see how far you've come. Sometimes I'm too lazy and tired to take a pic.....but most of the time I do. It's worth it! If I lost my portfolio book I would absolutely freak out. I think in a lot of ways you have way more room to create with a plated dessert than you do a cake. I wish I could do more plated desserts, but rarely have the opportunity! I hope you will take some pics of your desserts and share them with us!

Acetate being your stencil and/or shield for overspray I assume? You do cakes, chianti? Post some pics if you can! We'd love to see 'em!!!!!!

Yep, you're right chianti.......peace and consistency are pretty awesome to me right now. It's not every day you're sitting there planning out your tasks having your morning coffee, and your boss/co-worker says, "Hey, you want a little brandy in that?"

So glad we could clear that up for ya Richard! Here's a picture of my bread-meat-lettuce-tomato and cheese torte!

You know what, if it were 5 years ago, when I was still hopelessly single, and working my ass off in the cake shop for peanuts, I'd pack my bags for LV in a HOT SECOND. To work where a lot of talent is, and where money is no object to the owners regarding ingredients and equipment.....I'd be a fool to pass that up. A damn fool. But......I actually found a man with a job, and married him, right when the cake shop closed. Moved to Tinytown USA. Work in a quaint little kitchen with earthy fun foodie people. It's pretty great. But a little part of me would love the opportunity down there at the Bellagio!!! Maybe next lifetime I guess!!!!

Yes! My pie was just like a frozen mass produced pie! Except, uh......it was better.

Boy, you said it! The perfectionist thing.....that's my "problem" too. I always feel a little sad when I feel I have to "rush" a job and can't obsess with it more and add a zillion more finishing touches to it!! I have to say to myself, "Anne, step AWAY from the pastries!"

Hey there..... I'm kinda new to this forum, but not eGullet. I frequently make a pest out of myself in the Pastry and Baking forum, but I felt like bothering another forum, so here I am. I did a coupla searches and read some of the pinned topics on Coffee and Tea, particularly milk foaming techniques for creating latte art. There's still some things I didn't really find info on regarding this topic. I make Lattes and coffee drinks for my friends at work.....we have 6 year old Faema that seems to chug along ok, but by NO MEANS would I call myself a barista. In fact, I think I probably pull some pretty lousy espresso shots. I wouldn't dare pull any for our fussy clientele, I'd probably drive them all away. Hey, I know my limits. But....I want to change! I'd like to make a decent latte for my friends, because they always make a decent latte for me. But I don't want to ask THEM how do it 'cause I want it to be a surprise.....one day, I want to serve them their lattes and have them say, "Hey! This is pretty good!" I'll settle for that. I also want to do what they don't know how to do, and that is....some latte art. I think I can master that....but I just want to know a few things.....(besides how to pull a good shot) In order to make latte art, it is essential that you have crema on the top of your shot, right? And by crema, I mean the tan foamy stuff on the top of the espresso BEFORE the milk is added. Is my terminology right? How do you get crema? Is it a natural occurrence? Can you enhance it by how you tamp your espresso? Does the grind have to be just so? Is crema affected by how long it takes to pull your shot? Should you pull your shot directly into the cup you're serving it in, or can you pull it into a small pitcher or shot glass first? Or is latte art all about how you foam the milk? Can any of you guys help me?

Whenever I work with fondant, I have found that it's ok to pre-form stuff like flowers, leaves, balls, individual bows, etc, but when it's something like a long rope that you will have to manipulate later, you can run into trouble because even though you have it well wrapped, the outside STILL forms a skin and it will wrinkle, crack and even break. Take one of your pre-formed ropes and see how it is.....test to see that you can manipulate it around easily without it cracking or breaking....you'd hate to get a nasty surprise on-site. How much longer will they sit there before you go to assemble your cake?

You don't think it will dry out to the point where it will break or crack when you go to place it?

So what is the "weavy" stuff in the background supposed to be?

That's a huge raise! Congrats! Dedication DOES have it's rewards sometimes! Regarding not knowing how long it will take you to do a new project is something I deal with all the time. I hardly ever get asked to to the same thing twice, so it's always a major guesstimate on my part. One thing I've learned is, it always seems to take me longer than I think it will take, so I make my guess and then add a couple more hours. Sometimes I come out ok.....sometimes not....

Just don't make that a habit. And MAKE SURE your exec KNOWS you spent 6 hours off the clock. Otherwise he/she is going to think you cranked it out efficiently within your clock hours and that may set you up for a future headache. I used to do that a lot because I was more concerned with the quality of my project than anything else, so I'd put in countless off-the-clock hours. Then when I got burned out and decided I needed to get paid for every minute I put in, I looked like a total jerk, when all of a sudden, to them, I got "demanding". A lot of people, even execs, don't quite realize what kind of time can go into some pastry projects. And they won't "realize" until they see it in actual paid hours. If you do stuff off the clock, you aren't doing them any favors, and you're certainly not doing yourself any favors. I speak from experience! Don't set yourself up. When someone asks me to do something that I know is time consuming, I'm very upfront. I say, "I'll be glad to do that, but know that this will take at least "X" amount of hours.....perhaps you might like to think of something that may be less labor intensive?" I love doing labor intensive stuff....to me, it's fun. But I'm not doing it for free anymore. Can't afford it. I'm not lecturing.......gosh no.....just givin' you a "heads up" is all. Great job on your pastries, by the way!

Ok, kids......cast or no cast, I just couldn't stand it any longer. Had that leaf lard sittin' in my fridge, and it was cold and yukky outside and I was bored to death. Hence, the one-handed pie crust experiment! According to "Saveur" magazine, leaf lard is supposedly the best thing around for flaky pie crust. I set off to find out. Made a miniature apple pie. Followed pie crust directions to the letter. Here's the pie right out of the oven......looks pretty good...... Here it is cut in half......look at the flakiness! But what does my cat think? No one knows. Here's the REAL test......my husband. He loves me enough to tell me when my stuff really sucks. Here are the flaky remnants of the taste test..... And finally, my opinion. OH. MY. GOD. It truly IS the flakiest crust (and tastiest) I've ever made. I'll be ordering leaf lard from here on out. I'm converted. I'm amazed. Here's the details for those of you who want to try leaf lard. I got mine from: Dietrich's Meats (610-756-6344) A 1 lb tub is $1.00. Here's the recipe I used: 2 tsp. white vinegar apprx. 1/4 cup ice water 1 1/2 cups a.p. flour 3/4 cup cake flour 2 Tbsp. sugar 1/2 tsp. salt 1/8 tsp. baking powder 12 Tbsp. chilled butter, cut into pieces 6 Tbsp. (3 oz) leaf lard, chilled Mix dry ingredients....put in freezer for 20 mins or so. Mix your vinegar with ice water. Cut your chilled butter and lard into your chilled dry ingredients with a pastry cutter or a couple of knives til most of it looks like small peas. Add your ice water/vinegar a little at a time until dough comes together. Split your dough in half and press into disks on plastic wrap. Wrap and refrigerate at least 30 minutes or up to 8 hours. Make your pie. I can't say enough how awesome this stuff is. Hope you can try it!

My co-workers just ordered in a huge case of leaf lard from Dietrich's Meats. They gave me a tub to try and I can't wait. There was a big article in "Saveur" magazine about making the best pie crust, and they went on to describe leaf lard which is fat that is located around the pigs' kidneys. "Saveur" listed the sources for leaf lard in the back of the mag, so my co-workers immediately got on the phone. It's supposed to make the flakiest pastry ever. We'll see! I'm going to try it as soon as my hand gets out of this cast.....!

Man, so many of my problems would be solved, if people would just put things back. I'm very generous with my tools, but I probably shouldn't be because they're rarely put back, and a lot of times, lost or ruined. Co-workers can be SO inconsiderate when it comes to tools.......WHY? Luckily that dowel board worked great in the cake shop, 'cause the only people working in there were cake people.....tips got put back. But yeah, working along with hot-siders creates a whole new set of problems. My husband would say something like: "I know, I'll make one with metal dowels. We'll hook it up to a power source, and when you're gone from work, just plug it in. Anyone stealing a tip from there would get a nasty shock!" Those things are fun to think about.

I've used every "medium" to write with.....royal, buttercream, chocolate, ganache, jellies, powdered color paint, and airbrush. My favorite is chocolate....I like how it flows, how smooth it is, and how it allows me to create with ease all the swirls and embellishments involved in fancy scriptwriting. However, what type of medium I use to write with depends on the cake I'm doing, where the writing is going, and what angle I'm writing at. I've used an airbrush on a few occasions.....but don't like to generally, because even with the pressure set low and getting close to the work surface with the tip, there's a tiny bit of overspray, and I don't like it. One time I did a cake that was a Mexican theme and there was a sarape that I'd made out of modeling chocolate laying over the top. I airbrushed the sarape pattern on, and I had to hide the inscription within the pattern, so I used an airbrush for the writing too. Oh yeah, another reason that chocolate is my favorite for writing....... if you make a mistake, it's really easy to fix! Once you realized you've accidentally written "Happy Birtday" (which for some reason, I do a lot), you stick the cake back in the fridge, let your chocolate writing harden up, then bring it back out and gently stick the tip of a paring knife under the letters you want to get rid of. They come up off the cake easily, and the surface is hardly marred at all. Then you can re-do your writing and no one except you knows that you goofed the first time. Of course, if you're writing on top of a ganache covered cake, make sure the ganache is completely set up before you write on it, otherwise that little fix doesn't work so well.

With some exceptions, I do all of my cake writing in chocolate.....either dark chocolate or white chocolate or colored white chocolate. I melt down chips or chopped chocolate whatever I have on hand, and add oil if I need to, to thin it down to the right consistency. I've never really seen the need to have a separate "writing chocolate". I don't think it would make much of a difference to justify an added expense.

See? From what mckay and McDuff said, even if you have a definition, it's pretty useless, because everybody has a different definition.

Right now I have all my pastry tips semi-sorted by category in my tackle box style toolbox, which is also probably the worlds heaviest toolbox.....geez! Lugging that thing around is a major pain in the butt. I think the BEST pastry tip organizing system I ever experienced was similar to what andiesenji described above. A cake shop I worked in had a large board with 2-3 inch dowels stuck in it at an angle. It was mounted on the wall next to where we hung our pastry bags. The dowels were a size that every tip could fit on them, from the tiny tips to the huge cake covering tips. Every tip was right there in plain sight, and best of all, you didn't really have to worry about putting them in the same place afterward....you just put them where there was an empty dowel. It was so easy to spot the tip I needed, no matter where it was. It was so cool, that I made a mental note to have my husband build me one when he has spare time. Problem is, he never HAS spare time.....so I think I'll make it a birthday request. It'll get him off the hook and he won't have to go shopping....

I have found that even if you're "backed up" with an "official definition", it's lost on a lot of people. I've seen so many regular type layered cakes marked as "tortes" simply because the baker wanted to market it with a fancier name. Fancy sells better, and it's a great reason to sell it at a higher price. People also frequently mix up the terms "torte" and "tart" (not so much pros, but the "common man"). They'll say, "I had this great pear almond torte in Michigan, can you make one?" And I'm thinking "Did they really mean "torte"?" Pear almond tarts are much more common. So I have to quiz the customer.....what did it look like? Was it flat? Was it tall? And they'll end up describing a tart. Then I gently try to educate them without making them feel stupid, but they don't care. They come back to me a few months later and say, "Could you make that pear almond torte again?"

Actually, nightscotsman mentioned the silicone stuff a few posts up. I think everybody would probably ditch the old metal pans for the new silicone ones if we could get the owners to ante up, which is tougher than you may think.

I think no matter what you used to paint on chocolate, the color would rub off at some point.....especially if you touch it. I have found that when I use the powdered color/alcohol mix and let it dry thoroughly, it will stand up to a touch here and there, but not a rub. For instance, if I were doing, say, a wine label like Keith did, I'd paint the label and make sure I left enough room at the edges for my fingers to handle it as I'm placing it on the wine bottle...then I don't have to worry about accidentally rubbing off any painting I did. Sure, handling something you painted on can get a little tricky, but it's a lot LESS tricky than trying to paint on something that's already been applied.....but it depends on the angle. I do best when whatever I'm working on is lying down flat.....when it's vertical it's a lot harder.

If you do post about the new Bellagio Pastry shop, make sure it's in a new thread....it'll get lost in this one. Neil, I hope you know how completely spoiled you are. Hee hee....if most of the owners I've worked for in the past had a couple million dollars...it would have gone up their nose or something....they never would have thought (gasp) to invest it back into the business! They'd be drivin' their new Jag around and I'd be sayin' "Hey! D'ya think you could replace my duct-taped RobotCoupe???" Hey Mel! How's business so far this month? I've experienced the typical huge January drop off. People aren't even buying my "health muffins". Bastards! Drop those resolutions already! You know you're going to. At least it was a good time to schedule my hand surgery.