Wendy DeBord

Joconde is a type of cake. It's very thin. In the photo I posted above it's the green layer. If you want to know more about it please take a look at a current thread in the Pastry & Baking Forum on this topic, lookhere. You will have to scroll down thru the discussion. Inside the joconde photo I have posted above is keylime mousse.

Wow great questions: Taste is THE factor above any and all! A good looking product that tastes average or horrible is a waste, why bother. But to that end I do not aggressively seek out high-qualtiy ingedients. I can't at this current job, it's not in the budget. It doesn't lessen me or my work. It challenges me to do even better! Very often with baking the whole process of baking and one chemical or flavor against another cancel out your ability to taste specific brands. Sure that isn't the rule. But I can't tell what cocoa powder is in a damn good piece of chocolate cake unless I eat two pieces made by the same person with the same recipe. The piece of cake is more then the ingredients, it's how the ingredients are handled and combined and the quality of your recipe and mostly the chefs ability to do good work. It's not quite like cooking, certainly not comparable to a salads ingredients, the quality of your meat or fish, etc....... You don't eat specific individual ingredients with baking. When your picking produce for baked goods.......that is a different story and quality is everything. Again, there's an exception to that too. Many times fruit frozen at it's peak is better then the anemic fruit you get at the store or thru produce companies. I'm only cooking or baking for others, rarely myself. And the same thing hold true. Taste is THE most important thing, with-out it- it doesn't matter what the item looks like.

I use the danish recipe from "Baking with Julia" written by Dorie Greenspan. It's not laminated. It's a blitz type, no additional butter is rolled in. You leave the butter in chunks and that does the same thing as the rolled in butter. You still do three turn rolling out the dough to build layers though. I find I can get as good of flavor out of the blitz with less work then regular laminated dough. I have not had any formal training. There is some grey area there........as in I always tagged along with my Mom who was a pastry chef and owned a bakery. She never "taught" me, I watched while washing dishes and learned. She did super basic work, I've learned mostly from books and hugely by on line reading and talking to others. I learned alot from Steve klc and Michael L...........and several others that are members here. I think it's best not to say exactly where my job is...........just in case. If your a member of a country club in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago..........most club memberships let you dine at other club. It's a great system so you can check out more then the club you belong to. You can pm me and I'll disclose where, that way.

No problems with my wrist yet. That's another aspect of being a pc at a country club verses a bakery. I don't do repetitive work like bakerys do. People who decorate cakes all day tend to get carpial tunnel. Yes, I do make a supply of decorations and keep a variety of things on hand at all times. I don't often make the same thing twice (cause theres so many things you can do and why not learn to make everything). Here's some photos in my garnishes cabinet. You can tell their all spring related. As we get into summer I'll begin making different items.......more bee's and butterflies (I like to put those on cookie platters for golf outtings that are served outside, kind of foux fun) and I'll change the types and colors of flowers. Heres a look inside: (I've been using those little drop flowers as accents on banquet desserts lately. No one but myself at work understands those are retro decorations, the drop flowers.......as is what's so in today.....but I've finally got you to tell.)

Here's more that went on today. Just cutting these pastries and sitting them on the shortbreads. I won't decorate them until later. We have a party for 191 people for lunch tomarrow so I had a alot of creme brulees to make. I'm just heating the cream at this point. Everything else is measured out and ready to be tempered in. Since I had breakfast this morning I didn't stop for lunch. But around 2:00 I started to get hungry again. I noticed when I was up in the upstairs kitchen the smell of popcorn, and I couldn't resist. It's wasn't as good as it usually is. We have a new full time bartender and it's her job to keep the popcorn flowing in the grill room. I can tell this bartender doesn't like popcorn as much as the last one did. Last one made it so good, if you closed your eyes you'd think you were at the movie theater. Popcorn is one of my favorite foods! I've eaten it before until it actually made me sick from too much. Forunately that hasn't curbed my liking for it. Heres the filling for my cannoli waiting to be beaten together: I had to make a b-day cake today that I didn't want to make. They ordered a whip cream frosted cake and wanted all the decorations to be green. Specificly asking for green flowers.............that's weird/different. I hate when they take orders like this because I don't have green flowers laying around and I can't make them easily out of whipped cream. I'm not a buttercream piped out flowers fan. I tend to prefer real flowers or crazy fun flowers......not roses or real copies of flowers. But a girl has to do what she has to do. I instructed the Chef to put a gum paste butterflie into the cake before presenting it. When I arrived home tonight my hubby was boiling hotdogs for himself. I opted to reheat last nights Chinese food: and now here I sit typing to you while I drink another cherry h20. I've been thinking about making a dash down to the kitchen for a hand full of m & m's while I continue visiting with you all...........I'll be back.

hello again..... Today was a typical friday. Rush, rush, rush, RUSH! Can you guess what I drank first thing this morning while I checked my forum? Sha......... I'd like to say it was a different flavor, but it wasn't. I think my body would be shocked at this point if it started the day with a different flavor or drink. For excitement I pulled out a old favorite sippy cup. Anyone reading along that's from Iowa? If so, you'll be familar with the name on my cup. Bruegers has great bagels in Iowa City, IA. We eat there when ever we visit. Walking into work with a party already in progess makes you feel like you've missed something and you need to get into hyper drive and be on everyone elses speed. I started to, but then Leo said, "theres breakfast on the line, help yourself" so I stopped, made up a plate and went back down to my dungeon to eat this: I didn't ask how long it had been put up, but it did taste pretty good inspite of how long ago it might have been made. It's always a weird thing eating left overs off buffet parties. Sometimes it's a feast of wonderful items and sometimes it's horid. When you work in the kitchen you just wait for the buffet to come back when you hungry, instead of fixing yourself something. Also, it's not bad form........the waitstaff is hungry too and they don't have the option of making themselves something to eat. Ah...........if you notice I finally got a cherry h20 instead of those darn grape ones. I buy these cases of the h20 at Sam's club and the last time I was there they didn't have the case of flavors I like. So not only getting what you don't really want, that case also comes with lime h20............and I don't care for those at all. It leaves me with a 6 pack out of each case that I bring to work and pawn off to everyone else. Today for some reason they sort of were fighting over them.......... strange. I couldn't photograph alot today. Fridays and Saturdays in the food biz are generally major days, and today was no exception. My mini pastry stash was almost depleted last weekend and I really need to restock the freezer with more, plus I needed to do a glass mirror for tonights party. When I began working at this club they hired me part time just to come in and make petite fours/mini pastries, they sold that many to make it worth while. They've got their system and it still remains. The system is to have tons of mini's in the freezer so there are always some ready to go. It's really NOT a good way to do this. They are impossible to decorate and then cover with-out ruining their presentation, etc... but it's what they want, period. That type of storage and prep, eleminates any fruit topped mini...........no fruit tarts, etc... And I've had to figure out how to do things that aren't fragile and that can be held for weeks in the freezer. I do try to make a couple fresh mini's for every mirror I make. Today I did some strawberry tarts and cannoli. Wait, heres todays mirror of mini's: I've been becoming too focused on photographing these trays of mini pastries lately. I'm sort of beginning to day dream off and think more about patterns and colors when I'm preparing my mini's, then I should. You/I want mini's where the whole is greater then the one. Hopefully that made some sense? The group of pastries looks more impressive then looking at one detailed little mini. That's sort of the opposite of what you see in pastry books and competitions. They, make each piece a work of art..........but when you put a bunch together.........in my opinion they loose good design and compete with each other. Sooooooooo I thought I'd share a couple more photos on this line of thought. The next several shots are the few photos I took while at work today: Eclair shells before they are baked...pate' choux or choux paste as we refer to it. Chocolate pate' choux. Baked off cream puffs and eclair shells. I was impressed with the thinness of my shortbread cookies (sorry- but true). We had been talking in the Baking & Pastry Forum lately about a new technique to make these joconde wrapped mini's......and I wanted to share a photo of how this technique was coming along for me. I've learned that my photos aren't showing the scale of objects correctly and so I stuck a ruler up to this mini to give Bripastryguy a peek (if he's been reading along here).

Absolutely, I have.

owwww, would you mind giving more details on that inespm? Welcome to The eGullet Society For Arts & Letters!!

Bummer.........if you bought something called pistachio cream you didn't get pistachio paste which is the good stuff. Sorry. And, no it isn't cheap either, but the real stuff goes a LONG way and keeps for years.

Thank-you all through out the posts I'm answering for all of your kind words. Trust me as far as pastry chefs go, I'm strickly average. If you don't mind, I would have more time in that forum when I'm completed here? thanks for understanding!

I have to make mini pastries for a party tomarrow so I hope to down load photos of that work tommarrow. For cookies I mostly make full sized average ones. I make tons of those once the golf season gets under way with banquets. But I've never photographed them. I have mentioned in the P & B Forum my favorite recipes for cookies. The pink disc is the frozen strawberry mousse. Lemon cake,..............there isn't any curd (that I'm thinking about), it's just a lemon chiffon cake. Perhaps I'm not following you?

I probably only do 10 sweet tables a year at this current club, mainly for holidays really. Specialty cakes..........most members don't want to pay extra for those. So usually it's my standard b-day cake design. Most of my work goes into banquet functions, that's the most volume of our sales, then ala carte.

Yes, your correct about simple items verses complex. But that topic it's self is complex and another thing I could write pages on. I really would be happy to talk about that in the Baking & Pastry Forum after I'm done blogging. We have talked about it many times before, so please drop by and read thru some of our threads. If you don't find something that really answers that question, please start a new thread on it and we will all join in and help.

Thanks. The bee's are made from marzipan. It used to be my "signature" garnish. This year I'm into butterflies as my "signature". I have talked extensively about those darn bee here (at eG) and I finally posted a shot of them. I wonder if anyone from the Baking Forum remembers me going on about them.............?

You'd be quite shocked at how fast I can pipe out those lobsters (it takes far longer to whip the whites and color them then to pipe that out). I've done them before. Oh, the Barney cake.........I have a story on that one. I did the barney part of the cake the night before the b-day, totally out of cake (as usual) and I wasn't thinking (I left work quite late that night and was really tired) and left it in my room on a speed rack (just because that cake couldn't go in the coolers overnight). The next morning when I came into work it had melted. Up until then (as all our pastry people have read me complain about) my room is in the mid-90 degree heat zone and a HUGE complication in my job. So anyway, when I got in that morning I had a little break down over the temp. of my room and my barney cake melting. I had to remake the barney before lunch when it was due ( and I didn't have enough cake in my freezer to make a second one, so I had to make the head out of styrofoam I found in the mantainence department). I might have even threatened to leave if they didn't do something about how hot that room is. Well, that worked having a fit, because they went out and bought an air conditioner just so I could work in that room. Sometimes it does play to fail, then you can get what you need.

I believe all questions are good questions............. Buffet prices vary wildly. All pricing is set by the manager. AND we are a "not for-profit" club. Which means we really only charge enough to break even, we don't want to make a profit. I'd say prices range from $7.00 to $50.00 per person on a party that entails a buffet. We have pool parties and kids halloween parties.........they can't charge much on those. We really want member participation for many reasons. The handbags were from last years Mothers Day. At that time I was working at two country clubs part-time. The current one I'm at had me part-time for a while. Then I got a full time offer from another club and my Chef worked wonders to keep me.

It's hard for me to figure out how long I've been a pc. When I began I was working for my families catering business and we really did some basic stuff, lots of cake mixes and none of the recipes were mine. I did about 10 years of that kind of baking because I was mainly cooking at that time.........I was a chef on the hot side of the kitchen. Then I took like 10 years out to be an artist. I really only became a 'professional pastry chef' about 5 or 6 years. Then I haven't always worked full time because I've stuggled finding work between positions. Pc jobs aren't available on every corner, jobs are very hard to find. 911 left me out of full time work for well over a year. (hum........it's past mid-night so don't hold me to the years and dates, I could be dreaming and not even typing now) Members weddings. For weddings we do a "package deal", it's the only time we do so. So a basic cake is including in the price of their meal. Anything done at work, from work is payed to work. They then pay me a salary, period. I don't get any bonus's or anything like that. It's to the clubs benefit that I work hard then they make a profit off my work. Typcially the pastry area is not as profitable as hot food so in alot of ways I'm plain lucky to have a job.

I've never competed in any baking related competitions. Steve Klc is an expert on that topic, so is Chefette. They can tell you all about them and expectations, etc.... Not being modest (please Murphy, don't strike me down), I can do more realistic and better work. You really can't belive the time pressure I'm under all day everyday. Nothing gets my full attention at this job. I'm always doing multiple things at once and someone is generally talking to me, while the radio is blasting, and I have 3 things in the oven upstairs I'm thinking about and the produce guy is looking for me to sign in his delievery, etc.... Once upon a time I worked at jobs were I had time to perfect things. I do miss that! But right this moment I'm going thru a growth period. When I first began this current job it was taking on at least double the amount of work I'd done before at other clubs. So I'm growing in the respect that I can now look back and laugh over how I stressed over a party for 200. Heck, over 500 is starting to get comfortable............enough that tackling that number like at Easter doesn't scare me anymore. I've let myself stop the perfection and trade off getting things done. I'm now working on getting more perfection back into my work (within this tighter time frame).....but that's slower then I want.

At the moment I wrote that (it's now way past my bed time) I was thinking multiple components that I might use to cover a cake. Like theres frosting, whipped cream, ganche etc......... too many choices to detail at the time. To differeniate how I'd define "icing" I used that word to mean something that goes on the exterior of a cake. Frosting is.......well, any type of frosting, but limited to something I apply with a spatula...icing I might pour on.

Moving: I'd go anywhere and do anything job wise that meant I could support my hubby completely. He supported me for many years and I'd love to be able to return that before I die. The money thing. Well, I can't begin to tell you how complicated that whole area is. I can write pages and pages about it, and have in the P & B Forum. I'll try to sum one aspect of the money thing up, to give you a hint. My manager looks like a hero if he can get more work done for less money..........so every year that's exactly what he does. He also gets a yearly bonus based on doing so. Plus it secures his job and he doesn't have to go out on a limb with the board and ask them for money. At this moment we are down 2 full time people in our kitchen and everyone is running to death to cover those jobs. Instead of taking the money spent on those two positions and letting people work over-time we still have to get the work done with-out one second of anyone working ot.. Things are complicated, to say the least. Some things are just how things are done in all kitchens somethings are because of the manager. The thing is, as long as we make things work (which we all ways do) the manager thinks he is doing a great job cutting people and expenses. The morning sous chef and I were talking just this morning about this issue. We're like thinking we need to mess up to break the pressure on us and prove we need more staff. That's the only way the money will be spent, if we fail.

Well I can tell you haven't spent any serious time in the Pastry & Baking Forum. We have many people there that just blow me away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Big time!

YES! Welcome aboard my friend. I wish everyone liked and ate dessert. Us pastry chefs are becoming dinosours. Like I titled my blog........I really do think dessert is the most important "meal" of the day. I mean, what if you die tommarrow or later today and you only ate healthy stuff thinking it would keep you alive longer??????? Nope, not me. I life for today and eat for today.

Yes, some of the handbags were covered in fondant. Some people like it and others don't. The current club I'm at, the manager hates it and won't even try it. henseforth, he won't sell one wedding cake with it. That stinks!!! At least I've got him selling modern wedding cakes now. When I began there he was selling cakes out of a 1970's Wilton wedding cake book. YUK! No time to make two cakes. I have pretty close to a zero waste factor at this club. For instance, if I whip cream today and don't use it all. I put the left over whipped cream in with my fresh cream and whip them together (from the start, not after they are both whipped) the next time I need whipped cream. I save any melted chocolate that didn't get used on one project and re-melt it and use it in something else. If I recall correctly I think I only posted wedding cakes that are from my current job. Flexiblity with menus..........almost complete control. The only thing I don't do is talk to each and every person booking a party. The manager does that and he either tells me what they've asked for or he bounces off some ideas with me and calls them back. This is a wondeful aspect of my job at this club! As far as choices and budget......that part. I have a banquet menu I wrote up and each dessert is individually priced out. So the customer isn't getting a dessert included in some sort of "package deal"..........it's all ala carte and up to the guest to deside. I'll do anything I'm capable of......regardless of price. If someone wants a replica of the White House for a b-day cake, I'll do it and the manager charges according to my time invested. It does make life very hard though when people want time consuming items. When that happens and I start to panic over how I'm going to accomplish my work load I do talk to my Chef and he either helps me or tells the manager no more specail orders for this time period, Wendy's swamped. They're really good at respecting that! My Chef is really great!!!!!!!!!!!!! He protects me and helps me...........the BEST Chef I've ever EVER worked with, for, or seen (and he's very young too). The chocolate boxes were from last years valentines dinner. My Chef dreamed up this idea of a gift box where the sides fall away, then I figured out how to do that. It's pretty rare that he asks me to do something that specific, but I thought it was a great idea and enjoyed working on them. What's inside them..............gosh I hate to admit this, but I don't recall anymore. Sorry.

Oooooh, that's a hard/good one. Hum, technically nothing is practice. There isn't time to make mistakes and start over again. You become a genious at fixing things. I guess I have to admit, shapes and artistic types of things are very easy for me, that's something I inherited, so did my two sisters. Lots of times people make comments about that to me...........but the facts are: I got one talent and to balance things out, I was left with plenty of deficits/faults!!!!!

The beauty of the garbage bag is how dirt cheap they are. Use it once and pitch it, plus earily in the day you can use it to double line your garbage pail. I use plastic wrap/saran wrap over my smaller mixers and the one that has a shield..........that's lovely cause it contains the mess better then open mixers, even though it's challenging to work with. ← Oh I'm with you now. Yes, that was a darn good idea! The time I am talking about is back in the 50s, before there were plastic garbage bags. We saw a baker at one of the baking shows we attended using the garment bags and thought "How Great is That!" and immediately bought some. The only plastic bags were the very thing ones that cleaners put over garments and that stuff was too fragile. ←