Culinary School - Weeks 4 and 5

This has been a busy couple of weeks for culinary school. Last week we learned all about pies and tarts! I can feel my pants getting tighter and tighter as the weeks progress. :) We made flaky pie dough, mealy pie dough, sweet tart dough, and quiche doughs from scratch. We also made a Dutch apple pie with streusel topping, a blueberry pie with a lattice top, a cherry pie with a double crust, a chocolate cream pie with crème chantilly, a pumpkin pie, a fresh berry tart with apricot glaze, quiche lorraine and French baguettes. Boy was it fun tasting our creations!

This week I had midterms! It's hard to believe that these classes are half way over already. On Wednesday I had my Baking & Pastry Practical. Each person had to make:

Soft Yeast Dinner Rolls
Citrus Spritz Cookies
Flaky pie dough
Pecan pie
Country Biscuits

I don't know my grade yet but I did pretty well. I felt like my things looked and tasted amazing but my teacher seemed to grade rather hard and always found something teeny, tiny wrong with them. Some things I felt were a personal preference. Such as my yeast dinner rolls. I (along with my team members) thought they were phenomenal yet my teacher said they were a bit too salty and could have been baked a tad longer. Oh well. I probably got a B on the practical. I'll find out next week.

Today I had the written part of the midterm for my lab class as well as a written exam for the Baking & Pastry Concepts class. I spent a lot of time studying for these and have already found out that I got an A on one of them.

I'm tired! Midterms have worn me out and I'm ready for a nice, relaxing weekend!