Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Sure is a lot of pressure to get breakfast out for 40 people! Make three pots of coffee, get out the yogurt, dish it up, put our little boxes of cereal, put out three carafes, one with orange juice, one with milk, one with apple juice, put out disposable cups for hot and cold, ceramic coffee mugs, cereal bowls, napkins, silverware, cut up a BIG platter of fruit, slice three loaves of banana bread and make sure I keep checking the levels on the coffee and juice AND get my pate brisee rolled out and in the tart pan and in the freezer before lecture starts!! Oh, my! Good experience though. Everyone like the banana bread I made yesterday. Out of four and a half loaves, only one was left!

Our first lecture was on Laminated or layered doughs: puff pastry, danish dough and croissants. For all three doughs, you start with a "Detrempe"-mix your flour, salt, butter and water (or in the case of croissants-flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and milk.) and let it sit in the fridge. Then you take a Beurrage or butter block, and layer and roll the dough into a Paton or "package". Croissants and puff pastry are rolled differently but are very similar. I am happy to share the exact recipe if anyone is interested. Applications of puff pastry are: Napoleons, Mille Feuille (thousand leaves), Jalousie (think gourmet pop tart!), Pithivier (round version of a Jalousie), Fleuron (a crescent shaped puff that is used for garnish), Bouchee ("mouthful", a one bit round basket that you can fill with savory or sweet ingredients) and Vol-au-Vent ("fly in the wind"-same as the Bouchee but bigger).

Then we started both puff pastry and croissant doughs. We'll finish them tomorrow. They should turn out well!

Once we were done with that, we had another lecture, this time on Alsace-Lorraine, two regions (or departments as the French call them) in northwestern France. They border Germany and through the years have been under French rule and German rule but have always considered themselves to be French. Alsace-Lorraine is as far north as you can be and still grow grapes, although most of their grapes have a more German association than French association. There are mountains (which give them game for stews) and lots of rivers (fish stews). The people there raise pigs and geese as well as hops, grains, barley (think lots of beer!), plums, grapes and they also make lots of cheese. Quiche Lorraine originated here as well as Madeline's (the national French cookie).

After the Alsace-Lorraine, we had an Alsatian lunch! There was lots of beer! Lunch became very jolly, lol! We started with Flammekuchen, which is a type of pizza topped with cream, sauteed onions and bacon. Wow! This is definitely something that would make a great appetizer for a party! The main course was Choucroute Garni, which is several types of sausages served with boiled potatoes and cabbage. It made me think of Jordan, he loves sausages (and so does Kasha!). There was smoked beef tongue and duck confit. Dessert was a cheese platter and dessert wine.

I pre-baked my quiche dough for tomorrow's breakfast and also made a blueberry cream tart. As the new class needs a substantial breakfast tomorrow, they asked Chef Brian (who teaches some of the rec classes and often makes lunch during the wine portion of a new class) to make a more substantial breakfast, so some of the "heat" will be off of me tomorrow morning.

I came home from school and made some Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies. They were a hit already with Carl and his friends Rebeca and Richard! Nice!

Monday, August 30, 2010

First day in Pastry and we hit the ground running! The next class started today and Pastry is responsible for making breakfast not only for our class but for the new class (we have 14 in our class and they have 22 students in their class). The new class will spend their first month in Wine just like we did in June. Once we got coffee made (we are the first people there in the morning!) and started to set up the breakfast or "snack" table as Chef Lexie calls it, she gave out assignments for the next week. I have snacks! I am the only woman in my group again so the "boys" got to choose what they wanted to do. Shawn and Geoff are doing bread, Corey and Collin are doing dessert, and April has snacks. First thing I was told to make was blueberry muffins, tripling the recipe to feed all these people. Hurry, hurry! Corey cut up fruit for me, although tomorrow that will fall to me. Collin sliced cheese and meats to put out. Corey also soft boiled some eggs.

We had a lecture after that on Provence. Provence in southeastern France is known not only as the "Port of Olives" but also as the "Land of the Sun". Southern Provence is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea (lots of seafood here), the Rhone River to the east and the Alps and Italy The climate in Provence is dominated by two factors: the wind and the sun. The summers are hot and sunny, the winters are chilly with the "mistral" winds that begin in Massif Central and makes its way down the Rhone.

The Greeks brought olives to Provence 2500 years ago and established the harbor of Marseille (mar-say). Because of this, you see more olive oil here than butter used in cooking. 500 years later, the Romans came and took over this area. Provence was the first Roman province outside of Italy. With the Romans came vineyards and wine making. The Romans also developed irrigation systems for agriculture using water from the Rhone River. Provence is actually older than France itself!

The "holy trinity of Provence" is olives, tomatoes and garlic. Vegetables play an extremely important role in the cuisine here, zucchini, sweet peppers, greens, artichokes, fennel, eggplant, fava beans, asparagus, and haricot vert (green beans). Herbs grown here include lavender, thyme, rosemary, savory, chervil, mint, marjoram, oregano, saffron and basil. The further away from the Mediterranean coast and further north into this region, olive trees make way for nut trees, so nut oils are frequently used for cooking in northern or "Haute Provence". Fruits include berries, cherries, figs, lemons, apricots and melons. Livestock includes goats (with LOTS of goat cheese being made-Provence is world famous for their goat cheese), rabbit and lamb as well as some cows.

Boullabaisse is their most famous dish as well as ratatouille (just like the movie!). Provence is mostly known for their rose wines-70% of wine from this region is rose. Grapes grown here are mouvedre, grenache, cinsault and syrah. They also make Cassis wine (not to be confused with the liquor Creme de Cassis) and Pastis-the French national drink and aperitif (tastes like black licorice).

Then we learned how to fabricate a rack of lamb, which, by the way, is what we had for lunch today. Hot Plate did a good job! Pistachio Crusted rack of Lamb served with Ratatouille. GardeMo made Crespeau, which is egg pancakes layered with green olive tapenade, black olive tapenade, and goat cheese, served with a tomato/red pepper coulis. Yummy!

For dessert Colin and Corey made a Paris Brest, which if you remember is the round ring of Pate a Choux first made to celebrate the bicycle race between Paris and Brest (pronounced bress). They cut it in half then layered boozy cherries, Pastry cream and whipped cream in it then put the "lid" back on. They did a great job!

Then it was time to clean up and go home. I am doing breakfast (or snacks, depending on your point of view!) by myself tomorrow so it will be a busy morning. I made Pate Brisee for quiches on Wednesday and mixed a Royale (3 eggs to one cup of liquid, in my case I chose cream) using 9 eggs. I'll choose the filling for it tomorrow after I see what's in the walk-in. I also made four loaves of Banana Bread! That's for breakfast tomorrow. Busy, busy, busy!

Friday, August 27, 2010

First thing today was our exam. I know I missed at least two. We'll see what my grade is next week! Today is my last day in Hot Plate. That means I only have four weeks of school left! Next week I start in Pastry. Today is also "cooking without a net." The chefs give us a menu (something we have made in a previous class) and then give us 2-2 1/2 hours to make it.

We had a short lecture on Petit Fours from Chef Lexie. Petit Fours translates to "little oven". They are really any sweet little treat. They are usually 1 inch in diameter, one bite, cut, intensely flavored and intricately decorated. It is the sweet version of the Amuse Bouche.

There are four categories of Petit Fours:

1. Frais ("fresh"), which means higly perishable (the quality becomes easily compromised). This would be for example, a mini fruit tart.

2. Sec, ("dry"), which are dry, crisp little cookies. Shortbread, toiles, little biscotti. they are good for coffee service and to put with a serving of ice cream.

3. Glace ("glaced") which are the classic cute little cakes.

4. Deguise ("disguised"), these include things like chocolate dipped fruits (apricots or strawberries), baby biscotti dipped in chocolate or caramel.

For cooking without a net, Hot Plate had to make Chicken Roulade with Sauce Veloute and Butternut/Parsnip Puree. We had a little over two hours. We fabricated 12 chickens so we had enough chicken breasts to do the main course and enough to make chicken mousseline. We ended up doing ok (I was in charge of making the mousseline used for filling the flattened chicken breasts), but our sauce was a little thin because we started it too late. Our parsnips were roasted so ended up woody and could not be piped. The squash was good as was the chicken. The four chefs gave the entire class and the entire meal a 78. We were kind of disappointed (all of us) that we didn't do better. Oh, well, it was a good learning experience!

We got out of school early today. I'll be working on my project part of the weekend, going out to sushi with one of my friends from school and going to Cherry Creek Mall to look at Sur La Table (a cooking store) where we get a 10% student discount. Have a good weekend everyone!

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Lectures today covered Piedmont and Emilia Romagna. (Piedmont is where I will be going for a week of class in October.) Piedmont has a continental climate with cool, humid weather. Turin is the capital city of Piedmont. Two of the other important cities in Piedmont are Alba-which is the white truffle capital of the world and Asti, where they produce Asti Spumante (Janell's favorite!). There are two major rivers in Piedmont, the Po and the Tamara Rivers. Therefore, fish is a part of their diet. One of the major dishes in Piedmont is Bagna Cauda, a garlicky anchovy dip for vegetables. Piedmont is also on of the most important rice growing regions of Italy. The quality of this rice was already appreciated in the 18th century when the American President Thomas Jefferson smuggled two bags out of Piedmont so he could plant it in his estate in Virginia. Most of the rice grown here is Arborio rice, which is used to make risotto. Meat and game are also important to this region as is cheese. Pasta is not so important in this region.

The biggest historical influence on Piedmont was the ancient ruling house of Savoy, who owned much of the land in the western portion of France as well as northern and southern Italy and whose seat of power started in France but thru marriage was moved to Turin in Piedmont. This accounts for the large French influence in this area. French cooking has improved the cuisine of this northern region of Italy. Here cooking is elegant and yet still tied to the land, thanks to the pride the locals have in their produce and products. As a result of the dichotomy, the local cooking is best described as cucina borghese (the cuisine of the bourgeoisie).

Emilia Romagna is in the middle of Italy and essentially separates northern and southern Italy. Lombardy lies to the north of Emilia Romagna with the Po River running between the two regions. The Adriatic Sea lies to the east, Liguria to the west and the Apennines Mountains to the south. The region embraces two different areas, Emilia, the western part and Romagna to the east. The cooking of these two subregions is different, yet many general characteristics are shared. It is always full-flavored cooking created by people, for people, who are deeply involved in what they eat. Emilia Romagna is essentially one big fertile plain and is considered Italy's "bread basket". This big fertile plain promotes agriculture, wheat being the main product, as well as pastures for cows and pigs. As you can imagine with all that wheat, pasta is a mainstay of this area. The local housewives are experts in making pasta. Shapes and stuffing's vary but the quality is always the best. The imaginative creativity in matching shapes with different sauces is unequaled. From the pork raised in this region comes prosciutto and many kinds of salami, coppa and pancetta. The city of Parma is here which produces outstanding Prosciutto di Parma and culatello. The city of Modena is famous for it's aceto balsamico (balsamic vinegar). Milk is a vital ingredient for the third most important product of this region-Parmesan cheese, grana padano and the more valuable Parmigiano-Reggeiano, a must for pasta sauces, baked pasta dishes and for some of the meat and vegetable dishes known as alla parmigiana. Romagna, thanks to its coastline, offers many fish dishes. From sole to eels there is a wide choice of fish and they are usually cooked more elaborately here than elsewhere. The most famous wine of Emila Romagna is Lambrusco although this is not a region famous for its wines.

The two major factors in the history of this region around the 6th century were the Romans, who brought irrigation, agricultural techniques and urban organization. The Romans also understood how to harvest salt from the sea water of the Adriatic. The Romans built the "Via Emilia", a 125 mile road, the first road to connect northern and southern Italy thereby promoting trade. Then came the Gauls, who warred with the Romans and split the area in two. One side was Emilia, the other Romagna. The Gauls brought pigs to this area.

Lunch today was very good. We had Bagna Cauda with Grissini (long breadsticks famous in Piedmont)and a variety of vegetables as well as Peperone Farcito (tuna stuffed roasted red peppers) made by the students in GardeMo. Hot Plate made Hazelnut Stuffed Quail with Barbera Fig Sauce and Polenta (sorry Jordan, no green vegetables on this plate!). We had an ice cream buffet for dessert (the ice cream from yesterday). There was Lavender-Cassis ice cream, Chocolate-Espresso ice cream, Chipotle Chocolate ice cream, Raspberry-Chocolate ice cream, Orange-Chocolate ice cream, Mango Coconut ice cream and Tropical Mango ice cream. Looking at this list, I'm thinking chocolate is a popular flavor in this class! There was also a raspberry coulis sauce as well as a chocolate sauce and Swiss meringue for anyone who wanted it. We also had the nougat and brownies left over from yesterday as a side. Yummy! We had a "chef for a day" potential student who asked if we ate like this every day. We said yes!

We have another test tomorrow (I got a 93 on last week's exam) so I better get studying! Tomorrow is also cooking without a net. Hot Plate has to make Chicken Roulade stuffed with chicken mousseline, Sauce Veloute as well as a squash/parsnip puree we had back in week 10. Originally we were suppose to make Sauteed Chicken with Sauce Robert, but they felt this was too easy for us!?! We'll see how we do.

Carl hired a new chef to replace Eric, who is still in school at The Art Institute. His name is Carlos. He has two semesters left of school but was unable to get funding for this semester and so was looking for work. I will still be doing the baking, but he will do the majority of breakfast prep. Seems like a nice guy!

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Chef Pete talked about the Lombardy region of Italy today. It is localed in Northern Italy nestled between Piedmont and the Veneto. Emilia-Romagna lies to the south of Lombardy. It's major city is Milan. It has mountains to the north where you will find typical game like hare, venison and birds. Mountain pastures are littered with grazing dairy cows and sheep. On the hills of Lombardy, you will find fruit and nut trees, mushrooms, and herbs such as rosemary, laurel and sage (hearty herbs). Lombardy also has plains that were formed from alluvial deposits from the mountains. The Po River runs thru here and when it floods, corn, wheat and rice fields were formed. Milan is considered the veal capital of the world. Because of the many lakes and rivers, fish is plentiful-pike, trout, perch and carp.

Specialties of Lombardy include Bresaola (dried beef tenderloin), risotto, Pizzoccheri (buckwheat pasta with Savoy cabbage and potatoes), Cassoeula (pork and cabbage stew), Osso Bucco (a dish made with veal shank) Grana Padano (a cheese much like Parmesan), Gorgonzola, Mascarpone, Taleggio, Mostarda di Cremona (preserved candied fruits in syrup flavored with mustard), Torrone (nougat), and Pannetone.

They are not well known for their wines as the landscape and weather does not allow for great tasting grapes, but you will find Lambrusco and Francia Corta (a sparkling wine).

After that, Chef Lexie lectured us on frozen desserts. Most frozen desserts are made from some combination of cream, eggs, milk or sugar or simple syrup. Creme Anglaise (ice cream, really) and frozen custard are made with cream and egg yolks, Gelato is made from milk and egg yolks and simple syrup is what is used to make sorbets and granitas. If you add Swiss or Italian meringue to sorbet, you get a "Spoom". I've never heard of that! Sherbet is a sorbet with a little bit of dairy added, either a powdered milk or regular milk.

You can make your own proportions for these ingredients to get the texture and creaminess you want. It really takes three days to make good ice cream. On day 1 you make your base and allow it to "ripen" overnight in the fridge. On day 2, you churn your cream in an ice cream maker. It needs what is call "over run", which is the amount of air churned into the ice cream. You need some, but not a lot. Cheap ice cream has more air in it than more expensive ice cream and you can taste the difference. You ice cream will always come out soft from the ice cream maker, so put it in the smallest container you can and store it in the freezer for 24 hours to harden. On day 3 you eat it!

We broke down into teams of two and each made Creme Anglaise and then decided what our own flavor profile would be. We started out by scalding 2 cups of cream. While that was heating, we whisked 4 egg yolks with 1/4 cup of sugar. Once the cream had scalded, we tempered the eggs with some of the cream to bring the temperature of the two closer together, then put the mixture back on the burner to cook (so the eggs were sterilized). Kim and I decided to do Lavender and Creme de Cassis for our flavor profile. I'll have to let you know tomorrow how it turned out. We are going to have an ice cream buffet for dessert tomorrow to try all these ice creams!! Experimentation can be such a trial!

For lunch, Gardemo made Zucchini soup topped with a ravioli that had a walnut pesto, ricotta cheese and an egg yolk in it. It was surprisingly good! Hot Plate made Friccassee de Veau (French veal stew). I know it's Italian week and we were suppose to make Osso Bucco, but apparently our order got confused and we did not get our veal shanks. One adapts, lol. Dessert was a chocolate sauce with bourbon in a shot glass that you drank! Very rich. There was also a nougat on one side of the glass and three 1 inch x 1 inch little brownies on the other side. The brownies were excellent!

After class we met with Becklien and finalized our flight to Rome, so at least that is taken care of. Two days in Rome, two days in Florence, then on to Milan and Piedmont for our cooking class.

I made Easy Cinnamon Buns tonight. Take an entire package of Phyllo dough (you can buy this at the store in the freezer section) and let it thaw. Unfold the sheets so that the lines run left to right, using a little water to repair any dough that may have torn when you unfolded it. Brush the dough with 1 Tbsp of melted butter for each sheet, then sprinkle each sheet with half a mixture of 2/3 cup lightly packed brown sugar mixed with 3 tsp cinnamon. You can then sprinkle it with raisins and/or nuts if you desire. Roll up starting with the end facing you and slice each sheet into six pieces. Put these pieces in a greased muffin tin (you will end up with twelve buns) and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. You can drizzle them with a powdered sugar frosting if you want once they cool. Easy!

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

We spent most of the day together at school rather than in our separate kitchens. Chef Dale Demoed veal hind quarter fabrication (dividing the hind quarter into usable parts). I mentioned primal cuts yesterday, well today we learned about sub-primal cuts. The hind quarters can be divided into nine cuts: lower shank, flaps, tenderloin, top sirloin, knuckle, top round, bottom round, eye of round, upper shank. The lower shank and flaps and fat are considered "trim" and used for stock in the case of the first two but the fat is rendered with a bouquet garni and kept for cooking. Once Chef Dale had taken the hind quarter apart, he divided us into groups of two and gave each one of us a muscle. We each weighed our muscle before we trimmed it, then again after we trimmed it. We also weighed the trimmed material (fat, "silver skin", tendons if present). The exercise was to see how accurately we could weigh and to see how much of the veal would be left "saleable" (the amount you can actually sell and charge for). We started out with 57 pounds of veal at $5.75 per pound. We measured 11 pounds of bone, 6 pounds of fat (only the fat that was initially removed during fabrication) and 51 pounds of muscles. That adds up to more than 57 pounds, so obviously we did something wrong. The point of the exercise, however, was to show us what we get for our money and that we can save money by doing the butchering ourselves. Although there will be times when buying cuts of meat already cleaned and ready to go will be more cost effective for us.

We also talked about our final project (I already talked about that the other day) and Chef Dale showed us some previous projects so we could see what to do and what not to do. It is definitely a lot of work!

The only thing we had to do for lunch was make our own veal scallopini (which is actually a cut of meat and NOT a specific dish). Veal scallopini is very thinly sliced meat. We dredged the scallopini in seasoned flour, then dipped them in an egg/Parmesan cheese mixture, then sauteed them in blended oil until lightly brown and just cooked. Chef Pete made Panzanella (a Tuscan bread salad) and gnocchi for us and Chef Lexie made Arborio Rice Pudding seasoned with quatre epice. A very good lunch, if I do say so myself! Our wine was a Valpolicella from Italy.

We got an email from Jackie, our Alumni Director, about a four month culinary internship in St Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands working at a resort. Their executive chef is a Cook Street Grad so is looking for other Cook Street grads! Nice! I am thinking about taking it. It would cover their busy time, which is essentially winter for us. A hardship, I know, but somebody needs to do it!

I've had to rewrite my resume, as it is all about nursing. Now I need to be sure that potential employers, etc, realize this is a career change for me (when they look and see I have no real culinary background) but that I can bring many skills and talents from my nursing career to my new culinary career (management, purchasing, organizational skills).

All that said, it is time for laundry! No baking tonight-we still have things left over. Carl is completely full from now until after September 1. He is very happy about that. He is planning a Restoration Party in September and is going to let Cook Street students cater the party. We are all excited about it! Will let you know more later....

Monday, August 23, 2010

I had a wonderful weekend with my friend Vicki. She did however, tell me she has only read this blog once and it was too much information. I have heard from a couple of you telling me you enjoy the blog, so I am not sure what to think! Believe it or not, I do leave some of the things we learn out of the blog, otherwise it would be even longer! It has been a good study guide for me, and hopefully some of you have learned some new information along the way.

I started my final project for school yesterday after Vicki left. We have to choose a business (catering, personal chef, restaurant or bed and breakfast), come up with a business plan, a menu with recipes, then cost them all out. We also have to come up with a list of kitchen supplies/equipment we would need. It is due a week before graduation. We also had to choose a region in France or Italy to pattern our business menu around. My region is Tuscany (now a huge surprise to the people who know me!).

Today in lecture we started learning a little about food costing and the need to find the "yield" or the usable and saleable portion of purchased food. We should get more information on that tomorrow as we will need it for our project and right now, none of us can quite figure out exactly what we need to know!

Then Chef Dale talked about cuts of meat. 90% of the protein we consume is four legged (although he included chickens in that and as far as I know, chickens and turkeys only have two legs!). The different cuts that come from steer, lamb, veal and pigs are called primal cuts. The four primal cuts for beef are beef round, beef loin, beef rib and beef chuck. It seems that the industry is always looking for ways to market or sell meat and so they have come up with many different cuts of meat (some of which are the same meat, just different names) to sell us poor consumers. The other interesting bit of information I learned today was about veal. Veal is a by-product of the dairy field! Farmers want cows that can either provide milk or birth babies, so they keep the female cows but send the male cows off to be sold for veal.

Chef Dale also talked about grading beef. The three top grades of beef are Prime, Choice and Select. In order to be granted Prime cut status, you have to pay to have your beef graded. The grading is based on the amount of marbling in the meat between the 12th and 13th ribs. Prime accounts for 8-10% of beef sold and it is usually bought by hotels or restaurants as a special order item. Choice makes up about 20% of the beef sold and is what you find most commonly in restaurants and can sometimes be found at Costco or Sam's Club. Select cuts also make up 20% of beef sold and is what you find in grocery stores. The other 50% of beef sold is standard or utility. You see these cuts at buffets (i.e. prime rib buffets) and conventions where people do not want to pay high prices for meat.

Red meat is aged (beef and lamb). White meat is not aged (pork and veal). There are two types of aging: dry aging and wet aging. In dry aging, the meat is hung up in a humid and heat controlled environment for a period of time. Dry aged meat has what some people consider a "sour" taste, so if you do not know what you are eating, this meat is sometimes thought to be "bad". Wet aging is meat that is in a cryovac package with blood and fluid. It is generally sold by the box and should be protected from light. Wet aging is the most common.

We will start to cover specific regions of France and Italy, about one per day until the end of the school term. Today we talked about the Veneto, which is a region in northeast Italy. The Veneto is bordered by Switzerland to the north, Slovenia and the Adriatic Sea to the east, Emilia Romagna to the south and Lombardy to the west. The Veneto is a fertile plain between two rivers, the Po River and the Tagliamento River. This plain extends all the way to the Adriatic Sea to the east, so not only is a large amount of fish and seafood seen in their cuisine but the plains allow a great amount of produce to be grown. Arborio rice is grown along the Po River. Venice is the capital city of the Veneto. At one time Venice was the home of Marco Polo and Venice soon gained control of the spice trade. The use of many spices is still seen in the cuisine of this area today, which makes it quite different than say, food from Sicily. Wines from the Veneto include Soave, Prosecco, Valpolicella and Amarone. The cuisine of this area ranges from peasant type stews of game and beans to more refined dishes of Tiramisu, Risotto, and Carpaccio.

Lunch today was a first course of Fresh Pasta with Braised garlic and Balsamico. Our entree was Veal Scaloppini with Braised Radicchio and Gorgonzola Potato Cakes. I was in charge of the radicchio. I quartered the radicchio, cored it, then put the quarters into a hotel pan. I put lemon juice on them, salt and pepper, then a layer of brodo so we could steam or braise them in the oven. Once they were done, the liquid was drained and Grana cheese grated on top of the quarters. The radicchio was finished under the broiler. The radicchio has a somewhat bitter taste, but all the above food paired together makes a wonderful pairing. Dessert was a "Puzzle Cake" on of the students made as a special project. It is a six layer cake that alternates between vanilla and chocolate cake, then has sections cut out of it, frosted and reinserted so that the inside of the cake looks like Teutonic plates in the earth. Very cool looking! And tasty!

Then it was time to clean up and go home. I made some cookies tonight as well as the Baklava muffins (Carl's request). I am determined to get this high altitude baking down! Either things do not rise (or rise well) or they spread out too much. I'm working on it!