My Friend had a Crush on The Little Mermaid

The project this week was to create a cake stand sugar piece in the theme of our choice. My sketch was of an underwater seascape. My sketch was chosen out of a hat to be made and thus making me team leader again! We used numerous techniques in making this. The color and texture of sugar really reminded me of the blue water in the carribean with all the coral, rocks, and tropical fish. I think the piece came out beautiful and I was really proud of my team because we all worked well together.


I made the lobster myself!

I Bet Dali Didn't Do It Like This

The project for this week was to design a sugar show piece that is based on a famous artwork or sculptor . I did a sketch up of Salvatore Dali's "The Persistence of Memory". This was a group effort and mine was the one chosen by my team members to be made. We used a number of techniques to get the final effect of the piece. The clocks are made of blown glass, the back wall was made with bubble sugar, the tree and dead horse looking thing was made of pulled sugar, the floor and supporting piece are all made of poured sugar except that the floor was poured on a silicon mat to give it that texture, and even the rocks are made o

Chocolate Show in NYC

A team of us in school designed and built a chocolate showpiece for the 9th annual Chocolate Show in New York City. We had four teams each working on their own side of the chocolate shrine. Our side was modeled after the Chichen Itza in Mexico. It is fitting because the mayans are the ones who are credited for discovering chocolate. The picture doesn't do it justice. There's so much detail in the textures and figurines that my camera didn't pick up. It was a great experience to be part of a team and design something and then see it come to life on display with hundreds of people looking at it. I think it came out really amazing.


The "front door" of the shrine was made by our instructor. I couldn't get a good picture of it but you can see it here.

Other two sides:

We Are...

I know this picture is all wrong. You can't wear uggs in the kitchen.

The plated desserts section of the curriculum was really interesting. Cooking is not only about making beautiful items, it is also about presentation. We are artists. If you want to see amazing styles of plating just look at the Alinea or El Bulli websites. The amazing chefs there create art that I can only imagine in my wildest dreams.

In this section we took it one step further then just "cooking". We learned how to design plates, sort of like fashion designing with sauces as fabrics and tuiles as buttons. Thought goes into texture, taste, height, color, lines and shapes. We are designers. Before a chef plates anything up he builds the plate, deciding what to put on it, where, and how. We are sculptors. He then draws a diagram that is an exact blueprint of the plate. We are architects.

Throughout the whole curriculum we've been writing production lists for each days duty. Everything is organized and planned. There's a lot of paper work involved. In the field, cooks will check their inventory at the end of the day and write out a production list for the next day. So it really is a lot more then just cooking or baking.

Before plating a chef must "sell" the item. The words on the menu have to make the customer conjure up thoughts of exstacy. It's easy to sell a product if it "looks" tasty but it is much more difficult to make it "sound" tasty. We are writers and poets. During this section our chef had us make a list of 20 words that describe: flavor, action, texture, and style. Using these words we had to name all the plated desserts that we made and describe them. Here are some of the words I really liked;

FLAVOR: effervescent, full bodied, umami (look it up!), pungent, subtle, briny, along with the usual words like caramelized, crunchy, zesty, nutty, etc

ACTION: sizzling, infused, candy coated, sous vide, enrobed, fermented, flambeed, molded, along with the usual words like broiled, sauteed, barbecued, reduced, baked, etc

TEXTURE: moist, flaky, soft, tender, foamy, stickprovocative, silky, velvety (fashion and food are the same thing I'm telling you!)

STYLE: old fashioned, home-made, eclectic, seasonal, rustic, artisanal, avante garde, French, cutting edge

The menu wording assignment was harder then I thought it would be. I wanted to be descriptive and creative while not using the same words over and over again. I also didn't want to use too many words because customers want to eat not read. People get bored easily.

I'm starting to work on my next project which is designing and making up my own menu and restaurant. Things are getting busy!