My favourite recipes to work with at home have been from two published books: Home Baking (Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duquid) and Tartine (Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson). The former travels one across the globe, finding sweet and savory morsels that range from delicate dumplings to rustic cakes. The photographs are part of what makes the book so attractive to read, but when one gets past the visual experience and actually starts cooking, the pleasure increases several-fold.

Recipes from the delectable San Francisco bakery Tartine are all winners. Of particular yumminess to my palate — the lemon cream which one can turn into tarts, layer in a parfait, spoon over toast or just lick from the bowl. I think I might have to try freezing it when summer comes.

A recent foodie experience that sadly yielded no pictures, only good memories, was breakfast at Medina in Vancouver, on Beatty Street. This is the sister cafe to Belgian-inspired restaurant Chambar, but with a much smaller seating capacity. Once the line-up is conquered and one enters the front door of Medina, the rack of waiting waffles and scent of fresh coffee causes instant salivation. Spare yet not sterile, the cafe design supports the food in both presentation and flavour; things are highly considered, but not over-wrought or fussy to eye or tongue. A wide array of Belgian-French brunch items are given counterpoint by the waffles. Each waffle comes with one condiment for an extra dollar or so. Therefore, one can try raspberry caramel sauce, or fig-orange marmalade, or stay tried and true with maple syrup and yogurt. Just to tempt you even more, the coffee list includes a milk-chocolate lavender mocha and lavender latte. Absolutely, perfectly, divine. Lavender can be cloying, but in these coffees it is just the right embellishment of aromatic surprise. One really has to try it.

I wasn’t very good at taking pictures to document our trip, but my little point and shoot wouldn’t have done justice to the pastries or dresses or flowers or entire “joi de vivre” scenery anyway. Visiting the Mission bakery Tartine was a highlight. Everything I sampled was delicious, but the most surprisingly delightful treat was perhaps the gigantic gougère, with black pepper and thyme.

It was a crispy but soft, cheesy wonder.

The gougères made at Voya are tiny bite-sized morsels, perfect for snacking. Tartine’s giants easily make breakfast, or could be an awesome light lunch accompanied by some veggies or fruit.

When we walked up to Haight-Ashbury, hunger drew us into the Magnolia gastro-brew pub. They had quinoa on the menu! The coasters also had exquisite little drawings, and a message about slow food on the reverse.

All in all, this three day visit was just a sampler of San Francisco’s magic. I’m very excited to venture back in the near future, with resident friends and family the perfect excuse to eat another gougère in Dolores Park!

Purity has come and gone. I managed about 3 weeks on our “no wheat, no dairy” diet, and then I got a new job. That, as they say, was that. In a restaurant where there is staff meal provided every day, it is enough of a challenge to be veggie, let alone demand rice and no cheese. Staff meal is always meat based, even if the carb is a grain, they’ve likely cooked it with chicken broth. I’ve been grateful to be fed at all, really, so whatever the boys make especially for me, I eat. Currently, that means a lot of pasta! At home I still aim for quinoa, brown rice, millet and a hefty dose of legumes and tofu, but it is hard to miss out on cooking dinner, because I’m working from mid-afternoon until 10-11pm. Adapting to this new schedule is something of a sacrifice.

However, all that aside, I’ve been making sourdough regularly and loving it. A new bread book I have, Bread by Jeffrey Hamelman, is stupendous. So far the Vermont Sourdough (of course, my version is the Vancouver Sourdough) is the only one I’ve made. Three versions into the habit, I’ve decided a dose of buckwheat is a must, as is a milk wash and poppy seeds. The bread bakes up with a fantastic, crisp crust, and a soft but meaty crumb. I’m pretty ecstatic every time it comes out of the oven, and the family fan base is growing.

This bizarre looking treat was purchased at a local bakery as a sort of engagement snack. (Yes, M and I are now going to be married!) The bun, called a potato by the baker, was composed of cake scraps, rum and butter cream. The lady at the counter recommended the potato as one of her favourites, but it was the oddest flavour combination, far too sweet, and not to our liking at all. After one taste, the whole thing went in the garbage. Too bad! The mocha macaroon pictured behind the potato bun fared a little better, in that it tasted great, but was also too sweet. I actually managed to get a headache from its sugar content. Wow. I should stick to my instincts, and get fruit tarts or lemon squares at new bakeries. I think they are generally satisfactory, at worst.

Of course, I still have cravings for bread and sweets. A pastry cook can’t help it! So, vegan and gluten-free baking is also very de rigueur. This afternoon I adapted a Garden of Vegan recipe. It was called “Pear, Ginger, Pecan Bread,” but it’s become “Wheat-free Curried Coconut, Pepita and Cranberry Loaf.” Once it comes out of the oven I’ll be able to a) photograph it and b) taste it. Then I can pronounce it an excellent idea or an experiment gone wrong.

Photography (and baking) complete. I think it turned out OK. Oven-drying the cranberries a little first would eliminate some of the wetness around the berry. Flavour-wise, I like it, but it wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste. Less sugar would be a good idea too, since it is more of a lunch accompaniment than a breakfast or recess snack, with the curry.

The recipe for Curried Coconut, Cranberry and Pepita Loaf:

2 C flour -to render it GF, substitute brown rice flour, potato flour and amaranth flour. I used 3/4 C brown rice flour, 1/8 C potato flour, and 1 C amaranth flour.

2.5 t baking powder

.5 t baking soda

.25 t salt

.5 t garam masala -increase to 1 t if you love curry

.5 C organic sugar

.5 C shredded, unsweetened coconut

3/4 C soy milk

1/3 C olive oil

1 banana, mashed

approx 1 C frozen cranberries

1/3 C roasted pepitas

Bake at 350 F for 50-60 min.

As per usual for the season, yummy treats seem to be falling from the sky and sprouting up like mushrooms wherever one goes. I’ve had sufficient lounging time to peruse the beautiful and edifying book “The Sweet Life: desserts from Chanterelle” by Kate Zuckerman. She includes useful tips on the chemistry of baking — why beating egg whites with tartaric acid increases volume and stability, for example — as well as providing insight for the home baker on how to turn a lovely, family-size flan to decadent, individually portioned presentation. Although I still have to try the recipes, the chapter on souffles was full of valuable information that will undoubtedly allow for scrumptiously towering rise.

I have to share the many uncommonly superb kitchen-themed gifts I was honored with this Christmas:

To make the production of creme chantilly even more rewarding than usual, an astute friend gave me the delightfully cute rabbit whisk. Apparently one can also get bird whisks, but the cocked ears on Mr Rabbit have me sold on lagomorphic style.

Another gift wherein the giver had Patisserie Bateau in mind was the extendable cooling rack. One can lay out a whole batch of cookies on the counter without wrestling multiple cooling racks that want to become entangled.

*these are not my baked goods; all photos originate from online shops

My parents gave me funds for a KitchenAid stand mixer, which occupies pride of place on the kitchen buffet. It is one of the Professional HD series, in workmanlike grey. Multi-tasking has never been easier. Thank you, Mum and Dad!

An Anthropologie oven mitt, sweet apple-print apron, fairytale tree serving platter and to-die-for Japanese wave-patterned bowls and plates (I’ll have to properly document them) round out the kitchen-oriented items I received. Hopefully everyone who got a Christmas gift from me was as thrilled with their gifts as I was with mine.

Hurrah for the useful and inspirational! It will be fun to experiment with my new tools.

Today, we clean; tomorrow, we graduate. 15 weeks gone just like that at NWCAV! For the exam, which lasted 2 days, we had to produce:

1 lemon sabayon tart with meringue

1 florentine torte

12 bread rolls in 4 different shapes

12 molded chocolates in a “unique” truffle flavour

1 marzipan rose

1 batch of cookies (we drew the type out of a hat; I pulled “kipferli)

There’s room for improvement, but I’m also quite pleased with my efforts. The 5-spice chocolates were very popular at home. I got the ganache recipe from Kate Zuckerman’s “Sweet Life: desserts from Chanterelle”.

Home stretch. That’s right. My pastry school experience is drawing to a rapid close. We have 9 days left, and some of those include graduation day and exams! I can’t believe it’s gone so fast. The past few months seem like a blur of scaling, whisking and lots of laundry. I know I’ll miss NWCAV and Chef Tim as soon as I leave, but the end of assignments and scheduling also seems highly desirable.

Last week, one of our big events was our Celebration Cake. Some people made cakes for specific events, but S. and I made an autumn squirrel cake. It started out with my wanting to make something themed around peanut butter and jam, and then grew into a vision of sleek nut envy. Unfortunately, our skills didn’t quite live up to my imagination, but the cake was a hit nonetheless. My life-size Italian meringue-coated squirrel (christened Skipper) became a big draw. (see tiny image at top left of first photo)

We made rolled fondant and coloured it with food colouring from an air gun. We made gum paste leaves. We made modeling chocolate for the squirrel skeleton, royal icing and marzipan fruit (plus a walnut for Skipper.) The cakes were all gorgeous and we learned a lot about how finicky cake decorating really is. The best part was the actual cake. Ours was hazelnut sponge, raspberry coulis soaker and gianduja buttercream. ie. the best PB&J type dessert!!!

The end of the week saw us plunged into a restaurant day. Over 2 days, we prepped for 5 different plated desserts, and then presented them during a service call. Chef gave us some freedom to play with flavours and recipe combinations, so unlike the previous service day, not all of us had the same desserts to plate, although there were many similarities. My partner and I had the idea to turn a crepe component into cigars or straws, baked crisp as a garnish for the tiramisu. We also piped a cinnamon ice cream into cylinders so that all three items on the tiramisu plate were cylindrical shapes of varying sizes. It was definitely our best presentation.

Today and tomorrow we are in the midst of a dessert menu project. We had to come up with a concept for a restaurant, its clientele and size and location. Then we devised a dessert menu with 5 items. Two of those have to be served tomorrow for marking. Recipes and drawings or everything, plus food costing, rounded out the project. I’ve really enjoyed the tasks, although researching and computing ingredient prices and recipe conversions was tedious. Thanks to M. for all his patience and help with Excel!

Hopefully I will have pictures of everything up soon. My final theory is on Friday, then Black Box and 2 days of practical examinations before the real end. … and then it will be Christmas!

At school, I have to do a presentation on alternative baking. This means I lecture the class for 20 minutes on what diet particulars can walk through the door of one’s establishment, how to cater to them, and what ingredients to use — or not touch. Being the only vegetarian in the school (pastry and culinary combined: 38 students & 4 chefs & 2 secretaries) I garner a lot of teasing and not a lot of consideration when it comes to shared lunch. All in good humour, my friends harass me about blood and guts (“B, come eat an animal chocolate. You’ll feel predatory and strong ripping its head off.”) as well as gelatin. However, I can’t imagine the torture a vegan would face in pastry. Butter, milk and eggs abound. Cream runs forth like water. A diabetic or celiac individual would have to suffer blank stares. No wheat flour? Limited sugar? What could one possibly make? A carved melon?

Seriously though, I don’t think many people consider lifestyles or diets that aren’t akin to their own upbringing and culture. The wealth of culinary bounty we share here on the West Coast is extraordinary, and I feel very fortunate to be living in the age of oil and technology wherein imported oranges, avocados and crisp lettuce, not to mention unusual spices, tropical nuts or bushels of coffee and chocolate are readily available. — We should probably all eat more local and in-season food, but an orange in November is awesome! — It would be rare, I think, to find a young person here who had no knowledge of other cuisines. Toddlers know sushi and quesadillas as well as macaroni and cheese. That being said, not many people know what to feed a vegan. Thanks to a friend, some books, the internet and my own sense of vegetarian cooking, I’ve been able to figure out a few tricks for vegan pastry. The discovery of the day is a version of pastry cream, or crème patissier. It’s the filling in a Boston Cream donut, or a custard Danish, or a Napolean cake. You can put it in a tart with fruit or in a trifle. Usually, it’s milk, egg yolks, sugar, vanilla and a little starch. What would you do for a vegan?

I found a recipe that called for 2 cups of soy milk and 1/2 cup of starch (flour and corn starch) plus the organic sugar and vanilla bean. Trying it yielded a gummy, starchy tasting disaster. No amount of cooking “cooked out” that starch! I tried an egg replacer, which is also pretty much starch, with even worse results. It looked like that sticky slime stuff you play with in elementary school. Remember how it collected hair, dust, lint and dirt? Gross. So, back to the drawing board. Flax was another vegan egg option that seemed logical. Obviously bananas and tofu were out. This is what I used:

1 C + 3 T hemp milk

2 T corn starch

1 T flax meal

1/4 C organic sugar (sucanut might be a better choice)

1 t vanilla extract

*orange zest and almond extract were also tested as flavour profiles, and declared yummy by my very non-vegan parents

Mix the starches and the 3 T hemp milk in a small bowl. Allow the 1 C of milk and sugar to get hot on the stove, but don’t boil (you’ll get a skin). Pour some of the hot milk mixture into the starch slurry, stir to prevent lumps, then mix everything in the pot and put it back on the stove. Cook on medium heat so you get a simmer going. Stir constantly with a rubber, heat proof spatula, to eradicate lump formation. When the mixture seems thick, turn the heat up a little and let it boil while stirring, so the starch is thoroughly cooked out. Strain the pastry cream through a sieve, to remove the worst of the flax skins (if you want more fibre and don’t care about flecked cream, AND you did such a good job of stirring that there really are no lumps, you can skip this step). Stir in the vanilla extract or zest, or both. Cool before use.

A couple items of note: I did find the pastry cream a bit sweet for my taste with 1/4 C of sugar. One could likely stir in some maple syrup instead of sugar, but I haven’t tried that yet. Also, the flax meal did render the finished product “dirty” in appearance. One cannot sieve out all the little brown skins. I think most vegans wouldn’t care, as they tend to be healthy types who appreciate flax. On the other hand, fruit flans at a wedding with flecked pastry cream might be odd and undesirable. So … make flax eggs (boil water and flax seeds, then use cheesecloth to filter the clear “glue jelly” from the seeds, and then put the jelly in the pastry cream, mixing it in with the hemp milk. Lastly, I chose to use hemp milk because a lot of soy milks taste beany, or chalky, or too sweet. Even though I like drinking soy milk, it just seemed that hemp would be a richer, cleaner taste for a pastry cream. I’m sure almond milk would work nicely too.

We put our trial vegan pastry cream (orange and almond options) on poppy seed cake. Unconventional, but good!

Hazardously yummy challah helped us start week 2 of breads. I never post on Facebook, but I did after eating Challah! “I ♥ challah and butter!”

Sticky buns finished us off in bread, in more ways than one. Not only were they one of our last recipes in the bread section of the curriculum, but they were also so deliciously soft, sweet, tender and scrumptious that at 2pm with no lunch none of us could wait and we all ended up stupid-silly on sugar highs. The giddy laughter wrought by the sticky bun was very contagious.

At the end of our 8 days of breads, we faced the midterm. Half a day on Thursday and all day Friday for the practical. I can still look forward to my 3 hour theory exam on Monday.

Stress prevailed today. I stood for 7+ straight hours, didn’t eat for almost 9, and ended up 10 minutes late presenting my practical exam products.

12 Croissants

125 ml Crème Anglaise

50 Checkerboard Cookies

1 Baguette

1   6″ Poppyseed Cake (European style)

No photos. I wasn’t that organized!

I was very teacherish, and aided by a peer, organized everyone in the class to follow a schedule for when we were making and baking what. In theory this worked well, and even in practice it came off fairly smoothly. The problem was we needed at least an extra 15 minutes or even half an hour for everyone to feel comfortable finishing their products for presentation to Chef Tim. Apparently no one has ever been late before, but about 1/3 of the class was late finishing today – primarily because we are slower workers, but also because in spots where we might have saved time, we waited for other class members, did people’s dishes, assisted etc. We get one percent deducted for every minute we are late, which doesn’t make me very happy.

On the up side, Chef said all I need is practice. Which I know. Making a perfect baguete while also producing equally perfect cookies, croissants and sauces plus a buoyantly risen flourless cake in 6 hours is meant to be challenging. I couldn’t have imagined doing this just two months ago, but now I have, and the baked goods were all decent. We’re talking about perfection here, and even as students we are measured to the bar of picture-perfect market-ready pastries. I guess to be upset that I am not a master baker after two months is ridiculous. Onwards!

As Peter Reinhardt says, “May your crusts always be crisp and your bread always rise.”

We had 10 hours over two days to actually make our entremet in class. I practiced mine on the Thanksgiving weekend, and then made some adjustments to the mousse recipes for the “real” cake. Unfortunately, the konnyaku powder I used as a plant-based gelling agent seemed to have a poor reaction with the wine in my top layer. It didn’t set properly, despite a huge amount of the konnyaku powder. I guess I should have experimented more just with the riesling mousse, or used gelatin. To stay true to one’s beliefs, or go for the high score … I guess personal integrity won out.

The main project work day was quite stressful. Twelve people making twelve different cakes that were each composed of at least four different aspects and in many cases required many more steps for the inclusion of flavours and poached or roasted fruit. We tried to plan out a schedule for the ovens, so people making like sponges could join forces for temperature and baking time. It worked, but the kitchen was still a mad-house. Functional, but very high-strung. We were all relieved when Thursday was over, and Friday morning’s garnishing proved almost relaxed.

My entremet was Plum-Chevre and Riesling; inspired in part by the William Carlos Williams poem “This is Just to Say”. I put a walnut nougatine sponge on the bottom, followed by the plum-chevre mousse, a candied ginger japonaise, the riesling mousse and then a decorative jaconde on the outside.

A sad and droopy tip to the slice, courtesy of the konnyaku powder and my lack of knowledge about gelling agents.

I was quite pleased with the decorative jaconde and the simple aesthetics of the poached plum garnish. Chef told me that partially submerging the plums into the mousse would make them literally part of the entremet, and be a stronger, more pleasing presentation. With the plums skating on the surface, mirror glaze was displaced and created thick patches on the cake. Also, the plum edges were slightly scraggly, no matter how carefully I trimmed them. Setting them into the mousse would have given a cleaner look. Of course, unless I’d done the whole thing on Thursday, setting the plums in would have been impossible. Also, I don’t know if the unset mousse would have held the plums up, or just engulfed them entirely. Chef had initially recommended poaching the plums on the Friday morning so that their colour would remain bright for adjudication. Technique and scheduling to consider for next time.