I thought while I was in the
mood to blog, I might as well write another one. This one is an overview and reflection,
of my first year of my Certificate 3 in Hospitality (Patisserie) at William
Angliss so hopefully it’s not too long and boring for you all. If it is, you
can just look at the pictures!
I feel like I have learnt a lot
this year, both from the teachers at TAFE, and from my other classmates. I’m
not going to write anything here about the theory classes that we had to endure
for two reasons. The first is that it would be quite a boring read and the
second is that if you got me started on the ridiculousness of our first
semester theory it would probably become an endless rant of all of the problems
that we had. The main thing I would like to write about is our practical
classes.
I remember the very first practical
class when we were all standing around outside our classroom with our brand new,
oversized chef whites and feeling like we were back in the first day of year 7.
We spent our first lesson cutting up lots and lots of vegetables and learning
fancy words like julienne, brunoise and macédoine and thinking about how this
was going to help us in our careers as pastry chefs. To be honest I still haven’t
answered that question, although I did feel very clever knowing some of these
fancy terms when they used them during the last series of Masterchef.
After these few weeks of general
cookery we progressed to the pastry kitchens and began our unit on cakes. While
the cakes we made were quite basic it was great to have some new recipes and
practice the basics of cake making. Probably the best cake we made was the
Chocolate Mud cake. I have used this recipe numerous times since making it at
TAFE. It is extraordinarily easy to make and the result is a very moist cake
that is easy to cut. 
Our next unit was Pastries. I
was excited to see the picture of a croissant on the front of the workbook for
this unit, only to find out that we actually weren’t going to make croissants
during the unit at all. Instead we practised making sweet and savoury
shortcrust, choux pastry, filo and puff pastry.
We followed our pastry unit with
hot and cold desserts. The highlight of this unit was probably making the Bomb
Alaska. The low of this unit was definitely the assessment. After making a perfect
chocolate soufflé in class on our first try it took 3 attempts to get it right
during the assessment.
Our Yeast unit was next and this
was definitely my favourite unit of the course so far. This was when we finally
got to learn to make croissants and Danishes! I learnt so much in this unit
about using yeast and dough, and I’m sure it will be very useful in the future.
Our final patisserie unit for
the year was present desserts. I found this unit a real challenge. I am, and
always have been, artistically challenged. With a lot of the things I cook,
they may taste great but often they are not plated up very well at all and this
unit was all about plating up. We learnt how to make simple garnishes to finish
off desserts and experimented with height and colour on the plate.
Our last unit for 2011 was in
the Angliss Bistro. I must admit I didn’t enter this unit with high
expectations and they diminished even more when I found out that we weren’t actually
having customers while we were in there. The unit did get better towards the
end when we were all able to make cakes, of our own choice, that would be used
at the bistro during the week. In the final week of this unit we were able to
invite our family and friends to come to lunch in the bistro. I was lucky enough
to have my husband John and two of my best friends, Kate and Gav come. It was such
a great way to finish the year, sharing what we have been doing with our loved
ones.
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| Esterhazy Torta |
While I have been enjoying a few
Saturdays without the early morning starts, I am really looking forward to
going back for this last 6 months. I look forward to sharing the things I learn
with you all!
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for reading!
