This is the first Tuesday since finishing pastry school and I’m already so bored. The intensity of the amazing program really set a pace for the week and now there is… whatever I want again, like summer.
The program at NWCAV was fantastic, with amazing teachers and people overall. Despite being pretty odd-one-out (when is that not true?) it was all fam feels and whatnot. I do want to do their culinary program too, which is arguably what they want everyone to do, but the time and the whole, into pastry a lot more than cooking. What a great bunch of people.
These were the most fun finals that I’ve ever had. Practical finals were to design a six course dessert menu including a drink, bread, two plates, a palate cleanser, and a mignardise – take home chocolates.
A clear Japanese theme going on. The chocolates are dark chocolate shells with roasted strawberry jam and ganache inside.
Mini pull-apart milk bread with gruyere, daikon pickles, miso charred scallion butter.
The first plate was meant to look like the street snacks you might find in Harajuku. A ‘crepe’ cookie with mango mousse and sponge cake, strawberries on top, all soaked in Malibu rum, three ice creams to look like ‘dango’: strawberry, vanilla, matcha. The first iteration of this plate was so bad the chef remarked on the vast improvement.
A ‘zen garden’-esque plate. The standing rings were a bit of a nightmare. Plan C with tuile cookies worked when plan A and B were chocolate rings. Roasted strawberry mousse, black sesame ice cream, chocolate torte. White lines are coconut milk gel, flower is made of wagashi/nerikiri paste, green dots are cucumber lime gel, ring made of chocolate tuile cookie, and green ‘tree’ stuff is a lime chiffon cake. Thanks to Kate and Steph for the photos you’re seeing. I forgot to take photos in my haste to be done.
Pretty proud of the work, but obviously improvements can be made. It was so nuts to carry the zen garden plate out and not have the rings fall over. It was the greatest sense of relief when those were on the table.
Now to try and get a job in this industry.