Anyone for a kleenex?

18 weeks have flown by and my time at SFBI is, very sadly, over. So get the tissues out, as I may feel the need to go deep and meaningful by the end of this blog!

As for the final week itself, one word - chaos! We had to produce 160 different products (and multiple numbers of each) for the graduation celebration on Friday. Teams were assigned, baking schedules locked in and it was all action go. Between us, we remade nearly the entire 18 week syllabus in one week - cakes, cookies, pastries, choux, chocolates, bread, pizza and icecream. Spirits remained amazingly high despite the pressure (and lack of sleep for the breadbakers).

Here's Rainie and Janina putting the final touches on some fruit flans....:

And Denise looking like a pro piping shells on the mini charlottes:

Here you can see approximately one third of the bread buffet and one of the bread animals - would that be Mike or the alligator?!:



The cake and chocolate buffets were pretty amazing too - again, just a small fraction squeezed into the photos but you get the idea of the volumes produced:




Diplomas were handed out - yes, I did officially graduate!:

And all 16 of us bid sad farewells to the teachers and each other:


So what did I take away from the course - the deep and meaningful bit?!

1. The concept of a "cultural divide" is garbage. We had 16 students from very different cultural, geographic, religious and social backgrounds and we all got on like a house on fire. I made a new family of friends that I hope to stay in touch with for many years to come.

2. Food is fun! I don't think I've ever witnessed a place as happy as SFBI. United by a love of baking (and eating) healthy, yummy food, the smiles just kept on coming.

3. Life is short, follow your dreams. It wasn't easy making the decision to skip out on work for five months and attend the SFBI program. And it became even harder when Dad passed away a month in. But looking back, it was one of the best experiences of my life. I'm taking away new friends, an even firmer love of baking and incredible memories.

Thanks to everyone who has followed the blog. I've enjoyed sharing my experiences with you. Until the next adventure......!

Plated and sated!

In our final week of instruction at SFBI, we swapped hats from bakers to restaurant pastry chefs to tackle plated desserts. Our instructors, Juliette and Frank, have both worked at some pretty high end restaurants in the Bay area, so kept us mesmerised with their creative constructions.

I think my biggest takeaway for the week though was the importance of adjectives in dish descriptions, particularly the word caramelised! Note how many times it appears below. It seems the blowtorch is a natural extension of any pastry chef's right arm.

Teff tarts with caramelised apples, cinnamon sabayon and French vanilla icecream (yes, those little balls are apple):

Crispy sable breton with caramelised figs, French vanilla icecream and fresh raspberry sorbet:

Breton style crepes with caramelised pineapple, roasted hazelnuts and French vanilla icecream:

Chocolate mousse and marshmallow tarts, with a crispy, caramelised croquant wafer:

Coffee cream tarts with a caramelised croquant wafer and caramelised cocoa nib sand:

Pistachio frangiapane with mint sorbet, white chocolate icecream and, you guessed it, caramelised pistachio dragees:

Cheesecake - finally a dessert unique in no caramelisation!:

And while we celebrated Thiago's birthday this week........

(Two days later - Thiago still recovering outside at lunch!)

.....we mourned the fact that this was our last week of class. There is only one week left in the SFBI program and it will be wholly production ahead of the graduation party and buffet next Friday. If any of you is looking for an excuse to use up some FF miles, here is the menu for the occasion. Just make sure you pack clothes with an expandable waist:

So no more teachers, no more books....... Until next week and my last SFBI blog ever!

Temper-a-mental!

Les grands maitres du chocolat (the master chocolatiers) take decades to hone their skills. At SFBI, we mastered the art of chocolate in three days, and boy did it drive me mental!

For those more familiar with eating chocolate than working with it, chocolate is said to be in temper when it has gloss and snap. Alas, just melting it does not temper it. You need three magic factors - time, agitation and temperature. I've also learned you need all the stars to align and to cross every finger and toe you have as it's tricky business. Chocolate has a mind of its own.

Here is Juliette "tabling" chocolate - a form of tempering for the more advanced:

The rest of us stuck to tempering our chocolate by stirring it around in the bowl for hours on end. And the "hours" is no understatement. This was Thiago after a morning of tempering class:

Why go to all that effort you might ask? Well check out the photos below of what we made with our perfectly (not) tempered chocolate. Please take a moment to applaud the shine (and imagine the snap)!

Pistachio mendiants a la Fergus:

Rum and raisin truffles:

Hand rolled truffles with ganache filling:

And a grand end of day display of everyone's efforts - actually it was confectionery week, so in addition to the chocolate work, you can see marshmallows, toffees, brittle, pate de fruits (in passionfruit and cassis flavours) and more macarons. Yes, I have booked a dental check-up for when I return!:

The only job more mindnumbing than tempering this week was handwrapping hundreds of candies:

So that's this week's update. Just remember next time you unwrap that chocolate bar, that some poor sucker went to great efforts to deliver you that gloss. Actually, that's a lie as I think these days most tempering is done by machine, even in the artisan chocolate factories. If Juliette dares mention the word tempering again, I'm buying SFBI one!

Food or fiction?

I struggled to find the magic with mousse cakes this week at SFBI. Sure they were spectacular as you'll see, but from top to toe, the whole week felt artificial. Food colouring, chocolate transfer sheets, spray guns and a bucketload of gelatin created a disconnect with what I think of as Real Food. Particularly in a week when I was fortunate enough to visit Chez Panisse, the bastion of ecological, harmonious, organic Californian cuisine.

Judge for yourself below - droolworthy or deceptively dangerous?

Food: Lemon and blackberry mousse cake
Fiction: Outside cake layer handpainted with food colouring (see Janina preparing hers); top glaze similarly dyed yellow with E102 / FD&C Yellow 5. Yellow 5 has been banned through most of the EU and in the UK. There are continual petitions to delist it in the US and Australia (see note at the bottom of this blog), but sadly these never seem to gain traction with the respective authorities. It is a suspected cause of hyperactivity and learning disorders in children, can trigger hives, asthma and other allergic reactions and several research studies of the chemical have identified indications of carcinogenicity. Incidentally, Yellows 1-4 have already been found to be toxic and delisted in the US, which doesn't give me much hope for the safety of Yellow 5!


Food: Bavarian saffron, vanilla and white chocolate mousse cake
Fiction No 1: Cake spraypainted with yellow dyed chocolate (that's Juliette in action with the spray gun)
Fiction No 2: White chocolate decorations on the rim patterned with chocolate transfer sheets, again manufactured with some rather scary Yellow 5 food colouring


Food: White chocolate, pistachio and raspberry mousse cake
Fiction No 1: More of that spray gun action on top, this time with pink food colouring (FD&C Red 3; again Reds 2&4 have been delisted in the US given adverse toxicity findings (a subtle way of saying tumours in rats))
Fiction No 2: I couldn't believe it when we got out the titanium dioxide (think paint additive used on tennis courts) to dye the side macarons extra white. Apparently a natural off-white wasn't sufficiently attractive!


Food: Grasshopper cake
Fiction: Chocolate transfer dyed decorations on top and a bright green (FD&C Green 3) peppermint cream layer within the cake

Food: Passionfruit pyramids
Fiction: More chocolate spray (this time Orange 13) and more of those chocolate transfer sheets used to create the starry deco


Food: Macarons
Fiction: Don't get me started on the food colouring in these little ones


Fortunately there were some relatively harmless mousse cakes, which stopped me from going completely insane for the week - raspberry mousse cake (proving that bright and attractive colours can be achieved naturally), whisky hazelnut dome (with an extremely addictive crunchy praline layer) and the charlotte, decorated with a simple ribbon. The three of these were still loaded up with gelatin, but that was about their only crime.



So that was my week. I won't deny they didn't taste good (cream, chocolate, eggs - symbiosis) but I think I'll take my mousse cakes in natural tones and minus the spraypaint next time please!

Note to above: you can find out more about the dangers of food colouring on www.additivealert.com.au (Can the Colour campaign). I found it fascinating to read the letter to FSANZ petitioning for the removal of six identified "high risk" colour additives, already banned in the UK. The letter closes with three pages of very credible medical signatories and yet, two years on, FSANZ has still not acted on the issue.

Find me the man!

Just blogging to advise you to expect wedding invites in the post soon! I may not have snagged the man yet but I've found the cake designer, and it's all downhill from there, right? Actually, so many talented cake designers emerged in wedding cake class today that I may need to enter into a regular marriage and divorce cycle for the next few years!

Check out these stunning creations made by some of my fellow classmates:

Thiago's mosaic inspired fondant cake, so amazing that I have to show you a close-up too. He hand-coloured and hand-shaped every element:


Justyn's floral fantasy - take a close look at the incredible flowers he shaped from fondant. Martha Stewart, watch out!:

Denise smelling the flowers on her Hawaiian garland cake - perfect simplicity:

Fergus' Pac-Man cake - yes, that's Mr and Mrs Pac-Man on top!:

Juliette's spotted pretty-in-pink demonstration cake:

And finally, the entire group's fondant creations:


We also tried our hand at buttercream cakes - see Denise and Ursula in action below, as well as Thiago's finished design.




So, just because Ashley handed out her final rose on the Bachelorette this week (I promise I don't watch that show, I'm just well informed from third party sources!!), doesn't mean the rest of us aren't still looking for the man. Pls email suggested names with photos and a list of attributes by Monday as I need to put the cake order in!