Ode to Italian Buttercream

First, in honor of the 32 lbs of Italian buttercream my group made today, a little waxing poetic about Italian B.C.:

Egg whites and sugar
what a sticky mess you make
stop! medium peak!

sugar and water
is thermometer working?
please don't crystallize

pouring carefully
syrup hits side of bowl and
makes cotton candy

whipping until cool
add lots and lots of butter
whipping until smooth

oh dear buttercream
why must you take so much time?
Hours I can't get back

And yes, you read right. We made just shy of 32 pounds of buttercream. Hopefully I'll put some pictures up tomorrow of the cake monstrosity that requires so much buttercream. Actually, I'm sure it will be lovely. Just right now, that's alot of cake and alot of buttercream to deal with in the am.

We spent much of last week making petit fours. We did some petit fours sec ("dry") and demi-sec ("semi-dry"), my favorites of which were pine nut macaroons, and almond spritz cookies with raspberry jam. We also worked on petit fours glace, tiny squares of frangipane (almond cake) layered with raspberry jame and marzipan. Then, we had to cover the squares with cream fondant. Let me state for the record that while I have now figured out the cream fondant, I still don't like it. The highlight of last Thursday was dripping some on my shoe. Then, yesterday, the fondant was fine but my scrivosa for drawing on the tops gave me problems. Today, my skills were a hot mess. I hope it gets better before our practical next week.

Speaking of practicals, it's hard to believe that cakes class is almost done. I'll miss having Chef C. for class every day, but we'll get to see her again next tri for advanced cakes. We also have Chocolates next tri. I think I'll like chocolates, and I hope I'll be good at it. I mean, I do all right in cakes, and I did fine in my other two labs, but I feel like I'm not really excelling at anything yet. Granted, I've made lots of progress since the first day, so maybe I'm judging myself a little harshly. I don't know. I still think I'm going to like chocolates; apparently it requires patience. For the most part, patience is something I have lots of.

As an escape from school, Other Half and I have been watching the dvds of Battlestar Galactica. I didn't get into the show until the third season, and we've since discovered that Other Half didn't start watching regularly until almost the middle of the second season herself, so this has been a fun journey. The final 10 episodes start on Friday. We won't be finished watching the back episodes, but I know that I'll have a much better understanding of the goings on than I did before.

Check back tomorrow or Friday for pictures!