I know it's been a long time since my last post, school is half over and I feel like my head is in a whirl. This semester I have plated desserts and the art of pastry, which means I make a lot of very sugary sweet things like pies and cookies along with cheese cake, Panna-Cotta and Creme Brulee.

Today I had the pastry class and we made Éclairs and Cream puffs



This is the cake I made for my grandmother for her 80th birthday. I love her, what a great lady.

This is the cake that we made at the bakery that I'm interning at, it was a joint effort getting it decorated. I did all the whipped cream frosting and made it all square and nice looking and we both worked on the fruit arrangement. It is a white chiffon cake with two layers of Raspberry filling and Frosted as you can see with whip cream and fruit. We coated the fruit with an apricot glaze to help keep the fruit from browning, this is the final product.

Since school has stopped a lot has happened. I got approved for an internship with a very good friend that I meet at school. Things are continuing to look up, My boss is trying to move her bakery into her home so we have been doing a lot of plumbing and things like that to try and get her kitchen ready to be inspected for commercial use. We are still baking and filling orders when they come in at the old kitchen. We made a blue and white Penn State cake for someone that got accepted there. We have two more cakes to do this week along with hanging doors and cleaning up equipment. I thought I was getting out of construction, I guess it's good I like working with my hands.

These are my grades that I got this semester they are as follows A,A,B,A,B

We made a cheese cake today before our final it's really good.


This is the cake I decorated for my final. We had an hour and a half to decorate. we had to make three roses and do some writing or printing. I got a 98 on it. this is one of the better pictures of it but I don't think pictures do it justice.



Last week we made Boston cream pie and German Chocolate cake and a Chiffon layer cake.

In our class on Wednesday we decorated some cakes for Easter this Sunday. We didn't do any baking which is that part that I like but that's Ok with me too. We decorated pound cakes in the shape of lambs. We decorated cup cakes to look like Easter Baskets and put flowers on chocolate covered egg cakes.

The nose got smashed against the box on the way home.

This is the cake I decorated on Wednesday in class (it was baked the week earlier).





I also made a Peanut butter Tandy Cake, and Jewish Apple Cake.

It's been pretty busy here at our house and it seems like there isn't much to show for it. Linda was sick with the flu twice, fortunately the kids didn't get anything yet. I had mid terms in most of my classes and they seemed to go pretty well. We haven't had cake class in two week because of snow one day and a teacher day last week so not much baking too show off. We do have to make six icing roses for class and they turned out pretty well if you ask me.



We made Carrot cake in our last class. It was pretty good, Linda took it to work and they ate it all in a very short time. Linda said they were all raving about it being so good, which always makes you feel good.

Making a Scooby Doo birthday cake today, for a lady in Mifflinville. Hope it turns out. I'll have to ask her to send me a picture of it because my youngest daughter was carrying our camera around and now its broke.

BUMMER!!

It's been a few weeks since I have posted anything and we have learned a lot in class. We learned how to make character cakes and pipe stars on to make the outline and body of the character.



We also learned the proper method of putting together a double layer cake. We learned how to cut the cake flat, witch I knew but it was nice to know I was doing it correctly. I learned that putting a crumb coat on and letting it dry makes doing the final coat a lot easier. We learned how to pipe shells for a shell border and rosettes as well as Fleur De Lis.

The week before last we made Valentine cakes and cup cakes. The cup cakes were just the leftover batter from the cakes that we made, which were just yellow cake. We had to decorate one of the cupcakes for a contest in the class and I won 2nd place.

This week we made Black Forest cake and yes it is all gone. For those of you who don't know, Black Forest cake is chocolate cake with cherry pie filling and whip cream icing and maraschino cherries on top.



And of course, as many of you know, we have Christian with us now and he continues to be a delight.

I had a good class on Wednesday we learned how to make Pound cake and a simple frosting. We learned how to use the creaming method. Being that it was the first class, we learned some basic pipping techniques. We learned how to make drop flowers and other simple decorations.








We are also one step closer to being done with the upstairs Bedroom. Yesterday I installed the paneling on the knee walls and am very impressed with how it looks. I think it makes the room look a lot better

Sunday afternoon and evening. I love baking with my kids, and the results too.

I had my cake class on Wednesday. It will be a fun class and I'm really looking forward to it. We are going to learn a lot of basic decorating techniques and basic cake baking skills and methods. We each get to bake and decorate our own cake and or cupcakes next week. We are making pond cake and cup cakes and we'll be bringing home around a dozen cupcakes and some small loaf pound cakes. Minus the large amount of cake that will inundating my house I am very excited about this semester.

After two weeks of break from school we still have two more weeks to go. I have done some baking, but I've been concentrating on my house and finishing the up stairs so we can move into the Master bedroom. We decided to add a closet and desk space to the Master bedroom



The desk space will be to the left of the closet. I'll be finishing up the last few coats of spackling today and tomorrow, then hopefully sanding will go smoothly and I should be able to paint Saturday night or early next week. After that I can put bead board on the knee walls and trim the doors and move in, before I go back to school on the 18th. That's two weeks so I should be able to.

Christmas was lots of fun, my two little girls had a lot of fun opening their presents. We went to my mom's that day, after we opened things. What a good dinner we had, there was BBQ'D spare ribs, and potatos, corn, a few different types of salads. Then for desert we had lots of good stuff. I made the pies and we had, Pumpkin, Sour Cherry and Blueberry, and Billy made the pecan pie filling. We had angel food jello cake and as always ice cream.

Since the semester ended I've made cookies and bread twice, pies numerous times. I am starting to think I should just make our own bread and stop buying it but that probably will not happen for a long time, due to the lack of time.