Instant Karma, Bakery Version

I think David will be pleased that I brought nothing home for him to taste. Too much of a good thing, and all that.

Today was Day One of cakes. We had our choice of orange or chocolate chiffon, flavored as we wished. Chiffon is sort of a "hybrid" cake. It's made with fat (canola oil, in this case), like devil's food or pound cake, but it's mixed like a low fat cake, such as angel food or genoise. I added cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger to mine. The technique is straightforward: mix dry ingredients; mix egg yolks, oil, and flavorings; stir it all together. Beat egg whites with sugar and cream of tartar; fold them into the egg mixture, and pour the batter into pans. Once they were in the oven — two nine-inch pans — we moved on to Swiss Meringue Buttercream.

Yesterday, we learned that there are three kinds of meringue: Italian, the most stable, where you make a hot sugar syrup and pour it into egg whites; Swiss, where the egg whites and sugar are warmed, then whipped, and French, the least stable, which is the simple mixture of whipped whites and sugar. We started our buttercream today by warming two cups of egg whites (about 16, which you'll remember from yesterday) and two pounds of sugar in a bowl on the stove, beating constantly. Once that was "too warm for a hot tub," we poured it into the 8-quart mixer and beat it forever. Can't be overbeaten, Chef Judy says. Once it was glossy and cooler, we added two pounds of butter, and lo and behold, fabulous buttercream, to flavor as you like. I added orange extract and orange flower water to mine.

We had free rein on filling, as well. I made a milk chocolate ganache flavored with orange liqueur. By the end of class, we had assembled our cakes, using only half the cake recipe: cut the layer into thirds and brush each layer with syrup (mine was marmalade, thinned with more orange liqueur and orange juice). Then pipe a ring of buttercream around the top edge of the bottom layer. You do this if your filling is not buttercream, to keep the filling from coming into contact with the outer icing. Then I filled the center with ganache, and repeated with the next layer. The top layer went on, all was adjusted and smoothed, then I wrapped it all in plastic and refrigerated overnight. Tomorrow, we'll frost.

I may have previously mentioned Jeff, who's joined us for Baking and Pastry and hopefully for nothing else. He's a couple of months ahead of us in the program and he's sort of a dorky obnoxious guy. He acts like he knows Chef Judy better than the rest of us (since he had her class for four full days last fall, before he had to drop out), and he makes weird comments during lecture. Like, she'll say, "And now the cream is fully whipped." He'll say, "Yay!," like a five year old. He leaves class spontaneously and comes back eating food. Yesterday, it was a hot dog at 10:30 am. "Hey, man, take it outside," Andrew said. "I have to leave right after class," Jeff said. "No excuses," said Andy. He doesn't make them, and he doesn't accept them either.

So today, we're all gathered around a big mixer while Chef is pointing out the various stages of buttercream. And behind her, Jeff is wearing a pair of oven mitts, and using them as hand puppets, making them talk while she is talking. If I was closer to him, I would have jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow. Totally rude. Later on, he was finishing up his cake while Rudy was putting away a mixing bowl, which slipped from his hand and smooshed one side of Jeff's cake. General sounds of distress and apology followed, but Tashana sidled up to me and said, out of the side of her mouth, "That's karma for the hand puppets, right there."