"You have permission to jump."

Today was production for the weekly Careme Room buffet, and I spent the first three hours of class in total happy zen mode, decorating little cakes. I told Chef Alex that I was really enjoying myself. "You have permission to jump," he said. Then he demonstrated.

The cake base was made earlier in the week, from equal parts ground almonds, eggs, sugar, and butter. I turned the cake out of the pan, spread it thinly with raspberry jam, and cut it into 1-1/4" circles. Then I decorated them, and there were five toppings in all. Strawberry with candied orange peel. Raspberry with a sliver of pistachio. Apricot with chopped candied ginger and lavender. Blackberry with a paperthin slice of crisp candied lotus root. And strawberry with a basil leaf. Elsewhere, cheesecakes and petit fours were under final construction.Then we arranged the various cakes on slabs of marble and shelves that we then carried into the dining room.
Chef Alex is really fond of the "tortilla bowl" and the "tortilla flames". The flames are triangles, dipped in red and yellow food coloring, then deep fried. You fill a tortilla bowl with sugar and then arrange the flames in the sugar. Alex argued profusely and at length about including the tortilla bowl on the buffet, but the Chef is always right.While we set up the dessert buffet, we chatted a bit with Chef Stazi, who sat at a table in the back of the dining room with three students and five bottles of wine. "This is what I do after the final," he said. "I have a tasting with anybody who wants to hang around." We missed out. He fell off his motorcycle the day before our final, and Chef Larry just gave us the test and made no mention of wine tasting. He did make it open notes, though.