holiday cookies

One of the last things I did at my internship was decorate holiday cookies. It got me in the mood to make some of my own, and I did it just like they did at internship, using a sweet dough recipe normally used for tarts. I never thought you could have a multipurpose dough - for tarts and for cookies. It's very similar to shortbread, although more flavorful, with just enough crumble and snap.

The recipe (makes about 50 cookies):

soft butter 250g
sugar 175g
almond powder 40g
yolk 1
eggs 1
flour 400g
baking powder 3g
orange zest 2-3
cold water 12g

1) Cream butter and sugar for a few minutes using the paddle attachment. 2) Mix in the other ingredients in one by one in the order listed (although yolks and eggs can be mixed together first, as with the flour and baking powder). As soon as the cold water is mixed in and the dough comes together, stop mixing. 3) Take the dough out and spread it flat in a casserole dish or other pan. It should be thicker than you want your cookies to be. Refrigerate the dough for a few hours, or overnight. 4) Roll out the dough to the desired thickness. Cut and bake for 15 minutes or until golden and firm-looking. Then cool and decorate!

Here are some of my decorations:

Classic-looking



Playful



Untraditional (since I didn't buy any holiday-specific cutters)



And I also made gingerbread cookies using this recipe. Substituted maple syrup for molasses. It turned out well, just softer than the cookies I prefer. The fun cutters were ninja gingerbread men, on loan from my friend Kim.



Happy holidays everyone!

marzipan figures

As part of the sculpture I'm working on at my internship, we needed little people figures. Chef ordered a whole box of modeling marzipan expressly for this purpose.

My first task was to make a bunch of different marzipan colors. There were some colors left over from last year that had dried out, but became workable once heated (in the microwave for ten or so seconds) and incorporated with new marzipan.

I portioned out the same amount for each color.



Used food coloring and kneaded the marzipan to get the right color and consistency.



After repeating this process a dozen times (and getting my hands dyed different colors), I had a whole "crayon box" full of colors.



For the figures, I made torsos, legs, hats and shoes. In all the colors.



The faces got eyes, noses and ears.



And then I made marzipan Oprah. (Chef was doing a bunch of celebrities.)



And then we needed monsters, so I shaped whatever my fingers felt like. Didn't know I had that much imagination! (They became Oprah's new friends.)

portion control

Maybe because of Food & Fitness class and in general being ever more conscious of what I eat, I have been changing what/how I eat. Not dieting or avoiding foods, but by 1) eating smaller meals and 2) eating more often. This and lots of dance/exercise means fast metabolism and healthier being.

I think portion control and exercise is a much less stressful way to go than dieting. And portion control doesn't have to involve much of saying no - part of it is switching things around and tricking your eyes.

An example here is how I eat lunch at my internship, where everything is plentiful and self-serve. I take a plate and fill it with salad, then I take a bowl and fill that with starch and meat. It's a reversal from how things usually go, where the plate is starch and meat, and the bowl would be salad. (Which reminds me of the video we watched in Food & Fitness - it talked about Americans planning entrees around meat with starch and vegetables as sides instead of the other way around.)



Also, once I'm full I don't eat any more. Which is hard because I was brought up to eat everything in front of me, to never waste food. So I try to gauge my hunger level and only get enough food that I can finish. (I no longer feel bad about throwing away junk food though. In my mind since it's devoid of nutrients, it's not waste.)

So if you're contemplating healthy changes in diet or lifestyle, I would recommend portion control, and exercise. You don't have to say no to yourself to look good and feel better!

pastillage

In my culinary program, everyone has to do an 240-hour internship in their last (typically 4th) semester. I decided to do my internship in a hotel pastry department, since I've never had experience in a hotel environment.

So far it's been quite different from working at local or even chain bakeries. Although I've been making doughs, batters, shaping/piping product, occasionally I get to help out with sculptural pieces that a small bakery would simply not have the resources to do.

One piece I've been working on requires a lot of pastillage, which is similar to gum paste and fondant. Made out of sugar, gelatin, water and vinegar, it hardens as it dries, making it very useful for sculptural pieces.



Before the dough can be used it has to be kneaded until smooth (on a cornstarch-covered surface) and then rolled out flat to the approximate size of the surface it is meant to cover. In this case, it's castle gates made of foam-core board that I had a great time cutting because it utilized some long-lost drafting skills.



Once the pastillage has covered the piece and is trimmed to the exact dimensions, designs can be etched on it. In this case I used the triangle tool to indent parallel lines for bricks.



Then I took this handy plastic tool and indented individual bricks. A very hands-on process. I think there are brick stencils/rollers made for this exact purpose, but Chef likes the inexactness of this.



To actually adhere the pastillage to the foam-core board, I used royal icing (meringue + powdered sugar). It's literally like edible glue.



Then there's some more trimming and detail cut-outs like the crenellations and windows.



After that Chef demonstrated using the airbrush machine to spray food-grade airbrush coloring onto the pieces.



Here are all the pieces I cut, airbrushed with color.



Once the spray color has dried, we dabbed a side towel with water and wiped the surfaces, blending the colors together.



I hope that these things I learned will one day come in handy, like the drafting skills I had from the one architecture studio class I took in college. I guess you just never know.