A Piece of Cake: Baking & Pastry Arts Semester One Recap

Almond Cake

Poppy Seed Bundt Cake with Cardamom Streusel

At long last, my first semester as a culinary student is over. For our practical final (there was also a written one)  we had to make a pate sucree, lemon curd, and French meringue. In other words, a lemon meringue tart.

While mine came out just fine (I got a 99%!) there's no photo. To be honest, over time I grew increasingly apathetic about taking photos of my school projects. Sometimes that's because they were a bit worse for wear by the time I got them home. Take my cream puffs with chocolate ganache. I was really excited to have a chance to use the jasmine chef extract I won from Deana at Lost Past Remembered.  The ganache was ever-so-subtly scented with it, and it was well received by my instructor. But, by the time these little puffs had traveled for over an hour in my warm-ish car, they looked all melty, like they had contracted some sort of pastry wasting disease. So ... no photo.

On occasion, there were pastry failures that I immediately consigned to the trash, like the collapsed and curdled angel food cake, or the shriveled, dessicated macarons.

Other times, I was just so tired of working with sweets that I would either let my (awesome) partner take home the lion's share of the classroom booty or I'd deposit the whole lot on my neighbor's doorstep before I even got inside my house. So, there's no record of the pear frangipane tart,  the candy apple pie, the lemon tea bread, Vermont cocoa cake, or the crepes.

That said, before I tuckered out, I did record some things for posterity. We made a boatload of Danishes and a jalousie, which I dutifully carted home:

I thought my madeleines were quite photogenic, and the peanut butter cookies were very popular with Poppa Trix:

And though I am not a huge fan of biscotti, I will admit that these weren't so bad when you dipped them in coffee:

Of all the sweets we made, however, my far-and-away favorite is the almond cake at the top of this post. You know, this one:

I love that it was simple and not too sweet. It had just a hint of almond and vanilla, and it was a perfect accompaniment for coffee. This cake  was also incredibly moist - that may have something to do with the seven  eggs in the recipe.

You may have noticed by now that I do not have the biggest sweet tooth in the world. For me, a little goes a long way. My favorite parts of the class (aside from talking smack with some particularly hilarious classmates and working with my extremely competent partner) were the too-few times that we made savory doughs.  

So I've decided that next semester I'm going to take the Intro to Culinary class.  I don't love the fact that I'll be making meat stocks and working with animal products, but I want to learn. My brain travels in savory circles, and I've got to go with it. I'm sure I'll be sharing my inevitable ethical dilemmas with you in the fall ... please don't judge me too harshly!

In the meantime, drop me a line if you want the recipe for any of these baked goods -  I strongly recommend the almond cake.

Edit: So many people have emailed me for the almond cake recipe (*blush*) that I thought I'd just go ahead and post it. So ... enjoy!

Seven Egg Almond Cake:

1 1/4 c sugar
8 oz almond paste (I believe we used European paste, which has a milder flavor than American)
1 c (2 sticks) soft butter
2 t vanilla
7 eggs
1 cup AP flour
1/2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Grease one 8 inch cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.
In a mixer, combine almond paste and sugar on low speed until well combined. scrape down sides of bowl as needed.
Add the soft butter and cream the mixture.
Add vanilla and eggs, 2 at a time (actually I find it's best to mix all the eggs together in a bowl, and then add roughly 2 eggs' worth at a time.) Combine well.
Combine the dry ingredients and add them to the mixture. Mix on low until just combined.
Pour into prepared pan and bake for 40 - 50 minutes. The cake will bake fairly dark on the surface, and if you need to late in the baking process cover with aluminum to keep it from getting too dark. (This cake was wet and mushy for a looong time before it firmed up, so don't panic! I think it took longer than the recipe says as well.)
Cool for 20 minutes and turn out onto a cooling rack. When cool, dust with powdered sugar.