Halloween Bake Sale

November 1, 2016.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Last week, my students have been super busy creating treats for the school and a group of elementary students that are staying with us for a short period of time. Here is some of their work:

Spiderweb sugar cookies

More decorated sugar cookies

Sugar Cookies

October 27, 2016.Reading time 3 minutes.

A few weeks ago, an old student of mine came to Jean Augustine Secondary School as a guest baker to show our students how to make decorated sugar cookies. This student is now the proud owner of MistryCo Cakes where she creates stunning, one-of-a-kind designer cakes for any occasion. My students were super excited to have the opportunity to talk to a former student about their pathway in pastry arts — of course, it didn’t hurt they would get to hear someone besides me talk for a few days, either.

The cookie decorating was split up into 3 days. On the first day, the students rolled the dough out to a specific thickness. The dough was then baked at 375F for approximately 10-12 minutes or until it became slightly golden brown around the edges. The cookies were cooled on a rack, ready to be dipped on the following day. The next day, students dipped the cookies in royal icing in the follow colours: Yellow for Pikachu, Green for Bulbasaur, and so on. During the last day, students added the finishing touches with either icing or edible markers.

Pokemon sugar cookies from MistryCo Cakes.

Copenhagen: Our Trip

August 29, 2016.Reading time 8 minutes.

The Food:

It likely won’t come as a surprise that food was a big part of our trip. We’ll be sharing some notes on a few of the highlights shortly:

Noma (no surprise here)
108
Torvehallerne
The bakeries
Carlsberg Brewery (yes, really!)

Sightseeing:
If you read the backstory on our trip, then you’re probably aware that this wasn’t exactly a typical vacation. It wasn’t until after we’d booked our flight that we began some attempt at planning how we would be spending our time in Copenhagen (when we weren’t eating). If I’m being honest, most of this didn’t happen until a week or so before the trip itself.
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Plum and Almond Tart

August 28, 2016.Reading time 1 minute.

With a basket of Ontario plums left over from our recent cottage trip, we have decided to make a plum and almond tart. We used Pierre Herme’s pate sucree recipe from our previous post as a base and added the ripened plums and an almond cream filling .

The tart is first blind baked at 400˚F for approximately 20 minutes. The almond filling is then added with plum halves and sliced almonds. The tart is then baked at 375˚F for another 45 minutes or until golden brown. We served each slice with a generous serving of vanilla ice cream.