Puff the Magic Dragon.

I am tired and do not feel the greatest. Today was a long day; I even had to miss dinner waiting for my genoise to finish baking in the oven. Therefore, I am going to try and make this post short and sweet. Then, it's beddy bye time on clean sheets! :)

I enjoyed giving Katy a tour around the CIA. This is not my first rodeo, aka tour, and pretty soon, I will be giving tours on a regular basis. That's right... you are looking at the CIA's newest tour guide. I am fulfilling a lifelong dream really. I will start training soon, and I know y'all are excited about hearing MORE about the CIA when I learn the ins and outs and history, etc.

I was horrified at the Apple Pie Bakery Cafe today when they served me an EXPIRED Coke. Proof, yet again, that the North hates Coke. This is the CIA people, and I have expectations to drink an "always refreshing" soda when I want it. The Nutella cupcake did make up for this slight slip-up. And, the company, Ms. Capers, was not too bad either.

In Baking Techniques on this Day 10, each person in class cut their puff pastry that we made on Friday into two portions. With the first portion, we rolled palmiers in raw sugar to be made tomorrow. With the other half, we made (top to bottom) apple turnovers, vol au vonts (with bear claw filling and apple pie filling), and pinwheels (with almond cream and apple pie filling). It was exciting to see our hard work in flaky, buttery, quite tasty layers!
In learning more about lamination of dough with fat, half of the room made and folded (4 fold- 3 fold- 3 fold) danish and the other half croissant. Puff pastry differs from these two products in that it is folded 4-3-4-3 (I cannot explaining folding... you will have to look it up) and has no yeast, while danish and croissants do. We will bake these tomorrow.

We also made spongecake, again. I am getting bored with making so much spongecake. Team 6's genoise was perfectly acceptable today (we are not allowed to say "good"), not too dense with no flour lumps. This makes the boringness worthwhile, I guess.

Now, after two loads of laundry and soup for dinner, I am going to bed. The cold and third week of the block are getting to me.

LIVED BY THE SEA

Hay Reh

*Happy 49th Birthday, again, to my second mother, my Aunt Deb! The Nutella cupcake was just for you, in honor of this anniversary of your 49th year, except that I had to eat it for you. NY and GA are just too far away, most of the time! I love you, and I am sorry I missed your parrrr-ty.