White Jacket Required (15 page)

“See? You just gently twirl the cake stand while you squeeze icing from your other hand,” she said, trying to show me how to make a buttercream rose for the second time. As hard as I tried, I couldn't seem to spin the stand and form the creamy rose petals at the same time. I always just ended up with a blob of frosting melting all over my fingers. It was hopeless, and maddening.

“I can't get it!” I said, gritting my teeth in frustration. This wasn't just about the buttercream roses. I'd always thought of myself as a good cook and baker, someone who was good with her hands and thoughtful in the kitchen. Someone who
got it.
These buttercream roses made me wonder if I was really cut out for any of this. I felt defeated.

Samantha already had seven perfect buttercream roses sitting on tiny pieces of wax paper in front of her. Jake, on the other hand, was more on my level and at that moment was discussing his plight with Chef Matthews. I shifted around on my bar stool and picked up the pastry bag once again. I never thought I would rather be cutting meat than frosting cakes, but this was getting ridiculous.

“What did your wedding cake look like?” I asked Samantha, while picking pieces of dried frosting out from underneath my fingernails.

She laughed. “Well, you know we got married at Disney, right? The cake was a big pumpkin, like the one from Cinderella! Vanilla cake and lots of buttercream. It was perfect.”

On the outside I smiled, but on the inside I felt like I was about to die laughing. Living in Orlando had introduced me to the subculture of Disney World “groupies.” Every day on my drive to school, I saw them all dressed as their favorite characters, boarding buses into the park. Samantha was a great girl, but she was one of those groupies, and sometimes I questioned her taste.

In my mind, a wedding cake should be tall and white with lots of delicate frosting swirls. Not that I was offering to make one—that seemed like a clear recipe for disaster. But at the end of the night, that's exactly what Chef Matthews told us we had to do. Each of us would make a wedding cake—no partners on this assignment—for the last night of class. It would be worth exactly half of our total grade. I was doomed.

When I got home it was close to 12:30 a.m. Every time I took a step, my black rubber clogs squeaked from a glob of frosting that had spread out on the soles. The wedding cake project already was looming over my head, even though it wasn't due for two and half weeks. I had no clue what I would do or what it would look like. Paging through wedding magazines had never been one of my priorities. I flopped down on my queen-size bed and debated calling Rob to say goodnight but then remembered what time it was. Lately, our conversations had been shorter than before due to my school schedule and his job. But that was normal, I told myself. We had been dating for so long that we didn't need to have deep, hour-long conversations late at night when we were both already exhausted. Rob with his fishing, rum and Cokes, and good-natured laughter. We were opposites in every way possible, yet somehow we still managed to make things work.

The next night in school, I sat with Samantha and Jake in the computer lab doing “research” on different wedding cake styles. Not too surprisingly, Samantha had chosen a gothic Halloween theme for her cake and was busy finding patterns of skulls and crossbones online to copy onto her cake. Like me, Jake had no idea what he wanted his cake to look like yet, and the two of us spent the hour goofing off instead of researching like we were supposed to. Jake was an interesting guy, and I enjoyed getting to know him. He was incredibly intelligent and loved video games, baking bread, and physics. He was a geek, the kind who probably dresses up to go see Harry Potter movies.
Talking to him is a lot more fun than talking to most of Rob's friends
, I thought to myself.

“What about this one?” I asked Jake as I scrolled through a site of simple blue wedding cakes with cherry blossoms winding over the layers.

“That looks like it might be sort of difficult, but I love the colors!” Jake responded enthusiastically.
Hmmm
, I thought to myself.
How hard could this really be?

In the kitchen the next day, we were handed rolls of white fondant. The fondant was soft and felt like pie dough made out of smooth clay. It smelled sweet, like frosting, and could be easily molded and cut into various shapes and sizes. I immediately pulled off a tiny edge of mine and brought it to my lips. There was no real flavor other than sugar, and it tasted intensely sweet. I chose to dye my fondant a robin's-egg blue, like the wedding cake I had seen on the Internet, and soon my palms had turned the same color. In my excitement to get started, I had forgotten the crucial step of wearing gloves while working with the food coloring. Blue dye sank into the lines of my hands and onto my short fingernails.
This will be interesting to explain to Tony tomorrow at work
, I thought. But I kept squeezing my fondant, which was now swirled blue and white, to get an even color before I attempted to cover my first cake layer. I had decided to go with a completely blue cake and then, despite Jake's doubts, make a rather intricate cherry-blossom pattern winding up from the base. I thought it would be interesting if nothing else.

The next day I rushed from work to school with bright blue hands and a new sense of determination. Even though I knew that decorating cakes was not my strong suit, I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. My blue fondant was waiting for me right where I'd left it, and I immediately began rolling it out with a large wooden rolling pin. After a few minutes of hard rolling, I had a large, smooth disk of fondant in front of me. I dotted the top of my first Styrofoam layer with glue and neatly laid the fondant on top. I still found it ironic that we were using Styrofoam and glue to decorate wedding cakes. For the sake of time, we weren't actually baking the cakes that we were decorating. I'd initially felt a little let down when I heard that, but I realized that it made sense to focus on the decorating aspect instead of more baking. Still, the whole process seemed more like a child's arts and crafts project than an advanced class at Le Cordon Bleu.

I kept rolling and working with my fondant for the next hour, until small beads of sweat dotted my eyebrows and my neck, where my cravat remained tied tight. There were still air bubbles around the sides of the layers, bubbles that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to smooth out. Every time I smoothed one, another one would pop up right next to it. Feeling frustrated and hungry, I grabbed my snack of a homemade oatmeal cookie and fled to the hallway to eat in peace. I had baked these cookies for Rob and my brother last weekend when I was home in Tampa, and I'd taken a few home with me for late-night school snacks. They were pretty healthy, really, and contained flaxseeds, almond butter, and dark-chocolate chips. Come to think of it, I probably liked them a lot better than the boys did.

After taking my time eating my cookie, checking my voicemail, and stopping by the hallway water fountain, I made my way back inside the cool classroom kitchen. All seventeen students were working diligently on their cakes, and as a result, the room was almost silent. Back at my table, Samantha had her headphones on and was deep in concentration. In the time it took me to wrap my three Styrofoam layers alone, she had already begun working on the meticulous border of ghoul faces that wrapped around every layer of her cake. Jake, on the other hand, was still trying to cover his pieces and looked just as frustrated as I'd felt all evening.

“How's it goin' over here, guys?” Chef Matthews asked as he suddenly appeared at the end of our table.

“Pretty good,” I responded, trying to stay positive. “I'm almost ready to start the cherry-blossom pattern on my cake.” Chef nodded and glanced at Samantha, who was still working away, most likely while listening to a Disney soundtrack.

“Samantha?” Chef asked, inches from her face.

She grew beet red. “I'm sorry, Chef! I was totally absorbed in this. Did you say something?” she asked.

“I'd rather you not have headphones on in class. It makes it hard for me to direct the entire class as one body. I thought I mentioned that the first night we met.”

“I'm sorry. It won't happen again, Chef. I honestly didn't realize.” Samantha stuffed her iPod into her backpack and smiled sweetly up at him. Chef just nodded and moved on to the next table.

Once he was gone, Samantha sighed dramatically. “I can't believe he won't even let us listen to music! Decorating cakes is all about artistic passion. How are we expected to let that passion out when we can't get in our zone?”

For the rest of the evening we worked in silence, and by the time 11:30 rolled around, I had made a batch of brown fondant and begun cutting it into thin ropes to serve as my cherry-blossom branches. The cake still wasn't as smooth as I had hoped, but it was turning out just fine. On the way home, my cell phone buzzed and Rob's face lit up my caller ID.
What in the world is he doing up so late?
I wondered before answering.

“I was just thinking about you. I love you, Jenna,” Rob's smooth voice filled my ears and brought a smile to my face.

“I love you, too,” I said and meant it. Rob made life so easy, stable, and predictable. While many of my friends from college were hanging out in bars looking for a date, I had found security and stability in my relationship. And here in Orlando, I felt I had the best of both worlds. I could maintain my space and independence, with an apartment and friends of my own, and still go back on the weekends and enjoy time with my boyfriend. I've always needed plenty of alone time, and that made this situation work out nicely. Rob and I still rarely spoke about the future, other than discussing whose engagement parties and weddings we were scheduled to be at in the upcoming weeks, but when we were together we enjoyed each other's company as much as ever.

The next day was filled with final wedding-cake adjustments. I planned to use the first two hours of class to finish adhering the cherry blossoms to my cake, and the last three hours to pipe icing borders and do any last finishing touches. Though the cakes weren't due at the end of class, it was the last class period that Chef Matthews was giving us to work on them before we moved on to our written exam the following night. Samantha's cake was already finished, and it stood eerily on its pedestal at the front of the classroom. Even though the creepy theme really wasn't my personal favorite, I had to admit that the final outcome was nothing short of stunning. The entire cake was a rich, deep purple, with delicate orange ghoul faces at the base of every layer. She had made skull-and-crossbones cutouts with
pastillage,
a sugary dough that hardens like cement when it dries. I, too, had dabbled in the world of
pastillage,
but only to make a simple heart shape. After I applied my last bit of royal icing, I stood back a few feet from my cake to evaluate it. The cake looked good, despite a slight tilt to the left and some leftover air bubbles in my fondant that I hadn't been able to pound out. The cherry-blossom pattern was, hands down, my favorite part, and I loved the way it flowed up the cake. I had had a little trouble molding the small blossoms, but they ended up turning out just fine, and I was proud of my work. The only problem was that it was inedible. The recipe below for flourless chocolate cake is a much more delicious option.

Flourless Chocolate Cake
with Vanilla-Buttercream Frosting

Makes two 9-inch cake layers

Keep this cake in mind when you want to pamper yourself or another serious chocolate lover. I like to store the cake in the fridge and serve cold slices with espresso.

For the cake

10 ounces (about 2 cups) semisweet chocolate

5 ounces butter

6 eggs, at room temperature

½ cup granulated sugar

For the frosting

2 sticks (½ pound) butter, softened

2 cups confectioner's sugar

1 tablespoon milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Thoroughly butter two 9-inch cake pans, then dust each lightly with flour and set aside.

Make the cake layers:
In a small saucepan over very low heat, melt chocolate and butter together. While mixture is melting, whip eggs in a stand mixer at high speed. After about 3 minutes, when eggs start to become thick and pale, add sugar slowly. Continue whipping on high until the mixture is thick, pale, and ribbony, about 6–8 more minutes.

Slowly fold melted chocolate into the egg-and-sugar mixture, gently turning with a rubber spatula so that batter stays light and airy. Pour batter into cake pans.

Bake for 30 minutes, then remove from oven and let cool in cake pans for 10 minutes. Run a knife around edges of cakes and transfer from pans onto a wire rack to cool completely.

While cakes are cooling, make the frosting:
In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter and sugar together until combined. Add milk and vanilla extract, and continue beating on high until the frosting is thick and light, about 5 minutes.

When the cake layers are cooled completely, spread one third of the frosting on top of one layer, and top with the other layer. Frost top and sides of cake with remaining frosting.

14
THE CLAW

O
N THE FIRST DAY OF CAPSTONE CLASS, I WAS FULL OF
anticipation and nervous energy. This was the final course in the Baking and Pastry program before we went off on our externships—stints working in real, professional kitchens and bakeries. This class would dictate if we were cut out to go. We had been working toward Capstone all year; it was the goal, the finale that tested all of the skills we had been drilled on for the past ten months. Unlike in other classes, no books were allowed here—we were to rely on the diligent notes taken in previous classes, and recipes we'd written out on three-by-five note cards. As part of the class curriculum, we would be preparing at least one dish using each technique we'd studied, and all of our dishes would be graded on a very strict universal Cordon Bleu scale. There would be no sweet-talking our way into better grades, and certainly no cutting corners.