SFBI

On September 24th I completed a week long course at the San Francisco Baking Institute. It was a great experience and I really learned a lot. It was a grueling week in the sense that I was on my feet for 9 hours a day for 5 days and the commute to SF sucked. The instructor was fabulous but hardcore. She was very ambitious with our time and in the end we completed 10 cakes, 4 buttercreams, 5 cream bases, 1 syrup and marzipan while still fitting in lecture and demo. We were all complaining of exhaustion by the end. I learned some great cake "science" and can adamantly say I will never "measure" again!

After a long 10 hour day (our last day)

Interestingly, most of the students were working professionals from all over the United States with two students attending from different parts of Canada. In the beginning it was a little disconcerting because the instructor gave us a tour of the kitchen and then put us straight to work spitting out all sorts of french culinary terminology that I had never heard before. I caught on rather quickly and the rest of the week went extremely smooth, in fact, amazingly smooth! I felt very confident in my abilities, surprising myself at times, and never once felt inferior to the professionals there. I was very pleased with all of my final products. We learned all sorts of crazy cakes with very interesting histories like a genoise, dacquoise, biscuit viennois and le fraisier, just to name a few.

Mmmm...golden chiffon with a butter lemon curd, raspberries and pastry cream

I am proud to say that I can now keep up with all of the professional kitchen jargon (almost always in french). The hardest adjustment coming home was cooking in my home kitchen again after using a commercial kitchen all week...that sucks! I had the time of my life and definitely feel that this is what I am suppose to be doing. I am also so thankful to my husband who took a few days off, and my sweet friends who helped me with Ty all week; it's so great to have a group of people who love and support you.

My favorite...Chocolate Hazelnut Dacquoise with a Praline Buttercream

The ovens

The kitchen