Cakes - a Chef Demo

Hmmm… I’m not sure where to begin. Well for starters, we’re clearly putting “food” cooking aside and turning toward classic French pastries or sweets. Today we’re supposed to make a cake, a buttercream frosting, and lady fingers.

I guess the next thing to say is Chef Tom is a pastry chef as well, and the cake class is his favorite class to teach. With this said, Chef Tom basically spent half of the class (2 and a half hours) demo-ing how he makes cakes, frostings, variations on the cakes and frostings, and a bunch of time on decorating the cakes. We barely had enough time to watch him demo the lady fingers (which we were supposed to make ourselves), and more importantly, odds are we will never have to make these cakes again. I guess it was good and bad that it was basically a demonstration class. I definitely lost interest in it because it was so hands off, and we were going to bring our cakes home wrapped in foil, so they were probably going to get destroyed. And I was more concerned with going out that night with my class mates, which was gonna be a fun time!

Also, Chef has a horrible habit of calling us up to his area to watch him do something when we’re in the middle of cooking. The demo he gives us take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes and we usually have something on the stove. Then we’re rushing around like chimps, frantic, trying to clean up and get out in time. Sometimes its good to be frantic, it’s a little more similar to what we should expect, but other times, especially when we have extra time in class, there is no need to rush us.

For a taste of irony, I made a regular yellow cake, with white buttercream frosting and wrote “chocolate” with melted chocolate. I got a kick out of it, but no one else did. I tried giving it away to a homeless guy, and he didn’t even want it?! He said, thanks man, but I just ate. Well, I hope his next meal presents itself as easy as this cake did.

Anyways, we went out until around 4 in the morning that night. I paid my credit card bill already, but all in all it cost about as much as a 4AM night should cost. But I paid even more severely the next day at work. I was loopy and WAY out of it. But it was a lot of fun.
Our group has extended to 5 people. $ guys and one girl, and it’s a really good time.