My final day in New York City and my last day at ICE.  I'm tired!  I saw the show "Lend me a Tenor" and had a wonderful time walking through Times Square last night.  So many people and so many lights!  I'm packed (cheesecake and bagels tightly wrapped and stored in my luggage!) and I'm off to school.  Again, I get there early but the place is already bustling with activity.  Chef Cirlil and his assistants are measuring out ingredients.  Today we have a busy day ahead - finish off stollen, chocolate and plain danish doughs, rustic bread, decorative dough, swiss carrot cake, banana chocolate chunk cake and berry muffins.  Can my hips take all these calories!!

I've never made chocolate danish dough before and I'm excited to see the layers of butter and dough developing as we roll it out on the automatic sheeter (I know, I'm a baking nerd!).  It makes it so much easier to roll out with an automatic sheeter.  I wonder if we can get one for the pastry kitchen??  We're going to shape this dough out in several configurations - again Chef Ciril showing us the versatility of the dough.

Look at all the layers!!

Chocolate almond croissant, ready for baking!!

Chocolate cinnamon roll!!

Using the poolish (dough starter) I made yesterday) I quickly finish the dough for the rustic bread.  Because the poolish had time to develop overnight I don't have to handle or knead this dough as much as I would have if I had made this dough all at once.  It only takes a few turns and some rest time before it is ready to shape.  The dough is quite soft so shaping it is a delicate process.  Basically the dough is turned out onto a floured surface and cut into the shape required and then set on a floured linen cloth to rise.

  Once the dough has risen it is turned out onto wooden paddles and then you slide it into the oven.

Did I mention that we are using a deck oven with glass doors so you can look at your product without having to open the door?  The oven also "talks" to a satellite if anything goes wrong and automatically contacts the head office if it needs repairs.  How cool is that?

While all this is baking Chef Ciril decides to show us his skills with decorative dough, basically a playdough in the bread world!

So it is go, go, go for the rest of the morning.  I finish off some croissants and savoury danishes, muffins, stollen and quick breads.  At the end of the day we regroup and have a discussion about the baking business and current trends in the baking industry.  Chef Ciril is very knowledgable and has great tips for us all.  He considers what we do as an art, one that is not as common as it used to be and hopes that we can bring what we have learned with him at ICE and pass it on.

Overall, it was a fantastic experience.  It's great to learn from different people because everyone has their own idea of how to do things.  The trick is to adapt what you learn to your own style and run with it!  I hope I have the opportunity to share these recipes and my experience with students very soon at NSCC.  I'd also encourage anyone with an interest in baking to contact me for these recipes and tips on how to make it work.  Maybe even a trip to the Institute for Culinary Education is in the works.  I'd like to thank the International Association of Culinary Professionals for awarding me the scholarship to attend this course, my colleagues at NSCC for their interest and support and my family for doing without me for a few days!!

Cheers!!

My plan for the afternoon and evening is to see as much as New York as possible.  After dropping my pastries off at my hotel I decide to brave the subway to go way downtown to Battery Park to visit the 9-11 Memorial site.  Helpful tips from the hotel concierge get me on my way to the subway without a hitch.  I find my way to the memorial site and I'm struck by the size fo the area.  It is now a bustling construction site but there is a small museum that houses some of the artifacts from that day and shows the plans for the memorial sited expected to oopen on September 11, 2011.  There is a room available to record your memories of that day and videos of family members and survivors recounting their experiences.  It is ver sobering and heartfelt.  I take a walk around the perimeter of the site and I'm struck by how beautiful the neighbourhood is - there is a lovely park, a school and a playground, apartment buildings - everything you would expect in any neighbourhood in any city.  The twin towers weren't located in a sterile environment but in a lovely and vital neighbourhood.  It just reinforces to me the horror of that day and how many people were affected.

I then head uptown through Little Italy and then decide to hop on the subway again.  This time I'm heading to the American Museum of Natural History so I can tell my kids I've been where the Night at the Museum movies were filmed!!  I enen manage to transfer to another train at Times Square station to make my way uptown.  I spend about 2 hours wandering around the museum. I even found the "gum gum" guy - if you have seen the movie, you know who I mean!!

I start walking back downtown and my feet are getting tired!!  I decide to get a last minute show ticke and end up seeing "Lend me a Tenor" starring Tony Shaloub from TV's "Monk" and Anthony LaPaglia from "Without a Trace".  Before the show I have dinner at a real New York deli where I have the biggest brisket sandwich on potato pancakes I have ever seen the then I top it off with a ridiculous dessert of devils food cheesecake. 

  Seriously, I would hate to even guess as to the calories in this meal, especially the dessert with layers of chocolate cake, ganache and cheesecake but it was really, really good.  I can't finish it but my cute young actor/waiter puts it in a takeout container for me and I'm hoping I can fit it in my luggage to take home with me because I know my husband would love this!!  Now I waddle off to the show and enjoy 2 hours of comedy with some great actors.  I finish the night by walking back to my hotel (I need the exercise after today!), pausing just long enough to admire the spectacle that is Times Square.

Once again the day started early.  I enjoyed some pannettone from the day before for breakfast at my hotel.  I'm saving a lot on food because I'm eating everything I make!!  I arrived at ICE at 6:30 am and found Chef Ciril already there and getting his mise en place ready.  He seems to have endless energy because he is as enthusiastic first thing in the morning as he is at the end of class.  So a quick change into kitchen clothes and I'm helping to scale ingredients for the class.

A nice touch with these classes at ICE is that with a class of 8 students there are 2 staff helpers and a student helper PLUS a dishwasher who travels from room to room to help out.  As a student here I don't have to do dishes (and we all know how great that is!).

Everyone is a lot more familiar with the layout of the kitchen today so we seem to all settle into our routine.  Chif Ciril does a quick recap to yesterday's lessons and gives us a quick demo of one of our recipes for the day.

The doughs that were prepped yesterday are removed from the fridge.  Chef Ciril works a lot with doughs that have either been frozen or chilled overnight because he believes the cold fermentation develops a better flavour and aids in the development of gluten.  Today we will be finishing our pumpkin brioche, brioche donuts, bagels and sweet dough and prepping some plain and chocolate danish dough for tomorrow.  Our first treat of the day however will be our breakfast (my second breakfast!!). Chef Ciril has used some gibassier dough from the previous day, shaped it into a loaf and now has sliced it and brushed it with an orange flavoured sugar syrup.  We spread a mixture of hazelnuts, sugar and butter on the bread and then top it with sliced almonds to make a product called Bostock.  This then goes into the oven and bakes until toasted.  All I can say is YUMMY!!  This is a great treat with a cup of tea.  Chef Ciril comes from a background of working in bakeries in Europe and believes in using one dough several different ways in order to offer variety in the kitchen and to the customer.  Using the gibassier dough for the bostock is one such tasty idea.

Chef Ciril is a master bread baker and represented Team USA in 2002 at the Coupe de Monde de la Boulangerie where the team won silver.  At the 2004 National Bread and Pastry Team Championships he won first place overall and all three individual trophies.  Today we will be making one of the items he made at the 2004 championships:  Chocolate pumpkin brioche.  It is basically a spliced brioche dough shaped into a flattened round.  The centre is filled with pumpkin pastry cream and then topped with a chocolate almond glaze and then baked.  Again, another delicious pastry to be tasted.  Good thing I'm walking everywhere because I think this morning alone I've eaten my calories for the day :-)

We prep danish dough, plain and  chocolate, in anticipation of using it tomorrw.  We'll be using these doughs to make danish and croissants tomorrow so we flatten the dough onto a half sheet pan, wrap it the put it in the fridge to chill.  Meanwhile, we turn back to the brioche dough that we made yesterday and cut out some rounds.  We are about to make the most decadent donuts one can have made out of brioche dough (my diet has gone out the window today!) and then fried.  All you need to do is look at the picture to see how yummy these are!  One is rolled in cinnamon sugar, the other is covered in a sugar lavendar glaze and both are extremely decadent!!

Finally we take our bagel dough that we made and shaped yesterday and boil them in a honey water then set them to bake in the fancy ovens here.  Did I tell you that the deck ovens here have glass doors so you don't have to open the door to check on your product.  They are also connected to a satellite so if anything goes wrong with the oven the head office can quickly diagnose the problem and send a signal to fix it or notify the repair team.  The bagels turn out well and now I can say that I have made a New York style bagel in New York!!  Time goes by quickly today and I'm impressed with the volume of breads and pastries that the eight of us are able to produce in such a short time.  Before we leave I make a poolish to be used for a rustic bread tomorrow and a preferment for some stollen.  Things are wrapped up and refrigerated and then we are free to go for the day.  I take a cab back to the hotel because I am so loaded down with pastries (both in hand and in my stomach!) that I find it difficult to walk back.

So I woke up at 5:30 this morning because my course starts at 7am.  I left the hotel at 6 am so I could walk to the Institute of Culinary Education, 22 blocks away from my hotel and made it there in plenty of time.  The surprise for me was the number of people out and about at that time.  New York really is the city that never sleeps!

The Institute for Culinary Education is located on the 5th floor of West 23rd Street, on the outskirts of the Chelsea area of Manhattan.  To say that I was impressed with the facilities was an understatement!

The above picture is one of about a dozen of the kitchens at ICE.  They have a blast freezer as well, located out in the hallway for all kitchens to use.  To the left of the reception is a display of antique cookbooks and kitchen utensils, includiing utensils from Julia Child's kitchen.  On the second floor of the school is a library, more kitchen space and a presentation/special events/dining room.  I'm sure there is more but I haven't had time to snoop around.

There are eight of us in the course.  One person is from Mexico, another from Japan by way of Portugal, me from Canada and the rest from various points in the US.  Chef Ciril Hitz introduced himself, divided us into groups of two and we quickly got to work.  Chef Ciril started by demonstrating technique for pannettone and gibassier, both sweet pastries and then the teams set to work preparing doughs.  We have a long list of tasks to accomplish in 5 short hours!  I can't wait to share the recipe package with Jean-Luc and Larry because Chef Ciril has some great recipes.  In the next few days we will be making pumpkin chocolate brioche, chocolate danish, bostock, lavender glazed donuts, challah, strawberry brioche and much, much more.  Today we managed to get the mini pannettone and gibassier pastries completed.

The pannettone is a traditional Italian fruit bread, in mini form and gibassier is an anise and orange flavoured pastry from the south of France.  Both turned out beautifully and I especially love the subtle flavours of the gibassier, something I had never tasted or made before.

After class I walked one block to New York Cakes which turned out to be like an Aladdin's cave for cake decorators - I was in heaven!!  Like everything else in New York, it was bigger than I had expected it to be.  Everything and anything you could want for decorating cakes and cupcakes is available at New York Cakes.  Of course I had to buy a few mementos ;-)

Next I headed to Chelsea Market.  Walking through the Chelsea area I could imagine myself living there - as long as I could live in a beautiful brownstone with a wrought iron fence and a quaint garden on a quiet street!  Chelsea Market is like the Brewery Market in Halifax only 10 times bigger and 100 times busier!  All the bakeries that are famous in Chelsea are located there: Eleni's Cookies, Fat Witch Bakery(known for their brownies) Sarabeth's, Amy's Bread and Jacque Torres Chocolates to name a few.  Eleni's was amazing for the detail in their cookies and the prices!!   A package of 9 sugar cookies iced to look like poodles was $45.50!!  For cookies- UNBELIEVABLE!!  I bought brownies from Fat Witch and chocolate from Jacque Torres.  Here's an idea for someone in Halifax - Jacque Torres sells chocolate coated corn flakes or cheerios for $5 for 4oz!!  Another money maker!!

I ended the day by walking to Rockerfeller Centre and taking the tour to the "Top of the Rock" - 70 stories above the city.

As you can see, I'm having a great time, loving New York and finding a lot of treats along the way!  More adventures tomorrow!!

Last year I was awarded a scholarship by the International Association of Culinary Professionals to attend a professional development course in Pastry at the Institute for Culinary Education in New York City and now I'm here!!

I arrived in NYC around 9:30 local time Sunday morning.   After a quick (and at times alarming so) cab ride to my hotel, I was hitting the streets to see what I could find.  I didn't have a specific plan of what to do but I headed west towards Grand Central Station and then wandered north, eventually ending up at Central Park.  In between I found Magnolia Bakery and bought one of their famous cupcakes and a whoopie cookie.  Loved the charm of the bakery and everything was very pretty and I would love to have a bakery like that of my own some day but I must admit that the offerings were sweet, sweet, sweet - dare I say even too sweet?  The icing in the cookie and on the cupcake was a basic icing sugar and butter recipe, nothing too fancy.  I still ate it though ;-) and saved a few crumbs for the pigeons!

As I walked I found so many bakeries and chocolate stores that I've made a note to revisit in the next few days.  I even wandered into the big Hershey store in Times Square (really!!).  I wondered if they piped in the chocolate smell, though, because it was really overwhelming and I couldn't believe that all those Hershey bars contributed to that aroma.  There are a lot of beautiful bakeries that I can't wait to discover.

What else did I do?  I went into the Plaza Hotel (does anyone remember Eloise at the Plaza books) and too a picture of the Palm Court dining room and all the Eloise stuff for my daughter Julia who is a big fan.  I also went to FAO Schwarz.  Did you know you can make your own Muppet there and design your own Barbie!  How cool is that?

Later in the afternoon I went to the matinee of Wicked.  AWESOME!!  If you ever get the chance to go see a Broadway show, this is a great one.  Beautiful set, flying monkeys and witches.  It was just amazing.

I walked up and down Madison Avenue, Fifth Avenue, through Times Square and there are police everywhere.  New York is still on edge!  What can I say?  I've had a great day and I'm thrilled to be here.  Tomorrow I start my Artisan Bread and Pastry course with Chef Ciril Hitz at the Institute for Culinary Education at 7am.  I'll have lots of great pictures tomorrow.