First Week in William Angliss Institute

I know I know, it's already week 3 and photos I took in class are piling up. Ok, so here comes the pictures of what I've done in my first week. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm applause to welcome the master-piece of a to-be patissier. *vomit*

Poached Pears in Red Wine, served with Chocolate Sauce and Creme Chantilly. The first product we made in William Angliss, in Prepare Hot and Cold Dessert class. Sounds complicated? Nah, not at all. We first need to peel the pear and remove its core. Rub the pear with a tea towel to get a smooth surface (u know, there will be visible lines/ angles on the pear surface after you peel it). We then popped the pears into a liquid mixture of red wine, water, sugar, lemon zest, cinnamon and vanilla. Poach the pear for ~30 mins. Then, to prepare the chocolate sauce, simply melt chocolate with milk and sugar over double boiler and add cream into it. Lastly, the creme chantilly - it requires some physical work. I used to whip whipping cream n times back at home, with my handy electric mixer. But in the class, we had to whip the cream manually...my partner Por did most of the work =p

White Wine Jelly. The second product we made in the dessert class. I love this so much! We used Creme Chantilly and Chocolate Sauce to decorate. Learned to make piping bag from baking paper to pipe chocolate sauce onto the cream. Hohohoho, I was very satisfied with my product~

Mama your daugther can cut! Cutting is never my forte. I've never imagined that could cut mirepoix, julienne carrot, brunoise carrot and paysanne (from left). *Proud of myself* The first day in Kitchen Operation class, we learned some basic cutting skills. Kitchen Operation is a cookery subject, still wonder why we Patisserie need to study do that subject.

The final product~Yes basically what we did for the 5 hours class was cutting, cutting and more cutting.

Stay tune for my second week product! =)

千雪

原谅我迟迟不更新，我中毒了。祸首为一部中国连续剧，千山暮雪。我和花花在3天内煲完，星期五晚看通宵，星期六早上7点才甘愿爬上床睡觉。星期六晚看完后，意犹未尽，上网看了原著（千山暮雪改编自同名小说）。星期天才把他看完。可到了今天，脑子里仍尽是莫绍谦和童雪。唉，中毒颇深。

好久没有这种感觉了，就莫绍谦一个眼神，会让我看了揪心。嗯，跟演员有绝对的关系。莫绍谦由刘恺威饰演，刘恺威，那个tvb常出现的男配角，皆大欢喜里的太监，演员刘丹的儿子，中国小花旦杨幂的男友。他在tvb的表演从来没有让我如此惊艳过，可能他从来没有机会表现自己吧！他的内心戏极好，眼神表情极到位。这种看戏会心痛的感觉，应该是韩剧天国的阶梯之后,就再没有这种感觉了。

这是一部虐戏，我在短期内大概没有勇气再重看，心脏负荷不了。莫绍谦是禽兽，他虐童雪，可同时却也被童雪虐着自己的心灵。最喜欢的还是莫绍谦和他妈妈（刘雪华饰）的一段，莫绍谦内心的痛苦，绝望，他爱得如此深刻，却又时刻遭到内心的谴责。那一句：“妈，这一生，我不会幸福了”，着实让人心疼；还有一句，“我宁可她恨我”，让人心碎！我现在在等的，是千山暮山的微电影，明日上映，我一定得挖出来下载！因为这部戏的结局是属于开放式的，微电影算是这部戏的续集，希望，不要太虐人才好。

p/s:哦，做莫我一直没提童雪？她其实演得还好，可没有让我惊艳，没能让我心疼，可能经验不足吧！演员叫颖儿，88年出生，所以还挺嫩的。可她的样子有几个角度实在像亦菲，亦菲较为精致，颖儿稍嫌胖。我在想呀，要是亦菲饰童雪，我铁定会中剧毒！

Orientation Day 2

A very fruitful day! Finally got my timetable, and bought most of my stuff needed. Broke my record to spend $600 in less than 2 hours! NoNe the shopaholic, weee~

(Please click on the picture for a larger image)

Kindly refer to the details of each item below:
Clog Profi Birki - Quality shoes made in Germany. The ultimate footwear in kitchen. $99 per pair.

Stage one textbooks - Kitchen Operation, Prepare and produce yeast goods, Prepare hot and cold desserts, Prepare and produce cakes, Prepare and produce pastries (Clockwise, from left). All 5 books cost $76.

Chef uniform, each set consists of chef trouser, chef coat, studs, neckerchief, flat top hat and apron, $95 in total. Students are required to wear clean, ironed and neat unform prior to entering kitchen.

Equipments in the Tool Box. Students are not allowed to share equipments, therefore everyone has to buy one. Each tool kit: $330.

In addition to that, I have yet to buy a textbook and another set of uniform. There goes another $200. Ouch, my heart is bleeding! =p

Orietation Day 1

Finally experienced the crazy weather in Melbourne - temperature plummeted from 30C yesterday to as low as 15C (max 20C) today! I'd prefer 15C rather than 30C though~ Nice, cooling weather to wander around in city =)

Back to topic. Orientation? Crap! They spoke about student support services, visa, health cover etc stuff like that for more than 2 hours. Lunch served at 12pm. 4 types of sandwich, beef pie and beef dim sum (fried siew mai, stuffed with minced beef instead of pork), fruits and soft drinks. I'm not complaining anything, but the food is lousy compared to free lunch in melb uni =p Followed by enrolment at 1pm: wait, queue, fill up forms, wait, fill up forms, submit enrolment form. Ciao at 2.30pm.

In conclusion, I haven't got any idea what my course will be like. The most important thing today is that I received a book list and a list for uniform and equipment requirement. I'm not sure what is compulsory and what is not, but if I am to buy everything from the uniform and equipment list, that will cost me $524 - anO's 1 month salary in Baker's Cottage =p Not to forget about the booklist - no price stated so I assume textbooks are not compulsory =p Don't worry lah, I will attend Orientation Program for Patiserrie on Thursday. Then I'll find out which are compulsory and which are optional, and buy whatever I need to buy, without looking at the price, OK?

Shall update again after orientation on Thursday. Bye~

回来啦！

我回来了，部落格该被唤醒了。这5天都耗在家，没啥特别事。啊，在这里做个记录，继昨天33度的高温后，今天温度再创新高，直逼35度。于是，我熟了。x.x

后天就要报到啦，有点忐忑，实在不喜欢这种充满未知数的将来。不知会上什么样的课，学什么东西，认识什么样的人，心里没底，感觉怪怪的。

祝我今年无灾无难，生活过得充实些就好了。

就爱了

Another day of 39 degree

Another day of 10 hours standing. 但，累并快乐着~也不懂为什么这么热爱烘焙。喜欢量面粉，打鸡蛋？喜欢专心一致地在做的时候能把所有事情抛诸脑后？喜欢期待这次的成品是否成功？喜欢闻着成品从烤箱传出来的香味？喜欢大家说成品的味道相鸡蛋糕/饼（虽然我做的是南瓜蛋糕，核桃酥）？喜欢看到成品不消半天就被一扫而空？噫，不为什么，爱就爱呗！

Back in Baking

Sorry people, this blog is soon transforming into a food blog >.< My life isn't all about baking, but I can't resist posting up photos of my little babies!(babies = 结晶品)

I like glutinous rice, especially rice dumplings and 郑老师's glutinous rice (*gulp*). I like products of glutinous rice flour as well, e.g. 糍粑,汤圆,penang muachi, japanese mochi & daifuku, snow skin mooncake's skin.....etc (*gulp gulp*). Therefore, cake of the week for this week - Mochi Cake!

The recipe calls for blueberry. Blueberry is in season now and we have plenty of blueberry selling in supermarket. The only problem is that it's so super mega expensive....I decided to substitute it with frozen raspberry. And since we have plenty of lemon at home, I added some lemon zest and lemon juice in it. To further intensify the flavour, I added a teaspoon of vanilla essence in it....A blend of flavour eh.... @@

Before into oven:
The chocolate ones were added with cocoa powder (just feel like being a bit creative suddenly =p)

They didn't rise much in the oven, and started to collapse and shrink once removed from oven. After a while, only I realised that they were made from glutinous rice flour, which is gluten-free! A short summary for those who dunno what is gluten: Gluten is a protein component in wheat flour that is composed of glutenin and gliadin. These 2 proteins gives elasticity and strength to the dough, and can hold and trap gas produced during fermentation. Gluten thus contributes to the textural characteristic of wheat flour products e.g. breads and cakes. Without gluten, the product will be unable to expand or collapse easily....And thus the shortbread (biscuit)-like texture. Sooooo.....the same outcome for my mochi cake - shorty cake that is unable to grow tall - as u can see, they are at the same height before baking.....

The flavour isn't bad (quite complex - memang a blend of raspberry, lemon and vanilla flavours), and the sweetness is just right for me (with some tartness from raspberry). The only thing that I don't like is the over-cooked surface =( As u can see, there are cracks on the surface, makes it too dry to my liking. (The cracks somehow just remind me of old people grumpy face =p)

Ah, can't wait for next week's kimi's birthday cake!

(p/s: I'm so addicted that I hope to bake everyday!)