ServSafe....what?

The French Culinary Institute could not be more different from Le Cordon Bleu.  The school is physically bigger, but in addition to that the kitchens are huge, the ovens are gas, a ton of the Chefs are women, all of the Chefs are super friendly, and the biggest difference is that all of the students take a food safety course and become Servsafe certified!  Apparently food safety certifications are a huge deal in the US.  Who knew?  I've learned more about hygiene, contamination, and food borne pathogens in 4 hours of class than I learned the entire year I was in France.  I'm not sure if knowledge is power, but it certainly is eye opening.

In addition to taking a food safety course the structure of the class itself is much different than at Cordon Bleu.  My class, which can enroll up to 14 students, only has 7 students.  We have one head Chef and each day we have an assistant Chef as well.  My Chef is Cynthia Peithman and she has quite a resume.  She is a full time pastry chef at FCI, but also runs a business out of her home making wedding and occasion cakes.  Her business is called Cakeline and I think she will be an amazing resource now and in my future.

For the past few days we've been working with Genoise cakes and learning about different kinds of Buttercreams.  While I did learn recipes for these items last year in school the learning process here is much more in depth.  I'm retaining a lot more information because I'm not just repeating a recipe, I'm learning how and why ingredients in that recipe interact and respond to each other.  We also have a textbook with our recipes, tips for executing each recipe, and the history and science behind each recipe.  The experience is much more hands-on and interesting.

On Monday we made a Genoise and refrigerated it until we could make Pate a Bombe based Buttercream on Tuesday and decorate it.  Today we made a Chocolate Genoise, a white sheet cake, and a batch of vanilla flavored pastry cream and refrigerated those to assemble and decorate tomorrow.  I was not very pleased with my Genoise, but we'll be making them again for a practical test on Tuesday.  Hopefully I'll perform better next time!  I do think the rosettes I piped on top of the cake were quite nice in relation to what Chef Cynthia was asking us to do.  Here are some photos.

Genoise Cakes before being decorated.

The side of this cake could have been MUCH smoother.

My rosettes.

My finished cake filled with raspberry jam.

Keep checking back and until next time Bon Appetit!