a slice of humble pie.

so...i have a bit of a confession to make.

a month ago, i started this blog, all bright-eyed and bushy tailed with an ungodly amount of time on my hands, and thought wow! this is a great idea! there is NO way i could miss a post because i have set up this nice schedule and i will have things to write about once school starts and i will be happy go lucky hooray!

and then this past month happened. in the past month, i've started school, taken two jobs, turned down a third (for my sanity's sake!), and applied to countless more. i've been to three of the five boroughs, and have mastered the art of both the metrocard swipe and the balancing act that is being on the subway without having anything to hold onto. in the same week i've had to bundle up in my winter coat and have taken advantage of t-shirt weather (hello odd climate patterns). i've made twenty four individual tarts (and/or tartlets), and a few hundred cookies--thank goodness i didn't have to eat them all (sharing is caring after all), or else i would add to this tally that i gained at least a metric ton as well. i've learned an enormous amount about the world of baking and how it works and i'm only more convinced that this was the right step, even with a few mis-steps, or full-on, face-down splats on the pavement.

but you wouldn't know any of that based on what i've written here.

the past month of classes have been incredible: incredibly difficult, but also incredibly rewarding. with these classes, there is a definite, tangible output with which i can gauge my progress. all of my effort and running around the kitchen actually means something that i can not only show to others, but share with them (seriously, anyone in the new york area i need to get more food off my hands, let's chat and i will share). we're reaching the end of our first unit, tarts and cookies, and studying for my exams on monday has given me time to reflect on the past month and what it means. as thrilling as all of that is though, to me or to you, it would undoubtedly get boring to see: hey, class was great! we made a tart. it was so fun! yay! day after day. it got boring just thinking about it like that! the problem with that whole structure is that of course, we did more than just crank out tarts, but i only made notes of it as it applied to what i would need to know, not what i'd like to write about here. now that i'm in the middle of it, instead of projecting about what might happen, i think i have some solutions to better address the gap between what i promised and what i provide.

in the mean time, here is a series of highlights from the past month:

• i now know the recipes for pâte sucrée (sweet tart dough) and pâte brisée (flaky tart dough) like the back of my hand. those two are the doughs we most frequently used for all of the tarts and tartlets that we made, and of the two, for a variety of reasons, i prefer the pâte brisée. i like being able to actually make the dough by hand, instead of by mixer (although, let's be honest, i wouldn't give up the mixer entirely) and i love the finished product. pâte sucrée hits only one note for me, but the brisée has a nice quality to it that i feel better meshes with a wider variety of fillings.

• as previously noted here, i have learned how to flambé. other fun tricks? making suprêmes ("fancy" orange wedges) and other fun knife skills, making whipped cream by hand, piping onto tarts. the piping that we did two classes ago was actually the most fun: we piped with chocolate onto a ganache tart, and i had a bunch left over after my design was done, so i got to play on my work surface. i drew a heart, i wrote my name, i played around with other designs-it was all of the fun of kindergarten without being told "Don't draw on the table!"

• oddly enough i may have actually retained how to convert my units! we had a whole lecture on this, and it was so wonderfully easy. we put the conversions into practice by adapting a recipe for "chocolate heaven cookies"--i didn't actually have any of them, but i did hear that they were quite delicious.

• this is sort of a generalized highlight, and an obvious one at that, but it is admittedly nice to have a greater understanding of what each item in a recipe actually DOES for the finished product. i really appreciate the lectures we get during technique demos, because i can come out of them saying that i actually KNOW something about baking and food, instead of saying yeah i can follow a recipe, sure.

• and finally, the lowlights. or rather, the lowlight that is, in my opinion, just as important as any of these highlights. while i could dedicate a number of posts on the importance of failure to success, suffice it to say that on wednesday, i bit it. hard. i struggled with my mise en place (the set-up for each recipe), i was behind on nearly every project, i almost burned my fingers twice, my hand once, and somehow managed to not destroy my face when boiling water/caramel? sputtered on my skin. i burned my caramel twice in a row, worked straight through dinner, and in general, was off my game. but in that class, i feel like i truly gained a mentor out of my chef-instructor, a partner out of my station-mate, and some important lessons for myself. not everything i make will be perfect, and even with that in mind, i may not even enjoy the finished product just because i made it. i'm still learning, very much so, and while i aim to be a do-it-yourself-er, there will be times that i simply can't do it on my own. and that's ok. in fact, that's great-because to do everything alone is too isolationist for my taste, to be honest. now, of course, these are lessons that extend into the rest of life, and that will take some time to adjust to, but i am happy to be making these steps. i'll be happier once i make them without the trainwreck, but we're taking baby steps, right?

now, all of this talk of how i'm going to post from now on does not, in the slightest, mean that the other fun stuff is going to end. i'm just going to do my best to strike a better balance between the two, that's all. additionally, i think that i'm going to adopt a more regular posting frequency, so that anything beyond those posts will simply be extra and fun, instead of an overwhelming majority of fluff.

and now mes chers, it is time for me to return to studying. tomorrow i'm going to post about those oscar-inspired treats, but right now, i need to focus so that i can get to bed. i wish you safe and happy eating, bon appetit until next time.