Well, my regular classes at the French Pastry School are officially finished. We spent the last two weeks working on Taste and Cake Building with Chef Joshua Johnson. We learned about different types of cakes and fillings that can be used in Wedding and special occasion cakes. It was awesome to be able to do even more baking and to learn so many new recipes. Chef Joshua, who use to have his own chocolate shop also showed us some of his favourite recipes including brownies, chocolate milk and caramels. I currently have five delicious cakes in my freezer so I'll be set for dessert until I leave!

The only bad part about all the baking we were doing was the dishes. Over the two weeks we made over twenty different recipes, so needless to say we had a lot of cleaning up to do.

This is the first cake we assembled. It's components are orange hazelnut biscuit, hazelnut japonais, bitter orange marmalade, coffee mousseline, coffee crumble and coffee buttercream.

Our second creation. Lemon almond biscuit, coconut dacquoise, lemon cream, almond pralinettes, fresh apricots and vanilla anglaise buttercream.

Despite the fact that I don't usually like chocolate, this cake was my favorite! Chocolate biscuit, pistachio cinnamon ganache, chocolate mousse, caramelized pistachios, cocoa nib florentine crisp and dark chocolate ganache. My dad loves chocolate and pistachios so I can't wait to try this out on him!

This cake was a close second! Almond genoise, caramelized almonds, vanilla anglaise buttercream and fresh strawberries. I would like to try making this again when strawberries are in season. I'm sure it would be even more amazing.

We were only scheduled to make four different cakes but we had some extra time at the end of the week so Chef showed us a few extra recipes to make another one. We also used some leftover components from the previous cakes. This is what we came up with. Chocolate genoise, dark chocolate ganache, almond pralinettes, vanilla crémeux and peanut butter mousse all sprayed with milk chocolate.

We had a little extra cake left over at the end of the week. Luckily one of my classmates took mine because I don't think it would have all fit in my freezer.

Of course we had to try all the different cakes we created! Luckily my chef pants have an elastic waist.

I had an awesome time these last two weeks. It made me realize that, although I love cake decorating and making food look beautiful, baking will always have to be a part of my job because I love it so much as well. Besides, it doesn't matter how nice something looks if it doesn't taste amazing. I can wait to get home and try out some new recipes on my family and friends. Next week we will be starting our final projects. First we will be creating a sweet 16 cake with a partner. Then for our final project we will each be creating a winter themed Wedding cake. I am equally nervous and excited to get started. Wish me luck!

Happy baking,

Kayla