10 Things That Irritated Me During My First Culinary Course

Now that the course is over, the glamour is gone and I can gripe about some of the things that irritate me in hindsight. I still love it and I'm going to do it, but I think there should be some changes to help out new students that are especially new to this college thing!

1. Getting out early but my tuition bill is the same.

After the first few classes, we got out early almost every week. And it wasn't like a few minutes, some was more than 2.5 hours! Yet, I still paid the fool eight-hundred-and-something dollars out of pocket. I feel like if you can't fill the whole long day, cut the credit hours.

2. Constant stains on white jackets.

Okay, this is more my fault. I guess chef coats are white to reflect the heat and yada yada, but come on! We only had waist aprons… I needed one for the top too. For a custom jacket that was a little pricey, I want some protection. I feel like every semester I'm going to have to purchase a new one. Sometimes it was my carelessness, but when mysterious stains started showing up, I knew that some things around the kitchen were coated in something designed to make me look bad!

3. Know-It-Alls were legion.

If you are not my professor, I do NOT, repeat do NOT need you to come over and check my stock. Go away! When you're over here being nosey all in my grilled and the chef is calling to you telling you your stuff is messed up, you need to check yourself bro! Okay, that was one guy. The next guy would just tell me things that I didn't ask nor want to know. Yay, you used to work somewhere where they cooked this differently… sorry but we are doing Classical French cooking and your method is Disillusioned American. I repeat: GO AWAY! I wouldn't be upset with these people if it was a one-time occasional thing, but it happened every class to both me and my girls. Also watch out for the 'know-it-none's'. These people did not retain any information and kept the class slow and constantly asked for answers even in the last few weeks. It's like they didn't even try. One even whined and accused the chef of picking on her when she claimed that a mixture can be 60/60 and he asked her to show where in the world possible that can happen. Sigh…

4. The supply list was a lie.

Ok, not really but come on! I shouldn't have to be scrambling to purchase things for the next week when you suddenly decide we should all have something. That expensive of a facility should have enough wooden spoons and scrapers for us all. Or you could just, you know, figured out it was needed from the prior classes and put it on the supply list. Thank goodness my mom had some 'mesh' that suddenly became required to put underneath our cutting boards!

5. We had two chefs overall, both with different directions.

I spoke about this in my previous posts. There was Chef Loving and Master Chef Gabriel. It looked as if Chef Loving commanded the most respect, but everyone wanted so bad for it to be that the Master Chef always knew what he was doing. It usually turned out that Chef Loving's methods were the best and not only was that a bit odd, it left the class confused as to who wanted what on the exam.

6. There wasn't enough time set aside to do everything we were supposed to.

Maybe this was just my opinion, but it seemed like we were supposed to learn a little more. The beginning was focused on knife cuts, but it became almost the focus of the entire course. Though I'm grateful for that, I wish we had enough time to make ALL of the mother sauces, make some brown stock, spend more time on fresh herbs and dry spices, and see the uses of all of the equipment. Everything else seemed like such an afterthought.

7. My group never got enough feedback.

It's true that my group did a good job of working together and were usually successful at our attempts, but I wish the chefs and the assistants came over to us more and critiqued more. Sometimes we all got to walk up to show our work, but they paid more attention to others during our cooking process. I guess that means that they trusted us, but still, it would have been nice.

8. There wasn't any real structure, just an illusion.

Not to say the course was unorganized, but we surely did not follow the syllabus. While I'm grateful we got to work more on things the class as a whole was bad at, I still feel like there were other things we needed to strengthen. We never knew which chef we were going to get and I really was disappointed when we didn't actually make that bread.

9. I felt like the homework was a waste.

It was cool that we had little quizzes or whatever, but it just seemed like busy work. There were right and wrong answers and that's it. Nothing to make us reflect, nothing to fill in our opinions on anything. I felt like it didn't even need to be there. We should have just been given a chapter to read and discussed it the next week. To make it worse, a completely different chef was in charge of the homework and it felt like a detachment from the rest of the course.

10. They overreacted on the ability to catch up.

I was really nervous because the attendance policy and syllabus let you know that it was near-impossible to catch up or make anything up if you miss anything. I call bull on that. Mainly because a lot of things were repeats. It may have hurt to miss a demo, but some of the things were simple to learn and practice on your own if you needed it. I really thing that girl should not have had to drop if she missed the first course because we basically learned it all again, plus it was in the book. I can see missing the time where we had to use stock from the previou- oh wait, the stock spoiled anyway so we had to remake it. I could really see missing one of the last few weeks when we practiced the timed exam and learned the herbs and sp- oh wait they tricked us and used other herbs and spices that we didn't learn about at all. See where I'm going here? If someone is dedicated, they will get the work done. If they want to continue and they end up failing out, let it be their choice.

Don't worry, I'm not here to complain. Even with all it's faults, I absolutely love this program and the chefs were amazing! I just wanted you to realize that everything that glimmers is not gold. Go into what you want with an open mind and the faults will be nothing to you. Schoolcraft College really is one of the best out there. I'm going to let you in on a secret. I took half of a culinary course at Lansing Community College before they shut the program down and I had to drop because they tricked me on financial aid. In that course, all we did was attend class, he would hand out various recipes, we would cook them either alone or in groups, and at the end of the night we all sat down for family dinner and ate it. We critiqued. We cleaned up. We went home.

I can do that ish at home.

With Love,

Cookie

Finding the Perfect Homemade Yellow Cake

In my culinary journey- in fact I feel like in almost everyone's culinary journey, we have been searching for the Holy Grail of homemade yellow cake recipes. Some of us own businesses or is the 'baking queen/king' in the family and gets everything down to a perfect science… except that darn yellow cake. So we doctor up Betty Crocker mixes and go along with that because most non-bakers can't taste the chemicals! Well I'm here to let you know that the search for you just MIGHT be over. I say might because I, like you I'm sure, have been told this over and over again with the same fails.

Looks pretty right? Too bad it tasted like nothing.

Really nice texture and very fluffy - no flavor!

The cake is too flat, it rises perfect but tastes bland, it came out more like cornbread or a muffin, it's too dense, it's dry, it's okay but I wouldn't eat it without the frosting… we've all been there. Today, just try this recipe out. If it doesn't work for you, I'm sorry for the wasted ingredients and time. I really hope it does because I've found the best cake for me. If it doesn't work, I say try it ONE more time. Then that's it… if it sucks, you can continue your search.

Weird crumb cake concoction that was the result of a failed yellow cake recipe. Tasty... but tasted like muffins. The second layer completely fell apart...

We want everything like a box-mix cake minus the chemicals. We want flavor, rise, moistness, perfection almost every time- but we want to be able to say we made this with our own fresh ingredients and our own loving hands. Before I move on, I'm going to link to where I got the recipe and add a thank you to this kind soul who posted it:

http://www.cheftalk.com/t/45372/finally-that-perfect-homemade-yellow-cake

I believe it's a combination of two recipes that came out great!

Delicious, moist, fluffy... excuse the mess!

I had to take pictures before it disappeared!

This was delicious, moist, and was definitely able to hold a good amount of frosting. In fact, the layers would have been perfect if I didn't rush the process and try to take the cakes out of the pan while still hot… good thing frosting covers everything!

So as I said, try this out this weekend. I'm going to try them as cupcakes and follow up, but this is the one that I will pass down to my children and their children!

With Love,

Cookie

Perfect Yellow Cake Recipe

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (do not sift the flour)
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1-teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups milk
Vegetable oil
1 stick butter (not margarine), softened
1-tablespoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350°

Cut wax paper to fit the bottom of (3) 9 x 1 1/2-inch round pans. Spray the pans with cooking spray, place the wax paper in the pans and spray the paper.

In a large mixing bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt, mixing well.

Measure the 1-1/4 cups of milk in a 2 cup measuring cup….then add enough vegetable oil to bring the liquid up to 1-1/3 cups.

Add the milk/vegetable oil mixture, butter and vanilla to the flour mixture and beat with an electric mixer on medium to medium-high speed for 2 minutes, scraping sides of bowl as needed.

Add the eggs and continue beating an additional 2 minutes. Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake at 350° for 20 to 25 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted near center of cake comes out clean, or until cake springs back when touched lightly in the center.

Cool cakes on wire racks for 15 minutes; remove from pans and cool completely.

Frost as desired.

Note: It rises well, but I only made two out of the three rounds... I had to cook it for longer but it still came out great.