Culinary School Update: Braised Cabbage, Cookies, Danishes, & More!

Okay guys, it's school update time again! It's the middle of the semester, and we've been cooking up a storm.

In cooking class, we've been making a lot of veggies.  Last week, we made apple and wine braised red cabbage.  I'm not the biggest cabbage fan, but this turned out pretty well and I was happy about it.

We also made ratatouille.  It obviously would have been better with beautiful summer veggies, but we worked with what we had.

 

And, to get started on frying, we made onion rings and blue cheese dressing.

 

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In baking class last week, it was a cookie extravaganza!  Our little group of 3 people made oatmeal raisin,

 

snickerdoodles,

 

oreo biscotti,

 

and sugar cookies (in dinosaur shapes!)

 

Other groups also made peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. By the time we were done, I didn't think I could ever look at another cookie again.

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This week, we didn't have cooking class because of a short spring break.  Yesterday, in baking class, we learned about laminated doughs, which include puff pastry, croissant, and danish doughs.  There's an entire class dedicated to laminated doughs, because it is such an intensive process.  So, we just watched our instructor demonstrate how to do it, and used ready-made puff pastry and danish doughs to practice different ways to use them.

With the puff pastry, we made apple turnovers.

 

They were nice and flaky.

 

Even with the packaged danish dough, we had to roll, cut, and proof the danishes.

 

We filled them with cherry, blueberry, and apple fillings. Then, we lightly brushed them in a marmalade glaze, and finally, they were drizzled with a simple icing.

 

I usually think of danishes as being dry, but man, these were so soft and delicious.