Blueberry, Chocolate Chip and Streusseled MUFFIN Greatness

Happy Post-Apple Pie-Day!!  Or Monday for the rest of you.

I must say I was a bit on the tired side all day.. I thought I needed a nice cup of  joe but not even THAT helped out! It's ok though, tonight I will get some good rest, but not before I get some good reading in. I'm a bit overwhelmed with the reading, the homework, the quizzes, the notes, the pictures, the conversions... Sheesh, this is more work than I thought. But I'm totally into it. It's like the FUN project that you get at school. I don't even fall asleep while reading the text book. Now that's something special!

Today was Muffin day! Yeay, yippee!! Love muffins. We made Blueberry muffins using the creaming method, Chocolate Chip muffins using the muffin method and a wonderful cinnamony ( i get to make up my own words, right?) streusel to put on top.  I love streusel but we worked in teams today so consideration kicked in and I only put it on a hand full. :)  After all, its not all about me. (wink wink). I made the blueberry muffins today and my partner in crime Stacie made the chocolate chip ones. I LOVE blueberries and anything having to do with blueberries so that worked out quite nicely. They taste VERY good so I am willing to share. :) Muffins are easy and quick to make and once you have your batter ready, scoop those into your muffin pans and put in the oven at 400 degrees. Shouldn't take but 20-25 minutes to bake. Although in our class, with so many people opening and closing the ovens, it takes quite a bit longer. I'm patient, I can wait :)

Quick tip of the day... if your oven is not hot enough, your muffins will come out flat instead of with that nice dome on the top. If its too too hot, then you get the volcanic top as you can see in some of my blueberry muffins above.  We unfortunately had issues with both of our muffins. The chocolate chip were in there and the oven wasn't anywhere near 400 degrees, and mine was just at 400 but then got slightly above... but again, its just the kitchen chaos and as is stated over and over again, we are learning METHODS.. but man its nice to get a good product to munch on at the end of class.

Here is the difference between the creaming method and the muffin method:

Creaming- you want to cream together your fats and your sugars ( in this case we creamed it with our salt as well as our powdered milk). Slowly add in your egg making sure to scrape your bowl and then slowly add in your dry ingredients....you don't want to over mix your muffin batter.

The Muffin method entails pouring your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients then slightly stirring. You will get a lumpier mix. You do not want to over mix here as well.

I PREFER, all day long, the creaming method :) Even if its more work. I like the texture of the muffin much better!

Enjoy your evening and bake with you soon!

An American Staple..Apple-icious Pie!

Yuummmy!!

I've always made this from scratch for Thanksgiving along with a Pumpkin pie but today we learned

a different way to make them. I normally cut and peal the apples and create the sugar creation with the sugar, cinnamon, etc :) But today we used the canned apples and we created our sauce by boiling the juice with our cornstarch mix, then  incorporating the sugars and spices.  This was a fun project. We each made our own pie's but worked in groups to create the filling. Yesterday we created our different pie doughs. We made a mealy dough for the bottom of the pie and a flaky dough for the top. I cant wait to taste this later this evening. Its so pretty I don't even want to cut it ;)

Its FUN to hear everyones preference in class. A lot of people don't like apple pie! Shock! Then there are some who don't care for chocolate and don't care for cookies. Craziness! I'm really going to have to join a gym because I love it ALL. I'm not sure if we will ever make anything that I wouldn't eat and thoroughly enjoy. That's me with the crazy sweet tooth! If you want the recipe for the Apple Pie, let me know.

I had a quiz today in technique and I missed two which is horrible! There were only 15 questions. That gave me an automatic "B". What's with my brain?? Ok, granted, its been a LOOONG time since I have been to school, but I should still be able to retain! laughing.. its ok. I am happy with it and more than anything, I am

really, truly LOVING school. I look forward to all the creations to come!

Enjoy your weekend! Relax and unwind because come Monday we will all be at it again.

Sending you hugs,

Linda

Basket full of Biscuits and Almond Biscotti "deliciousness"...

Good afternoon everyone! I hope your Thursday was as tasty as mine was. Before I go into today's details I just want to thank everyone who is reading and commenting. I truly appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.  I enjoy your feedback and your questions; its the fuel to my fire. As I mentioned in the beginning, I love to share. Sharing is an amazing gift that each and every one of us is capable of  doing. :) 

With that in mind, we made some yummy flaky biscuits today. As you can see, there were a lot of layers in the biscuits.  I made these today with my partner Andrea. :) I am so glad we shared the task as we would have been overloaded with biscuits, not that overload is a problem ;). I have been MEANING to go to the store and get Tupperware to bring all these treats  home.  As of now, I can only hold so much! I promise tasters, Tupperware is on the way! ** The key to flaky biscuits is to have peanut size fat when kneading into your flour. **  Its the same as making pie dough. If you want it flaky, leave the same amount of fat in your mix vs your usual corn"mealy" texture. 

Quick tip of the day: when biscuits bake in the oven, the fat melts, creating a steam that gives you those wonderful layers you see pictured. They look great and they taste heavenly!

As if that was not good enough, we cut our biscotti today.  I baked the cut pieces again for 5 minutes, each side.  The result was an amazingly tasty treat.  Really, Coffee is a must to truly enjoy, but alone they are divine!  I will throw the recipe in here near the end of the blog if you want to give it a try. Remember, patience and time with these babies.  These are WELL WORTH it.  I am not a fan of hard biscotti, although that is their texture. I personally like them slightly softer.

It was an awesome day. It ended with learning about pathogens and viruses... wow!! As much as I enjoy my techniques class, I really am jaw-dropped with food borne illnesses and how they can affect and even kill you. Its so crazy how something so simple, WASHING YOUR HANDS, can be so overlooked. It's not cute people. I cant stress it enough, please wash your hands. Normally common sense will tell you when you are cross-contaminating something in a kitchen and if you don't know, you can learn. But its pretty gross to see what we carry on our hands when working around food. Ick is all I can say...

I wont leave it on that yucky note, I will in turn leave you with this!

Recipe for you!

Almond Biscotti

5 oz of egg
9 oz of Sugar
.25 oz of salt
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 tsp Orange Zest ( or more) :)
14 oz Pastry flour
.35 oz of baking powder
5 oz sliced almonds

Combine your egg, sugar and salt in a bowl, use the steam from the double broiler to mix, then whip until its thick and light
Fold in your vanilla and orange zest
Add your sifted dry ingredients (flour and baking powder)
Fold in your egg mixture
Mix in your almonds
Create the dough into a log, brush a little egg wash on top,
Cook at 325 degrees for about 30 minutes.
Let cool, cut the biscotti in pieces and bake again for 5 minutes, each side, at 275 degrees.

Enjoy!



Practice makes Perfect they say...

Another beautiful day in sunny Florida.  We should take our baking to the beach!

Practical went great today. I was still very nervous when creating those rosette's. I mean, I can do them, but I want to do them like the chef! laughing... I really do!  Practice makes perfect, I totally understand. You would think these were difficult but they REALLY are not. What will I do when we get into cake decorating?!? Oh my, I don't even want to think of it!  At any rate, I piped out 18 of the Butter Tea Cookies, wasn't happy with them so re-did about 15. At one point I just gave up and put them in the oven. Luckily the 12 I turned in came out the right size and with nice detailing. 50/50 was my grade, so I will take it and continue to practice! These tasted slightly better than the ones I made yesterday because I cooked them a little longer. Practice, practice and more practice.

I then went on to create my biscotti. This process requires a little more patience and extra arm strength. We were folding in all the ingredients instead of using the mixer.  We used the double broiler for the egg and sugar portion.  Lots of whipping while standing, waiting for that egg and sugar creation to get thick and ribbon like. I will have you know I am now ambidextrous!  Goodness that was a lot of whipping, but I got it and then moved on to folding in the dry ingredients. This took EXTRA arm strength since we used pastry flour and it got a lot harder to fold as more flour was added in.  I finished it off by adding the almonds, rolling the dough in sugar and placing it onto the sheet.  It kind of felt like play dough but much softer and much better smelling!  All in all it came out nice. I ended up not removing enough of my sugar from the tray and it slightly overcooked on the bottom. Boo!! Not happy about that. We will bake these for the second time tomorrow and then cut them up.  I will definitely post pics for you. Hopefully we can dip them into chocolate! Yuuummyyyy. Everything tastes better with chocolate. BIG SMILE :-) Cant wait to have these with some coffee.

After class we all grabbed a quick bite, I made a much needed phone call to my darling of a man and then I was off to take my Quiz!  I was super bummed because I missed 3 questions.  I wanted an "A"!! What happened? an 88% is UNacceptable. I beat myself up :) Well, it was our first quiz, so of course it was a little nerve wracking. I second guessed myself on a few of the questions and I should not have done that. My initial answer was correct and I had changed them.  :( Wont be doing that again! Better luck next time, right? 

I hope to have beautiful looking biscotti for you to see tomorrow! In the meantime, bake something up and let me know how it came out! Our first test in Techniques is coming up so I am off to do some studying.

Butter Tea Cookie Debut :)

Happy Tuesday everyone :)  Yes, I really am always this happy. So, today was awesome. I really am enjoying my techniques class and all of my classmates. Who ever thought learning could be so much fun? It's a super cool group and totally love the Chef's teaching style.  I know, I know, I have said that 3 times already. You all know how important that is though.. boring teacher = snails pace class. Vibrant teacher = not enough hours in a day ;)

As time goes on we should be getting better at what we do and hopefully a little quicker. What is most interesting to me are the details of  what to use, when and why.  Super fun facts that every baker should know.  Lets get down to the nitty gritty.  We had two demo's today. The pictured Butter Tea Cookie's and Biscotti.  My apologies for the NOT SO GREAT pictures.  My camera decided to die on me and I think its nicer to actually SEE what I am talking about , so for now you will get the Camera phone version . Boo.

We worked individually today which was nice. I was kind of testing myself to see how good I did on time with prep and procedure. I will give myself a pat on the back, I did good :)  The Butter Tea cookies will definitely be good with Tea.. not so much on their own.  A little Venezuelan Coffee wouldn't go so bad with these babies either. Or as my classmate told me today, "but, they are TEA cookies".. I cant help it. I love Coffee.  The jam in the middle of these guys gives it a little more kick and flavor, but on their own, they could be a little dull. I happen to love tea, so these may just stay with me.

These are pretty easy to make. We used cake flour which has less protein in it than regular flour. The less protein in your flour, the softer your product will be.  We used pastry flour for the biscotti, which has more protein for that hard texture.  The Biscotti will be double baked to perfection. Ooh! Just a fun fact for you, the Italian word Biscotto means "twice cooked"! Biscotti is its lovely plural name.

Tomorrow we have to make the Butter Tea Cookies again for a Practical.  We must produce 12 beautiful cookies to the Chef. Wish me luck! Its for our grade so I'm kind of nervous because I struggle in the decoration department. Those swirls look cute but its not the easiest for me to do. The prep and the dough are second nature but those details.. uuugghhhh I need to practice.

Have a beautiful evening and I will tell you how the Biscotti come out!

Chewy scrumptious Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Happy President's Day everyone :)

No classes today in observance of the holiday.  Yippee! I will be playing catch-up with my reading assignments. :) Reading calls for munching on cookies if you ask me, so off I went to make Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. :) Yes, those of you who know me understand how much I can not stand the smell of oatmeal when it is cooking or how it tastes. BUT, add the word cookie into the mix ,and the love just starts to filter in. :) I know, I have my quirks, it's the same with milk too. I won't drink it, not even on a dare. BUT I cant have cereal without some milk...??? Anyone??  Thank goodness this blog isn't about understanding ME. :) On with the cookies!

We can make these babies together if you would like, the recipe is below. I make these on the not-so-sweet side of things, so go ahead and add more brown sugar if you want them sweeter. I think these come out JUST right with the amount stated below.

INGREDIENTS:

2/3 cup light brown sugar

1 stick of softened unsalted butter**
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 large egg
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt

Nutmeg to taste. I use a small pinch or two
1.5 cups old fashioned oats
1 cup of raisins

**if you use salted butter, use less salt than indicated above

I make these cookies by hand but you are welcome to use your mixer. We will be using the creaming method so you will want to use two separate bowls.  One for the sifted ingredients and the other for the creamed creation.  To begin, sift your flour, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon and baking soda and place aside. Measure out your oats and your raisins and put them aside until its time to incorporate them in. Place parchment paper onto your cookie sheets and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

• In a bowl, cream together the sugar, butter, vanilla and the egg
• Slowly add in the sifted dry ingredients
• Add in the oats and then the raisins

Use a small ice-cream scooper to place the cookie dough onto the sheets. *Note* Using the scooper creates a consistency in your cookie sizes. :)  Leave enough room in between each scoop because your cookies will expand a bit. I personally cook these for about 10 minutes. I like them slightly undercooked so that they come out chewy.  You will get about 2 dozen out of this recipe, depending on how big your scoop is. Definitely enough to share. :)

Here is my finished product! I would love to hear and see how yours turned out.  Enjoy the day and I will see you back here tomorrow.  Bye for now....

Picture Perfect Checkered & Swirled cookies

As you can see, we created the IceBox Cookies today. This was a team effort project. I made those center swirls you see in the pic, with the chocolate trim on the outside. :) These were the cookies that frustrated me yesterday because they are made of butter.  You put them overnight in the ICEBOX  (wink wink), also known as the cooler in todays hip world.  When you are ready to shape them into the designs above, you take them out of the cooler and roll them out.  If they sit out too long they can become a little messy.  When I was shaping mine yesterday, they would keep breaking.  I have a problem with trying to make everything as perfect as I can get them.  My man and my family can tell you that once I see that they are not little perfections, I shun the poor things. I won't even look at them twice. Sad, I know.

But these were good. :) I was quite happy with them and our team did an awesome job! They taste delicious. We also made Almond Macaroons today which also tasted yummy. I wont show you a picture because they smashed in my backpack between books. Tee hee.. note to self, buy Tupperware.

Oh, and major news, for me that is, we got to use a mixer today!!! That's HUGE. I don't mind doing everything by hand, I actually prefer it. For Macaroons though, since you are whipping egg whites to a certain point, a mixer is heavenly to use. As much as I love baking, I do not own a mixer. Maybe Santa will bring me one this year.Hey, a girl can wish. I have been good you know, and that has to count for something.

Im going to keep this short since its Friday Fun-day, as I tell my dad every Friday. Let me know if there

is anything you want to see on the blog or learn more about. Otherwise I will continue with my ramblings. :)

Enjoy your long weekend and we will bake again next week.

Goodbye for now....

Creaming my way to delicious cookies

Hello, Hello. I hope everyone is having a nice week.  I am loving mine.  Today was a good day. It was more of a lecture and "getting to know" our Chef day.  I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but our Chef for the P&B Technique course was out for a few. She was back today and she is super cool with a pleasant and fun personality. Makes for a good class! I like her teaching style.  I think we have some of the same pet peeves which is awesome because we are learning the basic techniques.  Doing things her way means it will more than likely be my way too in the future.. give and take a few things ;)

So that said, I was happy to know that I was not the only person who didn't really LOVE those chocolate chip cookies we made. I did mention it to the Chef because I wanted to figure out what went went wrong.  I should have known better because the answer was simple: Play with the ingredients.  She did say that the course was more to learn different PROCEDURES vs making a good Chocolate Chip Cookie. :) I couldn't agree with  her more. I will learn from this FAIL and create my own. It still would have been nice to enjoy a freshly baked YUMMY cookie. Maybe tomorrow! We finished up our Ice Box cookies and created them in two styles, Swirl and Checkered. I totally struggled with the "Swirl" process because I made the dough too thin, and then too thick, and then it broke in my hands. I was frustrated. But, I swirled that baby so I will let you know how it came out tomorrow.

These two cookies use the Creaming method.  Creaming is basically the order and process in which the ingredients go into the bowl. Once I create a really good recipe for those chocolate chip cookies, I will post it so we can all go a little cookie crazy.

For those of you who are baking with me, if you want crispier cookies, it requires less moisture, so higher amount of sugars and fats.  Softer cookies require more moisture, so less sugar and fats. And for those of you who like them chewy as I do, you want high sugar and liquids and less fat.

So bake away and let me know what your favorite recipe's are.  Maybe I can offer you a few ways to tweak them. As for the food and sanitation portion of my day, boy oh boy!! Wash your hands and PLEASE, if you know what's good for you, use a "single-use" paper towel. Germs are all over the place and the best thing you can be, is AWARE. So that is my good deed for the day :).

P.S. I learned today that hand sanitizers most definitely do NOT replace hand washing. If used too often, your body actually becomes immune to it. 

Ta Ta for now!

Chocolate Chip Cookies galore and a Brownie Recipe

No cookies for me please. We made these today in a big batch. I personally did not like the texture or taste of the cookie from today's recipe. It tasted something like a soft biscotti.  Ahhh personal preferences :) its a beautiful thing.  BUT with that in mind, I will use this experience to figure out which ingredients I need to play with in order to get them the way I normally like:  just sweet enough, chewy with a little crisp on the outside. 

Cindy Lee, the answer to your question from yesterday's blog: Why do we sift ingredients?  A lot of people think its not necessary to sift, but as we are all slowly learning in class, baking is a science. Sifting serves quite a few purposes.  To name a few, it adds air into the mixture and it also gets rid of all the lumps prior to mixing it into your batter. This is of high importance because unless the lump is a nice chocolate chip or other tasty inclusion, it shouldn't be there. 

Today's class was about mixing methods and the creation of Gluten when mixing. This is exactly why I came to school. To understand the hydration that occurs when blending, to know that gluten is created in a flour product when mixed with liquid, the anatomy of a wheat kernel, the purpose of flour, ingredient substitutions, etc. It was quite an interesting day and I'm grateful I read and did my homework! Even if Noemi kept interrupting me. Just kidding Nemi!

After the cookies were made we did a Mise en place for tomorrow. Icebox Cookies. One batch of vanilla and one batch of chocolate that we will create and either cut into Pinwheels or checkerboard. I cant wait to do these tomorrow. From here we went on to finish up the brownies we made yesterday.  These were in the cooler overnight and quite honestly, I had forgotten about them.  The chef prepared a DELICIOUS chocolate Ganache which we in turn spread all over our brownie's, decorated them with a baking tool and then put back in the cooler so we could wrap them up and take them home. THESE I did like, and they do taste very good. Not so sweet but chocolatey. I never used to like chocolate Ganache but right now its up there in my top 5.



If you want the brownie recipe, here it is:

14 oz of butter

24 oz of sugar

14 oz of eggs

1 tsp of vanilla

9 oz of All Purpose Flour

4 oz of Cocoa powder

1/2 oz of salt

2 1/2 oz of Chocolate Chips (optional)

2 1/2 oz of Walnuts, lightly toasted (optional)

Oven should be at 350 degrees.

Melt the butter and set it aside. Put all your dry ingredients in a bowl. Add eggs and scrape the sides. Add the melted butter and scrape the sides. Add the chocolate and nuts. Bake for 3 minutes or so.

Enjoy!

A total Conversion

Brownies, brownies and more brownies. We were all so excited when we heard we were making these from scratch today. But then the twist came in, conversions... from teaspoons, to tablespoons, to ounces, to pints, to quarts and then to gallons! Goodness, talk about putting a damper on things ;).  But that's ok, its all so very useful. I'm still stuck on figuring out what half of 3/4 oz is.  We did get to see how the kitchen is run, how things are stored, food safety and sanitation lessons first hand ( because that class comes AFTER our techniques class.. who figured that one out?). I will be learning a few things backwards it seems.  Trial and Error, it's my best friend.  We had to work with a partner today which was nice because we were all able to meet someone new. Everyone in the class is a little younger but the passion is the same, and that's what counts. We are all eager to learn and eager to share.

You should have seen me this morning though, I had a ball trying to figure out how to put on my cravat. Luckily someone was nice enough to see me struggling and helped out.  Being in full uniform is a big part of the grade. They make you line up and everything. They even have a YouTube video that we are supposed to check out, but I forgot.  Oops! I will do it as soon as I am done here. The uniform isn't really ALL that bad. I do complain about the checkered pants though. I don't love those at all.. but the rest of it is nice :).

Food Safety and Sanitation is going to be a class that requires a lot of paying attention to. We have to pass the state exam at the end of the 6 weeks and there is a wealth of information to cover. The Chef mentioned quite a few times that once the course was over, we would NEVER want to eat out again. I personally don't eat out much, but wow! That doesn't sound too good. I will definitely be keeping you in the loop, unless of course, you choose not to know and continue your restaurant hopping :)

All in all I am piled up with homework, quizzes and reading. But as I said in the beginning, this blog is as much for you as it is for me! Ask me questions.  Let me know if there's anything in particular you want to know. Like, why to sift the ingredients or how much time ingredients should be laying out before mixing.. whatever you want! Its a learning process, and as it was told to me today, Life is not about doing things right, its about learning what you did wrong.

Ta ta for now! Tomorrow is Cookie day.  Ok, and quiz day, homework day and conversion day. But Cookie day sounds so much better!

1st Day of Class

Hi all!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Well, I got all dressed up but kind of no where to go?? We didn't really have class today, it was more of a formal, uniformed-up, orientation!  It was a bit of a bummer as I was really excited to start class.  When does that ever happen? ;)

I got there 15 minutes early but apparently so did everyone else.  There were tons of new students today which was impressive.  I would say there were equally as many men in the room as there were women. It was mixed though, so in the beginning you didn't know if you were going to be with a fellow classmate or a fellow student.  After they sat us all down, we proceeded to do a few hours of rules and regulations.  The President gave a little speech as well. I was happy to hear that the same people who spoke at the "mini-orientation" on the 5th ( which I  missed), were the same people who spoke today.

Thereafter, we were in long lines for ID's, Photo's, Books and tool kits. The Tool kit is so heavy and filled with so many goodies! I love it. As soon as I got it, the excitement started all over again.  That is not to say I wasn't excited to hear 2 hours of rules and regs.  :)  We were then put into two groups, Culinary students and Patisserie and Baking students. I was surprised that there was only one male in our 23 student Baking and Pastry group! It is a nice variety in age group and ethnicity though and I look forward to getting to know the team. I am already eyeing my competitors, for fun of course ;)

The Pastry Chef who will school us for the next 6 weeks gave us the next lesson, which was to go through the entire kit, making sure we each had every piece that we paid for. I cant say that it was cheap, but I will say it is quality.  Quality speaks for itself in my book.  We were all equally anxious to use each and every tool.

The Pastry Chef is very nice and down to earth. I think I will enjoy her manner of teaching. There is also a second Chef who will help out and both have the same qualifications.  I must say, I think this is going to be something truly amazing and I cant thank my lucky stars enough for having the opportunity to do something that I love, every day, for the next 9 months.  I have to thank my better half who kept encouraging me to follow my dreams.  You know who you are! I do this for myself to contine to grow as an individual, but I also do this for US! 

Tomorrow should be a fun day. I'm ready to roll...literally, any kind of dough! Thank you guys for keeping up with me! With the tools in this kit, we are going to be creating some delightful treats!

"Bake" with you very soon!

And she's off!

Well, the time has come.  Tomorrow, bright and early, I will send myself off to school! I will once again enter into the Academic world after 15 awesome years. I cant wait! I hope I can still retain information like I used to (wink). I have been told that my Kit is somewhat heavy and that the books are as well. Does that mean a backpack? A rolling bag?  I guess I will know more tomorrow.  Its time to leave the Louis behind and walk in with... a Trapper Keeper? Laughing.. do they even make those anymore? :) :)

Wish me luck everyone! I will be Posting again tomorrow to tell you all about our first day at Le Cordon Bleu.

Enjoy your evening.

White Coats, Checkered pants and a beanie!

I hope everyone had a great day today. I did not get the pleasure of attending my orientation last week because I was traveling for a family wedding, so today i strolled off to Le Cordon Bleu to pick up my uniform. My friend Cindy came along with me for what I like to call "emotionally excited" support :) Thanks Cindy!! We were on a mission as well, to start tasting treats from different bakeries in the area. I must say, I better start working out double time.

I am now fully equipped with my Le Cordon Bleu white coat, checkered pants, beanie, hand towel, steel toed shoes, apron and a kravat. Yes, you read that correctly, a kravat! Ask me if I know how to tie one?? Absolutely not! It adds to the fun though.  I will proudly put this wonderful ensemble on every day. Picture to post soon!

I am off to catch up on some reading. Enjoy your night and your weekend, I will check back in Monday, the 14th after my first day of class and every day thereafter!

The Start of our Baking Extravaganza!

Hello!

Thank you so much for visiting my page. I’m very excited to start this blog and I hope you will follow me as I begin this new journey!

Most of you know me already, but for those of you who do not, my name is Linda. J I lived in Miami Beach for 13 ½ years and was fortunate enough to have an amazing life and a beautiful career.  In that time I met some terrific people, who today are my dearest friends and confidants.  A little over a year ago, I decided to leave my high profile career and move to California to pursue a new happiness. It was there that I realized I could make my passion into a career, in baking!  It was a very fulfilling year and I was able to reconnect with myself, get in great shape, fall in love all over again, and meet some really great friends too. 

Baking is something that I have always held very dear to my heart and have taken great pride in. I am overjoyed to have taken the next step of enrolling in one of the top baking schools, the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu! I can not wait to unleash the creativity.  Of course, this dream has a goal, and it's to open my own unique bakery that will offer something a little different and special from the rest. 

I hope you will join me as I take this tasty journey.  We can experience baking and pastry school together from beginning to end.  You can see my ups and downs, my successes and epic fails! ;)  We can share recipe’s, opinions and so much more.  This blog is as much yours as it is mine and I am really looking forward to it!

Classes start February 14^th. Please come back and check in with me daily.

“Bake” with you soon!

Linda