@Shelovescake
Cake lover, baker, eater. Soon to be Leith’s Diploma student. Dabbling in catering, cakes and desserts to order and seasonal workshops.
Category: Uncategorized
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Another week and another looooong list of skills practiced and dishes executed: pate sucree, soufflé by creme pat method, slow egg cooking, fish stock making, liver prep and cook and round fish gutting, filleting and de-boning. Plus a delicious soporific bread dem, offal and fish dems and two afternoon wine sessions covering white, sweet and…
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Inspiring, daunting, intense yet light. Week two had lots of different things going on eliciting a range of feelings. A highlight of the week was a careers day organised for us by Leith’s List Connect careers service. All of us felt nervous about the ‘room of opportunities’; fearing voicing our ill-formed plans of what we…
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Back to school and I couldn’t be happier. After a very long break, the anticipation had been building as we received the recipe pack and draft curriculum for the term. Frightening and exciting in equal measure. Straight back into the kitchens on Tuesday morning. And there was a subtle yet definite shift in expectation from…
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The final week of the foundation term. And it didn’t disappoint. Skills practice, a Christmas lunch to beat all that came before, and the final flourish: a four layer white chocolate and lime celebration cake with lemon and lime needle shreds. Before all that: the much anticipated theory assessment. The preceding weekend had been spent…
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After the emotion and adrenalin of week 8, the start of week 9 felt flat. I was absolutely exhausted. Not helped by the fact I had cooked for 12 hours on Sunday preparing mince meat, mince pies, biscotti and rocky road for a Christmas shopping evening on Wednesday. We were cooking lamb rump with salsa…
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Week 8 can only be described as epic. Wine exam plus two formal practical assessments. And added to that the emotion of the first anniversary of my mum’s death. Definitely a hard week but looking back I’m beginning to see the culmination of everything we have learned over the foundation term. The wine exam kicked…
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A geographically diverse week: we began in Ethiopia, took a brief sojourn to Morocco, and ended in Goa. And that’s without taking into account the canter through the wine regions of the globe as part of our Level 1 WSET wine certificate. Another fun and stretching week learning yet more new skills (hello mackerel gutting)…
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The run up to Christmas (and arguably a week or two after) is the only time you can acceptably eat pastry every day. Or at least that’s what my mum thought and anyone who knew her knows it wasn’t worth disagreeing. And why would you? The pastry in question is short and crisp, encasing brandy-laced…
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Week 6 was short and carb-heavy. Two days off for half-term (yippee!) and then pasta, cacio e pepe, mashed potato, risotto Milanese and white bread….freezer now re-stocked for a few weeks 🙂 We returned from a restorative four day weekend to a morning of slow cooking. Carbonnade of beef, lamb tagine and an Ethiopian mince…
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Having settled into something of a rhythm, I was struck by a deep sense of gratitude this week. How changed my life is now from my Bank of England days. At lunchtime on Wednesday, having cooked and eaten a delicious sirloin steak with parsley butter, I went for a walk in the sunshine. The contrast…
@Shelovescake 