Pulla

Pulla is a mildly sweet Finnish sweet roll/ dessert bread that is flavored with crushed cardamom seeds and is either braided or rolled.

This bread was similar yet unlike any bread that I ever made. Tender texture, slightly sweet, spiced with cardamom, and flat-out beautiful. 

We grounded the cardamom seeds ourselves, which was fun to do. 

Here we divided our dough into threes, since one of our group members was gone on a field trip. We, then, divided the piece we each had in 3, 4 and 5 strips.

And here was the fun part! Braiding the bread!

 I did a five braid one 

A group mate did a normal three braided one

 And I made my sister make a four braided one (it's really hard) 

Since we had some left-over dough left, Faith and I braided it and then curled it to make a circle.

 We brushed each loaf with egg wash and sprinkled it with course white sugar.

Royal Icing Rose

In this class we made royal icing roses. Let me tell you how hard it was for me to make it actually look like a rose instead of a giant glob of a mess! I, personally, found it a pain the the arse to do but one of the members in my group was really good at it! 

So here's the ingredients for the royal icing. Egg white powder, icing sugar and water.

We actually had a variety of flowers we could choose to do. Daffodils, violets and roses to name a few. Making these icing flowers required A LOT of concentration and a really steady hand.

Here I'll attempt to explain what we did 

 Here we first made a 'mountain' of icing

Then we made a 'scarf' for the mountain

And then we kind of covered it.

 I also made a daffodil but I forgot to take pictures of it. 

Stacks - Vertical Food

In this class we made stacks! The stacks we made were Cherry Pie Cake Stacks. The whole point of this lab was to learn about plating and decorating.

The cake part of the cherry pie cake stack was a pound cake.

Here is the whipping cream that we used to make whip cream. We put the liquid measure in the fridge to keep the glass cool before we used an electric mixer in it.

And here is the cherry pie filling! 

To assemble and make this was fairly simple. First with the pound cake, we used stack cylinders to cut circles out of the cake. There are various items that you could use. You could purchase special stack cylinders or you could easily create you own by using various sized of cans with both ends removed. 

So basically you choose a can in the desired size, remove both ends of the can, empty it and wash the interior thoroughly with hot, soapy water. Then you remove and discard the labels and dry the cans well. Check the rims for any sharp pieces by the can opener. With some needle nose pliers, flatten it so they do not protrude and cut. Spray the inside with vegetable spray before using.

This is the cylinder we used.

To create the stacks, we sliced each cake into layers and between each layer we added some of the cherry pie filling. 

After we pour some of the chocolate sauce which, was just some Nesquik chocolate sauce on top of the cake.

We, then, piped the whipping cream on the top of the cake stack.

 I didn't know what to do with my cake, so Faith and I thought that since we have some leftover side cake we would make a crown out of it! 

This was just a missed-up one we made because we had one left-over and we had no time to actually design it.