Culinary School - Q3 Week 11

Holy cow!  It's FINALS week!

For our pastry final, in addition to a written exam, we are required to make a composed dessert that must contain the following five elements:

1. A Cake
2. A Buttercream or Mousse
3. A Crunchy Element
4. A Frozen Element
5. A Fruit Sauce

I chose to make a Chocolate Buche de Noel with a coffee buttercream, meringue mushrooms, vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce.

We had three hours on the first night beginning after the written exam and about three hours on the second night to finish up and present.  We drew numbers to determine our presentation time.

I scored 99% on the written exam (once again, the highest in the class) and 96% on the practical.   Chef scored me a little low on my creativity for my plated dessert because she thought I was playing it too safe.  However, on the timing portion of the night I scored 15/10 points because I had everything done and was washing everyone else's dishes because I finished 90 minutes before my presentation time.

I was pleased with my dessert, the class as a whole, and my grades.  I managed to get A's in both classes despite being sick and missing four pastry classes.

In Food and Beverage Operations I got a 91% on the written exam and a 94% on my operations manual.  My final score in that class was a 92%.  So, I am still on the presidents list for maintaining a 4.0 GPA!!!

The strangest thing is going from saying, "I'll be graduating next year in December" to saying, "I will graduate in December!"

I'm a fourth quarter culinary student!


Plated final




Whole final