Sweet Francisco

Sweet Francisco Loves...

2011-08-10T11:46:00.000-07:00

Dreaming up sweet catering ideas for 2012 weddings...

Eating Bostok for Sunday brunch...

Filling our apartment with the delicious summery aromas of peach cobblers, strawberry shortcake cupcakes and rosemary sugar cookies...

Exploring Santa Barbara with culinary style...

(Wild Boar Ravioli...yum!)

Appreciating the "wino" lifestyle and living it proudly at some of our favorite urban tasting rooms...

And enjoying this sweet life in San Francisco...

examiner.com

2010-06-28T14:33:00.000-07:00

I just heard from the official market photographer that one of her pictures of Sweet Francisco's tarts might get featured on the San Francisco version of Examiner.com in an upcoming article on the SF Underground Market! Very exciting!

I will let you know more details as I get them...

We Have A Website!! And Other News...

2010-06-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

Check it out at http://www.sweetfrancisco.com/!

Those in charge at ForageSF also let us know this week that the next SF Underground Farmers' Market is going to be held on Saturday, July 24th. Sign up for the market at www.foragesf.com/market to get in.

Oh, and just in case you needed ONE MORE WAY to buy our sweet treats, we are also officially going to be a part of the Underground Market CSA online buying club, to begin within the next month or so. We are getting everything together for the site right now and will let you know when it is up and running! They expect the beta version to launch pretty soon!

Sweet Francisco on a Food Blog

2010-06-09T11:02:00.000-07:00

A coworker informed me today that Sweet Francisco was featured on a food blog (that wasn't my own - imagine my excitement!) and I wanted to share it with you all. If you are interested in checking it out, click here.

The Sweet Francisco part is short and sweet, but it's on a fantastic site called, odetogoodness.com that is dedicated to food and other noteworthy happenings in this wonderful city of ours. Plus, it's the first public nod that I've ever received from a fellow foodie, so I'll take it. And love it. I love it.

Make sure to check out the rest of her site, too!

SF Underground Farmers' Market

2010-06-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

It's been too long since I last wrote. Two months! Such a disgrace.

I know I have been out of touch lately, and I apologize. Life has been crazy. What started out as a sweet little idea for a blog has bloomed into a promising business opportunity. For those of you who don't know, Sweet Francisco recently debuted its wares (tarts - so many beautiful tarts) at the San Francisco Underground Farmers' Market! The reaction we were met with was beyond what I ever could have expected. Aside from completely covering our costs (and making a wee profit, I might add), we were also humbled by the enormous amount of flattering compliments we received from food writers, professional bakers and, most importantly, dessert lovers themselves.

We were asked to cater weddings. We were asked to join bakers' networking sites. We were asked for pictures. We were asked for business cards. Soooo many business cards. (Why in the world didn't I think it was important to get business cards printed?) WE WERE COMPARED TO TARTINE!!! And we were asked to come back! So to all of you who didn't get a chance to see us at last week's market, you can catch us at both the Oakland and the SF Underground Markets (that's right - we're doing Oakland as well) next month! Or you can just stop by my favorite little Italian joint on Fillmore and Clay for a sweet taste of our desserts this Saturday when they debut on the Via Veneto menu!

I know, I know...I am way too excited about this. You will have to excuse all of the exclamation marks. I just can't help myself. I never thought that this little blog and Tante Marie's pastry classes could start such an exciting new venture.

I will try to post more this evening with some actual pictures of what I have been baking lately, but before I do, I have to give a special shout-out to my most amazing boyfriend who spent hours rolling out dough, filling tart pans and making midnight runs to Costco and Safeway to pick up everything I needed to make the Underground Market happen. I absolutely could not have done it without him and I appreciate every second he spent on me so so sooooo much. Together we made Sweet Francisco at the SF Undersground Market happen.

PS - seriously, checkout the market if you haven't already. It's fantastic and a great way to support your local bakers, caterers and passionate-food-makers.

Pate a Choux; Meringue. Loveliness.

2010-04-08T21:47:00.000-07:00

I really don't like Alton Brown. That has nothing to do with this post, but I'm watching him right now and he makes me want to punch the TV.

Anywho - there are more important things to be discussed. Like my recent trysts with Pate a Choux and meringue. If you have never heard of Pate a Choux, I'm sure you have eaten it; it is the dough that makes profitaroles, eclairs and many other beautiful pastries that grace upscale bakeries around the world. Meringues - well, a meringue is a meringue - but, in honor of my dear Grandmama Delia, I chose to whip up an extra pavlova during last night's class as well. Interestingly, I had despised pretty much every bite of meringue I had ever had until last night. Last night changed everything. Why, you ask? Well just look at these:

Piped meringue cookies. Some with a chocolate dusting. Some without. All yummy.

My baby. A Raspberry Almond Decquoise. Just look at how beautiful it is. I'm pretty sure my future children won't even be this attractive.

For my lovely grandmother: pavlova with a honey lavender cream and poached strawberries.

Some of the spread. I love the plating that some of the girls did!

I just thought that looked pretty. We actually got to take our food home after our last class!

Dave was very pleased.

Exhibit A:

Yeah, he is probably the best boyfriend ever. He sits outside my school for 15 - 30 minutes waiting patiently to take me home after all of my night classes and I rarely get to reward him. He enjoyed his little gift last night though. Luckily, my roommate had a bunch of friends over when we got home and they were all willing to help him eat it. The decquoise is incredibly sweet, so it fed about five people. Here is a little montage of that adorable little dessert's demise:

So sad. :( But so delicious.

Now onto the Pate a Cheux. I made three different desserts using the same dough: profitaroles filled with vanilla bean pastry cream and served with a chocolate grand marnier sauce, chocolate glazed eclairs and Gateaux Paris-Brest (I don't even know how to explain that one cause I still don't really know what it is - you are just going to have to look at the pics).

The spread. Oh yeah - and those are cheesecakes in the background. I forgot about them. I also made a bourbon pumpkin cheesecake that day. Sadly, it didn't have time to set, so it pretty much collapsed during our taste-ation.

Profitaroles.

Eclairs and Gateaux Paris-Brest. Yummers.

Wow. Completely forgot about these. They are the cappucino souffles that I made on Monday night. If I could have caffeine, I would have eaten all of them.

Here they are out of the oven and with some delicious chocolate Grand Marnier sauce poured into them.

Never in my life have I been able to make so many beautiful things. Seriously. Ask my parents. I'm probably the least artistic person ever. My prized drawing as a kid was a harp. Yes! I can draw lines!

Anyway, that's about all for now. No class until Monday, but I do plan on making some of Tartelette's Meyer Lemon and Sour Cream Donuts this weekend. Those are like, three of my all-time favorite things. I'm afraid to step on the scale at this point. It just sits there on the floor in my bathroom...taunting me.

Las Picturas

2010-04-02T22:46:00.000-07:00

As promised - here are my pics.

Note the amazing macarons. I made them today and can I just tell you how obsessed I am with my kitchen scale? This is the first time I have used it, but now I am addicted. They were perfect.

Without further adieu:

The cookie spread. Not bad for our first night of class.

More.

My chocolate dipped shortbread cookies.

Jessica's first creme brulee.

Class #2 - taste-ation. Some of the creme caramels fell because they didn't have time to set up, but they were still delicious.

Pretty pretty.

My beautiful babies.

The jam and marscapone filling for the macarons.

Yum!

The finished product...and by far the prettiest macaron I have ever made.

Anyway, that's all for now. I have class again all day tomorrow, so I'm sure there will be more to come soon!

Torch Love

2010-04-01T09:55:00.000-07:00

Night 2: Creme Anglaise, Creme Caramel, Creme Brulee, Pots de Creme, Caramel Sauces. Generally: Cremes and Caramels Galore.

Have you ever made a creme brulee? I hadn't until last night and let me tell you - it is FUN. I mean, at first you just make a custard, which is cool, you know, but not super exciting. But then you get to use a torch. And you fall in love with it. Or at least I did - but I'm a bit of a pyro.

In order to graduate Tante Marie's pastry school, you have to be proficient in many different things and creme anglaise and caramel are two of them. So it makes sense that our entire class last night focused around creating each of them a number of times using a number of methods. We learned how to make caramel using the "dry method" as well as the "wet method" (I preferred the dry - it was so much more fun to watch) and how to steep the cream for our creme anglaise with vanilla beans to infuse just the right amount of flavor before tempering our eggs and creating the thin custardy deliciousness that is used to compliment many a dessert made in a sweet kitchen. How fantastic.

Admittedly, however, all that was just a lot of (awesome) work until the blow torches came out. Then the real fun began. After pulling my delicious looking creme brulees (or just plain cremes, I suppose, since they hadn't actually been "bruleed" yet) out of the oven and allowing them to set in the fridge while I made my caramel sauce and creme anglaise, it was time to start burning some sugar. My classmate and I sat impatiently at our stations while we waited for our teacher to come over and show us exactly how we should go about making that thick, crackly crust on top of our custards that make the creme brulee so much fun to eat. We waited. And waited. And waited some more, until finally she finished tasting the batch of caramels she was grading and made her way over with the torch. The huge, hardware store kind of torch. It was intimidating to say the least.

Once she had showed us how to burn the sugar to perfection, we each took our turns experimenting on our own with a whole lot of sugar. Seriously. Have you ever seen how much sugar goes on top of your creme brulee? It's a lot. Believe me. I guess it has to be to get that thick crust. The first of our experiments turned out to be...hmmm, shall we say...interesting...but as time went on and we got the feel of the blow torch, they really started to take shape. By the end, they were fantastic and a joy to crack. So much of a joy, in fact, that I went around and cracked a number of them...cause that's my favorite part.

Then came the "taste-ation" (as I will refer to it from now on), and we went around tasting all of the brulees, pots de creme, creme caramels and just straight up caramels (with salt...yum!) that everyone had made throughout the evening. Once again, fantastic. There wasn't anything there that didn't thrill me. The pots de creme were especially delicious...like little pots of fluffy chocolate heaven for your mouth. Agh. I'm hungry again.

Oh, and can I just tell you one more thing? Last night, as we were watching our instructor (I should probably give her a name since I'll be using it a lot; it's Christa) perform her demonstration, she told us that many chefs take creme brulee off their menus because it is outdated, over-hyped and, aside from the fire, not that interesting to make. "So", she said, "just find ways to make it fun for yourself while you are in the kitchen!" A simple statement, to be sure, but it struck me. Just find a way to make it fun. What an awesome work ethic...what an awesome thing to do every day of your life. I can tell you right now that in 3 1/2 years of working at my current job, nobody has EVER told me to find a way to make my work fun for myself (probably because what I do could never really be considered fun...rewarding, yes...depressing, most of the time...fun, no). I can't imagine anything I would rather do right now than stick myself in a pastry kitchen for eight hours a day and churn out beautiful things that are FUN for me to make. Then I could act like a frat boy and tell everyone that I was "living the dream." Which, to tell you the truth, has always been my dream.

A Sweet Night In A Sweet Kitchen

2010-03-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

The emails have already begun pouring in. Three thus far and it is only 8:30am. Everyone seems to want to hear about my first night as a professional pastry student. Let me just tell you right now - it was pretty much the best night I have had in years. Seriously. Think of your best night, multiply it by ten and then imagine you had a batch of cookies to eat at the end of it. That good. Not to say that I wasn't terrified to begin with, because I was; my hands were sweating, my mind was racing and I literally prayed that I wouldn't end up accidentally stabbing someone with a sharp knife by the end of the night. Literally.

Our first assignment of the semester was cookies. I love cookies. I make them ALL the time. Chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, shortbread cookies, snickerdoodle cookies, the ever finicky macaron cookies. Yet I couldn't seem to shake the fear that mine would come out completely flat or that I would forget to shout the ever important "HOT PAN BEHIND!" and dump them all over one of my most unfortunate classmates. Luckily for me (and everyone else in the kitchen) those fears were never realized. And my cookies rocked my socks.

After a short welcome from Marie of Tante Marie's, our wonderfully knowledgeable instructor took her spot behind the demonstration counter and began giving us a step by step presentation of how to cream butter and sugar and create the perfect dough. I know it probably sounds menial and basic, but her explanations for each of the steps were incredibly informative. I always knew that you creamed butter and sugar together to create a base for the dough, but I never realized that you did it to cut holes into the butter that the steam or leavening (based on the dough) will eventually fill and force the dough to rise. Nor did I know that the amount of time spent doing said creaming was extremely important and specific to every recipe because it was a main factor in determining the texture of your product. She also gave us useful tips on creating our own vanilla, coffee, herb and tea extracts. How to steep ingredients to create the perfect flavor. How to combine flour to just the right consistancy. It was fantastic and it was just the tip of the iceberg. I can only imagine how much more I will learn by the end of the semester!

Once the demonstration was over and our recipes were assigned (sadly, the one I drew was the most basic), we all went to our designated 2'x2' work stations and clumsily tried to find our way around the kitchen. My basic shortbread cookies came together quickly and beautifully, if I do say so myself, and I finished the dough with enough time to melt some chocolate to dip them in. They were splendid. Simple, but lovely. And I wasn't absolutely terrible. In fact, I found that all my practice really paid off and I was able to catch on pretty quickly and keep up with everyone else!

During the first moments of class, both the owner and the instructor informed us that the main goal of Tante Marie's was, of course, to provide students with the tools to become proficient and successful bakers, but also to make sure that they were able to survive in a real "sweet kitchen" (yes, that is what it is called - and I love it), and they weren't kidding. Unless we wanted to risk reprimand, we were forced to learn to cope with a tiny workspace in a hectic environment. People were running around everywhere and as I politely waited to grab some measuring cups from a cabinet at the feet of a classmate, the instructor's assistant came up and told me to just go for it. According to her, I needed to tell her I was coming in for tools and grab what I needed. Then she said "you are never going to make it in a kitchen if you wait like that." Alright. Lesson learned. Don't wait for anyone. Just take what you need.

The rest of the night passed pleasantly as we all watched our cookies bake, decorated the finished products and plated them as nicely as we could for "presentation." Luckily, we didn't actually have to "present" anything. It was more like a "taste-ation," in which we were all encouraged to eat everything. Unfortunately, I would like to weigh in at less than a ton at the end of the semester, so I just nibbled on a few, but everything was delicious. If I could have indulged my inner fatty (and believe me, there is one), I would have devoured them all.

Next up (on Wednesday) is custards. YUM. Can't wait to get my hands on some of that!

P.S. I have pics, but haven't uploaded them yet. Be patient. They will come.

Bake'n Blog Night

2010-03-22T23:53:00.000-07:00

I've been gone a while - I know. Everywhere I go (okay, some places I go) I meet someone asking me what the heezy is going on. Where is the blog? Where is the food? Have I given up on my sugar-coated-pastry-dreams after hitting a few (a lot) of financial blocades? Yes yes, they are all friends or family (or most excitingly friends OF family), but still, the answer is no. I hath not. The food is here. My excuse is that I ran out of sugar. And I'm sticking to it.

Conveniently, Mondays are Dave's soccer nights, which means I have time to sit around and do nothing but bake and - apparently - watch a whole lot of Dexter. But that is irrelevant. What really matters is the sweet cinnamony smell wafting off the banana bread mini muffins in my kitchen...

And the heart shaped mini muffins in my oven...

But that's enough about them. Suffice it to say that they are as adorable and delicious as they look here. I'll let my neighbors know who to thank for the mouthwatering smells later.

The real reason for this post was to try something I had been wanting to try for a long long time: homemade granola. I saw a recipe for it on Smitten Kitchen a while back and have been itching to bake it ever since.

Being the lazy baker that I am, however, I ended up with a shortage of ingredients. I didn't have coconut and only had wheat bran instead of wheat germ. Oh, and after getting half way through the recipe, I realized that I only had half as much honey as the recipe called for. Oh well! All the more reason to throw some peanut butter in there. I had been thinking about doing it anyway.

I substituted dried blueberries for the apricots and threw a teensy bit of candied ginger in there as well. I picked some up the other day at Trader Joe's and have been wondering what to do with it since then.

Overall, I think it worked out pretty well! The ginger was sweet and spicy, so it gave it an unexpected kick that I rather enjoyed.

And they looked so lovely after I cut them! Unfortunately, the lack of extra honey was pretty evident. They could have been sweeter, but they definitely weren't bad. And they were so quick and easy to make! All I had to do was toast the granola, nuts and Wheat Bran, toss in the rest of the ingredients and pop it into the oven for twenty-five minutes!! Not bad for the amount of deliciousness that ensues. Check out Smitten Kitchen for the recipe.

In other news, I got fitted for my chef whites this weekend! I pick them up on Friday after they embroider my name onto the lapel and the school's name onto the sleeve. How very exciting. I'll be wearing them to my first class a week from today (and probably every chance I get after that...the pants are RIDICULOUSLY comfy)! Hopefully I'll be able to tear myself away from Dexter in the meantime so I can get some more baking in before school starts...

UPDATE: I just ate one of the granola bars after letting them sit all night. They are damn good. I wouldn't change a thing. LOVE the peanut butter flavor! I would highly recommend substituting 1/3 of a cup of the honey with some good quality organic peanut butter. Oh, and the ginger in it is fantastic as well. Sheesh. I wish I brought more than one of them to work.

Focaccia Fix

2010-03-07T20:04:00.000-08:00

Early last week, one of my best friends (let's call her Jessi...cause that's her name) sent me a link to an amazing focaccia recipe that neither of us could wait to try. Jessi recently got me on a major food blog kick and Bake or Break featured the recipe on her site. It sounded fantastic. Focaccia bread covered with lightly caramelized onions and rosemary? What could be better???

She set out to make it on Tuesday and immediately text messaged me her results. It rose. A lot. And it tasted wonderful. I had to try it. So I ran to Whole Foods during my lunch break on Wednesday to pick up an onion and some flour - all the ingredients I needed to create this masterpiece. I couldn’t wait to get out of the office to go home and bake away.

The focaccia tasted as if it had come from little Sicilian cafe, yet it was one of the easiest things I have ever made. If I had known this delicious Italian-style-bread was so simple to make, I would have been doing it for years. The process literally consisted of mixing yeast with water, oil, flour, sugar, olive oil and salt and then letting it rise for a couple hours.

Strangely, mine rather enjoyed raising and wouldn’t stop. After nearly an extra hour of raising (I think my kitchen was too warm??), it finally hit its peak and I waited for it to deflate. I waited. And waited. And waited some more. It wouldn’t go down.

So I called Jessi and she said to just punch it. Punch it? Well that sounds fun! I did. And it finally collapsed.

After letting the dough chill a bit so I could handle it more easily, I took it out of the fridge and patted it down. It was enough for three loaves. Excellent.

I cut the first loaf, sautéed some onions until they became tender and then sprinkled them on top with some olive oil, rosemary, salt and pepper and popped it in the oven.

The end results were amazing. Just look at this baby!

Dave couldn't wait to get his hands on it (hence the missing piece).

Having 2/3rds of the dough left, I made a couple more loaves and experimented with the spices on top. Pretty much any herb toppings would go well on this. I tried a mixture of basil, thyme and rosemary, and Jessi experimented with some Herbs d'Provence - both were delicious. Next time (and believe me, there will be a next time), I want to add some feta to the mix somehow…cause feta and focaccia are two of my favorite things in the world. Seriously.

Go Shawty, It's My Birthday

2010-03-02T21:35:00.000-08:00

Having just moved into a glorious new apartment, I decided that it was only fitting to have a birthday/housewarming party to celebrate all that is great about February, 2010. I had grand dreams of how the party would go: homemade appetizers, fantastic desserts, beautiful wines and a lovely birthday cake, all prepared of course, by moi. For weeks on end, I scanned the food network website and every cookbook I own to choose the *perfect* pairing of wine and food and had absolutely everything (even a grocery list) figured out by Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, however, my dreams were far from realized when a monumentally hellish birthday week rained down upon me. In the course of four days, keys were lost, student loans were thrice paid without the chance of a refund, unexpected apartment costs were incurred, macarons fell, brownies stuck, and I spiraled even further into the unavoidably impoverished lifestyle of the young San Franciscan. Needless to say, I was exhausted and defeated by the time Party Friday rolled around.

Fortunately for me, some kind souls decided years ago to create a wonderous grocery franchise named Trader Joe's. With every aisle of frozen delectables I cruised and package of enticing appetizers I picked up, I gained a little more sanity and decided to at least create one sweet masterpiece for the party that weekend. Thus began the very fitting undertaking of the Heaven and Hell Cake.

Being as impatient and impulsive as I sometimes (okay, most times) am, I snagged All Cakes Considered from my cookbook bookcase - that's right, my roommate and I have an entire bookcase dedicated to cookbooks...try not to be jealous - and flipped to the ridiculously decadent cake that I had seen in it a few days before. Now, I don't usually like cake at all, but this thing is incredible. It is layer upon peanut butter-frosted-layer of angel food cake and devil's food cake, covered up with a creamy milk chocolate ganache. I've never made cake. But I had to make that. Had I taken a little more time to familiarize myself with the book before going out and buying all the ingredients for it, I would have realized that it was the queen of all cakes - the very last recipe in the book, meant to be conquered only after baking your way through all the rest. Oops! Luckily, I very seldom read the fine print and am always up for a challenge (especially one involving chocolate and peanut butter), so I set out to bake a heavenly end to my hellish week.

And here is how it went:

After making the chocolate ganache and leaving it to rest while I got everything else together, I started on the angel food cake:

The whipped egg whites.

Once I had folded the flour mixture into the egg whites, I put the batter into my springform and popped it into the oven. Here is how it looked when it came out:

What a beauty.

And from another angle:

The devil's food cake was amazing. A mixture of chocolate and coffee thrown in with the normal cake fixings, the flavor was intense and it smelled incredible while it was baking. I can't wait to make this one on it's own.

I nearly started eating it before I could get the cake assembled.

While the cakes were cooling, I whipped up the peanut butter-cream cheese filling to go in between the layers, then I cut the cakes in half and started putting it all together.

It looked like a giant peanut butter and chocolate sandwich...not that I was complaining.

Here is a pic of the fully frosted (or ganache-d, I suppose) masterpiece. It may have been a bit sloppy, but I was proud of it anyway.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the chocolate had hardened so much and when we removed the parchment paper from around the base, some of the cake came with it, so it wasn't nearly as perfect as it looked in the book. It still tasted good, though. In fact, I've been secretly munching on it all evening...

It was a big hit at the party and I kept getting compliments about it for days, which was pretty exciting. Definitely one I would make again...though I don't really think I will need to because I have enough left over to last me approximately ten years. I wonder if I could freeze dry this baby?

Sure, I'll Take A Little Goat Cheese With My Brownie

2010-02-23T23:03:00.000-08:00

Ever since I watched Bobby Flay throw it down with the ladies from the Vermont Brownie Company last weekend, I have been dreaming of making the Chevre Brownie that dominated both the episode and the competition. The dark chocolate and creamy goat cheese seemed to meld together into a tasty little bit of heaven that I couldn't wait to devour. Unfortunately for me, the Vermont Brownie Company recipe is not available online and there appear to be very few others who are brave enough to take on such an intimidating combination of sweet and savory a'la brownie. But I was not about to give up. Thus began my first experiment in recipe creation...

Luckily, I have a grandmother with an endless supply of delicious recipes and culinary know-how, so I was set on the actual brownie front. It was just the elusive Chevre that proved problematic. Should I just beat it fluffy and layer it in or should I try to fold it into the mixture before pouring it? Is it just goat cheese, or do I need to add any other ingredients? After much consideration and a whole lot of google searching, I decided to adapt a recipe for a Chevre Swirl that I had seen on a few pages. I added just a little bit of honey, an egg, a touch of flour and some lemon zest to brighten the flavors. I'm not really sure if the Vermont Brownie Queens would think all that was necessary, as I don't recall seeing them add anything to their own mixture, but since they are too greedy to put their secret recipe online, I was kind of left to fend for myself here. ;)

Below are a few pics that I took along the way. Please excuse the messy kitchen. I tend to get a little carried away at the thought of making a delicious dessert and throw all notions of tidiness (and flour, apparently) to the wind. Poor Dave has to go to work wearing flour covered sweatshirts most days because I always seem to be wearing them when I bake. Oops! But I digress...back to the pictures.

The chevre mixture. It looked so pretty.

The brownie batter. And my pink mixer. Did I mention I have a pink mixer? I have a pink mixer.

I did a thin layer of the chevre mixture in between brownie layers. In retrospect, I should have used more, but I was afraid that the goat cheese would overwhelm the brownie.

Another layer of brownie batter went on top of the goat cheese, then I dolloped a little more cheesy goodness on top of that and swirled away.

Finally, I topped it off with some dark chocolate chunks and popped it in the oven!

Sadly, the goat cheese swirls didn't look as beautiful when it was finished baking. I wasn't sure how to keep it from browning too quickly on top, so it ended up looking crisp and dark, but still tasted delicious.

Here is a picture of the final product:

Yum!

It definitely was not perfection (next time, I will probably use a stronger goat cheese and omit the honey), but it wasn't bad either. I was proud of the creation when I was done, which is what matters most, I suppose. Okay okay, maybe taste matters more, but my pride was a close second.

Oh, and I only mention this because someone has already asked, but I really didn't think that anyone would be brave enough to try Jessica's First Recipe, so I didn't write anything down along the way. Which means, no, I don't actually know what I did or how long I baked it for. Sorry. In my defense, I really wasn't expecting it to turn out this well.

And So It Begins...

2010-02-22T13:53:00.000-08:00

In an attempt to recreate a little Julie and Julia magic (sure, I'll let Amy Adams play me on the big screen), and inspired by the ever-lovely Bakerella.com, I have decided to create a little blogspot to chronicle my culinary journey through pastry school and beyond. In case you don't already know, I am one of sixteen aspiring bakers registered for (and anxiously awaiting) the six-month professional pastry course at Tante Marie's Cooking School in San Francisco, beginning this spring.

It being a professional course, I figured that I should probably start practicing before it starts so I won't be "that girl" in class who can't make a soufflè rise or tell the difference between a macaroon and a macarón. It should also be noted that I DO NOT like to be anything less than perfect at things that I am passionate about (or really anything else in general). It is annoying, yes, but it is true, which is why I have decided to tackle the things that scare me most about baking (i.e. croissants, the perfect macarón, morning buns and danishes, just to name a few), before I actually know what I'm doing.

Hence, Sweet Francisco BlogSpot. It is here that you will be able to follow me through my many triumphs and failures (hopefully more triumphs) on my way to becoming a master baker in the best and most beautiful city in the world. What will ensue in the next few posts is a montage of some of this year's most recent baking experiments - some are silly, some are strange, some are fantastic, and i have enjoyed making them all - followed by regular posts documenting my pastry school experience.

Oh and PS, you will have to bare with me here as I haven't gotten this blogging thing all figured out quite yet. Other than a brief and rather ridiculous foray into Live Journal my freshman year of college, I've never blogged a word in my life.

Here are some from a Sunday brunch I hosted recently...

Morning Buns a'la Art and Soul of Baking.

Dave, the boyfriend, doesn't usually eat sweets unless I make him (which is often) and he ate three of these voluntarily. Not a bad first attempt. They may not have been the perfect shape or color, but the taste was spot-on.

Toffee Chocolate Chip Scones, or as the guys later renamed them, "Poopy Scones." The toffee on top melted in a rather unappealing way, but they disappeared quickly, so I wasn't too upset.