Lesson 1 : Plain Scones and Royal Icing

Since at 2 first weeks of being in Sydney, I stayed at Hyde Park Tower on Elizabeth Street. Then to arrive school at 7 am, I have to catch the bus 501 on George St. at World Square at 6.12 am…my gosh..so early, rite?

When I arrived at the bus stop, I saw some LCB students (as you can see they was carrying a big knife bag same as mine :D) and I was thinking these students might be my classmate..coz only Basic Patisserie in group 3 got this school time table. (some might be cuisine or whatever)

Ok…let’s start another new journey…

After changed uniform, we went to the demonstration class at K2 on Level 6 building A. We got chef Keith for first day…He is quite nice and mentally calm..

At first, we all who commenced Basic Patisserie at Le Cordon Bleu today seemed to be nervous and excited. Chef Keith did ice breaking by letting us introduce ourselves. There were 15 of us (some previous cuisine students, some who got the experiences in industry, with the majority of us being fresh-faced, dessert eating - love baking students which are 5 Koreans, 3 Thais, 3 Singaporeans, 1 Philippine, 1 Venezuelan , 1 Brazilian, 1 Indonesian) Looks like Asian international school..hehehe…

Chef Keith showed us how to make plain scone and some royal icing piping. It looked quite easy though. After that, we got time to take photos and taste products. Chef was very kind by making Chantilly cream (whipped cream with a bit of sugar and vanilla essence). It was good for today breakfast..haha…

Scones are English biscuits made from flour, sugar, butter, milk or cream. They usually use baking powder as a leavening agent. There are lots lots lots of variety of scones that you can make. sweet or salty. Tomorrow we will make 2 more kinds of scones : fruits scones with sultanas and Cheese Scones. Plain scones are best served with strawberry jam and cream. But I prefer butter and jam ^ ^

In kitchen, we learned about safety and hygiene, not only for ourselves but other colleages too. I found out that most of my classmates are quite good in baking. Since I saw most of scones came out very pretty. Just about 2-3 students who seemed like have never done scone before..(I did it only once before at home and not so successful). I made about 16 scones today…It was good to eat when just came out from the oven..But I think my scone can be better..maybe because I was afraid that I will work too much for the dough then what I did was too little mix the dough :P

I also have heard about one joke that chef said to students “When you buy the uniform, did they tell you to buy a bigger size? Cuz you will definitely grow up’’ hahahahaha...

After finished baking scones, we also made royal icing and practiced piping. It is made from white eggs, pure icing sugar and acid-cream of tartar or lemon juice. Mine was very ugly...^ ^''

We got about 1 hour break. Our late lunch were scone, scone and scone…haha..Then the last class was some theory about hygiene which I have learned before at William Angliss, Melbourne. (of course, already forgot most of them). Personally, I think we all did pretty good jobs on our first day in LCB.

And one more thing !!!, we have a kitchenhand to help us clean up!