Genoise

I'm 28 years old and I decided to start my life over in April of this year. Baking is a proud (and in most points of history, vital) tradition, an art that will last as long as humans exist and stuff still grows on this planet. When I was young I  honestly never really had a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up, other than when I was 4 and I wanted to be the lady in the circus that does acrobatics on horseback. She was cool.

So, why name this post "Genoise" you say? The picture above is a black forest cake with a chocolate genoise sponge. It has whipped cream, tempered chocolate shavings, chocolate trees and garottes (brandy soaked cherries). 4 months ago this would have been unfathomable to me as to how to make this...I wouldn't have even wanted to try. The Genoise cake isn't easy to make either. Several things could go wrong, from over folding the batter to the oven being too hot. Nobody wants a flat genoise.
I never thought "hey I think I'm going to bake for a living" or "that song Patty Cake really changed my life". When I do something right it makes me feel REALLY good. When someone eats the product that I made and their eyes roll back in their head from pure gastronomic pleasure, the feeling is indescribable. It's like your birthday and X-mas and the best day you ever had all in one moment. There's a saying one of my chef instructors taught us from the industry. FYIM...feeling like that is addictive. I'm glad I'm in school. I don't care if I'm going to be in debt for the next 5 (or 15) years.
I'm a baker, I bake therefore I am. I'm glad I finally figured that out. It's nice to have purpose and to carry on this tradition.
This blog is mostly going to be about baking, since that's my life's obsession right now. I'm not going to put up recipes or fully explain how I do what I do, that's why I'm paying to go to Le Cordon Blue. If a surgeon told you how to remove an appendix, I'm sure you'd get the grasp of it, but you wouldn't go cutting into people would you? Okay, Okay...so baking isn't as "life or death" as that scenario, but I take this stuff seriously.