September 7, 2010.
Today was almost easy. Class almost ended several hours early. Everyone almost left class in an okay mood.
Key word: almost.
All those wonderful things could have been, due to the fact that today was cluster day. Toasted, sugar-coated almonds mixed with tempered chocolate. Frosted flakes mixed with tempered chocolate. Feuilletine mixed with tempered chocolate. Not very difficult or time-consuming. We were done with all of that by 11:30.
(This is the part where Chef Gronert uses something harmless and delicious to ruin our day.)
For some odd reason that I will never know, Chef Gronert was DETERMINED to have us make cashew clusters. We had already made enough clusters to understand the cluster-making process, so it couldn’t have been for the sake of education.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have any unsalted cashews. We weren’t sure if we would have any cashews, but we were supposed to be getting some in a little later. And they absolutely had to be unsalted because Germans apparently aren’t into sweet and salty.
So we waited. Did we do anything productive while we waited? No. We just waited. Finally, right around one o’clock, we got our cashews. Class ends at two, so we got to work immediately. We put our cashews in the oven and waited for them to toast. Then we coated them with sugar syrup and waited for them to cool. Then we made the clusters and waited for them to set. Why yes, we did do a lot of waiting today.
We probably spent more time waiting today than we did actually working. So really, this was more like waiting day than cluster day. By the way, the nut clusters needed some salt.
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