My new teacher, Chef DeWitt, is so neato! She gets really excited about everything and smiles all the time; except when she acts like you after Dad didn’t get his list done! We get to color; make funny cone shapes out of paper; write words and weird shapes in chocolate; play with shiny, noisy kitchen toys; and, when no one is looking, we lick the beaters!!
Our teacher uses stories to help us remember all these new words and ways to do stuff. Did you know that chocolate has a temper? “Feel the bottom of the bowl, if it has a little fever, that’s fine; if it’s too hot to touch, YOU PISSED OFF THE CHOCOLATE!” When she was teaching us how to frost a cake she used plane noises and everything and said, “Bring your spatula down like you’re landing on top of your cake. Let the back wheels hit first, take it to the middle of the runway and then take off again. It’s like a touch and go!” But my favorite is when she does her dough cheer: “4-4-3-2, that’s how you make a Pate a Choux!” She is de bombe!!
Chef showed us her diary with all of her awards in it. She’s been on Food Network like a billion times and got the gold medal for a sugar sculpture that was six feet tall! And, in 2010, she won “Pastry Chef of the Year” for the American Culinary Federation. That’s a BFD, not to be confused with a GB&D! You could tell she was really proud….but in all seriousness (and now in the voice of an adult), her greatest pride is watching her students succeed. By far, this is the most challenging class I’ve encountered, and it makes me a touch nervous; everything is different and difficult to grasp. As hard as I tried, I kept pissing off my chocolate.
She stood close, looked me in the eye and said, “You can do this! Just make it work, Heidi.” So, when I put the finishing touches on my chocolate box and realized that I DID DO IT, I teared up a little. She put her arms around me, told me she loved me….and beamed!!
My Mom doesn’t live nearby, so when I got home that night, I gave it to my daughter. She jumped up and down, pointed and said, “Mom! That is so cool; I can’t believe you made that!” And like that little kid, excitedly walking through the front door with her school project, I beamed!
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