I get it. You’re busy. You may think you’re too busy to cook and bake from scratch several times a week, but I promise if you learn how ingredients function and some basic techniques and cooking and baking mixing methods, you’ll be able to get dinners (and desserts) on the table and still have time to hang out with your husband for awhile.
Or catch up on some Netflix! I’m here to help you be fearless in the kitchen to get you back out of the kitchen and with your family.
Photo by Stacey Sprenz Photography
I’m here to help, so please feel free to email me!
Do You Suffer from Kitchen Paralysis?
I’ve been watching cooking and baking shows for decades. I loved seeing chefs like Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, Justin Wilson, Sarah Moulton, Ming Tsai, Nathalie DuPree and more bend ingredients to their will.
They made it look so easy.
Despite watching these shows and buying cookbooks, I still didn’t really know how to cook. I never felt confident in the kitchen, and certainly not without a recipe clutched in my fist.
I was that person who would get a recipe, go to the store and purchase every single thing on the ingredient list without
- a)really knowing what I was doing or
- b)ever needing some of those ingredients ever again.
I can remember checking off each ingredient as I bought it. A whole bottle of red wine vinegar when I only needed a tablespoon (and I already had apple cider vinegar at home). A 1/2 oz jar of a spice I’d never heard of, had no idea how it would add to the recipe, and no plans for using more than the 1 teaspoon called for in my recipe.
Mixing up heavy cream with cream cheese to approximate creme fraiche (yes, I did this on recommendation of a dude at the grocery store) even though I had sour cream in my fridge.
I’ve made a huge pot of spaghetti sauce, tasted it, added some herbs, tasted it again, added some other random ingredients, and tasted it again. I knew it didn’t taste how I wanted it to, but I had no idea where to begin to fix it.
I’ve spent hours–hours!–making a huge cake from a recipe in a fancy cookbook without understanding the components I was making and how they behaved. As a result, I messed up my ganache and had no idea how to fix it, if it was fixable, or how the mistake could affect the end results.
I Found My Fearlessness, and I Can Help You Find Yours
Little by little, through Friday night experimentation, voracious reading of cookbooks like they were textbooks, and watching all the cooking shows–all of them!–I began to see patterns in the recipes I was following.
Like this:
- Cream butter until smooth. Add sugar and cream until light and fluffy.
or
- Cook onion, carrot, and celery in butter until softened.
or
- Whisk dry ingredients together. Whisk wet ingredients together. Pour wet into dry and stir until just mixed.
And I started to realize a couple of things:
- Certain techniques are almost universal to cooking (or baking) and can be applied no matter the name of the recipe or the specific ingredient list.
- Recipes are nothing more than a list of ingredients with a list of methods and techniques for how to combine those ingredients into something delicious.
Not all at once, but since I came to these realizations, I have focused less on specific recipes and more on learning how ingredients behave and how to combine them to get my desired results.
This has allowed me to be more creative and less fearful in the kitchen. And these days, I consider myself fearless in the kitchen.
I Made Mistakes So You Don’t Have To
I do not want you to have to spend decades learning how to be fearless. I want to share what I’ve learned on my journey to fearlessness so you can bypass all the worry and paralysis and just get in the kitchen to cook and bake for and with your family.
I offer plenty of recipes on this site, but these are the most important takeaways you can get from Pastry Chef Online, the skills and knowledge that will help you be fearless in the kitchen!
- knowing how ingredients function alone and in combination.
- learning the underlying cooking and baking methods and techniques so you can apply them to almost any ingredients you have in your kitchen
- focusing on similarities between recipe types (butter cakes, cream soups) rather than differences between specific recipes (pumpkin spice cake versus chocolate cake, cream of leek and potato soup versus creamy tomato soup)
And please know that, while I attended culinary school for baking and pastry and have worked in fine dining restaurants, I learned about ingredient function, cooking and baking methods and techniques and understanding what recipes really are outside the culinary classroom, mainly through reading and experimenting.
Just going to culinary school won’t make you fearless. Honest.
Click Here and I will
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How to Be Fearless in the Kitchen!
My Training and Where I’ve Worked
After teaching special education for 16 years, I left teaching and attended the Orlando Culinary Academy in 2005-2006.
These are the restaurants I’ve worked in:
- Luma on Park in Winter Park, FL (now closed after a 20-year run) and
- The Ravenous Pig in Winter Park, FL (which has expanded significantly since I was there)
I started my site while I was still at The Ravenous Pig, and I wrote a post about what my day was like. If you’re interested in what a pastry chef does on a daily basis, that’s a good post for you to read.
Photo by Stacey Sprenz Photography
I really am here to help you. Feel free to email me with questions right down there. See?
(onlinepastrychef {at} yahoo {dot} com)
You can also find me all over social media. Currently, I’m on facebook, twitter, instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.
Photo by Stacey Sprenz Photography Caricature by Triple Latte Design
I’m a Cat Lover and a Cat Foster Mom
I also have a bit of a thing for cats. That’s Cartoon Lester up there with Cartoon me. My husband, The Beloved, and I foster through Johnston County Animal Protection League here in North Carolina.
We almost always have a foster or three running around as well as our own motley crew of seven.
Please let me help you teach you the skills you need to be fearless in the kitchen! I’d be honored to be of help!
Click Here and I will
Send You My FREE eBook
How to Be Fearless in the Kitchen!
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Other contact info for PCO:
pastrychefonline.com
1300 Red Brick Rd.
Garner, NC 27529
United States
onlinepastrychef {at} yahoo {dot} com
Edited on October 11, 2017
