We finished School early today, which means I have time to tell you all about last week, before heading out for some tasty beer! =D

Last week was quite a busy week; the Welbeck Farm Shop Christmas Fair was just a few days away, & we needed to get baking, so we'd have treats to sell.  We settled for gingerbread & shortbread, as both keep well & both are tasty Christmas treats.

The class split into two groups; one tackled the gingerbread, the other the shortbread.  I was on the shortbread team, & I have never seen so much shortbread in all my life!  We made plain shortbread, which was cut into bauble, snowflake, star and shortbread boy (well, we couldn't call them 'gingerbread men' could we?) shapes.  We also made chocolate shortbread, which was cut into reindeer shapes  =)

Chocolate Shortbread Reindeer ready for baking

The team in charge of the gingerbread made the classic gingerbread men, as well as stars, candy canes, snowflakes and Christmas tree shapes =)

Gingerbread Stars, freshly dipped in chocolate

Shortbread Stars, with decoration

Gingerbread Candy Canes, with royal icing decoration

Gingerbread Christmas Tree decorations

So that was our Monday & Tuesday! All very hectic, but really rather fun =)

Wednesday we had an epic early start (circa 5.40am) for a trip down to Mono Bakery Equipment in Swansea.  They showed us round the factory where all the equipment is made, which was really interesting.  They also showed us a few of their ovens, spiral mixers, pastry dispensers, & the oven you'll find in most supermarkets, which was technologically very impressive, but from a food perspective, very depressing =(

The only human intervention in the creation of the bread, using those machines, is to put all the ingredients (including big bags of scary additives, improvers & preservatives) in the mixing bowl & press the big green 'start' button.  Less than an hour later, the fully developed dough emerges from the machine, all ready for baking... Very sad times indeed...

The saddest thing is, until you've tasted real, actual, hand-made, beautiful bread, you'd think the stuff from the supermarkets was alright.  I certainly used to.  Now I know I won't go near another supermarket loaf again!

But onto happier subjects, like Thursdays baking!  We made some lovely savoury goods, including beef & ale pies, Cornish pasties, pork pies & sausage rolls.

All my lovely baked meaty goods

We used hot water crust & savoury shortcrust pastry, both of which were fun to work with.  It was a really great day, a lovely end to a busy week.  All we had to do now was get ready for the Christmas Fair!

Originally we were supposed to be assessed on this fair, but collectively we decided that one week really wasn't enough time for us to create our products, complete market research, write reports etc; it was just too much work with not enough notice.  But, we were still keen to sell at the market, to get some experience at it  =)

I was on the Sunday team, & we turned up bright & early, fearing the worst for our stall after epic heavy rain & wind the previous night.  Sadly, the gazebo didn't survive, & we were relocated to just inside the farm shop doors.  We weren't really sure whether this was a good thing or not, but eventually we got our strategy right, & by the time the fair closed, we'd made just over £400!  Taking costings into account, that left us with £320 odd, all of which will go to Maire Curie Cancer Care =)

Sara on the stall, ready for a full day's trading!

That just about covers last week, so I'm almost up to date! (Hurrah!) 

Tomorrow I should be able to start up on this week, let you know what we've been doing in this, our final week before we head off on our placements =)