CAP - Admis

After a long wait and meticulously checking the test website every day, they finally posted the results for my CAP exams. Verdict? Admis - Admitted. However, the website only provided that information and no indication of how well/poorly I did on the exams. How typically French (i.e. useless).

A week later I received a letter in the mail with my grades. I'm not exactly sure how the grading system works, but it appears that the tests each have a different coefficient and are out of 20 points. I guess some are weighted more heavily than others, which makes sense. So here's the breakdown:

Approvision & Gestion Des Stocks: 13.50
Fabrication De Patisseries: 13.00
Francais Et Histoire-Geographie: 14
Mathematiques, Sciences: 19.5
Anglais: 20
Moyenne Generale (Average): 14.4

I don't know about you but 14.4 out of 20, aka 72% is a C to me, and not really a good grade. However, the way the system works here, anything over 16 is excellent, 14-16 is very good, 10-12 is average, and anything under 10 is not passing. Maybe I'm being to hard on myself and forgetting that I took a test in a foreign language taken by students who generally prepare for two years. Well, at least I did justice to my Asian heritage by doing extremely well on the Math and Science portion!

Why fondant blows

Last week in preparation for my CAP exams, I decided to make some pate a choux. I knew they'd be on the exam and would likely take the form of eclairs. Whenever I think of eclairs or pain au chocolat, I always think of one of my former classmates and friend who is slightly eponymous and loves writing about her pastry shenanigans as much as I do.

J'ai fini!

Which means "I'm done"! Though I could say je suis fini, though the literal translation in french is "I'm finished" or rather "I'm dead". Surprising how many people make that mistake. I'm not quite dead, but je suis vraiment claque. Which means "I'm really beat."

Enough with the French lessons. This morning started at 6:30 AM, even though I didn't work. But I still worked in a lab at school taking my CAP practical exam. From around 8:00AM until 3:00 PM (with a 30 minute pause for me to stuff my face so I didn't pass out), I had to make croissants, chocolate croissants, chocolate eclairs, an apricot tart with pistachio almond cream, and a charlotte cake layered with biscuit cuillere, vanilla bavarois, pears, and a marzipan topping. The cake had to have a Valentines Day theme, so I just threw together some marzipan roses and cut out some hearts. It was tiring. We had a proctor who helped us along to work faster. Actually now that I think back to it, he mostly yelled at us... telling us to not fall asleep and to hurry up. Best part were the Ferrandi kids who washed our dishes.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures to post of the goodies I made today; photographs were strictly prohibited. The proctors and 'jury members' seemed to be amused by an American taking an exam that most French kids have to take. They were pretty nice about the fact that I couldn't quite say something, but could describe it enough to get my point across. The proctor asked me why I was taking the CAP. My response? Because I can.

Holy moly mogador

Whats the heck is a mogador? Good question. Sounds like maybe something from Lord of the Rings? A quick google search says its either a cafe in the East Village of NYC, or an island off of Morocco that France tried to capture several times. Since it's also the name of a cake in my Fench school cookbook, I'm betting it  has more to do with the latter. However, the island's major exports are molasses and sugar, all I can really think of is that maybe this cake is super sweet? How about super deathly rich.

Having a heart to heart with tarts

One of the things I might be tested on during my CAP practical is tarts. I haven't made them since school, since they're not really Plaza Athénée worthy I suppose. So since I had some lemons sitting around, I figured I'd make a lemon meringue tart. Easy enough. To be honest, I was feeling a bit lazy and bought some pre-made tart dough from Picard. I mean everything seems to work out at Picard right people? Wrong.

Ready to pop a CAP up your....

Okay no. I haven't gotten all Parisian gangster on you. The fact of the matter is that I'm cramming and practicing for my CAP exams. That's "say-ah-pay" or Certificat d'Aptitude Professionnelle for the French. It's pretty much like a vocational GED and will make it easier if I intend on trying to find a baking job out here (which I'm still on the fence about).

What I didn't realize when I signed up, is that its about 14 hours of testing including subjects like French, science, math, 'professional and social life' (whatever the heck that is), gestion of stocks (pretty much pastry theory), and a 7 hour baking exam. Oh, not to mention I have to prepare two essays for history and geography with references. Yes that's two essays in French, that I'll have to talk about/defend in French. Seems a bit masochistic.

Anyways, to prep for the exam, I've also been baking. I made a rustic tart the other day.