Crumble Cake and Cookies

When I went in to the bakery this morning at 7, there was already cake batter made for me to scoop in to the cake tins.  For the very first time, I had to use my hand to scoop the batter in to the cake tins, which was definitely a different experience for me because I'm accostomed to using a ladle or spoon.  Although somewhat messy and squishy, this method was definitely faster than using a ladle or spoon and is the method that most traditional bakers use.  To measure the amount of batter in each tin, a scale was used.  On one side of the scale, there was a cake tin with a weight inside it.  On the other side of the scale was the cake tin that I filled up.  I had to fill each cake tin until the scale tipped.

There were nine trays, with five cake tins on each.  I put frozen mangoes on two trays, frozen strawberries on two trays, frozen blackberries on one tray, and frozen blueberries on four trays.  Next, I sprinkled a mixture of sugars on top of each of the cakes and finally put crumble onto each of the cakes.

Here are the mango tea cakes:

Here are the strawberry tea cakes:

Here are the blackberry tea cakes:

Here are the blueberry tea cakes:

After prepping the tea cakes and while they were baking in the oven, I made chocolate linzers and chocolate thumbprints.  I started with the chocolate linzers.  The cookie dough was already made, so all I had to do was roll the dough out using the rolling machine.  After rolling out the dough, I simply used a cookie cutter to make the flower shapes of the dough.  I made six trays in total, and since linzer cookies consist of a top and a bottom cookie, with a hole in the top cookie, I used a piping tip to cut out a hole in the center of three trays of cookies.  Next, I used the other half of the cookie dough to make chocolate thumbprint cookies.  I made three and a half trays of the thumbprints.  Unfortunately, I had to leave before any of the cookies were baked, so I wasn't able to help put the fudge in between the cookies for the linzers or put white chocolate and milk chocolate fillings into the thumbprint cookies.

Here are the chocolate linzers:

Here are the chocolate thumbprints:

Time Logged for this Session: 3 hours
Total Time Logged: 31.5 hours

I learned alot in my time working in the bakery, and although I didn't make most of the batters or doughs, I've learned several baking techniques that I will continue to use as I keep on baking.  Thank you so much to my mentor and the people at the bakery for being so welcoming, kind, and helpful in guiding me to become a better baker.