By The Skin of My Teeth! By The Seat of My Pants! By The Power of Grayskull!

Okay, I passed my fifth term practical. Barely.

I got an 82, which for me is horrific, but Legolas, who is faster and more talented than I am, got an 80, so I’m not going to stress too much about the numbers. The important thing is the P on my transcript, and the fact, the joyous fact, that I don’t have to take it over again.

Yes.

I knew Day One, Monday, would be stressful and tight schedule-wise, but I wasn’t expecting mousse cake issues. Going in, I felt the mousse cake was my strongest area. We build them upside down in a cake ring on plexiglass and acetate for a straight top. I had my cake layers cut and trimmed perfectly. I had the requisite 8 ounces of mousse per layer per cake portioned out and ready to pipe. It came time to put in the top cake layer (which would be the bottom of the cake) and, when I pressed down to ensure it was even, gobs of bright pink raspberry mousse erupted like Vesuvius.

It didn’t all fit in the cake ring. It was all over the place, though thankfully not on me, and Chef chose that moment to do a spot station inspection and snap "Make sure you clean that up." As if I’d leave my station covered in what looked like a Hello Kitty explosion.

It took a while to clean up the cake rings, get the cake layers settled as much as possible and clean up my station, so I was really rushed precoating my truffles. The truffles were already suffering: I weighed them out to be 5-6 grams each, as required, but when I finished the whole sheet tray of them, I thought "hey, wait... they look like they’re all different sizes." I went back and weighed a few and they ranged from four to ten grams. Whoa. Automatic failure. I didn’t have time to redo them, so I guesstimated and started ripping off bits of big ones as I was shaping them for the precoat.

That’s sort of like plucking the feathers as you’re breading the chicken for the fryer.

(In retrospect, I think something must have been touching the scale and throwing off the weight... five grams isn’t that much, after all... unless it’s the weight difference of your truffle.)

Because of all the mousse cake and truffle drama, I didn’t have time to scale out my challah and sponge for Tuesday. I decided to scale out at least the sponge and then hauled ass for precoating the truffles... I’ve never tempered chocolate so quickly. I set up my precoating station and just started cranking them out as the seconds ticked down on time. I figured I would just do as many as I could and that would be that. When Chef called time, I counted how many I did. 52. I needed 50. Whew.

Tuesday, I was able to get my challah sponge in the bowl and then into the proofer by 0600, which was my goal. While it proofed, I scaled out the rest of the challah recipe and got ready to temper chocolate for the mousse cake decor and the final truffle coat. While my precoat looked great temper-wise, the shape and size of my truffles was horrible due to the time crunch... I was sure that I was going to fail at least that portion. My goal was to do well enough with the cake and the challah that maybe I’d have a high enough overall score so I would just have to retake the truffle portion.

I was extremely worried about the mousse cake after the little eruption, but when I unmolded it, to my surprise, it looked great. Later, when I cut the sample slice to expose the interior, I saw my layers were straight and even. Who knows what the mousse burping issue was about.

I set up for dividing, shaping and braiding the challah dough and told myself that, no matter what state the challah was in, I was eggwashing it and putting it in the proofer no later than 0740. I made it, right on time.

While the challah was proofing, I did my tempered chocolate decor and finished the mousse cake presentation, cleaned my station and got ready for the truffle coating. Time was running out, and I was sure I was going to fail the truffle portion anyway, so I didn’t even check the temper of my chocolate with a thermometer or offset test. I just thought "it looks tempered, so screw it."

In the end, I finished about two minutes before time. I got a 28 out of 30 on my challah, a 26 out of 30 on my mousse cake, and a 21 out of 30 on the truffles... you need 20 to pass each portion.

Der Erlkonig, who graded the truffles, took off maximum points (and rightly so) for size and shape, but I scraped by because... my chocolate was in perfect temper.

Whew.

I got 8 out of 10 bakeshop points to finish with that 82. Again, I’ll take it. And yes, I too am amused that my highest score was for the bread, my weakest area.

I celebrated by driving an extra ten miles to the nearest Blockbuster to rent the last disc of season one of Rome. Worth it.