First Position Review

Blog Post: Documentary Review

First Position (2011), directed by Bess Kargman, is an emotionally compelling observational documentary that sheds a new light on the youth ballet industry. Kargman manages to create a dramatic and almost inspiring story by following six young aspiring ballet dancers competing in the Youth America Grand Prix in hopes of winning scholarship money. The film shows the strains and overwhelming time commitments that young dancers and their families endure in order to pursue their dream. 

The real appeal of the documentary, to me, was the amount of depth in each different young dancer. The literary aspects of the film really got my attention. All of the different dancers, with various different life stories and point of views made the movie’s charm. Aran Bell, an American army brat, manages to dance even though he lives in Naples with his family. He travels everyday to train, maintaining an innocent friendship with an Israeli dancer, Gaya Yemini. In contrast, Joan Samora left his country, Columbia, and lives alone, with few contacts in New York while he trains. Miko Fogarty, a young girl with an overbearing dance mom, has had to completely change her lifestyle (diet, school and all) to train.

As with most dance competitions, the dancers wear extravagant and expensive costumes and make-u to appeal to the judges (dramatic aspects). The most climatic parts of the movie take place on the stage. The documentary, in other aspects, is very simple. The cinematography is nothing special and the sound effects are mostly diegetic sound.

I would recommend this movie to anyone with free time on their hands, it is not one to go out of your way for. The human interest stories of the young ballet dancers are moving, especially that of Joan Samora (it doesn’t hurt that he’s handsome). The dances are interesting, and by the end, I found myself really routing for all six dancers to win awards at the Grand Prix.

Chocolat

(I will post photos later.)

Blog post: Week of December 10th 

Photo # 9

I have quite a lot of homework this weekend, so naturally, I'm very stressed out. As when I am normally stressed out, I kind of separated myself from the stress and decided to bake instead! 

I have been baking for years, beginning serious baking probably when I was about seven years old. My mother has Celiac-disease which is an allergy to gluten (most commonly found in breads, cakes, pastas etc). If my mother were to eat any source of gluten, her small intestine lining/villi would deteriorate and end in a lot of pain- so gluten (wheat, barley, etc.) was out.

Eating in our family became pretty hard for a while. We had always eaten waffles or pancakes for breakfast on Sundays, pasta on Mondays, and who doesn't love a sandwich for lunch everyday? My mother, a born sweet-tooth, missed baked goods more than anything. We were able to find various mixes for waffles, brownies, we replaced whole grain pastas with corn and egg pastas- but it wasn't enough.

My mom complained daily about her mother's classic Christmas cookies, her mother's moist chocolate cakes, her mother's pies, her mother's this and that. My dad can't bake, my sister didn't want to, so the job was left to me. I took quickly to baking and I continue to bake to this day, mainly gluten-free items, of course!

Last weekend, I made an orange-coconut cake with coconut pudding filling and citrus-vanilla Swiss-meringue frosting (toasted coconut on the top, of course!). This weekend I decided to make cake truffles! My mom is out tonight, so she hasn't had them yet, but I think they're delicious! 

They are dark chocolate cake, mixed with chocolate-orange buttercream. They are topped with chocolate ganache and toasted almonds. This recipe literally made about 50 cake truffles!

Now, your normal all-purpose flour is simply a super cheap little bag of unbleached wheat flour; however, this flour does everything in baking! Gluten is a protein (most abundant in wheat flours) which binds doughs and creates stick and sponginess. In other words, one couldn't just replace all-purpose flour with brown rice flour because it doesn't have enough protein to bind anything together. If you simply replaced flour that way, the result would be a crumbly, dry mess.  

My basic gluten-free flour is the following (made just enough for this cake recipe!):

1 cup brown rice flour (one could use sorghum flour, garfava/chickpea flour, corn flour or white rice flour, but I prefer brown rice and sorghum)

1/2 cup tapioca flour/starch

1/2 potato starch

I adapted and made all of the following recipes my own from what I have learned over the years.

TO MAKE THE CAKE:

Ingredients:

2 cups GF flour

1 tsp. xanthan gum (one could use guar gum, I use Bob's Red Mill xanthan gum most often)

2 cups sugar (this seems like a lot, but usually cakes often have around the same amount of sugar as flour...plus, it's cake, what's wrong with sugar?)
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark unsweetened cocoa powder (I used a mix of Droste's and Valhrona cocoa powder- they're super high quality and, I think, they make a big difference in the depth of flavor- not to sound pretentious. If you only have Hershey's, that would be fine too!)
2¼ tsp. baking soda
1½ tsp. baking powder
1½ tsp. salt

1 tsp. Egg Replacer (Ener-G brand. I know, I know. Why add Egg Replacer if there are 3 eggs in it already? Well, it helps bind and leaven the cake. With gluten-free baked goods, one has to make up for A LOT.)
6 tbsp. vegetable oil (one could use butter, but I find oil really moistens a cake up and makes it feel a bit lighter)
1 cup plus 2 tbsp. buttermilk (if you don't have buttermilk, just add a T of cider vinegar or 2 T of lemon juice to a cup of whole milk)
1 cup plus 2 tbsp. brewed coffee (this is optional; however, it really helps deepen the chocolate flavor)

3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (I use Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla. Again, it's not necessary, but it definitely makes a difference! I really really recommend this vanilla, it's perfection in a bottle. I usually find it at Williams-Sonoma.)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350˚ F.  

Grease and flour the edges of 3 8-inch baking pans.  (Optional: add a round of parchment paper. I don't do this for cake truffles because it doesn't really matter if the cake sticks at all. If you're making just this cake and you're trying to impress, parchment paper is the way to go.)

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, xanthan gum, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, salt and Egg Replacer.  

Add the vegetable oil and sugar into a bowl and mix together until combined. (If used using butter, cream together the sugar and butter until white). Add coffee, and vanilla to the bowl and mix on low speed until well blended and completely incorporated. 

Add the flour mixture and buttermilk alternately, beginning and ending with the flour (you would think that ending with flour wouldn't make a difference, but it does, trust me).

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans. Bake 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the cakes cool in the pans about 15 minutes, then put them into a large bowl and beginning mashing! Use a fork or potato masher to mash the cake into crumbs. 

Add the buttercream to the cake crumbs and mix together until homogeneous. Roll this mixture into small balls and refrigerate on a wire rack while you make the ganache.

Dip the cake balls into the ganache and place onto a baking sheet lined with parchment or wax paper. Refrigerate.

TO MAKE THE FROSTING:

I use this simple vanilla buttecream cream for almost EVERY cake or cupcake I ever make. It's super fast, super fluffy and my mom just loves it (as do I). There are a lot of different variations for this recipe, so I will list the one I used for this recipe.

Ingredients:

1 stick of butter (A stick of butter, y'all! -Paula Deen)

1½ cups confectioner's sugar

½ cup whipping cream (most recipes use milk, but whipping cream makes the frosting super light! It makes such a difference.)

½ tsp. vanilla 

Beat the butter until white and fluffy (using the whisk attachment, not the paddle). Add the confectioner's sugar in ½ cup increments. Beat until smooth and fluffy.

Slowly add the whipping cream until the buttercream doubles in volume. Finally, add the vanilla. Easy as pie!

For this recipe, I used this variation:

Omit the vanilla. Add two ounces of unsweetened chocolate, melted (Usually, I use Ghirardelli chocolate, but I had none left. Baker's chocolate worked just fine.) Also, add 2 T. grated orange zest (making sure not to grate the white part of the peel.

TO MAKE THE GANACHE:

Ingredients:

6 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, chopped

½ cup heavy cream
½ cup milk (Whole milk is my personal favorite, of course.)

1 T. butter

Heat the heavy cream and milk over medium high heat until boiling. Immediately take the pan off of the heat once boiled and pour it over the chopped chocolate. Mix together until smooth and mix in the butter.