{"id":2164,"date":"2016-08-13T16:14:01","date_gmt":"2016-08-13T20:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/sla2016\/?p=2164"},"modified":"2016-08-13T16:14:01","modified_gmt":"2016-08-13T20:14:01","slug":"build-me-up-butter-cake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/2016\/08\/13\/build-me-up-butter-cake\/","title":{"rendered":"Build Me Up Butter-Cake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks for tuning in.<\/p>\n<p>A little change here, I will start with my community interaction.<\/p>\n<p>So, if you\u2019ve been following along on my adventure thus far in Brittany, you\u2019d recall that my host family dad and I had tried our hand at making\u00a0the traditional Breton cake called <em>Kouign Amann<\/em> (literally \u2018Butter cake\u2019). Well here\u2019s the second attempt, as you can see, a little less brown on top, but we don\u2019t seem to have mastered the requisite creation of layers. Don&#8217;t get me wrong, it was still delicious by all means (sugar butter what&#8217;s not to like?), but perhaps a more\u00a0rustic (read messy) in presentation.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2165\" style=\"width: 223px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/sla2016\/files\/2016\/08\/0810161647.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2165\" class=\"wp-image-2165 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/sla2016\/files\/2016\/08\/0810161647-213x300.jpg\" alt=\"0810161647\" width=\"213\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/files\/2016\/08\/0810161647-213x300.jpg 213w, https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/files\/2016\/08\/0810161647-768x1083.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/files\/2016\/08\/0810161647-726x1024.jpg 726w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 213px) 100vw, 213px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2165\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Just my two cents, but this is definitely the best The Shirt of my three years here. #AlwaysReppin\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Unfettered by the disappointment of failure, I traveled to a local bakery to discuss this regional dish. In a short talk with the baker, I learned a little bit about the humble <em>Kouign Amann<\/em>. A couple highlights:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It was a 19<sup>th<\/sup> century creation made in a little town in Brittany (I found online the name to be Douarnenez, did not get the spelling right at the bakery)<\/li>\n<li>A good <em>Kouign<\/em> Amann&#8217;s pastry<em>\u00a0<\/em>is supposed to be\u00a0airy, light, and flaky, similar to a croissant. So our thick, dense cake doesn\u2019t quite fit the bill of a proper creation. We must not be doing something right; we sure aren\u2019t missing any ingredients, because it\u2019s just flour, sugar, and butter.<\/li>\n<li>And he didn\u2019t have to tell me why its popular, because I know these cakes are just freaking delicious. Although I will say that while the French are much more concerned with controlling portions and maintaining health in general (heck the end of their McDonald\u2019s commercials feature warnings to eat 5 daily servings of veggies and not too much fat\/sugar\/salt), that kind of restraint does not seem to be present in the preparation of their pastries. I\u2019m a stereotype fulfilling American, and I was surprised with the amount of butter and sugar we put into our stout-sized cake. I assume frequency of consumption is better\u00a0managed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And there you are, now turning to school.<\/p>\n<p>Our group of B1.3 switched professors as a group of 40 Mexican collegiate students arrived Monday, so our last prof went to take some of them. However, I did get my test back from last week, and it was the highest I had ever gotten on a test (17\/20 which is ok by US standards, but excellent in France).<\/p>\n<p>Nothing truly new to report from the classroom, I feel like I\u2019m learning a lot and making good progress. Perhaps what\u2019s most indicative of that is my conversational ability with other international students. For example, my best buddy here is Swiss, and I feel like I just have a lot more I can say to him after five weeks. I remember the first week when we met, where I just could not always get a coherent message across, and now we can have a lengthy, much more fluid conversation.<\/p>\n<p>On a related note, something that I&#8217;m most excited about is my fluency with the different tenses. I don&#8217;t feel afraid anymore of using the future, past conditional, or subjunctive tenses. Instead, quite naturally, I&#8217;ll just be talking and Whoop there it is just popping in like no biggie. Yay me!<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s all for this week. I haven&#8217;t decided the theme of next week quite yet, so I&#8217;ll leave my one reader in suspense for now.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks for tuning in. A little change here, I will start with my community interaction. So, if you\u2019ve been following along on my adventure thus far in Brittany, you\u2019d recall that my host family dad and I had tried our &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/2016\/08\/13\/build-me-up-butter-cake\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73607],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2166,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions\/2166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}