Who leaves a three-month bakery apprenticeship and just days later feels confident enough to bake for 400 people? Of course, that would be me.

Full disclosure: I never baked anything at Flour Bakery + Cafe during my tenure. They don’t let the interns near the ovens except for toasting nuts, which I did many times for trail mix and biscotti.

However, I observed what was going on around me, asked tons of questions and took copious notes. Hey, I was a reporter for 30 years. It’s what we do.

To begin, I typed up a daily production list for this project just like the F2 pastry chefs Sarah Powers and Sarah Murphy did each night. Mine, of course, was miniscule compared to their list, a baking balancing act for four bakery/cafes and Myers + Chang!

So armed with my years of baking instruction, my apprenticeship notebook, my family’s bakers’ supply warehouse at my disposal, 12 hours of commercial kitchen time and a crew of two, I was ready to hit the kitchen.

“This is NOTHING,” I told myself, borrowing a line repeated by Dustin Hoffman’s character in “Wag the Dog,” one of my favorite political spoofs.

The event was the Westport Historical Society’s first big fund-raiser that celebrated the town’s working waterfront history. As a board member, I volunteered to provide the dessert buffet. I also co-chaired the event. So, the pressure was on…

Lees Market catered the savory eats. Owner Al Lees, who also sits on the WHS board, allowed me to use his bakery for three nights between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. The first night, my cousin Sharon and I couldn’t get the bakery’s high-tech, six-pan BKI oven to work.

I had some instruction from the head baker, Sue Igler, earlier in the day. But come to find out, we weren’t properly slamming the door! (We swore BKI was some persnickety German import. Later, I found out the damn thing was made in South Carolina.)

So we baked off two large boxes of cookies in the dual wall ovens that ate up most of our kitchen time. Oh, and the vat of Portuguese rice pudding I made? It never made it to the party. Inexperienced me incorrectly chilled it in a white plastic frosting bucket instead of a hotel pan and it was hard when I went to scoop it out. I hope Al’s composter enjoyed it.

The next night, I made two full sheet pans of brownies – one with cherries, the other with nuts. Mom and Sharon filled tiny tarts with Bavarian cream and topped them with candied citrus peel. Raspberry tarts were garnished with fruit. We also baked lots of macaroons. They were drizzled with chocolate when cooled.

On Friday, I dipped 40 small Vanilla Bean Caramel Apples (the recipe is in ‘Baked: New Frontiers in Baking’ by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito). I also snagged a couple of Flour’s scaled-up recipes while I was there.

The Raspberry Shortbread Squares never got made but I did whip up a vat of silky smooth Butterscotch Pudding. The nostalgic dessert was topped with toffee pieces and served in tiny plastic cups with tiny spoons.

My fellow Flour intern, Abby Rahn, who caters parties at Harvard, gave me the idea. She said people go crazy for food in little cups with little spoons.

“You could serve them Jell-O Instant Pudding and they’d love it,” she told me while we scoped out the shelves in Flour’s walk-in. “They think it’s so…cute.”

However, it wasn’t so cute for the cook who splashed scalding hot milk and cream onto her left thumb while pouring the custard into a chinois. It’s a second-degree burn, but as I learned years ago at the Culinary Institute bootcamp: treat it, put on a glove, and finish the job. So I did. Ouch.

At the party, my father, the consummate salesman, talked up the Lilliputian pud so much, even the detail cops came over to try it!

Speaking of Dad, the man knew we were facing a baking deadline, so he came into the bakery on Friday night to shape mini apple turnovers. In 50-plus years my father has sold hundreds of thousands of boxes of Pennant 5×5 Puff Dough so who better to help out?

He and I cut the large puff pastry squares into smaller triangles, filled them with my fresh apple concoction (my brother, John, who runs the company’s fresh apple business, diced the Ida Reds the day before), got them shaped and finished off with King Arthur’s Sparkling Sugar.

The guests gobbled them up. The only thing that would have made them better was if the tiny turnovers were served warm. Right out of the oven, they were heavenly — if I do say so myself.

On Saturday, the day of the event, my mother and I set up the dessert and coffee tables with white cloths overlaid with fish net that I found in a New Bedford antiques store. (I only tell you this because we were all working so hard to keep the sweets buffet filled, no one snapped photos!)

I used antique block and tackles, old enamel kitchenware, flowers in mason jars and quahog shells to decorate the tables under the tent at the historic Paquachuck Inn. I stacked old copies of “Moby Dick,” “Captains Courageous” and other maritime adventure books to raise my large white platters off the table.

And to present the sugar, little creamers and stirrers on the coffee table, I used an old fishing tackle box. Coffee cups were in an antique wooden box.

Of course, no catering gig is complete without a little drama. In this case, we had Westport Point’s Great Coffee Explosion of 2013.

While my hubby, Steve, Dad and I checked in people for the Captain’s Party at 6 p.m., my family took charge of the coffee pots. Apparently, someone poured too much water in the 100-cup pot and coffee sludge burst out of the pot during the perk cycle!

There was a quick change in tablecloth and Sharon’s hubby, also named Steve, filtered the coffee while dispensing it into a 3-litre help-yourself thermos. It was so cold on the Point that night, no one complained about the strong coffee. There wasn’t a drop left!

The entire evening was a success. We raised lots of money as well as the Historical Society’s profile in town. I was flattered when guests asked where my bakery was located.

I learned many lessons last week, but No. 1 was baking for 400 isn’t “NOTHING.” I awoke at 4 a.m. anxious about chocolate frosting, for cryin’ out loud.

Also, you can’t pull off a catering gig of this magnitude alone. I was grateful for my team of family members who assisted me every step of the way. You cannot buy help like that. I’ll certainly keep that in mind going forward.

As for the baking gang at Flour – Joanne, the Sarahs, Keith Brooks, Rachel Gibeley, Johanna Hamilton, Malorie Barnes, Jon Singer, Allyson Schanck, Gayoung Kim, Tamara Marchel, Jack Cen, Erin Barry, Robin-Amara Heard and Chef Jeff – thanks for giving me the confidence to go out and do it. I will never do anything half-baked because of you!

(Note: I expect some photos of the WHS event to arrive in the next day or two. Please check back!)

Tags: #apples, #Baked, #bakeryapprentice, #CateringAdventures, #jbchang, #leesmarket, #mattlewis, #puffpastry, #WestportHistoricalSociety, #WestportPoint, Butterscotch, cookies, Dessert, flour