The relentless sunshine continued, although the overnights are getting chilly enough for reports of ice on the windshields when the cars aren’t parked under cover. Out cycling on Saturday I was initially regretting just wearing a sweater and not my rain jacket as well, which cuts wind better – there was a bit of a breeze and it was definitely chilly in the sweater. But by the time I went up a few hills, and the sun was higher, it was a moot point, back to warmth and overheated! Though I never did take off my sweater, on the way back it was definitely tempting.

The trail was pretty as always, and more people out than I usually see. At the main wetland visitor centre (which the cyclists bypass) there was a cleanup crew busy at work picking up garbage and debris. Apart from the usual careless and thoughtless human littering, flash floods bring a lot of debris down, including things like refrigerators, tires, etc., hence intermittent cleanups are needed. The preserve is a living filter system for the water as it runs through to Lake Mead, and so very important to curate. Only one roadrunner visibly out today, scurrying across the trail.

When home, LaTrek was dissassembled and put to bed in her suitcase in the afternoon, ready for her next adventure. Packing has begun! 5 more sleeps….

Sunday saw more packing, a nearly last foray to Trader Joe’s for veggies and dairy, and pickup of Debbie at the airport. Mystere (Cirque de Soleil) in the evening was pretty amazing – weird as all their shows, but this one more traditionally acrobatics and gymnastics, and the performers were fabulous. Debbie hasn’t been to Las Vegas as an adult, so some time was taken on the strip to see enough to repell her for the next ten years….no time to take her to see the good stuff, the outdoors within reach of the city.

And, another first for me here today – we had actual rain! Heavy at times, but by the time we got out of Mystere the roads were completely dry and the clouds had gone.

And so we enter the last week of the course…

A picture is worth a thousand words so enjoy the pictures! My freezer literally cannot fit any more.

Sooooo much fun making these entremets, and some of them are to die for….can’t wait to get home to play in the kitchen….

A real feeling of wrapping up – class picture, and thoughts moving to home and Christmas, as well as future plans for most of these folk. Pop-up quiz today identified real progress on my part from the beginning of the class. Seven more sleeps to go….

We finished our first cake today – Chocolate mousse surrounding layers of: chocolate sponge; raspberry confit; crunchy feullitine layer; chocolate sponge; sweet pastry disc.

It was given a dark chocolate mirror glaze with a crunchy chocolate collar yesterday. No credit to us for the finishing touch today, though it was fascinating watching the water cutter do its magic on a sheet of chocolate, making the decorations. They were carefully sprayed and placed atop our masterpieces… Happily got a picture before transporting it home during which one side was damaged in the container. I’m positive it will still taste good!

The process of layering continued most of the day, with each cake getting layers added one at a time, into the freezer in between to make the joining easier. The need for good organizational skills was evident once more, though generally so many different varieties would not be simultaneously in production.

We mirror glazed the fingerlings with different coloured mirror glazes, and put them onto sweet pastry cutouts we had made yesterday.

The opera cake was assembled and remains to be glazed tomorrow – interesting to see such a different way of assembling.

And finally, we learned how to make more chocolate decorations, again of different colours, shapes and sizes, and will put the finishing touches on everything tomorrow for the buffet.

Stay tuned!

The layers are mounting – pistachio joconde is now soaked with exotic fruit syrup and then topped with 2 exotic mousse/pistachio sponge layers, mango pineapple crémeux layer, an exotic mousse layer then pistachio sponge… (seven layers so far).

Opera cake is in construction. Amused to see the coffee syrup here was made from instant coffee in a jar, whereas I carefully brew many cups of espresso in my best machine with good coffee beans to make up the coffee base. Will be interested to see how this one tastes. It was described as “French tiramisu”….

Dark chocolate mousse now surrounds our two layers of chocolate sponge sandwiched with crunchy hazelnut, raspberry confit and milk chocolate mousse, and it has been given a mirror glaze coating and a sweet pastry disc base. Decorations yet to come.

Carrot cake was baked and layered with mango passionfruit crémeux then creamcheese mousse with a side covering of pressed sablé.

And so the day went on…. Layer this one, freeze it, prepare another mousse, refrigerate it, use another mousse to surround the layers in another smaller finger, freeze that. Interesting stuff, and very useful. Some experimentation is in the offing with quince flavouring when I get back!

Good organizational skills are a requirement of a successful pastry chef, especially with respect to time management. The planning that goes into these classes is pretty impressive, and our current teacher is clearly a master of this (the same chef that managed ten different types of bread simultaneously when we were doing bread week). I suspect really good things could happen if one got him in charge of an ER ….

We were sent home with raspberry, caramel, pistachio, raspberry, chocolate and vanilla éclairs made yesterday.

Decorating and assembling will occupy most of tomorrow and Friday. Stay tuned for the spectacular buffet.

Genoa Bread, genoise, dacqouise, Joconde. Hazelnut, chocolate editions of same.

And the best Paris Brest I’ve tried outside of France. Yummm. Look forward to sharing that one!

We are making the building blocks of what I suspect will be a flurry of variations on Thursday and Friday and a spectacular buffet. More Crémeux produced today to showcase the variation between using different firming agents; citrus crémeux using yuzu and kalamansi smelt heavenly.

We made chocolate mousse and inserted our layered cake from yesterday in a mould to be surrounded by the mousse layer.

Speculoos cookies and sweet paste for the bottoms of the entremets were produced – the speculoos cookies were delicious! A Belgian specialty.

We decorated eclairs at the end of the day and learned about the various options. I was happy to learn that the ones we made are freezer friendly, from glaze to filling.

And at lunch we got a taste of the chocolate bomb made last week (layers of vanilla and chocolate icecream with a raspberry insert, glazed and surrounded by mini macarons, on a Sablé Breton base), and the gluten free brownie dessert.

My partner was absent today and the ingredient I got today to scale for all the recipes was…. sugar. Regular, powdered, brown, and invert sugar. And just because that wasn’t enough, almond powder as well (used in ALL the sponges). Happily classmates are great at stepping in to help because, good grief, I had three rows of marking tape spread from one side of my table to the other with labels for the scaling!

It was a busy day!

Making the building blocks for Layered Delights to come – Crémeux of many flavours (vanilla, chocolate, raspberry, pistachio, caramel, passionfruit/mango) and some was used to fill éclairs.

Moist chocolate sponge was made, and Chocolate Dacquoise piped into rings, baked then covered with croustillant (basically a crunchy chocolate layer) then topped with raspberry confit, then another dacquoise layer – to be continued tomorrow with insertion into a mousse and then likely glazed and decorated.

Lessons in glazing – chocolate glaze made today, with a review of neutral glaze.

We bid adieu to Chef Francoise who heads back to France until the next class. We are in the final countdown (9 days left) before course completion and all are racking their brains for secret Santa gifts – what do you give someone you don’t know well, who has no room in their luggage and is leaving the next day on a plane?…. that eliminates the neutral bottle of wine, the edibles, and anything bulky….

On Saturday I headed south towards Rivers Mountain Trail, near Lake Mead/Boulder City – weather forecast had a predicted high of 18C, and sunny skies. It started out cloudy but soon cleared and roads were quiet even though I left relatively late (8:30 a.m.). Had originally intended to head again north of town towards Lee Canyon in Mt. Charleston Park but further research showed it wasn’t a low altitude canyon as I had thought, rather was the ski resort which I hadn’t found last trip! As ski season is starting there this weekend, an abort seemed prudent…

With only a brief detour due to wrong turn the trailhead was easily found. Those highway diverging points are very confusing as the highway number labels are constantly changing even when you continue on the same road – Richa can attest to this… It was rated at the trailhead as moderately challenging to strenuous – not sure that agrees with my experience, it was a lovely, gradual and well marked trail that switchbacked steadily up the valley and the hill. Blissfully quiet, surprising for such a lovely trail with nice views at the top…Perfect temp for hiking comfortably in capris and short sleeves. Still only four cars in the parking lot when I got down; ?was everyone Xmas shopping? Lovely interlude with bonus vistas and a workout in the warm sunshine.

Sunday saw the usual trek to Wetlands Preserve to ride the desert trail and around to Las Vegas Lake. Lovely as usual, and the roadrunners were out in force – saw 6 of them in different parts. Getting the hang of the trail except for that one pesky hill that always makes me hike up – too short a run-up to it, and too steep to get the bouncy LaTrek up it… knocked a bit of time off today, though. I was optimistic and shed my leg warmers at the far end of the trail, so had to keep moving to keep warm – it was 16C when I was out but not super warm for short sleeves and shorts.

Have only had very brief showers in Las Vegas the entire 8 weeks here – one solitary morning where the roads got a little wet, but nothing more. The mountains have seen some snow, though.

A brief stop at Ethel M’s chocolate factory on the way home to check it out – a botanical cactus garden was advertised as part of it. It was a HUGE complex, with a window to watch production which today was chocolate bars and panning. Gigantic machinery and everything done by automation… prices were not cheap, they were charging $2.50 per piece. I was intrigued by the one labelled “silky prickly pear cream” so tried it out – tiny bonbon with crude red cocoa colouring, it didn’t snap, the walls were too thick but the ganache flavour was good – floral and citrus together, although a bit too sweet for my taste. A 5/10, and the colouring of the others was also pretty basic. Definitely for the mass production market, albeit better quality than “Pot of Gold” types…. The cactus garden was decked out with Xmas lights, I suspect a nice display at night, and was big – pleasant sitting in a corner of the garden soaking up some rays and listening to the birds in the Joshua Tree singing, happily louder than the cheesy Xmas music being piped throughout. Good display of cactus, at least what could be seen through the Xmas decor!

And so we head into the second to last week, entremets, one of the modules I’ve been looking forward to….

Ice cream and sorbet week concluded, with our 21 different flavours, Belgian and French waffles, and beignets as well which we sampled with the jams and confits we made a couple of weeks ago. Raspberry and orange jam stood out as did hazelnut praline spread. Nice to taste real Belgian waffles again (recipe from the chef from Liege).

Of the ice cream flavours we made today, nougatine (with nougat inclusions), pistachio, hazelnut, yoghurt, timut pepper mint, cointreau, chocolate mint, Bergamot and pineapple sorbets were amongst my favourites. The soft serve vanilla ice cream also came out well. Blackberry and raspberry sorbet were delicious, as were peanut butter, horchata (cinnamon) and coffee ice creams. I’ll take a pass on popcorn ice cream (weak caramel flavour), lemon sorbet and coconut ice cream which wasn’t as good as the sorbet we made last week. Oreo ice cream was good but too sweet for me.

This week’s buffet:

My table was on special equipment cleaning detail this week, but happily the ice cream machines are relatively easy to clean. We have all agreed to crack some champagne when the last deep cleaning is in the bag, though.

Custom transfer labels arrived today for my magnetic molds with the “Chocolate Pedaller” logo. They look great – looking forward to trying them out when I get back.

Two weeks left to go, and hard to believe it’s December already….

Lots of ice cream and sorbet to make today – each table did two except for ours – we were gifted three recipes.

On the first batch, chocolate mint, my partner turned the immersion blender on in the air after doing the mixing and PLASTERED me (and my books) with chocolate mix. Hair wash tonight…. She felt really bad – unfortunately I didn’t have a spare jacket so was able to provide mirth to the rest of the class for the remainder of the day… We knocked off an entire board’s worth of recipes in the first couple of hours, all left in the fridge overnight, and then started decorating again.

The day finished with more decorating, glazing ice cream cakes, and we dipped popsicles made yesterday with our leftover flavours. We finished scraping our coverings from the styrofoam blocks we used for the wedding cake, cleaning them for reuse next class. Good luck, guys…..

So, yesterday we made several types of ice cream. Today, we made mousse with three different methods, biscuits, meringue, macarcon and started layering…..

• Joconde sponge disc, topped by cassis mousse layer then raspberry coulis, then raspberry mousse and second Joconde sponge layer with crushed hazelnuts.
• Chocolate dacquoise sponge baked with dehydrated raspberry pieces, then soaked with raspberry syrup, layered with chocolate mousse, then raspberry coulis then another layer of chocolate mousse closed with second dacquoise layer (and decorated of course).
• Chocolate bomb; chocolate icecream outer layer, vanilla mousse with centre of blackcurrant mousse, sitting atop a sweet pastry biscuit.
• meringue disc base, cassis mousse cast in a ring mold with centre filled with vanilla parfait, covered with chocolate disc, then caramel ice cream layer with second meringue on top.
• Baked Alaska; pate a choux sponge disc covered with snow sugar, meringue disc, rasp sorbet layer, vanilla parfait and mango sorbet then entirely covered with meringue (torched).
• Charlotte: pate a choux sponge, snow sugar, rasp sorbet, then blackcurrant mousse layer, blackcurrant coulis, and finished with rasperry sorbet. Meringue fingers on outside and fresh raspberries on serving.
• Exotic Charlotte: pate a choux sponge disc, snow sugar, rasperry sorbet, mango sorbet and coconut sorbet layers.
• Gluten free macaron strip filled with raspberry sorbet, decorated with sugar spheres.
• Buche de Noel: made with pate a choux sponge and raspberry sorbet
• popsicles made with leftover sorbet, ice cream, single flavours and double flavour layers, or with coulis inserts
• Orange granitas made with pink champagne

Pictures of all of the above will be on Friday’s buffet pictures.

As I said yesterday, it’s a whole new world for me – previously the most exotic I got was two different flavour scoops of ice cream…. We are learning what works for ice cream inclusions, and how to modify if not, how to make it crunchy, how to adjust the recipe to include different ingredients…..

Tomorrow looks to be a busy day as the board is full of extra recipes, and tons of scaling (weight measuring for the recipes). We have three LONG strips of labels for tomorrow’s recipes… Tomorrow’s flavours include popcorn, Timut pepper, Litchi mint, marscapone, Bergamot, Horchata amongst others…

tbc