Today was busy, a number of different recipes and techniques; pastry cream with different flavours, two different types of sweet pastry, pate a choux to practice piping skills, craquelin and a multitude of other finishes for the pate a choux, as well as gougeres (savoury cheese choux pastry). Learned the intracacies of different oven types, when to steam and vent, as well as different options for production of pate a choux (freeze, refrigerate, bake, fill or not to fill before each)… I was pretty happy to successfully make pate a choux again as the last few attempts with my old PICA recipe have really not worked. Different approach here to gauge when the choux is ready to go.
Piping always makes me feel like I have two left hands, pretty much the same as in surgical assisting (“do you want this cut too short or too long”? was what I eventually started asking the surgeons…). There are huge variations in skill levels in the class but really good tips from the teachers and the end result wasn’t bad. We filled with pastry cream of different flavours and definitely yummm. My favourite topping is still craquelin but definitely more work. The rock sugar topping was quick and easy and very yummy for a sweet pate a choux.
Lots of stuff made and set aside for later in the week and next week. Tomorrow’s scaling for our table is egg whites – we will be cracking and separating eggs tomorrow a.m. until the cows come home as it’s meringue day and we are making four different variations.
Not just elderly me feeling tired at the end of the day… and wishing for a stool to sit on.
Off to wash slacks which today were the receiving end of the flour overflow!