Too much sharing today! We made things in pairs, but frequently only had enough pieces or equipment for one person to work at a time. This resulted in either running out of things (caramel), or the warmth in the room and the person’s hands detrimentally affected the mix by the time it was passed over to the second person (Chantilly cream).
Despite that, as always we learned a lot, our piping is improving, and the St. Honoré that came home was delicious even if not the most pretty (my partner’s below, the Chantilly cream was too warm when it finally got to me to stand up – so mine looked like someone sat on it!).
We used our puff pastry (classic) today – when to dock and not to dock? Tartan fine with sliced apples assembled today and baked tomorrow; caramel flan with puff pastry and fruit flan with almond cream in paté brisée both progressed in their respective stages today. Our team was pretty happy with our puff pastry, hand rolled through 6 folds, although mine rose slightly lopsided (probably due to uneven docking) and had to be trimmed a little to lay flat for the St. Honoré, and my partner’s came out slightly oval (unequal rolling in each direction usually the culprit). The lemon pound cake was baked, dipped in lemon syrup then glazed with lemon icing. Meillefeuille upcoming, baked today – it is baked in a big sheet, and cut afterwards, who knew.
My partner this week is Anna from Missouri, who is in her early 20’s but has had cooking experience working in hotels and a Michelin star restaurant in France during a previous culinary program. Her knife skills are excellent – she tells me she was prepping avocadoes for breakfasts in one hotel every day for months – it showed in the apple slicing for the tartan. I am looking forward to the arrival of my replacement contact lenses, which I inadvertently left at home, as the board at the front of the class is receding and I’m starting to think I should be bringing in reading glasses for finer decorating work. I blame my apple slicing today on that!
It was a tiring day, tons of dishes at the end and no afternoon break. We shelved the pumpkin pie tart for today and will attack it tomorrow. I think Francois, our teacher, was tired as well trying to corral us all along today – I don’t think he realized that having only one set of things (equipment, mixes) means twice as long for each step as two people need to do it one after the other…. He is learning too!