Confectionary days began. We made flavoured caramels, and classic and chocolate nougat which we cut and wrapped as bonbons. Learned how to make pink praliné – still a mystery to me why anyone would want to eat bright pink candy covered nuts though…..Then made fruit marshmallows of every variety – the smells of the different fruit purées were delicious as every table did something different. Happily my pair was gifted yuzu purée, one of my favourite flavours… Finally ended with fruit jelly and this was familiar territory indeed, as quince paté de fruits are a regular now for the Chocolate Pedaller. The twist here was to use a tiny frog mold, and layer them with the white layer that often accompanies frog jellies. Fun!
I earned the chance to make an extra batch of nougat by correctly answering a question about how to make bavarois, so was gifted a station and ingredients. Always better hands on than watching, I thought, so off I started with help from colleagues and along came the class photographer halfway through taking masses of pictures. It took longer than expected to work the cocoa butter back into the nougat but I finally managed and cast it. During cleanup I discovered the sugar (a major component obviously, this being confectionary week – 450 g) still sitting on the table…. ooops. Tried retrospectively to save the day presenting it as diabetic nougat for Craig (our colleague with diabetes in the class) but it met its maker, the texture was definitely unusable…. It will be soooo ironic if those pictures ever make it anywhere, ha ha. At one point I had a patch of nougat in my hair apparently….
Doesn’t top the student today who flushed the toilet at exactly the same time as dropping her locker key in it though! And there was the lunch break when one of the students spilled her entire water bottle on the table and we watched with horror as it ran towards the huge chocolate crocodile that lives in the centre of the lunch table. So I’m in good company, I reckon….