Pastry School Nightmares

You know that dream, or rather nightmare, where you are going to the final exam for a class in college and you show up to take the test and can't find the room?  Well, let me tell you what a pastry school nightmare is like, as I've just woken up from one.  I was dreaming that I was running late for class and when I finally got into the kitchen our assignment was to bring a pot of water to a boil and then add sugar.  As everyone began moving around and filling their pots with water I realized I didn't have a pot!  I frantically opened every cabinet and drawer and could not find a pot anywhere.  Then I started going to other kitchens and finally got a pot, but when I was on my way back to my class I realized I didn't have my kitchen uniform on!  Disaster!

Anyway, I think this dream means I am in baking withdrawal.  I plan to begin the baking today and make at least one item today, tomorrow, and Friday.  I know I'll be making eclairs today and some form of puffed pastry tomorrow so anyone that wants to stop by for a visit or a sweet is welcome.  Call or email me for the appropriate time to visit and I'll look forward to seeing you then!  I'll also be posting pictures of my creations so we can compare the product from a home oven versus the product from an  industrial oven.  Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season.  Merry Christmas!

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 26: Graduation Celebration!

I am officially a graduate of Basic Pastry!  Yea!  As some of you may know I was under the impression that the school recognizes the top three graduates in each program.  Since I was certain I was not going to finish as one of the top three students then my only goal was to pass the class so I could continue on with Intermediate Pastry in January.  However, it turns out I was wrong and that the school actually recognizes the top five graduates from each class.  My good friend Lydia was number 1 for all of Basic Pastry and my good friend Josephine was number 2.  Another girl from our group was number 3 and a girl from another group was number 4, but you'll never guess who number 5 was...Me!

So, to all of you who have been following my blog or encouraging me over these past five weeks or even encouraging me to pursue this passion for the last few years I need to say thank you.  I would not be in pastry school, I would not be in Paris, and I would not have been dedicated enough to show up at school every day rain, snow, or shine without your support.  

After the graduation ceremony we had a reception including champagne, small bites, and petit desserts prepared by our chefs.  We had a great time and took a lot of pictures.  Here are some of the pictures from our day.

Our Main Demonstration Room

Josephine, Naama, Lydia, Maggie, Me, and Esther

Group A Gals-Lydia, Maggie, Me, and Josephine

Josephine, Maggie, and the desserts as usual!

Until next time (which may be a few weeks) Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 25: The Exam

Rest assured all of my apple peeling was not in vain; my recipe for the practical exam was in deed Tarte Aux Pommes!  If only Chef Bernarde had been there to see my apple peeling and apple arranging skills in action I think he'd have been very impressed by my improvement.  I've come a long way from Day 4 and backwards apples.

I began my day at 6:10am when I woke from a restless sleep and decided not to wait for the alarm, but to get up and resume studying for my 8:30am practical exam.  I ironed my apron, took a shower, packed my bag, and went to the coffee shop next to school to keep reviewing the ten recipes that could potentially be my project for the practical exam.  When I arrived at school around 8:15am I was informed by my friends that the recipes we were going to be assigned included Tarte Aux Pommes, Pithiviers and Sacristains, or Apple Turnovers and Palmiers.  Puff Pastry, really?!  I was just as glum as everyone else.

When we got to our kitchen we were greeted by Chef Daniel Walter who would be presiding over our kitchen for the exam.  We really lucked out as he is everyone's favorite chef because of his positive attitude and his laid back manner.  This was definitely going to be a plus for our group.  He had each of us choose a plastic chip from a bowl and he assigned our recipes based on the color of our chips.  I chose a green chip along with my friend Maggie and three other girls in my class.  When he assigned us to our spots in the kitchen we saw the recipes for Pithiviers and Sacristains in front of us.  I looked at Maggie and I knew the overwhelmed look in her eye was probably reflected in mine as well, but just as we were trying to determine what to do first Chef Walter took our recipes away and told us he'd made a mistake.

He then shuffled a bunch of papers and gave us the recipe for Tarte Aux Pommes instead!  Relief swept over me in an instant.  While this was not going to be easy it was certainly going to be much easier than the other options because Tarte Aux Pommes means no puff pastry!  No rolling and rolling and rolling the dough and no folding and counting turns either.  I'd really dodged a bullet!

The second part of the exam was the same for everyone.  It was a straightforward skills test.  Each of us had to make one recipe of Sweet Short Pastry and line a tart pan.  This was even more of an advantage for me because since I had to make the dough and line the tart pan for my Tarte Aux Pommes anyway I could line both pans and then choose the best looking one for my tart.  The second pan I lined looked much better than the first one and I was very happy to use it for my main project.

My Tart from Day 4

My Tarte Aux Pommes and My Tart Shell

At the end of the exam we were each assigned a number and told to set our projects out with our number in front of them.  When everything was finally cleaned up I was happy with my results.  I thought my tart looked better this time than last time and certainly was not the worst one on the table.  I cannot believe Basic Pastry is over and I'm not sure what grade I'll end up with for the program, but one thing is for sure I did not fail.  At the end of the day all I really wanted was to graduate into the intermediate program in January and after this morning I am confident that this will be the case.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 24: Celebration!

You know you're in France when, at the end of your final demonstration class, your chef tells you good luck on your final exam and then cracks open 6 bottles of champagne to celebrate the end of your program!

Today at 12:30pm we gathered to have our last demonstration class.  Chef Cotte had finally returned from his vacation and showed us a demonstration on how to make Chocolate-Bergamot Mousse Cake with Orange Crisp.  It was a really fun class and the cake looked like a double chocolate mousse cake from Filomena inside and was covered with a chocolate ganache glaze outside.

Chef Cotte's Chocolate Mousse Cake

After the demonstration our Chef cut up the cakes and we all enjoyed cake and champagne as an afternoon snack.  The cake was delicious and the champagne hit the spot too!

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 23: Finished!

Saturday was my last official practical class!  We had a demonstration at 8:30am for Alhambra, or chocolate cake, went out to breakfast, and then came back to make the cake in our practical class at 3:30pm.

The Alhambra was baked in a rectangular mold similar to one you might cook banana bread in but a little smaller.  The cake was taken out of the mold, cut, and put back together with thick layers of chocolate ganache in between.  The cake was then decorated with ganache piping, candied violets and flowers made from modeling chocolate.

My Alhambra

A close-up of my rose.

Our group breakfast was equally as exciting as making the cakes.  We went to a restaurant named, and I'm not making this up, Breakfast In America!  It is a diner that serves American specialties from cheeseburgers to eggs and bacon to thick milkshakes.  It is a great place.  We had some of everything on the menu, but my favorite item was the Obama Milkshake consisting of vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, and delicious peanut butter.  It all really hit the spot after all of the pastries and French food we've been eating in general.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 22: Buche Pistache-Chocolat

Snow and Christmas lights means it is finally holiday time in Paris.  Today we made a Buche Pistache-Chocolat or a Chocolate-Pistachio Log Cake.  It was referred to as a Yule Log by a few Americans in our demonstration class, but this is not actually what it is.  While it was made in a log shaped pan it was not rolled up, it was baked, cut, and layered back together with chocolate ganache and simple syrup.  Here are a few photos:

My Buche Pistache-Chocolat

The green and brown layers inside my Buche.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 21: Baking, Baking, Baking

Thursday was a busy day!  We made a cake called a Mogador at 8:30am, went to a demonstration on Puff Pastry, and made a Pithiviers in the afternoon.  The Mogador was my kind of cake.  It was a chocolate and raspberry mousse cake decorated with raspberries.  The base of the cake was a chocolate genoise sponge cake that was layered with a raspberry glaze and then covered with the chocolate mousse.  It looked very elegant, but was pretty easy to make.

My Mogador

In the afternoon we used puff pastry again to make another traditional dessert called Pithiviers.  The dough was rolled out and filled with an almond cream.  Then another layer of dough was put on top and the cream was sealed inside.  We cut a flower shape out of the dough and scored the top.  Using the excess dough we made twisty cinnamon sugar bread.  We all agreed that they would have been much better with parmesan and asiago cheese.  We are all pastried out!

My Sacristains

My Pithiviers

The layers of my puff pastry up close!

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 20: Cuisine

Wednesday, since we only had one demonstration class, my friend Maggie and I decided to sit in on a demonstration class for the Basic Cuisine program.  The cuisine class was not the same as the pastry class at all.  There was a lot of stuff going on everywhere.  The chef was simultaneously preparing four dishes at the same time.  We learned to make Parisian-Style Gnocci in a Bechamel sauce, Chicken Saute with Tarragon, Roasted Italian Vegetables, and Poached Apples on Brioche Toast with Italian Meringue and Raspberry Coulis.

Paris Style Gnocchi

Tarragon Chicken and Roasted Vegetables

Poached Apples with Meringue

Everything the chef prepared looked beautiful and tasted delicious!

As I'm sure you've all heard Europe, and specifically Paris, has had a lot more snow this winter than usual.  Since I was at school until 6:30pm on Wednesday I was a little surprised to find A LOT of snow on the ground when I came out.  I took this picture of L'Hotel National des Invalides on my walk home.  Les Invalides is a series of buildings that house museums and monuments all pertaining to the military history of France.  This building is a few blocks from my apartment and on the way to the Metro so I pass by it a few times everyday.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 19: International Meringues

I feel like I have been running around in circles for months now and it has only been four weeks!  I had my last demonstration and practical class for Basic Pastry yesterday and will now be using the entire afternoon to catch you up on all of my adventures since this past Tuesday.

First of all, someone needs to email me a terrific recipe for Tiramisu because on Tuesday I learned how to make my own lady fingers!  We learned to make a dessert called Charlotte Aux Poires or Pear Charlotte.  It was a beautiful dessert.  We used the batter for ladyfingers to make shapes that we constructed into an edible box.  The filling inside the box was a mixture of sauteed pears and a mousse.  The mousse consisted of a pear flavored whipped cream and an italian meringue.

One important thing I have learned since attending pastry school is that there are different types of meringue.  There are actually three types of meringue-French meringue, Swiss meringue, and Italian meringue.  All meringues are a mixture of beaten egg whites and sugar, but the difference between these three types of meringue is in the method behind how you combine the two ingredients.

French meringue is whipping egg whites until they form peaks and then gradually adding sugar while continuing to whip the mixture into a glossy, shiny state.  Since the mixture was made with raw ingredients you have to cook the meringue before eating it.  Swiss meringue is egg whites and sugar beaten in a bowl over the heat of a bain marie and then constantly whisked until cooled.  Italian meringue is a little more complicated and definitely the tastiest.  For Italian meringue you whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks, but then you add very hot sugar syrup and keep whisking until you get a shiny delicious meringue that can be eaten right away and used as decoration or frosting on many cakes.

The sugar syrup is a simple syrup made from equal parts sugar and water.  You must bring the syrup to a boil and then continue cooking until it comes to a "soft ball stage."  Then you may add a flavoring or liqueur to the syrup if desired and then you whip the syrup into the meringue.  To determine whether your syrup is at the soft ball stage you put the tips of your thumb and index finger in very cold water, then you dip the tips of your fingers in the hot syrup pot all the way to the bottom, and then you immediately put your fingers back into the cold water.  When you take your fingers out of the cold water for the second time you rub them together  and they should form a "soft ball" of sugar between them.  Once the sugar is in this soft ball stage you know the syrup is hot enough to put into the egg whites and finish your meringue.

My Pear Charlotte

A close-up of my marzipan rose.

I loved the way the Pear Charlotte looked when it was all put together, but again I'm just not a fan of pear flavored desserts.  I think this would be especially delicious with cherries or peaches.  While we have not done much work with berries up until now I wonder if this could also have been made with raspberries or blueberries.  I cannot wait to have an oven to finally be able to try these recipes out at home and make my own adjustments.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 18: Brioche

First things first, I have to let you know about my Sunday night girls dinner.  Four girls from my class and I went out for dinner to a famous Paris steakhouse called Le Relais de l'Entrecote.  The atmosphere was kind of like a New York Steakhouse with a lot of wood and brass everywhere and all of the waitresses wore your typical French maid uniform.  When we sat down we were immediately given a lettuce salad with a dijon mustard vinaigrette and asked by the waitress how we'd each like our steaks cooked.  She also took our beverage order and we ended up with a bottle of the house red wine and a carafe of water.  Next the waitress cleared our salads and served us dinner.  Our plates were filled with a thin steak cut into strips resting in a thick brownish sauce that tasted like a dill bernaise sauce and a heap of french fries.  After we'd finished our steaks we were immediately offered seconds on the dinner course.  Finally, since there was only one choice for our dinner we were given an extensive dessert menu with at least 20 items on it and asked if we'd like a sweet and/or coffee.  We shared some ice cream, some chocolate cake, and a lemon tart, none of which were as good as things we had made at school.  It was an interesting experience and fun for a group, but not necessarily as gourmet as you'd expect considering we had to wait in line 20 minutes for a table on a Sunday at 9pm.

Anyway, Monday morning came bright and early and we learned how to make brioche.  We had made the dough for our brioche on Saturday after the croissants and had left our dough in the refrigerator to rise a bit over the weekend.  For those of you who don't know, brioche is a soft, light yeast dough similar to challah bread.  It is a little bit sweet and traditionally served as a breakfast food with butter or jam.  Mine looked very nice, but definitely needed to be mixed with something or have a spread on it to be fully enjoyed.  Brioche is usually baked in a special molds and is formed into specific shapes.  We each made one loaf pan of brioche, one round fluted pan of brioche with a round head on top, and two mini round pans with small heads on top.

My loaf of Brioche

My Traditional Brioche

We also rolled out the brioche and layered it with pastry cream and raisins and made raisin buns.  They were pretty good considering I do not usually like raisins in my bread.  One of the other groups got to fill their buns with pastry cream and chocolate chips, theirs were delicious!  If I ever made these rolled up buns at home I'd either fill them with chocolate chips or I'd fill them with pastry cream and a heavy layer of cinnamon.  I think both of those options would be delicious.

My Raisin Buns

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 17: Croissants, Can it Get More Parisienne Than This?

SUCCESS!!!!

I have been anxiously awaiting croissant day for months now and I can officially tell you it was a great success!  First of all, I must say that croissant baking got a lot of hype and I was really scared to try and make them, but they ended up being much easier than I anticipated.  Don't get me wrong, they were not a walk in the park, but they were nothing compared to puff pastry.  Puff pastry required rolling and turning and rolling and turning, but the croissant dough only needed rolled out a few times and we ran it thru a professional machine to make it super smooth.

We actually made our croissant dough on Friday even though we wouldn't be baking our croissants until Saturday.  Apparently 3 or 4 degrees Celsius is the ideal temperature for croissant dough. So we assembled our dough and froze it overnight.  Then, Saturday morning, our chefs took the dough out of the freezer and put it into a refrigerator that was set at about 6 degrees Celsius.  When the dough had defrosted, but was still colder than the inside of the refrigerator, it was time to roll it out and make croissants.

My Croissants

After we made one batch of croissants we used the remaining dough to make Pain Au Chocolat.  I'm sure you've seen these pastries before even if you're not familiar with the name.  They are generally rectangle shaped pastries that are flaky like croissants but have chocolate inside of them.  Mine turned out kind of small, but were delicious nonetheless.

My Pain Au Chocolat

Up close they looked kind of like HoHos.

As I mentioned in an earlier post we used dry butter for the croissant dough.  While we probably can't buy dry butter in the US our chef assured us we could make a pretty good croissant substituting regular butter.  Maybe this year we'll leave croissants for Santa instead of cookies!

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 16: A Piece of Cake

Friday was by far the worst day I have had since moving to Paris.  To the average American, me included, living in Paris probably seems like a fantasy, and most of the time it is, but sometimes it is not all that it is cracked up to be.  It can be lonely, tiring, especially cold, you have to take public transportation every day multiple times, and to top it off, there is dog poop on sidewalks EVERYWHERE just waiting to be stepped in!

While Friday started off like a seemingly perfect day, it quickly turned into the worst day ever.  My group was only scheduled for one class from 12:30pm to 3:30pm and we were going to be making a cake called a Mocha that we'd observed in our demonstration class the night before.  The cake seemed like an average two layer iced cake that could potentially have been served as a gourmet birthday cake.  It seemed like it would truly be "a piece of cake" to make.

When we entered our kitchen we were greeted by Chef Deguignet.  While we had watched him perform demos we had never had him as the Chef in our kitchen for a practical class before.  It was clear from the beginning that he was going to be especially strict.  He didn't really want us talking, he constantly wanted to hear "Oui Chef!" and he was forever telling us to do everything faster and faster.  His presence in our practical class made everyone tense and put us all in a bad mood.  There was suddenly no positive energy in our kitchen.

As we went along trying to put our cakes together things got worse.  The cake proved to be much tougher than it looked to assemble.  It required a glaze, icing, and creative, yet traditional, decorations on top.  I cannot explain what happened during that class, but it was the first time I felt like I wanted to quit. I just wanted to walk out of that kitchen and not look back.  It was a terrible, angry feeling.

Then, just when things seemed to be getting really dark, our favorite chef, Chef Bernarde, walked in and asked us to stop what we were doing so he could talk to us.  He told us that he was sorry to be informing us that he was leaving the school and today would be his last day.   It was truly as if someone had sucked the air out of the room.  No one knew what to say at first, we were all heartbroken.  Then we asked What?  Where are you going?  When are you coming back?  And he told us, smilingly, that he was going away to pursue a new adventure.  And just like that with a few smiles and blown kisses he was gone.  I really think every single person in the room was close to tears and from the looks in my friends' eyes they had the same distinct idea in their heads that I had in mine, I'm ready to throw this cake at the wall!

But that's not what a pastry chef does.  No matter how bad your day is or what's wrong inside, you have to make the outside shine.  You have to finish the project no matter what because someone is counting on that cake. While it was only a practice cake on Friday, it could be a birthday cake or even a wedding cake someday soon and that thing needs to be completed to perfection.  So, I took my time, I finished my cake and when it was done Chef Deguignet told me I'd done a good job.

My Mocha Cake (It really was kind of pretty.)

I can't really explain how or why this did not make me feel better, but it did not.  I took the cake down to the communal hall and left it there for everyone to have a piece.  Then I went to a cafe with my friend Lydia to drown our sorrows.  We talked about Chef Bernarde and we talked about the class we'd just finished.  We also talked about living in a foreign country and how hard it can be.  After two glasses of Vin Chaud, or hot mulled wine, we both went our separate ways to decompress.  Around 8pm I went out with Lydia and two of our other friends for dinner and while we had a really great meal, something was still amiss.  We couldn't stop talking about how awful we all felt about our day.

I think the positive thing that really resounds with me after this experience is how quickly people can grow together when they are working in a very close environment.  While it was a crappy day it was fantastic to know that in only 4 weeks I've made some awesome connections and some great friends.  Our night ended up very fun and we all got in bed at reasonable times anxiously awaiting Saturday and the culmination of French pastries-Croissants.  So, thanks for listening to me complain.  I know it can't always be a bowl of cherries every day, but let me be clear, a bad day in Paris usually does beat a bad day anywhere else!

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 15: Queen of Tarts

Thursday was a really fun day!  We learned to make Tarts.  Our Chef demonstrated how to make chocolate tarts, orange tarts, lemon tarts, and raspberry tarts, but for our practical class we only made chocolate tarts and orange tarts.  Both were really good, but would have looked much prettier with more filling.

Our Chef's Assorted Tarts

My friend Lydia was the Queen of Tarts for sure.  Her tart shells were flawless.  They had perfect edges and were cooked just right and her filling was smooth and glassy.  My tarts tasted very good, but were nothing in comparison to Lydia's.  I'll definitely have to work on my aesthetics next time.

Two of My Chocolate Tarts and One of My Orange Tarts

As for tart making at home, I'd definitely recommend this activity.  The tarts can be decorated to look absolutely gorgeous, but they are also one of the few desserts that taste as good as they look.  Plus, along with petits fours I think tarts are fun to make and something everyone can master.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 14: Petits Fours=Macaroons

Wednesday marked my 10th lesson which means I have now officially completed the first half of Basic Patisserie and much to my surprise I received a midterm grade.  There are three groups of Basic Patisserie students and I am in Group A.  Each student was given a sheet containing our group's average and our own average, both out of 5, for the first half of the program.  Group C had a 2.7 average, Group B had a 2.9 average, and Group A had a 3.2 average.  Right from the start I was excited to find out that my group seems to contain some of the best patisserie students.  I was even more excited to find out that my average was a 3.5!  I'm by no means an expert, but ranked next to my fellow students I really feel like I'm holding my own.

You really do learn something new every day.  Wednesday I learned that the Petits Fours Bethany and Justin gave out as wedding favors at their September wedding are only one of a variety of small cakes or desserts that can be classified as petits fours.  As a matter of fact the currently very en vogue macaroons that you generally see in bright pinks, greens, and yellows are also a variety of petits fours.  They are called Meringue Petits Fours.   While we learned to make these petits fours in our demonstration class and we got to eat them, they were not a part of our practical class.

Chef Deguignet's Macaroons

For our practical class we made Palets Aux Raisins or Raisin Biscuits and we made Batons De Marechaux or Marshal's Batons.  They were both pretty straightforward and easy to make and were actually both very small tasty treats that could have easily become addictive.  The raisin cookies had a little bit of a rum glaze and the batons were like almond cookies dipped in chocolate, delicious.

My Various Petits Fours

I would definitely recommend making these at home because as I said they were pretty straightforward and easy to make.  The macaroons looked like they'd be much more of a challenge, but I hope to try making them at home as soon as I get an oven!

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 13: Pears Are Not In Season

After Gateau Basque on Monday we had a demonstration class for Tarte Meringuee Aux Poires Caramelisees, or Caramelized Pear and Crisp Almond Crust Tart.  The demonstration was such a comedy of errors that it is truly a miracle I was able to pull off the practical class at all let alone successfully.  There were many problems on Monday including the assistant not measuring the ingredients for the dough correctly, something falling when being taken out of the oven, and the chef being so distracted by everything else that he forgot to include half of the butter in the recipe for his tart filling.  I guess the moral is we all have bad days.

So, on to Tuesday and my try at the pear tart.  As I said, pears are not really in season here, so we were making our tarts with canned pears.  I am not personally very fond of canned pears so I did not even taste this cake.  However I think it would have been really good with canned cherries or maybe even canned peaches as a filling.  The dough recipe was for a sweet pastry dough and turned out much nicer than the day before.  The dough was put in a tart ring, filled with a cooked pear/almond/raisin filling and topped, creatively, with meringue.  It was then baked at 160 degrees Celsius until the meringue started to brown.

The pear tart was really pretty and I liked making the swirls of meringue, but I really did not like the taste of the cooked pears and raisins mixed together and would not make this again unless I had to.  While my Gateau Basque was ugly to look at it really was a delicious cake!

My Pear Tart

After our 8:30am tart class we had a 3:30pm demonstration followed by our class dinner.  Each semester halfway thru classes the students are invited to a class dinner at a fancy restaurant somewhere in Paris.  The higher the level the nicer the restaurant.  Basic Pastry and Basic Cuisine were invited to dinner at a Guy Savoy restaurant called L'Atelier Maitre Albert.  There were about 70 students and faculty who gathered for a lovely dinner in a private room at the restaurant in the 5th arrondissement of Paris at 7:30pm.  We began our evening with champagne and several passed hors d'oeuvres.  Our starter was a pumpkin soup with carrots and celery.  I cannot impress upon you how amazing this soup was.  I would study cuisine just to be able to someday recreate this soup.  The fish course was a spit roasted sea bass over green lentils in a red wine sauce followed by a meat course of spit roasted veal shank with spinach and mushroom gratin.  The veal literally fell off the bone it was so tender and left our mouths watering for dessert.

The dessert course was more than disappointing.  After the delicious dinner and several bottles of red and white wine our dessert was pear crumble with caramel ice cream salted butter.  Again, pears are not in season here and I am not a fan of cooked pears anyway so it was a huge letdown.  However, all in all, dinner was a lot of fun and the restaurant's atmosphere was really lovely.  There was a huge fireplace in our private room and the waiters were constantly stoking the fire.  In fact 5 other girls and I had so much fun that we're going out to dinner together somewhere new again this Sunday.  Although our night out wasn't a complete success, I did make a few closer friends and have a great meal!

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 12: Let It Snow

I've dodged plenty of icy bullets over the years, (i.e. Boston, Buffalo, and CT) but I never imagined that moving to the City of Light would bring me my earliest and coldest winter in recent memory.  While it snowed, and snowed, and snowed last year we still had plenty of sunshine and warm days and none of it started in November.  Much to my dismay when I stepped out of my house on Monday morning, November 29th, I was met with frigid temperatures and snow covering cars, grass, and some sidewalks.  Not okay.  Not having watched TV or read a newspaper in about 5 weeks I'm not sure what it was that led me to wear two pairs of pants that morning, but I'm sure glad I did!  I walked to the metro, went to school, and was all too happy to begin baking my Gateau Basque in practical class.

On Saturday we had our demonstration class on how to make Gateau Basque and since my family was still in Paris my Mom, Dad, and sister, Jex, were able to come observe the class.  They had a great time and it was all we could do to get Dad back on the plane to Dulles on Sunday morning after seeing what I do every day.  He was sold after the first five minutes and is seriously considering signing up for next year's intensive 5 week program to study either Basic Cuisine or Basic Pastry.  I told him if he studies Basic Cuisine maybe I'll join him.

Gateau Basque is a traditional dessert from the Gateau region of France and consists of a cake base with a pastry cream and cherry filling covered with a pie shell.  It is traditionally decorated with two hooked S shapes and it looks like a pie, but tastes more like a cake.  After the demo the chef was very nice to my family and offered them one of the extra cakes he had prepared.  After being told the Gateau Basque is best eaten two or three days after it is made my Mom bought a tupperware container and brought the entire cake back to Virginia.  They had it for dessert on Sunday night about 36 hours after it had been baked.

Chef Cotte's Gateau Basque

Monday morning was my turn to try my hand at Gateau Basque and from the beginning it did NOT go well.  When we go to practical class we have to bring our recipe and any notes we've taken on how to prepare the dish we'll be baking.  My first mistake was leaving the recipe for the dough in my locker.  While this was not a detrimental mistake, as I could share a friend's recipe with her, it made things difficult because I didn't have my own reminders to look at and subsequently ended up with dough that was much too sticky and very hard to work with.

My next task was making pastry cream.  I did have the recipe for that and since it was the same cream we made to fill our eclairs with on Friday it turned out very well once again.  While making my cream, my dough spent about 10 minutes chilling in the refrigerator.  It started to firm up, but not enough.  The dough was still very soft and was therefore pretty difficult to roll out and move into the pan.

As I mentioned, this recipe traditionally contains cherries.  It can be made with whole cherries or chopped cherries or cherry preserves, but for our purposes we were using whole cherries.  This would have been fine, but after I piped in the pastry cream and topped the dessert with cherries I didn't realize I needed to push the cherries all the way into the cream.  So since my dough was so stretchy and sticky when I put the top layer on my pie the dough fell into the mold and looked very bumpy because it had cherries poking through all over the place.  Again, this was a challenging day!

When it was all said and done Chef Bernarde told my three friends and me that he was very pleased with our organization and our ability to work so quickly.  He told me that my cake was still very tasty and that since my mistake had been making the dough too thin, it was something I could easily change for next time and have the perfect Gateau Basque.  While I appreciated his words of encouragement, and my cake was very delicious to eat, I was so disturbed by my first terrible result that I forgot to take a picture of my cake!  Oh well, I'll try to remember next time!

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 10: Dunkin' Donuts Watch Out!

Before I begin to tell you about how much baking I did on Friday I need to let you know that the chef was very happy with my apple turnovers on Wednesday.  I'm not sure if you could really see from the picture, but one end of your turnovers should rise up and have a solid ridge on it.  The chef said mine rose very nicely and he really liked them.  I was very proud!

On Friday my family arrived back in Paris from their trip to Vienna and Prague just in the knick of time.  When they arrived at 1pm I still had Wednesday's Palmiers and Apple Turnovers waiting for them to taste and I'd already made Chouquettes and Eclairs in the morning.  By the time my evening class was finished we had all of those sweets plus a traditional Dacquoise made of almond meringue to keep our sugar levels high.

The morning began with an 8:30am practical class on making Eclairs.  We had been told in our demo that we'd be making chocolate eclairs, but as is always the case you have to follow the directions of whatever chef you are assigned when you finally get to your practical class.  So with famous Chef Bernarde again, he announced we'd be making coffee flavored eclairs because that is his favorite flavor.

The first step in the eclair making process was to mix up the hot Choux Pastry for the dough.  We easily mixed up the dough and put it into a pastry bag to pipe the dough onto a cookie sheet.  We piped out 6 or 7 eclairs each and used the rest of the dough to make little balls called choux similar to the choux balls we made for our Saint Honore.  After piping out the choux we covered them with large sugar crystals making them chouquettes and put them in the oven.

While the pastries were cooking we made pastry cream for the eclair filling and we made liquidy fondant for icing the tops of the eclairs.  Dipping the eclairs and getting the icing to lay smoothly was a bit challenging, but when they were completed they definitely looked just like the frosted donuts you'd buy in a store.  The only difference when we tasted them was that they were even sweeter than the store bought doughnut and tasted even better!  As we'd made coffee eclairs and my family is full of chocolate lovers I swapped a few of my eclairs with a girl from another class before bringing the treats home to be devoured by my family.

My Coffee Eclairs

The Dacquoise we baked in the evening cooking session was actually a very simple cake to make, but when it was finished it looked so nice that it gave the impression it had been a ton of work.  The first thing we did was whip egg whites to make meringue.  When we'd finished doing that we added in some sugar, vanilla, and crushed almonds to add some texture and flavor to the meringue.  We baked the two rounds of cake in the oven and in the meantime started making buttercream icing.  I don't know about you, but up until now I have never really been a fan of buttercream icing.  It usually tastes kind of blah to me and is not sweet enough.  Well, I think that's because I've never truly made a buttery buttercream icing myself.  It took a long time to whip by hand, but I have to say, I could have eaten that icing on anything.  It was really tasty.

So once the cakes came out of the oven and cooled we iced one layer and assembled the cake then we learned how to make roses out of Marzipan.  I FINALLY found something that was easy!  When I'm done with school if I can't find a job anywhere else I am confident that Buddy will hire me to be one of the girls that sits in the back of his kitchen making flowers out of Marzipan and Modeling Chocolate on Cake Boss, because I was a real natural!  I was the first one done with my rose and leaves and everyone else seemed to be struggling with the task and at times starting over.  I hope someone tests me on flower making for the final exam!

My Dacquoise

So, cake assembled, the chef said he liked my rose and my cake and I got three 3.5s and one 4 out of 4 categories.  I'm not sure how to raise my scores around here as we all seem to be getting the same marks, but I'm happy with my 4 and will continue to work hard.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 8: Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

Wednesday was loooong and Friday was even longer!  Wednesday I got up at 7am, left the house at 7:30am, attended a demonstration class from 8:30-11:30am, attended a practical class from 12:30-3:30pm, attended a Bikram yoga class from 4-5:30pm, and stopped at the grocery store on my way home, reaching my front door at the top of the 5 levels of stairs I climb each day at 6:45pm.  Phew!

Wednesday was full of excitement and challenges as we tackled Puff Pastry and learned about dry butter.  We made Apple Turnovers and Palmiers which are a traditional French pastry combining puff pastry and sugar.  Once again the chef made all of the desserts equally attractive and tasty, but this time he did NOT make it look easy.  While watching this very tall, strong, typical chef looking man roll out the puff pastry I could feel my eyes getting wider and wider.  I figured if he was putting this much muscle into the task of rolling out the dough I was certainly going to have a hard time.  I tried to take comfort in the fact that he had quadrupled the recipe I'd need to make later, but that did not do much to allay my fears.  Rolling the dough looked like it was going to be strenuous and take forever.

Our instructions were to roll out the dough out in a straight long rectangle.  When the dough got to be about 1.5 feet long we had to fold one end in on top of the other end like a tri-fold book.  Once folded into a book we had to rotate the dough, dust the flour off of the dough, and begin the process over again.  All the while we needed to be sure to have enough flour on the work surface so as not to let the dough stick to the counter and we needed to be sure and only rotate our dough 5 times.  So not only did this dough require strength, but concentration as well.  It was tedious and messy and I, among other students, spent a large portion of the 3 hours with flour all over my face, hands, and shoes.

I also need to take a moment to talk about the newest baking ingredient this project introduced me to: dry butter.  While American butter has a fat content of 80% to 82% European butter has a fat content of 82% to 84%.  Dry butter is essentially the name for European butter and is probably the answer to the question why are croissants and pastries so much tastier in France.  Dry butter is any butter that has a fat content of 82% or higher.  Once we had made our dough, but before rolling it out we put dry butter in the dough.  We basically stretched out the dough a little bit, put strips of dry butter on it, and folded the dough around the butter like an envelope.  While constantly turning and flipping the dough after rolling it out each time we equally spread the dry butter throughout the dough.

After the dough was successfully rolled out we divided it into two long strips.  One strip was rolled out once more and cut into three or four 6 inch circles.  The other strip was folded from either end in on itself several times until it looked like an accordion from the side.  The circles were topped with apples and folded together to form apple turnovers.  The accordion dough was thoroughly covered with granulated sugar, cut into strips, and laid out flat on a cookie sheet.

Palmiers

Apple Turnovers

When the very artfully put together baked goods were put in the ovens it was time to clean up.  Working with puff pastry was certainly a challenge and makes croissants start to look all that much scarier!  I was extremely thankful my family was coming back from Prague on Friday to work on eating all of my Puff Pastry items as there certainly were A LOT of them.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 7: The Days Become Busier

First let me apologize for not blogging about Day 6 where I learned to make Madeleines and France's version of Fruit Cake.  My family flew in to Paris on Saturday morning and between visiting, sightseeing, and still going to school (yes even on Saturdays!) I did not have time to put something together.  Suffice it to say I made beautiful and tasty Madeleines and the Fruit Cake was more of a lemon pound cake with some fruit in it which allowed it to be rather tasty.  The real excitement of the day though was being graded for the first time.  I recieved three 3.5s and two 4s out of 5 in five categories.  I was definitely in the top half of my class and very pleased with my scores.  Chef said I had done a wonderful job and that my Madeleines were "tres jolie" or very nice.

Now on to today, Day 7.  This is where we apparently kick everything up into high gear!  We went from one class a day last week to two or three classes everyday now.  We are at school 6 days a week for 6 to 9 hours a day.  Today we began at noon with a class picture.  The next event was a 12:30pm demonstration class on how to make Saint Honore and Paris-Brest.  These two desserts are similar in that they combine different creams and pastry.  We then had to make the Saint Honore which looked a bit like a cross between a banana cream pie from Pie Gourment and Munchkins from Dunkin' Donuts in our 3:30pm practical class.

I really think the most stressful part of all of this is just having to get things done so quickly.  The order of events for the class was make your pastry dough for the bottom crust, make your choux pastry for the puffs, make your chantilly cream, and make your caramel sauce.  Each of these tasks was pretty straightforward, but I did run into a few glitches along with way.

Making the pastry dough for the bottom crust was easy as pie, literally.  Making the pastry choux was a little more complicated.  I had to combine milk, salt, sugar, water, and butter on the stove and wait for it to boil, I then added flour and mixed it over the heat until all of the ingredients came together to form a dough.  After removing the mixture from the heat and putting it into another bowl I added 3 eggs.  After adding the 3 eggs we were instructed to present our concoction to the chef to find out if we should add any more eggs as this is a very temperamental dough.  I was instructed to add 1/2 of one egg and after mixing it in I was very happy with the consistency of my dough.  For those non cooks out there that are perplexed as to how to add 1/2 of one egg to anything, you simply whisk a whole egg in a small bowl with a fork and pour half of it into your mixture.

I then piped mini blobs of the choux pastry onto the cookie sheet that already had my bottom crust on it and the whole tray was put in the oven.  While it was baking we made caramel sauce to dip our finished product in and whipped cream to line the bottom of the pastry crust.  I need to take a moment here to say that I will definitely have super defined arms when I get home.  I made whipped cream with a whisk today.  No mixer.  Not fun.  I feel like I work on a farm and as a matter of fact if I'd continued to whip the cream about 5 minutes longer I actually would have made butter as, unfortunately, was the case for some of my classmates.

So, with my doughs cooked and cooled, I began dipping my pastry puffs in the VERY hot caramel mixture.  I burned my right index finger right of the bat and am still feeling the pain now as I type.  That, thankfully, was my only caramel accident though which I think is pretty great considering how many puffs I had to dip.

Saint Honore dough fresh from the oven!

Saint Honore

After dipping the puffs and assembling my Saint Honore I piped my freshly whipped Chantilly Cream into my pastry and decorated it accordingly.  At the end of the class I was left with a beautiful Saint Honore and a very good idea of how to begin replicating Pie Gourmet's banana cream pie when I come home.  Drew can't wait for you to be my taste tester!  And when it was all said and done I once again received very high marks in relation to the rest of my class.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 4: Apples, Apples Everywhere!

Okay, I have a confession to make, I cheated in class today.  That's right, Day 4 and already I'm cracking.  Today was the highly anticipated day that I had to make a Tarte Aux Pommes, or Apple Tart.  First of all, I've never made any kind of tart and secondly refer to the Day 2 post where I mentioned the no mixers, everything by hand, weight measurements and you begin to see my trepidation with this task.  To make matters worse our head chef was none other than Nicolas Bernarde.  Among his many awards and accomplishments is the Meilleur Ouvrier de France de Patisserie-Confiserie award for 2004.  Basically that means he was named the Best Pastry-Confectionery Chef in ALL of France for 2004.  Sheesh!  Talk about intimidating!

When I arrived in the kitchen a few minutes prior to 8:30am with the rest of my group we were told to gather our materials, begin making our dough, then prepare our apples, assemble our tarts and put them on a rack where they would sit until we could put a bunch in the oven at once to be cooked.  Sounds simple enough, but nothing is that simple in an unfamiliar kitchen with a famous pastry chef watching your every move.

The first step was easy, I opened my knife kit and took out my paring knife, chef's knife, spatula, scraper, peeler, and scale.  I measured my ingredients and started making my dough.  Everything seemed to be going well and then Chef Bernarde asked us all to watch while he showed us the "correct" way to chop apples.  Apparently someone was a step ahead of me and was not chopping their apples so successfully.  After getting an apple cutting tutorial I began to peel the apples using my peeler as the Chef had just shown us.  This is when I ran into problems.

Number one while I'm sure this is how many people peel apples, as it is clearly the "right" way to do it, this is not my method.  My method, which I learned from my Dad, and scares the dickens out of Suzanne Jackson, is to peel the apple toward me with a paring knife.  As these knives are brand new and very sharp I can see plenty of reasons not to peel apples in this way, but the peeler situation was taking FOREVER!  It was one strip here and one strip there and the chef was saying "Hurry, hurry, you're going to run out of time!"  So, that's when I broke.  I flashed back to Miss Perkins' second grade class when we were learning to write in cursive.  She would walk around during the handwriting portion of the day and mark us down if we weren't holding our pencils the "correct" way.  Well, I was the slowest writer ever when holding my pencil the correct way, so I would hold my pencil the correct way only when she walked around and then once she passed my desk I would throw caution to the wind and go back to my easier and quicker way of doing things.  

Channeling this experience I decided the quick and easy approach was once again the way to go while peeling apples.  Whenever the chef would leave the room or even walk to the far end of the room I would toss my peeler down and pick up that paring knife!  This, of course, was the cheating portion of my day.  Although I must add here that there are quite a few people in my class of an, shall we say, eastern persuasion, who I'm sure would have cheated if they'd had an opportunity to.  So, apples chopped and thrown into my melted butter on the stove I was once again in business!

After the apples were cooked I put them in a metal pan and put the pan in the refrigerator so they could cool.  Meanwhile I took my dough out of the refrigerator and started rolling it out on the island.  At this point we were once again called over for a lesson.  This lesson was on how to flour your work surface like a professional pastry chef and not "the way your Grandmother used to do it at home."  By the way, there are many references to not doing things like your Grandmother, but I'd like to say my Grandmas made some mean desserts in their day!  Where would I be today without Grandma Saville's apple pie, and cherry squares or Grandma Welshans' marble cake with chocolate icing and handmade candies shaped like peanuts and wreaths?

Again I digress so back to the assembly of the tart.  I managed to fit my dough into the tart ring, fill it with apples and carefully lay out apple slices in a fancy pattern as shown in the demonstration and was quite far ahead of most people in the class at this point when Chef said something that sounded like "blah, blah, blah," because he was speaking French.  I looked at him and he repeated, in English this time, "Your apples are backwards."  Ok, WTF?!  Really?  So, I took them out and started over.  Nonetheless after relayering my apples in a clockwise direction I was still one of the first people to put my tart on the rack and have it ready for the oven!

When we were all finished baking and cleaning up and the tarts were in the oven Chef told us we'd done well for our second day, but that we needed to be much more concentrated and work much faster going forward.  When the tarts came out of the over not everyone had a completely cooked tart because they had worked too slowly.  I am happy to report that while my tart wasn't the prettiest of all, it was certainly cooked all the way through!  

Since it was only our second practical class we once again escaped being graded today.  Instead the chef walked around and talked to each of us for a moment about what we'd baked.  I am also pleased to report that one of the greatest pastry chefs in all of France told me my tart looked ok for a first try, but that he was pleased by my ability to work quickly and keep a clean and organized work station.

My Tarte Aux Pommes

The moral of today's story is sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, but in the spirit of really grasping all that I'm being taught in this prestigious school I bought a 10kg bag of apples on my way home and plan to practice peeling the "correct" way until I can do that quickly and easily as well.  Afterall, I don't want my professional baking capabilities to turn out the same way as my cursive handwriting!

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 2: Not as easy as it looks!

I hope no one skimmed my last post and inferred that I had made those delicious cookies in the pictures-not the case.  Today, as I mentioned earlier, I was charged with the task of baking my own plain batch of Diamonds, but without swirls or anything too exciting.  Even though I didn't fall asleep last night until 12:45am and this morning the alarm started ringing at 6:50am I thought I was more than up to the challenge by the time I arrived in the Kitchen in full chef's gear at 8:30am.

There were 14 people in my group and we each had a work space with all of our own tools.  The chef (who spoke not a word of English) showed us around the kitchen explaining where we could find all of our ingredients including farine, le sucre, le beurre, le sel, les oeufs, et la vanille.  I am happy to report that I felt way above average in my understanding of his directions and explanations even though he was speaking only French.  Once I assembled my ingredients I began forming the dough for my cookies and once the dough was formed I let it rest in the refrigerator, cut it into cookie size circles, and baked them in the over.  Pretty straight forward, especially for me, who is clearly more than a seasoned baker when it comes to cookies, right?  Wrong!

Let me talk to you a little bit about what it means to make something from scratch in a French Pastry School.  Number 1 you can toss out your measuring cups kiddos because every ingredient is measured by weight.  Try exactly measuring your flour or your sugar on a food scale, not an easy task to reach the exact amount you want.  It's one scoop in, half a scoop out until you're finally just sticking a small spoon in there to remove the excess and get to exactly 225g.  Also, if you think you might need that teaspoon for salt or baking powder you can forget that too as small quantities are consistently measured one pinch here and two pinches there.  The number 2 problem with these exciting lessons in baking are the fact that there are no mixers allowed!  The chef uses a lovely Kitchen Aid mixer on Demo Day, but we are left to the use of our hands only!  It is crazy.  So, straightforward cookie dough was not so straightforward, however it was really fun and I feel like I have a completely new skill today.

Between refrigerating our dough and actually cooking the cookies in the oven the chef took us on a tour of the food pantries.  These are closets in the school where all the ingredients are kept for each of the classes.  Pantries full of nuts, dried fruits, syrups, liqueurs, different varieties of sugar and everything else you can think of.  I need to take a moment here to thank Becca (Laurie's cousin) for having me over to her house on Sunday for lunch.  She not only invited me over for lunch, but also gave me a little tutorial of baking in a French kitchen.  She showed me ingredients I'd never heard of and low and behold they were all included on my tour this morning.  Two very remarkable ingredients that I had never seen before were a baking powder like substance and gelatin.  Instead of baking powder or baking soda they use something else that I can't remember the name of.  Instead of coming in a can or a box it comes in individual servings in packets that are the same color as Sweet 'N Low and about twice the size.  The other oddity is gelatin.  It comes in flat strips that look like clear plastic.  They are about 3in by 6in and you apparently dissolve them in cold water and add them to cakes to change their consistency.  I'm very anxious to see it in action!

When we returned to the kitchen we cleaned up and put away our tools while the cookies were baking.  After the cookies were cooled we took pictures of them and packed them away to bring home.  Yes that's right I left my school at 11:30am with more than 6 dozen cookies in tow.  Not good at all.  So far I've given them to the metro workers, some teacher, and the man that runs my apartment.  Hopefully I'll have more people to give them to soon!

And that's it.  Day 2 complete.  As it was our first time in the kitchens and we were still getting acclimated, we weren't graded today.  However, Thursday and Tarte aux Pommes is going to be an entirely different story!  Wish me luck with my apple tart and I'll keep you posted.

Until then Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!