Anyway... here's what I've been up to since the last time (along with pretty much not stopping; I have broken off a three and a half year relationship, recently started a new one, worked, moved two times in two months (!), suffered from various illnesses and probably some other stuff since starting this course). Here's that apple tart made with sweet pastry I was talking about in the last post. It was... perfect. Apple pie is always nice, but it's even more satisfying when you've made it yourself and it's all pretty too!
Next up was two puff pastry practicals both in one day. The first one was spent making our own puff pastry and also using a pre-made one to make a really delicious poached pear and almond tart with a lattice top (that I actually forgot to take a picture of). I ate the shit out of that thing in just two days and would happily make it again in my own time. The next practical was spent rolling out our own puff pastry and making a really disappointing tart with it... essentially a glorified fruit salad. I really wish I had been able to make the tart I actually liked with my own puff pastry, but instead I ended up throwing away most of the fruit salad tart after eating some of the puff pastry edges because it was just generally disgusting. The puff pastry was amazing though, perhaps even an experience I'd like to re-live... despite the heartache (or perhaps just intense labour) involved in making about a thousand little layers of butter to puff up.
Also, as another note the gods that be at Le Cordon Bleu London... I really wanted to make beautiful little palmiers!!! The chef in practical made us cut the pastry trimmings off though so that we wouldn't be able to use them for palmiers :( Why show us these things in the demo if only to tease us?! Anyway, here are my puff pastry scraps currently hiding away in my boyfriend's freezer (maybe?) to be used for little pies or something. They really wanted to be palmiers though... just look at them!!!
The beginning of the next week (despite some definite personal drama in my life) definitely started off pretty well with a lecture on cheese! CHEESE! (There was also one on wine before which was good... just not as good as the cheese one.)
A veritable cheesy feast!!!
Then, there was another exam piece. Piece of cake right? Easy squeezy lemon peasy? (See what I did there? See it?) Well... no. these were pretty damn hard. the making of all the elements was not actually that bad, choux pastry was fairly easy and pastry cream we had already made several times. The decorating, though... was entirely another story. For the exam, we will have to produce a dozen identical eclairs. Rolling on the fondant was fairly easy, even though I slightly over-heated mine so it wasn't quite as glossy as it could have been. The final element of chocolate piping was ridiculous though, and I'm pretty sure everyone in my group felt the same way. I think we all had this looming false sense of hope because we were so, so close to finishing; then we remembered about the chocolate piping... and the fact that we couldn't just wipe it off the plate like we'd been able to do before. So, here is my needs-a-lot-more-pracitce attempt at eclairs.
Here are the ones that I actually liked and took home to feed Erin and her flat mate who I stayed with that night:
Overall, I think I actually liked the eclairs a lot more than I thought I would considering the fact that they had pastry cream in them, which on all previous encounters I had been thoroughly disgusted by. Thank goodness I recently went on a culinary school equipment shopping spree though for things that can help me practice for the exam in about a month's time, like a whole kilo of Fondant Patissier! Also... thank goodness I came up with the ingenious concept at about three in the morning of saving and cutting toilet paper rolls in half and then rolling the fondant and piping chocolate decoration onto them so I don't have to make the choux and pastry cream every time. This is not crazy, right? Right? Anyone? Anyway, I think it's brilliant... especially since I can just roll the fondant over the old fondant and over the old fondant, again and again and again and again. Uhh... I don't know. Anway...
The final picture that I'll be sharing in this post was the result of, by far, the most enjoyable practical so far and something which I feel might be quite useful to my personal future business endeavours: bread making. (Although... I didn't like the soda bread. Am I the only one?)
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