I know, I know…it has been far too long. I apologize for not keeping you posted on my pastry school happenings, so how about we play a bit of catch up? Since we talked last, I was doing sugar showpieces and taking my first exam. Well, a lot has happened since then. There has been ice cream & sorbets, plated desserts, sugar candy, tarts, my second exam and now I’m on to breads & breakfast pastries. Besides school I have also been busy with internships and “stages” (1-day internships) where I have gotten the opportunity to see the inner workings of kitchens, bakeries, and small businesses. School has been a whirlwind and I’m loving each section that we cover, I can’t believe it’s already more than half way over.

In the ice cream section we learned to balance an ice cream  recipe so that we could create any type of flavored ice cream that would have the correct amounts of fat, sugar, non-fat solids, and emulsifiers. By balancing each recipe the final product result in a very creamy texture. Along with learning ice creams we were also taught how to make sorbets and ice cream cakes. The picture below is an ice cream “bombe” which is a molded ice cream cake of vanilla parfait, raspberry coulis and chocolate ice cream. At the end of this traveling home on the bus and the train was not an option, everything had to be well packed with ice and whisked home in a taxi or fear of melting and a great mess!

After ice cream came plated desserts where we got to see how desserts seen mainly in restaurants are put together in an artistic way. Some dishes that we learned included: souffle, creme brulee, flan, chiboust, and chocolate lava cake. Since I did not have my camera with me during this section, these photos are courtesy of my amazing partner at the time, Erica!

We also were introduced to sugar confections including: caramels, marshmallows, hard candy, pate de fruit, and gums. Out of everything we have made, so far caramels have given me the most frustration with getting the right set (either it would be too soft or too hard), so if any of you have made caramels successfully before I would love to get your imput! I must have made the caramels over ten times and still haven’t gotten them right.

After sugar candies we moved to one of my favorite sections: tarts. We learned three types of dough that we would blind bake and fill to make our tarts: pate sablee (fine and delicate), pate sucree (sweet dough), and pate foncer (for sweet & savory tarts). Shown in the photograph is a blueberry tart with a streusel topping, Mille Feuille (puff pastry with pastry cream), and St. Honore (puff pastry, pate choux, and vanilla creme legere) tarts.

Whew, that was a long post, next time I promise to get back to you sooner! Plus, I have to tell you all breads & breakfast pastries and the apple pie competition I entered happening this Sunday.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 3:49 pm and is filed under The French Pastry School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.