The last couple of days have been pretty hectic, but at least the random heavy snow has stopped for now (I don't want my classes to be canceled anymore).
Yesterday we made meringues, paris brest and chocolate mousse and got to sit for the lunch being made by the culinary students, so it was jam-packed. I love meringues, whenever I have them it always reminds me of the holidays when my Mom makes meringue mushrooms with her buche de noel - yum! We were allowed to make them a little more interesting by making variations with chocolate or almond, vanilla and lemon flavorings. I chose chocolate (big surprise) and worked hard on not letting myself get overwhelmed by working alone. Chef Katie made a joke that by now I've worked on my own as much as I've worked with a partner. She told me that my meringue batter looked perfect and then, as I was piping it, she announced to the whole class that my meringues made me MVP that morning! Some of my classmates even came over to watch me piping - needless to say, it was a huge ego boost and I was on cloud 9 for the rest of the day. After that we made the pate a choux dough for the paris brest and baked our circles. Chef Katie then taught us a neat trick for using our leftover pate a choux - mix it with a handful of parmesan cheese and any other spices or flavorings you want - I used black pepper and garlic powder, and then pipe into little mounds. These little cheese puffs are amazing! Dave loves them and I'm already planning when I can make them again. We wound up filling the paris brest with our chocolate mousse, which looked beautiful. Usually they're filled with a praline cream, but we were practicing making the mousse, so there you go!
Today Julie came back! She's still feeling pretty terrible, but she's no longer contagious so she toughed it out and made it back to class. It's kind of funny because even though I got my partner back, we were all working individually for most of the day. We started pies, which meant that today was a day of preparation - making our pie doughs and a cooked apple filling for tomorrow. I also suffered another stupid cut today. As Chef Katie would say, my chef's knife jumped up and "bit me" and I got a small cut one one of my fingers, which means I was cursed with the dreaded finger cot/blue condom. I think everyone cut themselves today - curse of the pie doughs I guess. Lots of blue finger cots.
Since I didn't have to go to work this afternoon, I brought a lot of my leftover class projects over to my old co-workers. It was nice getting to see them again, and I always love getting to feed people. Plus, now my fridge isn't overrun with so much stuff, which is good for my waistline!
I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow of the fabulous apple pie and fruit tart - yum!
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