Marzipan

Monday we did marzipan. I'm especially pleased with my strawberry.

Pastillage part 2

We finished our pastillage boxes. The sides of mine broke into 5 pieces, which I wasted 45 minutes trying to repair. That meant that I didn't have much time to decorate the damned thing.

You can see that one of my royal icing strings broke when we moved the boxes. That was the least of my troubles by that time.

Once more, pastillage = devil-paste from hell.

Here are the boxes my classmates made.

Pastillage

Tonight, we did pastillage. Exactly what is pastillage? It's devil-paste, straight from hell, that's what it is. No pictures, much frustration. Maybe I will enjoy it more next week when we finish our projects.

Valentine cookies

I made some chocolate shortbread cookies with a chocolate-orange truffle filling. Rich and delicious! The pink ones aren't quite so day-glo pink in person.



The pink sugar sprinkles are so pretty!



I think the ones with the pink drizzles are my favorite.

Fruit desserts

Today we made a beautiful lemon chiboust gratin. I used strawberries and blueberries instead of the raspberries that the recipe called for. I also decorated the plate with a mango sauce.

And then we made absolutely divine pear tarts. They have a puff pastry base, with an almond macaroon/pastry cream mixture piped over it, topped with a poached pear. The caramel sauce is actually my favorite part of the dish. I don't care for the caramelized sugar cage on the plate in the picture (it's to the left, under the meringue.) Definitely not my idea.

Chocolate again

We did chocolate again Monday night. Mostly, we tempered chocolate, then our teacher demonstrated lots of techniques. I made a pretty molded bunny and some piped hearts, as well as the base and axis for a showpiece.

Tuiles

No pictures. Today, we made a variety of tuile batters: almond tuile, vanilla tuile, Florentine, and sesame. We baked them in all sorts of shapes, such as spoons, butterflies, cups, curlicues, etc. They were perfect garnishes for our panna cotta and sorbets.