practice makes perfect...oui?

I never thought I'd say this, but I miss baking bread. That's right - I miss waiting for the yeast to rise and the little breaks you get while the bread does its thing all by itself. Because pate choux, pastry cream and crème anglaise do not attempt to do anything besides be perfect and stress me out. And dirty a ton of dishes in the process. This past Saturday was a looooong day.

We once again made pate choux and pastry cream in our groups, both of which turned out just fine for my group. We practiced making our swans since that's what we'll be graded on for our practical next week. We were then all individually required to make a small batch of crème anglaise. I was glad we were able to practice it alone, however, I'm sure the sight of me stirring milk and sugar over the stove while attempting to whisk a ton of eggs and egg yolks (17 total!) together with the other hand, was quite a sight to see. Meanwhile I also had my notebook with the recipe scribbled on it tucked into my apron and it fell onto the floor at least five times. Note to self: the faster you memorize key recipes, the sooner you stop looking like a total klutz. After the milk mixture has boiled, you have to temper the eggs by adding a small amount of the milk mixture to them at a time, whisking all the way. Then you put it all back on the stove - double boiler style to help prevent the sauce from heating up too fast. I managed to complete all of this and then proceeded to stir. And stir. And stir some more. Finally my sauce was up to the required 185 degrees (probably from the hot daggers shooting out of my eyeballs into the pan as I watched it oh so carefully) and I was ready to remove it from the heat.

My hard work ended up paying off. I had the best looking crème anglaise of my group, so we used it to make our crème brûlée. The others were used in bread pudding and thrown out. Our crème brûlée was baked perfectly and Chef showed us how to use a torch to melt sugar on the top. When he asked if anyone wanted to try out the torch, I shot my hand up and began torching away. Even though I charred it a bit too much for my taste, I managed to exit class with this little beauty completely of my own making.

Our next assignment was to make a butter cream frosting so that we could learn some cake decorating basics on our leftover chiffon cakes from last week. We failed to get this icing right not one, but three times, and eventually had to make a basic flat icing. This whole sugar-melting thing is really a pain in the butt if you ask me. It makes for some frustrating frosting. We used our flat icing to spread over the cake and learned how to create shells around the edge of the cake. At this point, I'm pretty sure I don't have a career in cakes, but with a few hundred practice cakes, who knows? It was fun to practice...

This Saturday is our final exam and practical for pastry cream basics. Because I'm feeling a little on edge about the detailed work that's necessary for these products, I decided to try out a test run in my own kitchen today. My pate choux came out okay - they look good, but taste a little less than so - and my pastry cream came out wonderfully. I practiced putting together a few delicate swans and now all I need is a little pond for them to float around in.

Cross your feathers that I can create two swans that look this good on Saturday...