This...

...is AMAZING.

https://cafedelites.com/slow-cooker-honey-garlic-chicken/

That is all.

reduce REUSE recycle

Since I had switched to a Langstroth hive, I had two Golden Mean top bar hives plus a nuc box and all their insulation panels and equipment just taking up space in the yard, garage, and attic. It seemed silly to leave them to attract termites so I posted on the local beekeeping association message board and within minutes I had a response from someone who knew exactly what they were, had worked with the guy who makes them, and was excited to take them off my hands. In fact, she was going to put them in a nearby conservation area which happens to be one of my favorite places to walk. She didn't take the stands that my husband made for them, she said they were "too nice" and I should find a way to repurpose them. Which I will do, and will post when I have figured out something for them.

But, in order to give her the hives, I had to finally clean out all the comb and the last bit of honey that was in them. It's taken a few days to: get all the bees off them, extract the honey (about one pint, in total), and render the beeswax. I have a little more wax to render in the next few days but most of it is done. This yielded just over 13 ounces of wax. There are 2 more combs that I left next to the new hive figuring the bees could try to get whatever honey out of it that they could before I take them away and melt them down.

Two days ago I fed them more syrup, they hadn't finished the last jar so I set the new one in the hive in a way that the bees could get to both of them and stay protected; I put the second box on without any frames so it's just a covered open space with the syrup jars. On Sunday if the weather is good I'll go in there and see how they're doing. I am not supposed to get into the main body of the hive until it's been a week since I put them in so I'll get in there Monday or Tuesday and see if Alcibee is out of her cage and doing well. 

Almost Ready

Not pictured: Banana Bread

The Baking with Honey entries have been delivered to the fairgrounds. I have been up since 5 am baking bread, making Earl Grey white chocolate ganache (for the scones) and generally getting everything ready. I'm super tired, as I only went to bed at 1 am!

See, I got home from my first shift at my new job at 12:30 am and then I needed to form the loaves of bread and get them proofing. Prior experience has taught me they don't need that long to proof and so I set my alarm for 5 am. That was perfect timing. The bread got baked, it smelled lovely (tasted lovely, too. I may or may not have eaten almost half a loaf just now for lunch....) and I had enough time to coat the scones with ganache, cut the brownies, get everything wrapped up and loaded in the car.

After I dropped the youngerchild off at the bus stop I went to my riding lesson at which I almost got kicked; the horse I've been riding lately gets rather anxious when being tacked up but is fine basically the rest of the time so I'm learning how to avoid his teeth and hooves while still getting him ready. I was able to scoot out of the way this time! As soon as my lesson was over I drove straight to Topsfield and got all my entries checked in. Then I headed home and got cleaned up.

Now I have to plan the entries in the regular Foods Department competitions. I entered in 4 categories: yeast bread, muffins, 2-crust pie and 1-crust pie. All that baking will happen on Saturday. Sunday we'll head up to the fair and I'll see how well my entries did!

And So the Baking Begins

The Topsfield Fair opens this weekend. 

My canning entries have been in for weeks. The Beekeeping and Honey Division entries are due Thursday and the Foods Department entries will be brought up on Sunday when we go to the fair. we're going on Sunday this year because we do have school commitments on Saturday and each day of that first weekend has different baking categories in which to compete.

Regardless, I need to do the Baking with Honey entries as those are due first. Today I made a batch of Honey Fudge Brownies and also a loaf of Banana Bread. Both recipes are from The Vermont Beekeeper's Cookbook, from which I found last year's prizewinning Honey Cheesecake recipe. I won't cut the brownies until it's time to bring them up on Thursday. Each of these items seemed to be things I could cool and wrap and refrigerate without the flavor or texture being affected. Tomorrow I'll make the honey scones and start the bread dough. I already have a jar of Peach Salsa which was made with honey so I thought I'd try to enter that as well.

Trial Run

Next week I'll be doing a lot of baking for the fair. First of all, I want to enter a few things in the Baking With Honey competitions. I made scones with honey a few weeks ago which I'll do again but I wanted to try bread again. Last night I tweaked the bread recipe I use with Legion to increase the amount of honey as my previous attempt was described as "not enough honey."

The proportions are: 16 oz. Legion, 38 oz. bread flour, 1/2 cup honey, 2-1/2 cups water, and 2 T. salt.

I'm happy with the crumb, and an independent observer said she could taste the honey, as I can't right now (I have a cold). I'll make another batch in a week and have it ready to enter as of Thursday morning. It'll be tricky because I'm starting a new job and my first shift is Wednesday evening, getting out at midnight. Hopefully I can get it all together!

Week Summary

Currently, I have a batch of pizza sauce in the canner. This is another thing I've not made before but since the farm share keeps offering unlimited produce I felt like it was a thing to try. I brought home just over 9 pounds of plum tomatoes yesterday, just enough to make a batch, using the recipe in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, page 366. For this, I used the 12 ounce jars, since I feel that we often open a jar of pizza sauce and then only use half of it. Maybe this is still too much in a jar but we'll just have to commit to using more of it.

Also this week I turned in all my canning entries so I'm done making canned goods for the fair. I'm not done making things for the fair, though, but now we've turned to the baking part. In an experiment, I made my usual bread with a few changes in technique. First of all, I made the bread with all bread flour and a whole lot more water: 16 ounces starter (Legion), 38 ounces bread flour, 4 T. sugar, roughly 22-24 ounces water, 2 T. salt. Then I turned the dough into an oiled bowl and used the pinch and turn technique I used most recently for the baguettes a few weeks ago. This dough is much stiffer and difficult to do this way but I wanted to see what happened. What did happen was we got a nice, spongy crumb with a few extra air pockets in it. Not what I expected but still very good. I might try a few more tweaks before I have to make a batch for the fair.

Lastly, I made a cheesecake using the honey cheesecake recipe that won last year in the baking with honey division. I'd never actually tried it again so had no idea how it was. Well, it may now be my go-to cheesecake. It was the smoothest cheesecake I've ever made, and it didn't crack, either! My trick there was to turn the oven off just before I though it was done and then leave it in the oven to cool down more slowly. And so easy: 2 pounds of cream cheese, 2/3 cup honey, 4 eggs and some vanilla, poured over a graham cracker crust and baked at 300˚F for about an hour.

I'm still trying to decide what to bake for the fair in general. It depends on which day I can go on that first weekend as there are different categories competing on different days. I won't really know which day I can go until much closer to the actual weekend. It's also Parents' Weekend for the youngerchild's school and I'm starting a new job that week as well!

Peach Salsa

One of the things I wanted to try with all those peaches I got this season was a peach salsa. I found a recipe that uses honey as the sweetener which is also appealing to me. I used a recipe I found online but increased the jalapeños because I had more that I wanted to use up. Here's my tweaked recipe: 

12 large ripe peaches, peeled and diced

¼ cup lime juice

½ cup honey

1 large red onion, finely diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

3 jalapeño peppers, seeded and finely diced

4 T. chopped fresh cilantro

Mix all the ingredients except for the peaches and set aside in a bowl. As the peaches are chopped, add to the bowl, stirring to coat the peaches. Ladle into jars, leaving a half-inch headspace, and process for 25 minutes in boiling water. On taste-testing the salsa before it went into the canner I found it very garlicky but I suspect it will mellow with the processing.

Adventures in Beekeeping

The flaw in my reasoning yesterday was that not just a few bees hovered around the honeycombs trying to find their way home. ALL my bees, it seemed, discovered a bunch of honey "just lying around" and decided to bring it home with them. This is called robbing. Usually a stronger hive robs a weaker one. Leaving a bunch of unattended honeycomb is probably the weakest hive they've ever encountered and they took full advantage. The backyard was unusable yesterday due to the Beemageddon.

Finally, after dark, there were only a few confused bees left. I put my bee suit back on and set to work getting all that was left inside. All told, I think they got back half the honey I'd taken. I guess that's OK. It means I don't have to feed the colonies as much this fall, I suppose. Anyway, some of the honeycomb had been in a colander straining during the heat of the day and a LOT of bees were stuck in that honey. There was nothing I could do but heat the honey and strain out all the dead bees. That yielded over a pint. Then I started more of the comb to straining overnight and throughout the day today. Finally, I gradually melted all the comb and strained out the wax. And put my bee suit back on today and hosed down the patio so the bees would finally give up and go away.

In all, I harvested just under 3 pints of honey. I don't know yet how much wax I have as it's cooling; I'll weigh it later.

This is the sort of experience I hope to avoid once I get my flow hive up and running next year. 

Queened

Today the weather is perfect and I went out to inspect the bees. First I may have finally solved the problem of my smoker going out too quickly - I used wood pellets that are meant for wood stoves. (We have them because they make excellent litter for the rabbit's litter box. We do not have a wood stove.) The smoker stayed lit and smoking exuberantly for the entire time I needed smoke. That was a nice change of pace.

In Beeyoncé's hive, there was a reasonable amount of honey and some brood cells. I did not see her highness the queen, but I didn't inspect every comb. Things were looking fine so I let them alone.

In the Langstroth, I moved all the top bars out which were moderately full of honey without any evidence of brood. There weren't a lot of bees left, either. The box got refilled with its original frames and will be ready to start a new colony in the spring.

In the other top bar, I found evidence of a new laying queen (larvae and brood cells, not just drone cells). And then I saw the new queen herself. She shall be called Hebee. (Hebe was the goddess of youth in ancient Greek mythology.) This hive also had a decent amount of honey and so I will continue to let them do their thing. Clearly they already have, as I have no idea how they managed to requeen but I'm glad they did.

I took all the bars from the Langstroth and am slowly extracting honey. I crushed some of the combs and they are in a strainer set over a pot in the sun. Right now, everything is outside basically attracting all the bees who are coming to get what honey they can. By nightfall they should be back in their hives and I'll be able to bring everything into the house at which point I can do a better job of getting the honey out of the rest. 

Bee Focused

This morning I drove up to Topsfield and entered a cheesecake in the Fair. This was for the Beekeeping Department's Baking with Honey competition. I discovered they had a category for cheesecakes and I'd recently received a cookbook from a nurse at work that was all honey recipes. The cheesecake recipe was four ingredients: cream cheese, honey, eggs and vanilla. Suffice to say I'd never made this cheesecake before, and probably making it and entering it in the fair was...brave? Something, anyway.

Making the cheesecake yesterday was a messy affair. First of all, the recipe was just for the cheesecake itself, no crust, and the pan was supposed to be set in water. I was having none of that, though. I made a graham cracker crust, prebaked it, and made the cheesecake batter. This is where things started to derail. In school we learned to pour viscous fluids like honey into little pouches of plastic wrap and then squeeze out through a hole in the bottom. Less waste. Evidently I squeezed too hard, and honey blooped out all over my hand, the outside of the mixing bowl, and the counter. I think a little actually ended up in the batter. I salvaged what I could. Not having a dishwasher is really a pain.

I'm not sure what it is about baking for the Fair that draws out the chutzpah and clumsiness in me all at once.

Anyway, I baked this cheesecake for about 65 minutes at 300˚F and let it cool. And it cracked. Not much I could do about it now, I guess. This morning I drizzled it with honey and sprinkled it with lavender buds and drove two hours round trip to get it there. Fingers crossed? Maybe?

This afternoon, rather late in the day, I changed the feeder for the bees again. I only have a few more weeks to build up their stores, after all. They were remarkably docile, both hives. I take that as a good sign.

Accomplishments

After making all that apricot jam, I left the canner out for a few days, hoping it would inspire me to work on those fiddleheads I'd bought. It did; today I pickled them and got three 8-ounce jars of garlic fiddlehead pickles. I followed this recipe but changed one thing, mainly that I used champagne vinegar rather than white wine vinegar. The champagne vinegar is from the batch I made a while back. Also, I'm not sure why it says not to submerge the jars when canning; I did submerge and can them the usual way and they sealed up perfectly.

A little blurry but you get the idea...

The other things I managed to get done today were to get the "yurt" ready for summer and wrap up the soaps I made last month with my friend. Several years ago I bought one of those backyard tent things that you can put a table and chairs in and then enjoy your dinner without all the mosquitos. Ours happens to be hexagonal so looks more like a yurt than anything, although I think it's officially a gazebo. Every year we have to hang up the curtains; I made the mistake one year of hanging them up too soon and the stormy spring weather tore off all the velcro straps so I wait now until the weather finally calms down and the pollen surges have passed.

My honey-beeswax-lavender-rosemary soaps finally finished curing and I wrapped them in parchment paper with little labels so we can either use them here or give as gifts. Two were already gifted so I only have six left. However, each bar lasts a fairly long time; and I still have other bars of soap from my friend to use here if I decide to give them all away.

Another New Skill

Two days ago I learned how to make soap. I have a couple of friends who make soap, one of whom sells her products. I had saved up some beeswax and honey for her and brought it over so we could make soap together.

First of all, apparently beeswax isn't the best ingredient for soap, at least not in large quantities. A quick web search suggested only 1-2% of the total oil weight should be beeswax so we used... 10g. And it was a challenge to melt it and incorporate it into the mix.

My friend showed me how to calculate the lye content, make the lye water, and measure out the oils. What we decided to do was to hold some of the water back, boil it, and use it to melt the beeswax. It sort of worked, but the minute we added it back in the wax would solidify so there were tiny little flecks of beeswax in the soap. I still think it worked reasonably well.

She wanted to make a soap with layers, so first we made the basic soap, which is white. She used palm oil, coconut oil, olive oil and that little bit of beeswax. When you mix in the lye and whisk and whisk, it turns white (begins the process of saponification). After we added the scents (lavender with a little rosemary) she divided it into three portions. To the second portion we added about a tablespoon of honey and the tiniest bit of turmeric. To the third, about a teaspoon of turmeric.

We poured the soaps one at a time into the molds, trying to keep the layers level in between. Then they sat, wrapped in towels, in an insulated bag, for two days. Today I picked up my oblong of soap, which looks beautiful, and cut it into eight bars. These will now sit for a month to finish the process of saponification and become lovely little bars of soap. They smell divine.

Catching Up

Two days ago I picked up the farm share. There are only two more weeks left after this one, and things are definitely winding down. There were very few tomatoes left, but lots of kale and escarole. This was also probably the last week for green beans. I came home with a few small eggplants, a few tomatoes, 1 quart cherry tomatoes, 2 quarts green beans, 5 tomatillos, 3 serrano peppers, 4 sweet peppers, 4 squashes, half a pint of raspberries, beets, escarole, kale, chard, lettuce, parsley, cilantro, dill, onions, garlic, leeks and scallions. I have some things set aside to make probably the last batch of caponata, and I'm slowly working through the rest.

Today after work I made another half-batch of salsa verde. The vegetables are first roasted for about 8 minutes under the broiler and then puréed with the vinegar, cilantro, lime juice, and cumin. As before, I got 2 half-pint jars and 1 half-cup jar out of that.

Other things that have gone on this week: I made lobster mac and cheese, which is terrific drizzled with white truffle oil. Along with that I tried macarons again, getting a little better this time. I used up the leftover honey lemon ganache I'd used on my coffee cake I'd made for the fair. When I ran out of ganache, I filled the macarons with strawberry jam.

Success!

It's rainy and cold today, which is just the day to go to the fair if you don't like the crowds. Which is exactly how we like it! We generally avoid the midway and the rides so the rain doesn't bother us.

Salsa Verde

Part of the collection of strawberry jams

Elderberry Jelly

Strawberry Jam

First off, the canning results: First place for salsa (salsa verde), sweet relish (zucchini relish), and "other" jelly (elderberry). Second place for the collection of 3 jams (variations on strawberry), apricot jam, and "other" pickled vegetables (carrots).  Third place for strawberry jam and raspberry jam. The dill pickles and the bread and butter pickles didn't place. The judges did something different this year. There were no Honorable Mentions, and if they didn't think a category didn't have a first place entrant they just didn't fill it. Some categories only had a third place awarded. Many categories had multiple winners in each place. It was unusual; I've not seen anything like it before.

Apricot Jam

Honey Lemon Almond Coffee Cake

Next, to the bee house for the baking with honey competition! I'm quite pleased to report that the Honey Lemon Almond cake won the coffee cake class and the Honey Whole Wheat Bread placed second in the whole grain yeast bread class. And I got some suggestions for a class to take this winter that isn't far from home and covers top bar hives.

Dilled Carrots

For the rest of the day we wandered around, ate fair food, watched emus race and female lumberjacks chop up logs. We fell in love with the rabbits, as always, and watched a chick hatch. And we rode an elephant. It was an odd collection of things.

Zucchini Relish

Raspberry Jam

Baking with Honey

This morning I finished up the honey lemon almond cake and brought it and the bread up to the Topsfield Fairgrounds. The cake was made yesterday, and then I put it in the fridge until this morning when I could make the ganache and finish it up. Here's the final result:

For the ganache, I used honey instead of corn syrup as the invert sugar even though the rules exempt the frostings from the requirement that at least 1/4 of the sweetener be honey. I thought it would round out the flavor nicely. And the black walnuts are some of my foraged stash. They smell so lovely when they're chopped and I think the stronger flavor of the black walnuts stands out against this very dense cake.

Here's the bread from yesterday as well. I took the one that I salvaged mid-bake so it wouldn't have parchment stuck to it and entered it.

I will find out in two days how my canned goods and these baked goods did and will report back!

Excavating

Now is the time to dig out the fridge. And it's a good day for it as there is a sidewalk repair going on across the street and it's hard to get in and out of the driveway. Because of the excavator.

With all the accumulated farm share veggies I made a triple batch of eggplant caponata (9 jars) and a full batch of hot pepper sauce (also 9 jars). I had to run to the store to get more jars.

Also today, I baked the bread and cake with honey that I plan to enter in the fair. I have to bring those up tomorrow to Topsfield. I was hoping to do that tonight but my husband and I are going to a lecture downtown and so I made time to drive up there tomorrow. The bread is the same whole wheat bread recipe I've been using with Legion and the cake is the honey lemon almond pound cake I came up with when I was in school. I'll top that with a lemon ganache and black walnuts. Tomorrow morning. Early. I don't think I'll have time to do that tonight. There was a bit of a crisis with the bread, though. The parchment paper I bought recently is *ahem* not of the best quality and STUCK to the bread. What a disaster! When I discovered the problem, the other loaf was in the oven so halfway through the baking process I had to get it off the bad parchment and onto another baking sheet lined with better parchment. This seems to have worked and I have one loaf without any stuck-on parchment to enter. I did go back to Amazon and write a truthful review of the parchment paper. I will never buy that again!

Didn't Really Go As Planned

Today I was checking on the bees and noticed they were building combs like crazy and getting close to the back of the hive. I needed to get in to add spacers between the bars and I figured as it was a sunny day I had time to do an inspection. I got dolled up in my gear as I was going to be more invasive than usual. That turned out to be a very good idea.

Things were going great until one of the new honey combs fell off the bar and landed on the bottom of the hive. Bees came charging out of the hive with a loud, annoyed buzz and some started drowning in honey at the bottom of the hive. I continued on with my inspection, thinking that I might have to get that comb out of there or maybe they'd figure it out on their own? As I got further along and could see the bees were doing just fine with raising more bees, I decided I should get it out. I ran back into the house for a bowl and then tried to lift the comb out of the hive. All covered with angry bees.

My total beekeeper sting count is now up to three. I got stung once on each hand, through my gloves. At least that allowed me to get the stingers out with minimal effort. I went back into the house for a large spoon.

Today's on the left, the older honey on the right.

After getting the comb out, finally, without any more stings, I gradually got the hive put back together. Then came the task of helping the still alive bees out of the bowl of comb and honey. Hopefully, they can get the honey off themselves and find their way back into the hive. If they can't I will feel bad but at least I know the hive is healthy and can recover from the loss.

Once I got all the living bees off the comb I brought it into the house and strained it. The one comb yielded 2.5 cups of honey. You can see from the photo it's much lighter in color (and less dense) than the honey I got after the winter. It also tastes different. The wax will be set aside for my friend and her soap making.

Lastly, I made a batch of granola as we were out. I love making granola because the coconut oil smells so amazing when it bakes. 

Brunch and Bread

This morning we hosted a little brunch with my friends and fellow canners. I wanted to make a coffee cake that I developed during my pastry classes - the honey lemon almond cake I made on butter cake day. To scale it up to bundt cake size I tripled the recipe, so it used 12 ounces of butter and a whole dozen eggs! In addition, it used 9 ounces of honey, which used up all the honey I had in the house that wasn't from my own hive. (As you might imagine, I don't really want to bake with that honey, not only is it a denser consistency but I don't have all that much of it!)

For the topping, I had some white chocolate lime ganache which I spooned it over the top and then I sprinkled the cake with chopped, toasted black walnuts. These were from last autumn's foraging out on the bike path. It was a nice way to top off this cake. We all loved the cake, and everyone had seconds, so there is less than 1/4 of the cake left.

Also this weekend I made more bread, a whole wheat with molasses instead of honey or maple syrup. I had to do it by hand again. I can't wait for the Kitchenaid mixer to come back! It should be here in about a week. From the sound of it, they are replacing almost all of its insides.

Tonight I'll make yogurt and let it grow overnight. Because I've been working so much lately I haven't had time to do a lot of things in the kitchen and I've fallen behind on the things I try to do regularly. I should be catching up things and having more time soon.

And to my friends, thanks for coming over and all your generous gifts!

THIS.

This is what I've been (not so) patiently waiting for: springtime, and the chance to check on the bees. And maybe even get some honey. I wasn't sure, you know, that there would be any for me to harvest. But the weather has been consistently good, the dandelions are blooming, and it seemed like time to remove the insulation panels and take a peek inside.

After I got home from work yesterday I went out (gearless, mind you, although I wondered if I should suit up) with my tools and removed the insulation. Next I had to attach the hardware to put the window cover back. I hadn't been planning on getting in to check on the bees but my curiosity got the better of me and I opened up the hive. First I removed the fondant boards. They'd eaten through about half of one and almost none of the next. I set those aside and started looking at the combs. The first one I pulled out had a little honey but was mostly empty comb. The second was mostly capped honey cells. The third was the one in the photo - almost entirely capped honey cells and very heavy. I set them aside and peeked at a fourth comb. This one was also mostly capped on the back but open on the front. Figuring that was where the bees were feeding most recently I left that one alone. I moved the false back all the way to the back and moved an empty comb forward. Then I closed up the hive and took these combs, surprisingly bee-free, into the house.

Did I mention I hadn't been planning on doing this? 

I took a big pot and cut the combs off the bars and into the pot. (The bars were later returned to the hive because they had comb remnants on them and it seemed a better place for the bees to start another comb.) Then I broke the combs into smaller pieces so I could crush them up. I felt like a bear, breaking combs apart with my paws, stopping every once in a while to lick a finger or chew on a little comb. (Don't worry, I washed my hands often!) After a few attempts at filtering I settled on a wire mesh strainer over a large sturdy plastic pitcher. It's been a day and the last of it is still straining but, here:

is the first jar of honey I've ever harvested.

And without my gear! I'm so proud of myself for being brave/stupid enough to do that.

All told, I have 7 cups of honey and might get another half a cup before all this is over. It's denser that other local honeys I've bought, likely because it spent the winter getting thicker. It's not as sweet; we did a taste test today. But it does have a floral taste. Sometime in the next day or so I'll take the wax, melt it down, and give it to my friend who is starting to make soap. For those of you who were hoping to join me when I did this, sorry, it sort of happened, but I still will have to do a bar by bar inspection in about a month so we'll plan on that...

Today the bees were very active, bringing in every color of pollen imaginable. Even that pretty blue. 

Day 18: Butter Cakes

This was another day in which we got to experiment, which was fun!

We started the day by having cheesecake for breakfast. Now, I'd already had cheesecake for breakfast as I had all those mini-cheesecakes from Monday and wanted to make sure I'd tasted all of them, so I cut two of them into quarters and had my share of each. However, once we got to school we took out those two NY Cheesecakes and cut one up for Second Breakfast. It was creamy and wonderful, even if it was cracked on top! I believe Chef took the other one home.

Sadly, there was no time for Elevensies or Luncheon, or even Afternoon Tea, as we spent the rest of the day making cakes based in butter. First we made a large rectangular cake with rum soaked raisins and maraschino cherries. Later in the day it was cut into six large squares and each square was spackled with marzipan and washed with egg yolk. After Chef decorated a few with a fork, I took over and made a fun basket-weave on the remaining three. These were left to dry out for a few hours and then briefly baked to brown the marzipan. I can't wait to try it!

Next, each team made a batch of Pain de Genes, as we need these for a future project. Ultimately we had eight cakes which we froze. Then each team made an additional butter based cake before we started on our individual experiments. There was pound cake and Sacher cake and Quatre Quarts. My partner picked the Gateau Basque. We'd been warned ahead of time that it was a "pain in the Basque" and I'm here to tell you that is SO true. I may never make this cake again. Even though it tasted amazing. Why? It was the fiddliest dough I've ever seen. It's butter, flour, almond flour and sugar, with a little rum. You're supposed to roll it out and then line rings with it. Well, we rolled it out between parchment sheets in four batches because it was so sticky and soft. The texture was more like a very soft cookie batter. We stuck those in the freezer to harden while my partner made a double batch of almond cream for the filling.

When the dough had set up a bit, we tried to get it into the rings. Ultimately we peeled the parchment off the top, set the rings on the dough and used a knife to cut out perfectly fitting rounds and transferred them with the bottom parchment still attached. We then had to use spatulas to smear the dough on the sides of the rings which took ever so long. Every once in a while Chef would walk by and say, "Aren't you done yet?" with a knowing smile. Finally all the rings were ready and filled with almond cream. It rises a lot so we didn't put very much in although some clearly had too much as the cream oozed out during baking. I then had to cut more rings of dough with the parchment paper for the tops and then we were able to peel the parchment off once we had the tops on. It helped to dip our fingers in ice water to seal up the crusts. These were then washed with an egg wash, decorated with fork lines, and baked. As I said, incredibly tasty.

Gateau Basque, Pound Cake and Quatre Quarts

Back: honey lemon, rosewater, apple walnut
Front:Blueberry lemon, honey quince, lemon pistachio

Lastly, we were given a set of parameters for ratios of sugar to flour, eggs to fat, and so on, and tasked with coming up with our own recipe. Our only initial guidance was to start with four ounces of butter. From there, we could play around however we wanted. Each of us was to make eight cupcakes so we could share them. I chose honey, lemon zest, and almond flour and made a dense, sweet little cake. The others used lemon and blueberries, lemon and pistachio, honey and quince, apples and walnuts, and rosewater. All of them were yummy, there were no failures. (We were told sometimes there were failures.)

As we had lots of cakes left over we gave them to the savory students and got a nice dinner of roast lamb and other lamb and grain dishes. I am so spoiled.