I Didn't Forget

Pi day was last Monday. I did not forget! 

Having generally been frustrated with my usual pie crusts, I decided to make a lemon meringue pie with a pate sucrée crust. This is more common in tarts, but the sweetness of the crust offsets the tartness of the lemon filling and it worked well.

Per usual, I made two pies, as the elderchild in college also needed a pie. (Note to self: 1/4 of the master pate sucrée recipe and 1-1/3 of the lemon filling recipe in the Pilsbury cookbook made one 9" pie and one 8" pie. 1 full meringue recipe.)

Plus, it gave me an opportunity to use the blowtorch. My favorite part!

Tastes Like We Remember

When the kids were little, they went to a daycare which had its food provided by the daycare provider's husband's restaurant. One of the most popular items was chicken-orzo soup, aka Avgolemono. The kids both loved it, as did the adults. From time to time we would go back to his restaurant and buy it by the quart. But it's been a long time since we've been able to do that, and he doesn't have it on the menu every day. I decided to try my hand at making it.

I found this recipe on line and made a few tweaks based upon what I had in the house. Instead of four quarts of chicken stock I used two quarts of my "Ducken" stock and two quarts of water. I used about 3/4 cup lemon juice. Other than that, I followed the recipe to the letter. One thing I would change for the future would be to try using four eggs instead of three. It just wasn't thick enough. Otherwise, it tasted just like we remembered. The children were pleased.

The other project for today was more bread. Now that everyone is home and eating lunches here every day I need to make bread much more often. In my quest to get softer sandwich bread from my starter, I tried something new with this batch. I replaced some of the water with 1 cup of milk. I'm pleased to say that the bread is super soft and springy, and I will definitely use that trick again!

Even More Christmas

Last night a larger subset of our family got together for gift giving and dinner. There were 10 of us in total, and we had a lovely afternoon of appetizers and presents. Then for dinner I roasted a beef tenderloin, Mom made baked stuffed shrimp which we baked after the tenderloin came out of the oven, and I made Persian rice. Apparently, I had not yet made Persian rice after I got my new pots, which are thicker, so my usual timing to make tadiq didn't work out, and the tadiq did not form properly. At least the rice tasted good! I guess I'm going to have to practice.

For dessert, I made individual trifles from this recipe; it was fun to assemble everything in wine glasses but it definitely took up too much space in the fridge....

It was great to get together with my family, some of whom live far away so we don't see each other often enough. Merry Christmas!

Remember These?

A while back I brined Meyer lemons with the intention to dehydrate them and grind them into lemon salt. While I never did get a dehydrator I was reminded by a friend who is currently making her own trail foods that I could use the oven. Well, it took two days, and I had to grind them, dry the powder, and then regrind that, but now I have a jar of a nice lemon powder which is slightly salty with a hint of bay. Last night I baked some chicken sprinkled with this and it was just lovely! Glad to have another project completed. Not surprisingly, it smells a bit like the ground lime used in Persian cooking. 

Another Use for Roasted Beets

After making the beet and goat cheese tart, which was really tasty, by the way, I had a bunch of roasted golden beets left over. I knew there were chocolate cake recipes with red beets in them so I reasoned that there must be a cake recipe out there which uses golden beets. My reasoning was correct and I found this recipe for a Golden Beet Orange Cake.

So I made it. But since I didn't have any oranges, I used lemon juice and lemon extract instead. And it was very good. I brought the cake to work today, as I thought we were having a staff meeting. The meeting had been canceled so we just dove into it. When I first cut it, I took a couple of pieces, less than 1/4 of the cake, to some of my coworkers. I came back 10 minutes later to find only 1/4 of the entire cake was left! Everyone loved it and the beets made it moist. Will definitely have to do this again the next time I have golden beets from the farm.

Sweet and Sauer

This morning it was finally time to can the sauerkraut I'd been fermenting. Every once in a while I still heard a "bloop" when air escaped from the crock (there's a water seal) but it'd been a few weeks and I needed to get it into jars so I could enter it in the fair. The sauerkraut was packed into three pint and two half-pint jars and processed for 20 minutes, once I brought the water to a boil. Because you pack the sauerkraut cold, it's important to not heat it too quickly or the jars will break. When I first opened the canner I was afraid a jar had broken but I guess I got lucky.

The next thing I did was make cookies. I'd been wanting to make some for the kids and the original plan was stymied by the lack of powdered sugar and my disinterest in going back outside. So I took the recipe I have for lemon sablées and altered it.

Pistachio-Lemon Cookies

12 ounces butter at room temperature

10-1/4 ounces sugar

2 eggs

3-1/2 ounces milk

1 tsp lemon extract

1-3/4 tsp baking powder

1-1/2 ounces finely ground pistachios (be careful not to turn them into paste)

19-3/4 ounces flour

Cream the butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat until smooth. Add milk and extract and beat until smooth again. Add the dry ingredients and mix until dough is combined. Pipe onto a parchment-lined baking sheet in rosettes, and top each cookie with a pistachio and a piece of candied lemon peel. Bake at 350˚F for 12-13 minutes, turning the baking sheet once during baking. 

I tried playing around with the shape when I piped the dough - I was trying to make seashells but ended up with what looked like winking hedgehogs (1 pistachio, 1 piece of lemon peel). And who has ever heard of a lemony winking hedgehog?

Strawberry Overload

We started this day bright and early by going strawberry picking. Halfway to the farm (a good 30 miles away) I realized I was supposed to ping a friend to see if she wanted to go with us. Sorry, Sue, if you're reading this! I totally spaced!

Anyway, we were brought via hayride to a field that had not yet been picked this year. How awesome. We hardly moved, and yet we picked 17 pounds of strawberries. They were beautiful and large and tasty! After returning from the fields, we had strawberry doughnuts and headed home. I had to stop at the store to get sugar, and a few other essentials, and when we got home I got to work.

Strawberries to eat - the ones on the top of the heap, the least crushed.
Strawberries mixed with sugar for the shortcake. (The shortcake itself is currently in the oven.)
Strawberry jam - 9 cups.
Strawberry rhubarb jam - 1 pound of rhubarb and 2.5 cups of strawberry purée - 8.5 cups.

Swans on the pond

Strawberry soup - 1 quart of berries, 8 ounces of cream cheese, some mango juice drink and some honey. That was lunch.

At this point, we went out for an hour long canoe trip in the local pond. They only started renting canoes and kayaks on the weekends last week, and since we have an ambitious canoe trip ahead of us, I wanted everyone to get some practice.

Another stop at the store, to get a few more things, so I could make:

Strawberry Maple Smooch - kind of a strawberry maple syrup thing for cakes or ice cream or pancakes.
Strawberry Jalapeño jam - 4 cups strawberry purée and 1 cup diced jalapeño peppers - 7.5 cups.
Strawberry Lemon Marmalade - 7 cups.

I still have about 1.5 quarts of berries left for something. I plan to make strawberry pancakes for breakfast. I am setting aside 2 jars each of the plain strawberry, the strawberry rhubarb and the strawberry jalapeño jams for the fair. I may change my mind, but at least I've got some things to enter.

And, I have to make burgers for dinner. But I'm taking a break. It's only 5:30 pm.

Easter Treats

In the few days leading up to today, I was busy with work but also with baking. First, as a lunch box treat, I made Easter-themed Linzer cookies. In order to do this, I needed to get tiny little cookie cutters. Even with them being so small, the cookies needed to be a fairly large size to accommodate the challenges of asymmetric cut outs. Many of the rabbits broke, but here are some of the ones that made it:

The fillings were blueberry jam and strawberry lavender jam.

Today, in between Easter baskets, video games, an egg hunt and a walk to the grocery store, I made Puits D'amour (wells of love) out of quick puff pastry (butter, flour, salt and water, folded and rolled many times), lemon curd and meringue. Since they ended up being more oval than round, I took that as serendipity. They are egg shaped, after all.

Happy Easter!

Meyer Lemon Ideas

Happy New Year!

There's lot to write about, particularly the adventure of co-roasting a goose for dinner the other night, but I'll get to that when I make goose stock, hopefully soon. Today's slow-payoff project was to brine Meyer lemons.

A few weeks ago I'd purchased Meyer lemons to make curd but never got around to it. As it's the beginning of the season around here, I figured I will have a chance in a few weeks to do that but these lemons really shouldn't wait that long. My sister tipped me off to a blog called Punk Domestics (although, I think I made the slow cooker pulled pork using a recipe from there a long time ago) and I saw that someone had brined lemons for a year, dehydrated them and then ground them into a powder which was used as a spice. That sounds awesome. I want to do that.

Getting the lemons brined is a very quick process. I followed these instructions and incompletely quartered them and salted them, but when it was time to get them into the jar I added bay leaves and some water which had been boiled and then cooled, so I knew it was sterile. I'll leave it on the counter a few days until the salt has been dissolved and then they'll go into the fridge for 6-12 months.

That gives me that much time to figure out if I want to purchase a dehydrator or maybe by then I'll have an oven with a dehydrator feature. We'll see!

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!

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!

Day 27: More Viennoiserie

Last week when we each made a batch of croissant dough, we saved half of each batch for today. Danishes!

But first, we had to make more dough for tomorrow: four batches of croissant dough to make eight patons, and eight batches of puff pastry dough, and a single batch of brioche dough. So, in between making various danishes, we made all the turns for all our doughs and got them ready. Tomorrow there will be more croissants and some other fun things as well.

Then we got to work on the fillings for the danishes. We needed pastry cream, which was the base for the cheese danishes and the apricot ones, and a component of the pecan rolls (part remonce, part pastry cream). We also made a lemon filling.

Each danish was a different shape. The cheese ones were squares with the corners tucked in. The apricot danishes were pinwheels. The raspberry ones were bear claws and the lemon ones were little baskets. Some of the lemon ones had raspberries on them and others did not. The pecan rolls involved strips of dough with the filling, twisted and then rolled into snails. Everything was proofed, washed with egg wash, baked and then glazed or dusted with powdered sugar or both.

This week we didn't forget and with the scraps we made monkey bread.

Day 24: Petits Fours Frais

Yesterday's class involved making something we've made before, pâte à choux. However, we were making it in the context of petits fours frais, or fresh. Some of us had already done this when we volunteered to do the prep for that party back in the beginning of March. So when it came time to make the little tartlets, we were familiar with the process. Pate sucrée, almond cream, fresh fruits with apricot glaze and lemon curd with Italian meringue. I got to work the torch again, which always makes me happy.

The best part of yesterday was getting a sense of how far we'd come. We made pâte à choux in week 3. It's now week 12 and it was a whole lot easier. Not perfect, mind you, but easier.

Today I made a batch of lemon sablée cookies, which are being set aside to be sent to Vancouver. My great aunt, a woman very special to me, passed away a few weeks ago and, while I can't go to the memorial service, I can be there in spirit in the form of cookies. After all, food is love. I have one more batch of cookies to make (tomorrow) and then I'll send them up to my cousin.

Also, I finally got to that bag of Meyer lemons in the fridge, and currently have 5.5 cups of lemon curd in the canner.

Days 21 and 22: Cake and Ice Cream

Mimosa Cake

Yesterday we assembled three cakes that had a more Italian flair to them: Tiramisu, a Mimosa cake, and a "Mara" cake (so named, per chef, because Mara is a brand of strawberries). For all of these, we had to make the creams and syrups but the actual cake parts were already made. The tiramisu and mimosa cakes were made in bowls that were placed in the freezer so the creams would cling to the sides. Each bowl then had three layers of cake in them. For the tiramisu, we'd made coffee biscuits (a kind of sponge cake) and these were soaked in a coffee syrup and layered with a mascarpone cream. It was finished with cocoa powder and pieces of chocolate (which we also made, marbled white and dark chocolate). The mimosa cake was a lemon-ginger cake, soaked in a ginger-citrus syrup and layered with a citrus mousseline. That one was topped with lemon-ginger cake cubes and fresh fruit. For the Mara cake we used rings and there was a Grand Marnier cream that was used for the outside and the layers; the rest was a layer of meringue and a layer of almond cake soaked in strawberry syrup. We made a strawberry glaze from scratch, which was a lot like making jam. Ultimately, the Mara cake became one of the prettiest things I've done so far. See if you agree:

Black Currant Sorbet

Today's class was all about ice cream and sorbet. For the sorbets, we each had to make one; I chose black currant. It was an opportunity to use a saccharometer, which measures density of a liquid using the Baume scale. This device works exactly like the one we use to measure the specific gravity of beer. Because black currant purée is so thick, I ended up adding a lot of sorbet syrup and even a little water to get the density correct so I ended up with a LOT of sorbet. I thought ahead for the first time, oh, ever, and brought containers. So I packed up a quart for myself and left even more for tasting.

For the ice cream, we could each choose a flavor. I made an ice cream that I always ask for at the local ice cream shop and they never make. See, they make Earl Grey ice cream and Vienna Finger Cookie ice cream. All I ask is that they combine them. And they don't. For me, one of my comfort foods at work was to dip Vienna Finger cookies in Earl Grey tea. I think they go great together. So today I made it. I even had to run to the grocery store to get the cookies! Anyway, I steeped milk and cream with nine tea bags and got a nice flavor, then finished making the base and chilled it. After it was in the ice cream maker and the texture was right I added crumbled up cookies and put it in the freezer.

The next task was to come up with a way of presenting it. I immediately wanted to serve it in a teacup. But it needed to be more than that. One of the other students and I made tuile cookies and, after a few tries, I got what I wanted - a little teacup and saucer made out of a cookie. Here is the plated ice cream:

Ultimately, we set out all 14 of our ice cream and sorbet flavors for the savory students to sample, and they brought us lovely shellfish and salmon for dinner: ceviche, mussels, calamari paella, salmon baked in a puff pastry, pasta with clams. Mmm.

Back row: Black currant, Pineapple-apple, Vanilla, Strawberry, Macadamia
Middle row: Cinnamon Graham Cracker, Chocolate Coconut, Passion Fruit, Cherry
Front row: Caramel, Apricot, Blackberry, Earl Grey-VFC, Pine Nut

Day 19: French Cakes, Pi Day, and an Excess of Gravity

Citron Cake

Today and tomorrow are focusing on French cakes, particularly cake construction. We had almost all the cakes made already but to assemble them into beautiful creations we have to make all the other components. Between the two days there are five cakes to assemble. Today we completed the Citron cake, which is lemon based and incorporates a white genoise and an almond meringue layer, and the Triomphe cake, which is a walnut cake with caramel based cream and mousse layers. Each has a glaze on the top as well. We needed to make a lot of things:  a triple batch of buttercream, pastry cream, lemon curd, caramel extract, lime mousse base, chocolate mousse, a batch of ladyfinger batter but baked flat with red and green batter designs, strawberry syrup, Italian meringue, whipped cream, cake crumbs for the outside of the Citron cake, candied lemons, and I lost track of all the rest.

I will admit that today was a day of challenges for me. I added the cream to the caramelizing sugar too soon and then, in an effort to fix it, the caramel kind of exploded. All over the stove. And a bit on me. Fortunately, I only got a tiny burn, not enough to do anything but annoy me for the rest of the day. The stove was easier to clean than I imagined. While I was dealing with that I missed out on a few of the things my classmates were doing although I was able to catch up.

Triomphe Cake

The worse challenge was that I dropped an entire tray of 6 cakes. Yes. I did that. I felt terrible. I still do feel terrible. They were coming out of the freezer to finish getting glazed and then decorated and the tray hit the edge of the door. Chef was able to resurrect them and we were ultimately able to decorate them and take them home however I'm quite unhappy with myself. Tomorrow, I resolve to be more focused and do better.

Even with all these lovely cakes, we already had a pie made for today, Pi Day, so the cakes are going to hang out in my freezer for a few days until we can eat them. The pie, too, was lovely.

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.

Day 12: Custards

Clafoutis

Today's topic was custards and Bavarians. While I'm still a little shaky on the definition of a Bavarian vs. a Bavarian Cream, I enjoyed making the custards. We made a huge batch of flan, so everyone got to work on it. These are baked in a water bath. We were taught that they're better served a day later as the caramel on the bottom becomes more of a sauce. Therefore, I have my three flans and we'll eat them in the next day or so. We also made a clafoutis (cherries baked in a custard sauce) which we ate; that was lunch.

The crowning achievement of the day was making a Ruche, or beehive cake.

The layers consisted of lemon hazelnut meringues (that gift from the past we made ourselves last week), lemon mousse, honey mousse, and Italian meringue for the top. One team made lemon curd which was made into the lemon mousse. That formed the sides and one of the layers in the cake. Our team made the honey mousse which consisted of a honey custard to which honey Italian meringue and then whipped cream was added to make the mousse. Then, while the cakes froze for a while, I made the bees with two of my classmates. First I kneaded marzipan with yellow food coloring and we shaped the bodies. Then I drizzled them with chocolate to make the stripes and we stuck almonds in for wings. My classmate who is terrific at piping finished up by making the eyes. I lined them all up for their photo op. Here is our Bee-2 Bomber Squadron...

Some others in class made the honeycomb chocolate for the sides and froze it. Then another person made the caramel which we all got a chance to drizzle into shapes. When I got to the caramel it was a little too cold so it glopped a bit. In my attempts to clean it up it serendipitously bent into a 3D structure which I liked very much.

Once everything was ready, we used Italian meringue to coat the top and pipe a beehive on the cake. Then we torched it to brown it and get the ring off. After that, we coated it with the chocolate honeycombs, added the caramel and then the bees.  We were overwhelmed with the cuteness of it all!

The evening lecture was the first of three covering fruits, herbs and spices. This was an opportunity to work with unfamiliar fruits. A panna cotta was made and we were each asked to come up with a compote, particularly using something we'd not used before. I picked pomegranate, red currant, key lime juice and apple. I added the apple for the pectin and, of course, ended up with more of a jam than a compote. However, the lime juice worked really well with the pomegranate. Chef also had us make some really terrific savory dishes; I made fried avocado with a cilantro dipping sauce and others made a risotto with strawberries. (So unexpectedly tart and tasty! And pink!)

Side Benefit

As part of our requirements for school, we have to complete a minimum of three "events." The career counselor suggested assisting in some of the recreational classes, particularly covering topics we're not covering in class, so we get a wider breadth of experience. Last Wednesday I assisted for a Regional French cooking class, covering the Savoy and Dauphine regions. The students made three different entrées, fondue, a cheese soufflé, two sides, three desserts, and a duck confit that will be used this week (I'm assisting this week as well). One of the entrées was trout Grenobloise. And it was amazing.

Since fish is piscis non grata in our house, sadly, I decided to make it with chicken breasts. First I clarified 12 ounces of butter and set that aside. Then I filleted the chicken so instead of three whole breasts I had six pieces of reasonable thickness. These were seasoned with salt and pepper and set aside. I set up the rest of the mise en place: the pulp of five lemons, chopped up, capers, toasted bread crumbs (they were supposed to be like really small croutons; I had toasted some of the French bread from a previous class to preserve it so I broke that up into little pieces), parsley for garnish. When I was ready, the chicken was dredged in flour and cooked in the clarified butter, about 8 minutes or so per side. They were set onto a warm serving plate and then the rest of the butter was used to cook up the lemon and capers. Right before serving I tossed in the bread crumbs and poured it over the chicken.

Had I known that it was too strong of a lemon flavor for the ten year old, I would have just made it with fish. But that's okay. The rest of us really enjoyed it.

(And, yes. I know. It's a citrus flavored food. But for some reason, this one is okay with me. Go figure.)