Pastry class 4

Sacristains, mille feuille, palmiers tarts. Phew. We has made the quick and classsic puff pastry dough yesterday, so all there was to do today was give the classic puff pastry another two turns, make some more pastry cream and figure out how to shape the doughs. Here is a picture of our day's schedule.
The chef, Faith Drobbin, is great at demoing the specific steps to making everything. Then we have to do it. Ours seldom look as good as hers. Maybe that has to do with all of her experience.
Below, left, is an example of my cheese palmiers.The right image is of my smoked salmon and chive mille feuille.

Neither are bad, just not perfect. I should have trimmed the mille feuille before putting the cream cheese/chive and salmon on. Should have put less cream cheese. Should not have added salt, even though the recipe called for it. Should have pressed the top on harder before I cut it up. The palmiers are not great 'cuz I didn't brush all of the dough off during the last roll up stage. I cut them when they were too warm. Etc. It goes on endlessly. There were some great things produced.  I couldn't stand doing one more sweet thing (three days of tasting sweets almost did me in.), but other people in the class did these yummy things.
As usual there are lots more pictures  here

Pastry class 3

Paris Brest (a pastry named for the bicycle race between Paris and Brest), èclairs, cream puffs, profiteroles and both classic and quick puff pastries. Chocolate glaze, chocolate pastry cream, coffee pastry cream. Wow. We rolled and beat and made all of these. It was exciting to fold and roll, stir and make all of these. I had never used a pastry tip and pastry bag, so that was and unusual thrill. The class went well. Well, except for being chased out of the room because of the lack of ventilation and extreme cooking from the next room.
The quick puff pastry went very fast, the classic was slow, but somehow satisfying. The amount of butter was frighteningly wonderful. I made a coffee (espresso, actually) pastry cream that was stunningly luscious. I kept secretly leaving too much on the spatula, then quietly grabbing a finger full. The èclairs came out perfectly ... we made small ones that were perfect two bite morsels.

I came home covered in flour. Shirt, pants and shoes all dusted. And I got to go out to dinner with nephew Robbie and his wife, Lisa. We went to a wonderful Italian restaurant, Antonucci,170 E 81st St, were given a magnum of the best red wine I had ever tasted, and I had a special meal with great company. Then a taxi ride with a chatty fellow. Yum. I am in love.
As usual I took a bunch of pictures, and even a video or two, and they are here

Pastry class 2

Today was apple day.
We started off making crème patissiere. We began by taking 1 cup of milk from a quart and adding, with a whisk, 3 ounces of cornstarch. Broke 4 eggs and added 8 yolks to the cornstarch/milk mix. Beat them up. The remaining milk we added to 1.5 cups of sugar, then brought that combo to a boil. Then took it off the heat and added the egg/milk/cornstarch gradually, beating the whole time. Then strained it back into the pot. (The pot, by the way, was a saucier ... rounded sides, so that whisking got into all of the edges and sides.) Then we put it back on the stove, and brought it to a boil, whisking constanly. It got very thick. Then we took it off the heat and beat in 4 ounces of unsweetened butter and 4 teaspoons of vanilla. We put this in a steel bowl, and put that bowl into another filled with ice. As soon as it cooled down we put the finished crème patissiere in the fridge.
Then it was onto apples. We cut, cored and sliced piles of Golden Delicious apples.
We made individual fruit tarts, tarte tatin, and two kinds of apple pie. The dough for

these yummy things came from the pate brisee we made yesterday. It sat in the fridge overnight. The rolling out was a breeze. The pictures will show you better than words what we made.
Once again Chef Drobbin was patient, encouraging and more casual about pastry measurements and techniques  than I had thought possible. As usual I took oodles of pictures. You can see the rest of them here.