Today we finalized the lifelike fruits, ending with a fully lifelike strawberry, raspberry, hazelnut, and apple. We started the day by finishing all the whipped ganaches and dipping each insert into the ganache. To create the apple, strawberry, and hazelnut we dipped the inserts into the whipped ganaches two times. After we dipped the inserts … Read more
Today we said goodbye to chocolate making and said hello to lifelike fruits. We started the recipes to make a lifelike strawberry, raspberry, apple, and hazelnut. We wer also given the recipes to make the lifelike peach but due to time we may not get to it. Each recipe came with a whipped white chocolate … Read more
Today was the final day of chocolate making and we were able to finish all of the bonbons and make some boxes to take home. We started the day by making the last four bon bons, salted caramel peanut, and black sesame vanilla. We made four different designs today using a few new techniques, one … Read more
Another day another chocolate, today continued Andrey Duboviks chocolate course. We made 8 more chocolates today with 4 different fillings, strawberry tomato, hazelnut orange, macadamia, and kalamansi caramel. Kalamansi is a type of citrus fruit, closest to a sour orange. We started by making all of the different designs using similar techniques to yesterday and … Read more
Welcome to week two, starting off with a guest chef Andrey Dubovik. Andrey was nice enough to fly all the way to England to teach us all about chocolate. For the next three days we will be solely focused on creating chocolate bonbons, twenty different designs and 10 different fillings. Today we made 8 of … Read more
The last day of the first week is bittersweet, I cannot belive its already Friday! Today was a short day, we worked on finishing all of our eclairs and cream puffs from yesterday. We started by making some ganache, whipped ganache, and chocolate cocoa nib dip. Damien showed us how to fill the eclairs and … Read more
Another whirlwind of a day working on pâte à choux to make cream puffs and eclairs. We made two different choux recipes, one for the eclairs and one for the cream puffs/profiteroles. Both recipes are pretty much the same except the eclairs called for salt and were cooked out longer on the stove before being … Read more
Not to disappoint you but there were no actual vegans in the area, however there were lots of vegan macarons! Today we began advanced macarons, which included vegan and nut free pastries. It was an interesting class as the main ingredients in really good pastries are eggs, butter, and milk which are all very much … Read more
Wow what a day! Today we began the true baking lessons with two different types of macarons, Italian and French. I did not know there were two different ways to make macarons so this was a brand new lesson for me. I have also never made macarons at home due to the fact of not … Read more
We have officially made it to day one of the pastry academy. Today was all about icebreakers and getting to know the other 11 students in the class. Most of the students are from the EU or the UK. I am the only student from the US. We got to know the main instructor, Damien … Read more