I'm Learning to Fry!

I have been overwhelmed with the length of class, homework, trying to spend some time with Jason and kids. I didn’t even get to see Jason on Wednesday since he was out that evening too. I get to see the kids for more that dropping them off in the morning only if my class ends early. It was quite early the first week, but now that we are in the swing of things, there have been a few nights that it was 9:00 before I was walking to my car. Kids are asleep by that time (or at least should be).

This week, starting September 8th, the girl starts school, and I will be required to wake before 7am to get the kids up, fed and dressed and out the door. I may get to go back to sleep some days if the homework is light.

School is kicking my butt, but I am having a blast. It doesn’t feel like I am in school, just having fun in the kitchen learning to make all sorts of fancy sounding food.

We are still very concentrated on desserts right now. Last week it was a lot of pies and the different types of fillings, then custards, mousse, turnovers and cream puffs/eclaires. Starting Monday (I hope) we are officially starting cookies and quick breads, which is a good thing, we are getting so sick of eating chocolate and pure butter and sugar during class and then bringing home our projects.

I have taken pictures of almost everything I made, and have recipes for it all, but just haven’t had the time or energy to put things up on my site. Here is a list of my projects, directions for my favorites will be coming soon.

• Pie dough
• Different methods for making a fruit pie filling
• Crisps and Cobblers, with Crumb Topping
• Puff Pastry
• Turnovers and Pinwheels using the fruit filling from the pies
• Vanilla Creme Anglaise (which is a base for a lot of different desserts, the ones we made are custard pies, bavarian creams, ice cream, and creme brule. Our ice cream flavor was caramel pecan.
• Pastry Cream, which we used to fill our Pate A Choux (eclaire and cream puff dough) (our choosen flavor was coffee)
• Chiffon (our flavor was Strawberry)
• Most of the teams made Napoleons, but I didn’t
• We learned how to “blind bake“
• The instructor also demonstrated Chocolate Mousse.

As a preview for next week, he made some yummy cheddar biscuits with chives and rosemary and some other seasonings.Writing this down makes me amazed at the number of things we learned in just one week. And, it is just five more until we start cooking in the restaurant, with live customers. I am truly scared.