Monday, September 10, 2007

Cooking class

For my 18th birthday, my uncles and aunts signed me up for a pastry making course at l'Institut Culinaire (The Culinary Institute) of Montreal. I just came back from the course and I'm so thrilled! It was a 7 hours intensive course where we learned all the basics of baking from making pie pastry to cream puffs. Here are the results:


Apple pie
Of course, this was my favorite, partial as I am to fruity desserts. I hope I'll have the time to pick apples this autumn to make plenty more apple pies but since I learned to make the crust, I guess I could do it with any other fruit. I'll try it with strawberries and rhubarb next.


Boston Cream Pie
I don't usually like Boston Cream Pies but the one we made that day was heavenly. I think it has to do with the fact that we used real vanilla beans to flavour the pastry cream instead of cheap vanilla extract like I usually do at home. Well now, no more vanilla extract for me!



Choux à la Crème/ Cream Puffs

We learned to do puff paste which was quite impressing because my puffs looked like little ugly blobs when I put them in the oven and when I took them out they looked perfect! The next time I make puffs, I'll fill them with ice cream and cover them with the fudgy sauce below.


Crème Anglaise

Again, I don't normally like English Cream but with the vanilla bean, it tasted so good.


Hot Fudge Sauce

Very simple to make, goes well with Ice cream


I'm prrrretty proud of myself! :)
I still can't believe that I got to learn all these recipes and baking tips in just One day. At the beginning of the day, we were given a small recipe book and I swear, at the end mine looked like the Half-Blood Prince's potion book since it was covered in so much writing ^_^
There are still many classe I would love to take at the Académie but since they are so expensive, I think I'll wait for Christmas and my birthday. *Subtle hint*

3 comments:

Margarinefly said...

oh god je bave sur mon clavier.

Lava said...

Hi, and thanks for visiting! I thought I'd stop by, and wow, you are quite the baker! Such beautiful baked goods! You've inspired me to preheat the oven and get started on some yummies too. And those smores cupcakes look so cute!

Anonymous said...

Wow you are very lucky! I wish I had the time to take some cooking classes. Everything looks amazing, especially those cream puffs! Keep up the great baking.