I'm So Excited I Could Just Spit!

I'm very excited for tomorrow's class but I'm not going to tell you why... If I told you, I would probably have to explain it because it's this fancy french thing and it would ruin the (hopefully) wondrous surprise for tomorrow. So be patient and tune in for fabulousness tomorrow!

Since what we did in class today is in part to prepare for tomorrow's excitement, you might be able to guess but nevertheless, I'm still going to tell you what we did today because it was very fun and exciting. Today we made something called pate a choux (sounds like pat a shoe) and pastry cream, chocolate pastry cream to be exact. Now you may remember that we made pastry cream before using Chef No-Name's dump method -- we threw everything in the pot and whisked it till it was thick -- we didn't do that today. Today we made it the hard way. Now, the hard way is not actually really that hard, it just requires a lot more dishes and a lot more attention to detail. The formula for pastry cream is a dairy + eggs + a starch + sugar + flavouring and hopefully that = pastry cream. With our method today, instead of just dumping everything, we mixed some of the milk with corn starch and then we added the dairy + starch to lightly beaten eggs and yolks (16 yolks and 4 whole eggs to be exact and that was just for the pastry cream!). Then we heated the rest of the milk and the sugar till boiling and then quickly whisked the boiling milk into the egg + dairy + starch mixture and then put the entire mixture all back into the saucepan and whisked and whisked and whisked until the mixture boiled and = pastry cream. After the pastry cream boiled, we took it off the heat and added vanilla extract (because, did you know that if you add vanilla before whatever your cooking is cooked that you will evaporate all the essence away?!) and since we were making chocolate pastry cream, then we added melted chocolate. We are going to use our cream tomorrow but I did taste it today and it was really good.

Now, for the pate a choux. First, we boiled water and butter and then dumped in a bunch of flour and stirred the mixture until it came away from the pan and looked like mashed potatoes. Then, we transferred the mixture into a kitchen aid and beat in eggs (20 of them...) very gradually until the mixture was not too runny or too stiff. Just like Goldilocks said, it had to be just right and in between these two stages. Hard to explain really, so sorry. After we got the perfect texture, we used our piping bags and piped out dozens of little circles and lines, and baskets of pate a choux (if I told you what these shapes were called in fancy French pastry terms, you might guess what we are doing tomorrow and I Really want you to be surprised!). Then we baked them and wrapped them up for tomorrow's class...!

Enjoy the pictures and maybe with them and all my subtle hints, see if you can guess what exciting, tall, romantic, and delightful French dessert we are making tomorrow!


Baked round pate a choux in various sizes


Pretty circular pastry with almonds


The whole lot of 'em