A Roller Coaster Of Sugar and Pastry and Emotion

Man alive did I have a bad day today and I really don't want to talk about it. We had a roller coaster, quite literally, of pastry and sugar and then we finally had success. The thing that I was so excited about making today was a French pastry wonder called croche en bouche (crock en bush or booosh, I'm truly not sure which way is right). It is basically a tower of cream puffs held together with caramel and boy oh boy was our final product a beauty. Our first product was not, actually, our first products were not. Both my partner and I had our croche en bouches fall apart and our sugar hardened and the owner of the school came in and was eating the few remaining cream puffs we had and asking questions that we all didn't know so we were making our chef look bad, and our new batch of caramel had to be remade twice and people in the class were annoying and mean about the whole thing and my partner got burnt like five times (I was unscathed...) and our burner broke twice and we lost power -- can you see why I don't want to talk about it? It was a disaster. However, then, once we made new caramel and worked together and got a little extra help, we made the most beautiful croche en bouche. Don't believe me, ask our chef.


This is the finished product which doesn't have a lot of spun sugar on it yet but because we were so worried that something terrible would happen to our croche en bouche we took pictures of it right away just in case!


This is the finished product. The little purple bits are actually candied violets. So pretty. After the horrible disappointment of the first croche en bouche, I was so happy and relieved with our perfect one because I had been so excited for this day that I just wanted it to all work out! Thank goodness it did!

We also made these things called paris brest. They are comprised of three little circles of pate a choux piped together and then brushed with egg and sprinkled with almonds, baked, cooled, and then sliced in half and filled with pastry cream and topped with heaps of confectioner's sugar. I didn't eat them so I cannot attest to how they tasted but damn did they look pretty.


I couldn't decide which view I liked better and I wanted to give y'all an idea of how full of pastry cream the paris brest was.


Today was also actually our last day with our chef because, believe it or not, we are finished our first quarter of school. Shocking, right?! It's going so fast and it is so intense I can't even take it. Tomorrow we have a date with our career services advisor and then Monday we have a practical exam (we have to make creme anglaise and flourless chocolate souffle) and we have a written test too. Sheesh. Guess I know what I'm doing this weekend, hopefully Collin Murray likes him some souffles and creme anglaise 'cause I'm going to be practicing like crazy!