Picnic In The Park

I understand that in some parts of the world that it is snowing...still...but here it New York it is hot, hot, hot and as such Collin Murray and I embarked on a wonderful excursion today to the shade of Central Park.


Our view -- we had to make reservations weeks in advance...ha!

To me, nothing is better than a picnic in the park and with the help of Zabar's, today we had just that. We picked up some crackers and grissini; prosciutto, salami, and some smoked salmon; a couple of cheeses; tomatoes; grapes and pineapple; and I brought some walnuts and apricots from and we had ourselves a feast.


Most of our picnic spread

No wine for fear of being captured by the park guards but I did bring some earl grey truffles, cookies and marshmallow that we bought yesterday (at 50% off no less!) from my favorite new bakery Three Tarts. We had a lovely, if not rather warm time and with just a little leg work at the grocery store, y'all could easily do the same...when it stops snowing.


Our dessert spread, not an advertisement for Ziploc


Annie Cookie before...


Annie Cookie after...

Dogmatic Dogs

How fitting that on this, Memorial Day Weekend, that we have a little bit of an all-American food focus? Americans love their hamburgers and fries but lord mercy do they also love their hot dogs. They also love their brisket, ribs, sauce, sides...you get the point -- but to me, I'm sure that they secretly love the dogs the best. Maybe that's why there are more and more hot dog focused restaurants popping up around the city. Of course you can always get a dirty water wienie -- "seasoned" to perfection in stale, murky waters, but who are we kidding? The best wiener is one that has those delicious char marks from being cooked on the grill. Enter Dogmatic:


Yesterday Collin Murray and I experienced one of the best hot dogs either of us had ever had at one such restaurant called Dogmatic. What makes Dogmatic different than other hot dog concepts is that it only serves meat that is "free from hormones, antibiotics, nitrates, preservatives and artificial flavors". Yum. And, not only does Dogmatic serve healthy, happy meats like pork, beef, lamb, turkey or chicken but the meat is also low in fat. And they have a vegetarian option, asparagus. Heaven. What makes it even better, the hot dogs are not served in traditional buns, they are served, with a choice of a sauce like Horseradish Mustard, Truffle Gruyere, or Sundried Tomato Feta, in a hollow out skinny loaf of french bread that hugs the dog perfectly. The bread is perfect too with a crunchy crust and soft, chewy crumbs inside.


A pair of dogs -- pork and turkey


Turkey dog with Horseradish Mustard

When you order a combo, which you would be crazy not to, you have the choice of a side such as Not-Fried Fries, Coleslaw, Truffle Gruyere Mac and Cheese, or Grilled Asparagus. The fries come with a choice of Cheddar Jalapeno sauce or Ketchup and the portions are delightfully generous.


Truffle Gruyere Mac and Cheese deliciousness

Oh yeah...just in case the dogs aren't your style, they have mini-burgers wih proteins like beef, bison and turkey, too.

Dogmatic is located at 26 East 17th Street between Broadway and 5th Avenue. Prices for the dog combos which include your choice of a side and a soda (they make super tasty home-made sodas like lemon-lime and coconut or the classic, coke) is $9.75. The slider combo is $11.75. Click here to visit their website

Tiffany Blue Chef Is Getting A Face Lift...

Hi there! Don't I look new and shiny? I'm currently being updated so that I might look a little more modern and a little more personal -- the Blog Mistress thinks it's necessary. Stay tuned for more foodie fun and for a newer, better, classier look. Don't be afriad Angie, Karen, Rod or the rest of the faithful followers, the Blog Mistress is not changing her content, not yet, she is just getting a little nip tuck.

What do you think so far? Any comments?

Pound Cake Flops and Fancy Financiers

Since we did the One-Step method at school, doesn't it make sense that today we did the two step method? Like the one step, it was really more of a three step process (can't they come up with better names?) but once you got the hang of it, it was quite easy. This time we combined our dry ingredients, threw in the butter and mixed until the butter was thoroughly combined, and then added the liquid ingredients a little bit at a time, scraping after each addition of liquid. Like the one-step, the two-step was quite simple...or so it seemed. When we attempted to make pound cake using this method, we had a horrible failure. I'm not sure if either of our scales were working because both my partner and I distinctly remember measuring things out correctly yet our mixture mixed fine until we added the liquid. It's hard to tell what exactly happened, whether it was the measurements or a mixing method error but whatever it was, the whole thing was a mess. The pound cakes were butter-soaked rectangular hockey pucks that tasted disgusting. Bake and learn and don't take pictures is how I look at the pound cake mess!

We also made a lemon buttermilk pound cake that was pretty tasty. We made it in a bundt pan but a lot of people had trouble getting their cakes out of the pan because the pans had been super super ravaged by the ghosts of baking students past and there was nothing that butter and flour could do to help the cakes release when they were done baking. As such, there is no pretty picture of this cake either. Sorry.

What there is a picture of is the pretty financiers that we made in tiny tart pans. Financiers are little cakes that were invented because French bankers were upset that they could not go out for lunch and find a pastry to eat that would not be all crumbly and get on their suits so someone clever pastry chef invented the financier...get the ironic name? Now I'm not sure if this is a true story or not but the financiers are tasty and very delicious. Basically the batter is like a pound cake but it has a lighter taste because there is a lot of almond flour in the batter too. We made the financiers in little tart tins but you could easily make it in a circular cake pan or tart pan and then slice it with a little creme fraiche or ice cream. Yummy and not disastrous.

Mod Three Begins With A Whole Lotta Cake!

Holy crap. We baked a lot of cake today and I'm rather tired just thinking about it. We made carrot cake, chocolate cake and muffins and all were painfully simple to make. The first part of this module is all about making cakes with different cake mixing methods. Today, fittingly for our first day, was the one step or one stage mixing method. Now, I'm sorry to be picky but I have to admit that a method that is called one step should only have one step...this one has three. Mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients, mix the dry and wet ingredients together and presto! It's a cake! Easy right?

The carrot cake was so delightfully delicious that I can't even begin to tell you. In fact, I just had a piece for dessert. We made an enormous cake, it was the size of two cookie sheets stacked on top on one another and then iced with a cream cheese frosting. Doesn't it look good enough to eat?





The chocolate cake tasted good from what I could tell; I sampled the crumbs as we froze the cake and will work with it next week. It will be my first four layer cake and I am pretty excited for it. I'm hoping for some tasty frosting to ice it too -- Collin Murray doesn't like chocolate cake so maybe I will luck out and get the whole thing to myself (he does however like carrot cake and God bless for that because if he was not here sharing, I might eat the whole thing!)!

We also made muffins today. The muffin base was fairly simple and then our chef provided us with a bunch of variations with which to pick from and flavor our muffins. Unfortunately our group got totally scooped on the muffin flavor picking and ended up with date and walnut muffins...fiber anyone? I'm not actually sure how they taste yet as I'm really more of a morning muffin girl but I can tell you that they look great and were a cinch to make.

The Puff You've Missed

So the last official day that y'all had a real school update was last Thursday and due to the time that we are in, in our module and the fact that doughs need to rest, you didn't miss tons and tons and I will try to catch everyone up.

Friday was a frustrating day. We worked on danish dough and croissant dough and even though we were assured that these doughs were a piece of cake compared to the puff dough that we had been working with, we were lied to. I have never seen so many frustrated pastry students! The big difference between danish and croissant dough and puff pastry is that danishes and croissants contain yeast and puff dough does not. Puff dough rises because when it is baked, the layers of butter (remember I told you there were 768 layers of butter and flour!), melt and leave space and create lift. Well in danish and croissants, the dough is lifted by the butter but also by the yeast which also lifts.

To help the picture come together, I will describe how the doughs are made as simply and quickly as possible...puff pastry is made by making a shaggy dough called a detrempe and then by pounding a one-pound block of butter dusted heavily with flour until it is very thin, this is called making a beuragge. The beuragge is then shaped into a square and the folded into the detrempe to form a paton. Basically it look like a tiny little present of dough; the present is rolled out and folded, rolled and folded, rolled and folded and then finally, you guessed it, rolled and folded. It takes a long time because the dough needs to remain slightly chilled so that the butter doesn't melt while you are rolling. It's hard to fight with the dough, believe me. So, the croissant and danish doughs were made in a similar way to the puff dough but the beuragge was pounded paper thin and the doughs resisted rolling like nobody's business. They leaked butter, they stuck to the table, the shrunk up, they were not kind to us young pastry students -- hence the frustration. I think we were all glad that the doughs had to ferment over the weekend in the freezer (being frozen doesn't kill yeast, it just slows its development which is perfect for when you have class during the week and need something held over the weekend)and that we didn't have to deal with them till Monday.


Perfect little puff dough present so you can better envison how the puff comes together, after this stage you begin the rolling process.

On Monday we started rolling the croissants and the pain au chocolats. Once I figured out the mathematics of dividing the dough into the triangles for the croissants, the were easy to make. All you do is make two little slits in the top, stretch the dough a little so it looks like the batman logo and thin rolled the croissant up with a little bit of forceful gusto. You egg wash the little tail to the body of the croissant, let them rise again and then egg wash the whole croissant and bake until golden. The pain au chocolat is made by cutting the rolled dough into small rectangles and then placing two sticks of chocolate about a quarter of the way in on both sides of the dough and then just folding the ends of the dough in to meet one another in the middle. The are proofed too, egg washed and baked till golden.


Croissant -- it's not over-baked, it's just golden. Our chef liked our puff to be very golden and what she says goes...


Pain au chocolats (there are a couple filled with little cheese batons in there too...we have both the savory and sweet cravings covered, just ask Collin Murray)

The danish dough was a little bit more complex to work with. We were shown a number of different ways to make danishes and chose what we wanted to do. I did a braid which is insanely difficult to try to explain how to do with charts and pictures and diagrams and a couple of other little forms too. One you simply cut a square of dough, place a little filling in the middle and bring up two opposite corners and secure them with a toothpick. I also made a pinwheel danish but like the braid, it is a little tricky to explain and still have y'all understand. I can say that the spread of baked goods on Monday were intense and tasty. Diets are completely pointless when you are going to pastry school.


Pinwheel danish filled with almond and chocolate frangipane


Braided danish dough filled with pineapple puree.

Today we wrote our second big test and prepared puff pastry for grading. It was not a great day for working with butter are the air conditioning in the school was no working and the state of New York was in the school doing a routine evaluation but we made all made it through. Tomorrow we begin our cake module with a new chef...I looked ahead, carrot cake, chocolate cake and muffins -- OH MY!

We started with the croissant dough on Monday.

Blog Mistress Update

Hi y'all,

The Blog Mistress has been very busy. She has not gone AWOL or forgotten you (Angie or Karen especially) but she has just been busy and trying to manage all her ducks and unfortunately her blog is what suffers. After tomorrow though the Blog Mistress's school commitments get to be a little less intense and she will be back to entertain y'all with her sassy wit and fattening pictures. Thank you for still tuning in.


Amaretti Cookies

Holy Heck, That's A Whole Lotta Puff!

There has been so much puff pastry in the last two days that I can't even keep up and I'm not even going to attempt to explain all the things that we made. Seriously, overwhelming couple of days. Yesterday we made a fruit strip with moussaline (butter whipped with pastry cream...very healthy) and a napoleon with was basically puff pastry baked on sheet pans and cut into rectangles of the same size and them filled and stacked with fruit and lightened pastry cream (pastry cream with gelatin and whipped cream folded in) and then covered in puff crumbs and topped with fondant and chocolate -- it was a beast, let me tell you and rather too sweet for my taste if you can believe it. Today we used our remaining hand-made puff dough to create little puff creations. I made two-strand puff braids, two wee apple tarts, palmiers with cinnamon sugar, vol-au-vents (little circles of puff pastry stacked together with the top piece having a little piece punched out -- very cute, very sweet), and little buttons of puff also dusted with cinnamon sugar because I was tired and lacked the enthusiasm to come up with something inspired.

So since we are not describing today, how about some pictures? Enjoy them and wait with bated breath for tomorrow when we make croissants!


Inside the napoleon


Un-baked palmier


Vol-au-vent from the side (on the inside it is partially hollow from me cutting out the middle of the top piece)


Braided puff


Bistro Apple Tart

Puffy Results!

I can tell you first hand that real puff pastry, puff pastry that is folded and molded and pounded by hand, is better than the boxed stuff. I thought there wouldn't be a difference because really who wants to do all that work when you can open a box but I can tell you that the real stuff is fluffy and light; it is flaky and smooth and free of that fake lard-y taste -- it's wonderful.

We used our "real" puff twice today when we made apple strips with almond frangipane and we made a French pastry called pithiviers. The apple strip was made by cutting a piece of puff and then laying borders down each of the sides; then you spatula in the almond frangipane in between the boarders and place finely sliced apples on top of the frangipane. You then egg wash the borders, sugar the apples and bake until the puff has browned and the frangipane has set. We glazed our finished product with warmed apricot jelly just to give it a little sparkle. It was so good that I might have had a piece of the strip for supper. Sorry mom.


Sorry for the wonky angle, I wanted y'all to see the full strip


Individual slice of the strip

The pithiviers were a little more complicated. Basically what we did was sandwich a mound of frangipane between two layers of puff and then trim the little package into a circle, decorate and egg wash it and bake it until the moisture has baked out. Sounds easy but it was a little bit trickier than that just because the sandwich method was just weird. There were bowls and pots involved...weird. And tasty. But weird.


Pithiviers and all 768 puff layers -- yes, that's right, there are 768 layers of butter and dough throughout the "real" puff!

We made pastry cream for tomorrow when we make fresh fruit strips(!) and though the fruit strips are exciting, what's really exciting about the pastry cream is that making it has become second nature. When we first started it was such a process and I was so nervous about ruining it and now making the pastry cream feels normal. I don't have to think about anything but the proportion of ingredients and that really delights me.

The Puff Is A-Resting

Short blog and no (relevant) pictures today...the puff is a-resting.

We made puff pastry today by machine and by hand. I would explain it to y'all but it would be so confusing without pictures and diagrams that I'm just not sure it's worth it. I can barely understand it myself and I actually did it; but tomorrow we get to actually use the dough to make a number of different (hopefully) treats and after we make them I will tell y'all all about 'em with great gusto.

Until then, please enjoy these pictures of the first strawberries of the season that I took at the Union Sqaure Greenmarket last week. Purty, huh?

Waffles and Dinges

I've had my fill of waffles the past couple days because I've been following, by complete accident I assure you, the Waffles and Dinges food truck around New York City. Food trucks are a big food trend that is beginning to sweep the nation but is very popular right now in New York. There are ice cream trucks, taco trucks, cupcake trucks, Chinese dumpling trucks and of course, there is also a waffle truck. The truck parks at different locations throughout Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs during the day and appears to have more than one "truck" or cart as when I had my first waffle experience on Saturday evening an actual gas-powered truck was parked on 7th Avenue in the West Village and this morning a baby waffle cart was parked near the South Shore Seaport. Of course if you have trouble keeping track of Waffles and Dinges you can always follow the waffle truck on Twitter. Don't laugh but I'm actually thinking I might because them were some darn tasty waffles.

The dinges, basically different waffle toppings, are plentiful and for just $2 you can have as many as you like on your waffle of which there are two basic types: the liege which is a crispy on the outside and soft on the inside little tasty nugget and the Brussels waffle which is crisp and light. I'm a liege kind of girl who like a dinge of fresh strawberries and nutella but you can have your waffle however you like -- they even slap two waffles together with ice cream and make an ice cream waffle sandwich!


Collin Murray's strawberry and maple syrup liege waffle

As I said, the waffle truck is a fairly inexpensive breakfast or snack and it is super tasty. The gentlemen who make the waffles and take your orders are the good kind of sassy and let us try a couple of the toppings before making our choice. I think the world needs more waffle trucks, don't you?!


My nutella and strawberry liege heaven...and my dirty fork.

Take Me Out To The Ball Game...The Food Edition

We took in our first professional baseball game today at Yankee Stadium. Collin Murray's parents are visiting and very kindly treated us to the game and we all had a great time. Naturally we partook in traditional baseball game food, I had a hot dog, not the dirty water variety mind you but a delicious stick of meat(?) nonetheless. I also had Carvel ice cream for the first time and it was sinfully delicious. It was very soft serve-y and very chocolate-y and very tasty indeed. By the way, I say sinfully because the stadium has the calorie count of each and every item that the concession stands sell listed beside the item -- sometimes, like when you are at a baseball game, you don't want to know how many calories what you are stuffing your face with has. It makes you feel a little naughty.


Skinny yet tasty hot dog


Carvel deliciousness

The variety of vendors that came through the stands was amazing. Peanuts, crackerjacks, hot dogs, seventeen different kinds of beer...my favorite was the one pictured below. I hope he gets extra pay for the fancy agility he displays.


I mean really, that takes skill!

The game was a slice. Homeruns, a crowd wave that just kept going and another win for the Yankees made for a great day.

Galaktoboureko...Say What?

Galaktoboureko is the name of one of the desserts that I made today. The name is Greek and so hard to pronounce and smell that I was forced to copy and paste it into this blog every time you see it typed. It means milk pie in Greek but I like to call it pure delciousness. In terms of how you say it...in the kitchen today whenever someone, other than our chef who is Greek, said it, it came out like galabooourkiki-ekki-o. As far as I can tell you say it gala-ka-bourk-rio but don't quote me on it. It was a zen dessert to make and since I did it pretty much all by my lonesome, that's saying something.

To make it, you make a thick custard with vanilla, sugar, eggs, milk and semolina flour and then, using phyllo/filo dough, you place seven layers of the dough into the pan and then dump the custard in and then top with the rest of your package of phyllo/filo dough. You MUST cut it before it bakes or else the whole thing will crack if you try to cut it afterwards. Once it comes out of the oven, you pour a thick sugar syrup that has honey, cinnamon and lemon rind in it over the galaktoboureko and let it cool and let the syrup soak in before cutting it and tasting how wonderful it is.


Galaktoboureko fresh from the oven


Sugar soaked galaktoboureko waiting to be cut


Inside of the galaktoboureko -- see the layers of phyllo/filo and custard?!

We also used the puff pastry that we eluded to yesterday today. I have to say that it was a little bit of a downer for me because our group had to make a really easy and not that challenging of a task when others were making some pretty fun and tasty nibbles! The one fun thing that we did make with my puff dough was something called a palmier. The picture below will best describe it but basically, it is a type of cookie that is made by folding cinnamon-sugar coated puff pastry and then cutting it into 1-inch disks and baking it. Collin Murray found my palmier to be extremely tasty and I have agree with him that it was.


Pretty palmiers


Palmier beauty shot

So That's What Strudel Is...

I thought I knew what strudel was. Really, I mean, doesn't everyone know what strudel is? Turns out I was wrong. I thought strudel was a pastry that had some jam-type filling in it and a lattice dough top...ahhh, no. We made strudel today and I can tell you that it is nothing like what I thought, not even a little.

We started by making a moist dough that kneaded for about seven minutes on the kitchen aid with a dough hook. Then we let it rest and worked on our fillings. Our group made a cheese and plum filling. The plums are really heavenly looking, smelling and tasting these days and I've been lucky to work with them twice this week; for their role in this dessert, I just washed, seeded and thinly sliced them. The cheese part of the filling was basically a mixture of farmer's cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, lemon juice, vanilla, eggs, milk-soaked bread (?) and butter beat in the kitchen aid till semi-smooth. After the dough had rested for a good long while, we clean our table and put a table cloth on top of it, floured it and set the dough in the middle. Now, you can imagine the look of shock on the faces of my fellow students and I when chef pulled out a table cloth but the logic behind its use for strudel is pretty neat. Due to the fact that the dough doesn`t stick to the table cloth, it made it a lot easier to stretch and also, when we eventually rolled the dough, the tablecloth helped us to maneuver the gigantic strudel with a little more skill.

When we began to roll out our dough, it was about two inches tall and six inches long. When we finished rolling and stretching, the strudel dough covered one-third of the table and was so thin we could have read a newspaper through it. We stretched it in pairs using the backs of our hands to lift the dough and gently pull and shake it enabling it to stretch. It was fun but a little tense because when you work with such thin doughs, the possibility of tearing is quite high. Once the strudel was stretched, we drizzled it with melted butter and bread crumbs and then placed our cheese filling at one end in three large, rectangular sections and then we topped the cheese with the plums. Then, very carefully, we used the table cloth to help us roll up the strudel. Once rolled we cut off the excess and portioned the big strudel into three smaller ones to bake.


Thinly rolled dough being filled before rolling


Rolling...


Finished product warm from the oven!

Now I can`t say that I was a big fan of the strudel. Our filling was really, really moist and that made it really hard to cut when it was so hot because the cheese and plums kind of oozed everywhere. The flavor was pretty good but for all the hassle that the dough was, I`m certainly not going to beg to make it again! However, that`s kind of a sad thing to say because strudel is not really made this way that often unless you are at an Austrian bakery and the tradition of making it in this way could easily die out in favor of methods of greater convenience.

We also made quick puff pastry today but I`m not going to tell you about it today because we are baking it into several things tomorrow and I don`t want to spoil the fun!

Teeny Tiny Tarlettes

Not a great day in the pastry school neighborhood today; perhaps we should blame it on the rain. Along with the teeny tiny tartlettes came tremendous team tension and so instead of frolicking through the day, I merely tried to survive along with 24 perfect wee tartlettes.

Prior to the tiny tarts we made something called a breton. Now I'm not sure where bretons are from, probably France, but they are not a picnic to put together. They use a dough that even at the best of times, with the best chef's hands (seriously, our chef was recently voted one of the ten best pastry chefs in the USA), they crumble. It was an incredibly soft dough that almost seemed to ooze butter and it was darn near unworkable -- instead of rolling it, ours had to be pressed into the pan. On the inside of the breton was a filling made of caramel and walnuts and then it was topped with yet another layer of unworkable dough. I must say that the end result was not very pretty. In fact, due to the grey hair that the breton gave me, I refused to photograph it out of spite. Don't be sad though, it really wasn't pretty.

Now for the tarts. Our team was assigned two flavors to make, raspberry and gianduja. In case you might not know, as I didn't, gianduja or as I spelt it in my notes, jon-do-ya, is basically a chocolate hazelnut mixture. It's kind of like a block of nutella and it is delicious. For the tarts we rolled or rather we pounded with our rolling pins, pate sablee dough out until it was see-through thin. Then we very carefully set out our wee tiny tart pans under the dough and gently nudged the dough into all the nooks and crannies of the pan. We baked the tarts just until they had a touch of color and then let them cool while we prepared our fillings. For the raspberry, we whipped some of our buttercream till it was soft then added some raspberry puree. We heated some raspberry jam to use as glaze and put it into a little cornet and then piped our buttercream into the tart shells and glazed them with the jam. For the gianduja, I made a ganache with the gianduja and a little cream and we piped that into the little shells and then topped them with a gold-powder dipped roasted hazelnut. It was a lot of work for a lot of little tarts but they were all quite lovely when we finished.


See how tiny!


Gianduja tartlette


Raspberry buttercream tartlette


The whole lot of 'em

Scones And Tortes And Biscuits, OH MY!

It was an intensely busy day today at school. We made chocolate scones, flaky biscuits, a linzer torte or tart, whichever you prefer. We made Swiss buttercream and pate sablee and we also had a marzipan demo. Like I said, intense.

The chocolate scones were really, really good. They have a wonderfully tender texture because we used buttermilk in them and since buttermilk contains acid it acts as a tenderizer -- the exact scientific reason as to why this is the way it is I canna remember to save my skin, but nevertheless, know that if a recipe uses buttermilk it is not only adding a little flavor, but it is also adding texture. Plus, they have chocolate in them and I'm a fan of anything with chocolate in it...


Please note the oozing chocolate

I have not tried the linzer tart yet but it is the darn prettiest little torte/tart. We made it by making a very moist pie-type dough that has cloves and almonds in it. Then we patted half the dough into a cake pan, slathered some raspberry jam onto the dough and then piped (and I wish I could express to you just how hard it was to pipe the dough -- far worse than trying to put a dress on a donkey I'm sure) the rest of the dough into a lattice design and then around the edge of the pan. The tart was finished with a quick egg wash of the dough and then a little sprinkling of almonds. Collin Murray says it tastes very good, so as per usual, I'm taking his word on it.


Pretty Little Linzer

The biscuits were made kind of like how some of our pie doughs were made. We broke the butter up into little pea-sized pieces within the flour, added a liquid (again, we used buttermilk for flavor and texture) and mixed the dough just until it all came together; this is to say, hardly at all. Like pie-doughs, biscuits are often over-mixed and turn out hard. You have to be careful to "just" mix them but when you figure out just how long that is, the biscuits turn out to be so flaky and tasty. I may share the biscuits with y'all on here too, there were a lot of variations that I wanted to try like cheese or cheddar and chive so as always, stay tuned.


Buttery, flaky biscuits

The buttercream and marzipan, while tasty, are not especially blog-worthy as they are were made to prepare for tomorrow's class when we are making TINY TARTS!!! At least I think that's what we are doing. If it is tiny tarts, I may be so excited I have to sit down because tiny things delight me and tiny sweet things delight me more than words can say.