Monday, March 8th - Friday, March 12th

Phew!!! The week started off a tad stressful... While we are delighted to have Chef Gomez again, but the school blended us with another class who is also learning Plated Desserts so now, instead of 14 of us, there are now 34. We are SO not used to having that many people in a class and its tight and busy and congested and pushy and loud and we have to form lines just to use the ovens and the sinks. As you can imagine, yours truly is NOT thrilled. On the upside, we get the benefits of being taught by their Chef, Chef Rocque, who is absolutely hilarious.

So after a very stressful Monday and a refresher of fruit coulis and creme anglaise, we went out to our favorite burger place, Islands, to celebrate Vicki's 25th birthday!

I ordered the worlds largest beer...



And then we did a very-illegal-in-school-uniform-happy-birthday-Vicki shot:




... Which Monica passed on and instead ordered a chocolate milk shake...





Wednesday we worked on tuile cookies. Thursday we tempered chocolate for the first time and learned how to make chocolate cups and filigrees and we also made a mousse that would go towards plating our first dessert....

So here is my fruit coulis with creme anglaise with my tempered chocolate cup, flourless chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, quenelle of creme Chantilly and chocolate filigree. Phew! It is very important to have a crunch factor in a plated dessert, at least one sauce, a garnish as well as "negative plate space."




And a close up:

Friday we made crepes in teams of two... Vicki and I made a fruit compote to top our crepes which were filled with nutella (drool) and topped with Chantilly creme.

It tasted as good as it looks... So good, in fact, that Vicki and I absolutely devoured our presentation plate and had to make up another identical plate just so we could take pictures...