The week when we had another art class

Remember how we had the evacuation situation on Friday due to a gas explosion nearby ? well, school had to ensure safety and cancelled all classes on Monday. I had heaps of art homework due on Wednesday and on that Monday our chef would be teaching a different class and we were to have the 'substitute teacher' for our macarons making day, so that didn't happen either and everything worked out for the best in the end.

School life resumed to normal on Tuesday, by the way it was the week of petits four secs. We started by making our filling for the macarons, the flavours were : pistache/fleur d'oranger, mangue/passion, chocolat au lait/gingembre, chocolat/menthe, cafe, citron, and chocolat. I chose mangue/passion and it turned out really nice, second favourite after citron and chocolat au lait/gingembre my third favourite. Then we made madeleines and financiers, as well as four poches which were to be baked the following day. We also made and baked the macarons shells which we freezed for the next day. We were told that all the macarons that we had bought and ate, would had been frozen guys, nothing would had been sold fresh. Somehow I wasn't surprised at all because by now, if I could afford it and have lots of space it would be really wonderful to have a blast freezer and a freezer the size of a cupboard and a walk in fridge please.

Wednesday was quite hectic.. ok so first thing in the morning at 8 am we had our second art class. I thought art class had been postponed to May and even when on Monday I had a free day I only did a little part of the homework, just the eggs in black and white and THAT took hours. It turned out that art class was ON! WOAH SHOCK! I had soooo much to do and I was so regretful of being such a slack throughout the long weekend. I slept so late for my standard, i.e. 12.30am but I know that some friends slept like only an hour! to do this art homework. The class itself I like it's just that the homework is dreadful. Our teacher is a MOF from 1979 haha and he is such an adorable character. By the end of the morning I was quite proud of my artwork.

Unsurprisingly art class ran soooo late, we were again given so much homework which in the end made me laugh because of the ridiculous amount of work he asked. I only had two pieces of bread and butter for lunch because we had to run to our lab.

We baked trays and trays and trays of madeleines, financiers, four poches, diamants and piped trays and trays of macarons. We also baked some langues de chats and tuiles aux amandes. We were like a factory more or less, and here is the result of our 2 days work. Ta daaaa....

On Thursday we had a demo by a world champion in patisserie and glaces and it was great! Really great! Yazid was very organised and clean, his work is impeccable and beautiful. He was really interactive and very nice guy, I sat on the very front row and maybe because I was very attentive listening to his every word, I got called up to help him decorate. I think all of us were very impressed by this guy and we all like him and so the atmosphere was very jovial and we took lots of photos, I have lots of photos from that day but I will just show you my favourite. This is like a tableau this photo haha.

On Friday it felt a bit flat because the demo was like the highlight of the week and that day we made 'simple' stuff that I still managed to not get correct ARGH. When I make mistakes I learn to not do it again but in my head I kick myself everytime I don't get things right and I feel really annoyed. I was especially kicking myself when I didn't put the pectine bit by bit when making the pâte de fruit because I was telling myself like a mantra to put the sugar and pectine bit by bit and suddenly HOP I tipped the whole bowl into the saucepan. The bloody thing turned lumpy and I had to strain and plus the colour, rather than transluscent and clear became milky and dull. It should've been so simple and something like that makes me worried that maybe I am just going to be mediocre :( You live and you learn right? Anyway so we made guimauve, pâte de fruits, caramel au beurre salé, and nougat montelimar. . and I loved them all because they were a far cry from packaged stuff especially the guimauve. The day finished with us wrapping the caramel au beurre salé and the nougat with cling wrap ONE BY ONE.

I was glad the week was over because... the following week we would have another week of viennoiserie! and we would make some kouign amann one of my very favourite!

As I'm typing this, we are on spring break which means that we are already halfway through the course. It's only Monday and I'm already missing school. I don't know how I would feel when the 18 weeks is up honestly. I'm such a lame sentimental I know.... *sigh*

Melinda x