The past month in retrospective part 1 - week of petits gateaux

This feels like ancient history now, the moment I'm typing this, I am 10 days in my internship. So long school life... :( So anyway, let me be nostalgic and resume with the week where we made petits gateaux. It was a busy week, we started preparing the elements for 3 days and to build the cake and the finishing took another 2 days. I think we made 7 different individual cakes : Tarte aux pommes revisitée, After eight, Fingers macarons, Le Banyuls, Le Mont Blanc, Finger chocolat cassis, Millefeuille pistache fruit rouges, and Verrine Dulcey.

We worked in pairs and I was lucky to have paired up with my besties Bhupar and Kiman. I think that week we had a little insight of how shops produced their petits gateaux, and how much more time and effort required to produce individual sized than a whole cake. We were like petits gateaux army, in the end there were so many cakes that even though we all could take however much we wanted there were heaps of leftovers. All were very good of course, my favourite firstly was the millefeuille because eating puff pastry fresh right after it's being built is the bomb. It was the The Bomb allright!! because as I was trying to reach out to the off cuts bowl my arm accidentally brushed the nozzle of a decapeur thermique alias the heat gun which is a kin to a mighty hot hair dryer used to melt chocolate. Now me and a few girls from my class are like members of a cult because we have burn marks around the same area from the same chocolate weapon.

Actually, many photos were taken on that friday, and because as times went by the bond got closer... the more recent photos including those taken that week are very dear to me. So just to keep it neutral and not too sentimental (I get a bit teary sometimes still looking at the photos... pathethic I know!), I'll just show you photos of the cakes.

Below are the tarte aux pommes revisitée, I remember that the day we finished the tarte aux pommes, the TV crews who had been coming in every now and then to film a documentary were there... I was quite surprised because I had never had a 'positive' comment from my chef other than pas mal before, that day I had a 'c'est bien ça... c'est propre' twice! Later that week I was sorting out my photos and I saw he was wearing a recorder underneath his apron. Ahhh, anyway I think Kiman and I did a good job on these tarts!

And the fingers macarons (with a reality shot of how messy my piping is) which were super simple really but very good! and can be very pretty and elegant... if you know how to pipe.

That week also, on Wednesday and Thursday we had Boulangerie class in the morning. We had to come in ready to go by 6.15. At that time it was WOAH! Nowadays I have to catch the first metro at 5.36 am to get to my intern place. When I used to work as an accountant, I hardly get in by 8.30. How quickly things change... Anyway, so we had 2 days intro to French breads with the new boulangerie teacher Didier, who is too nice. To be honest my baguette turned out so so. I didn't score them deep enough.... otherwise the class was informative and I learned new things for example, temperature of the dough, temperature of the water etc. Very interesting.... for a bread geek enthusiast like me.

Today is 5 months exactly since I arrived in Paris, my heart still feels a bit strung thinking that I finished school. That was what brought me here, and it's done. BOO HOO HOO. I don't know when I feel like writing part 2 of this entry... I get a bit sad still, shifting through photos reminiscing all the good times. It would be the last week of real classes before the creative challenge week and then the final exam and the final school trip. BOO HOO HOO again.

Melinda x