Day Twenty-Two

I’m so disappointed we didn’t get to taste the coffee crème brulee today!  I thought we were going to but I was wrong; we’re still putting together some different components of that dessert.  We’re serving it with a pistachio-hazelnut biscotti.  We made the dough today, placed it in plastic wrap, then shaped it using a mold.  I think we’re going to roll and shape the dough more tomorrow.  I thought it was interesting that we toasted the hazelnuts, but didn’t toast the pistachios.  I guess the pistachios will toast enough during the baking time. 

We made crepes!  We got the pan smokin’ hot, brushed it with butter, then placed a little ladle of batter into the pan.  We had to swirl fast to cover the pan with the batter.  After cooking for a few seconds we had to flip the crepes using our fingers.  It was hot and scary, and many fingers were burned.  Those French pastry cooks are hardcore.

I kept asking my classmates, “Why don’t we use gloves?!  Why don’t we use a spatula?!”
They told me to man up.



Making the crepes was pretty tricky, but I think my partner and I improved after every crepe we cooked.  We made crepes suzette by briefly sautéing the crepes in a mixture of butter, orange juice, orange zest, orange slices, and sugar.  Then we flambéed using some orange liqueur and a torch.  



I took a picture of the flame.  Can you see it?  The crepes were good.  I wanted them to be a little bit crispier, but they weren’t supposed to be crispy. 

This is florentine batter made with lime zest and pineapple juice. 



After baking, you mold it into crazy-lacey shapes. 


We also made mini hazelnut linzer cakes.  I’m having trouble remembering the ingredients… I know they’re made with toasted hazelnut flour, pastry flour, sugar, egg, butter and vanilla. 


We served the linzer cake with stewed red wine plums, spiced ice cream, and the florentine. 



Very delicious!  The spiced plums, spiced ice cream, hazelnut cake and buttery tuile tasted like Christmas.  I took home our leftover plums to eat because I am Sugar Plum, after all. 
Just remind me not to eat too many.