The last few weeks of Intermediate are a bit of a blur. It flew by.
I remember pizza.
I was over the moon with my croquembouche - my lovely classmate Pixie took these photos with her very fancy camera.
Everything you see (even the flowers) was edible. The sad thing about it was that the whole lot went into the bin! Croquembouches don't have a very long shelf life - because of the creme patissiere they need to be kept in the fridge, but that speeds up the melting of the toffee. What does a girl do with a croquembouche at 11:00pm on a Saturday night?
And finally, Intermediate Patisserie assessment day - Gateau Opera.
Mine is the one closest on the left. By the time I took this photo I was so over it! This assessment was nowhere near as fun as the last one. We had a lot more time for the Basic assessment and we were making two things, so it felt like if you didn't do as well as you hoped on one product, you could make up for it on the other. For this one, it was just one 20 x 20cm layered gateau. I was nervous the whole time (especially when it came to piping 'Opera' on top - I had to have a stern word with my shaking hand - it didn't listen!) Also, unlike the Basic assessment all our cakes were taken out of the kitchen and assessed by 3 chefs while we all stood around in the kitchen wondering if we had passed or failed (we all passed).
The last couple of lessons were biscuits, biscotti, macarons, shortcakes and sable breton - forgot to take photos.
We made macarons using the French meringue method and to my surprise they worked (previous tries at home with the French meringue method were a bit fat flop).
I also tried a new method of tempering chocolate - ice bath. Most people stay away from this one because of the potential of ruining the chocolate by splashing water into it, but I took various precautions and my chocolate was just perfect. It's much less mess than tabling and quicker than the vaccination method.
So, with that my journey at Le Cordon Bleu has come to an end. I've decided not to go on to Superior Patisserie as the curriculum just isn't going in the direction I want to go. I mean, I could happily stay in that kitchen 3 days a week, every week, for the rest of my life, learning new things everyday and hanging out with my great classmates and our chefs. Instead, in November I'll pack my bags for San Francisco, Toronto, Amsterdam and Paris. 46 sleeps and counting!
