Awhile back in bakeshop I made this fruit tart. I really liked the bright colors of the fruits.

I think cutting the fruits into the thin layer was one of the hardest thing to do. I was scared I would burn the pastry cream but it turned out pretty good. In my opinion the kiwi was a little sour. The raspberries were sweet, it kind of balanced the kiwi out. Overall I think the fruit tart was really good. 

  Two weeks ago, I got to make my first Danish dough. It was a bit confusing at first, but the dough turned out really well. At first I was supposed to make Danishes, but then plans changed and I got to make Croissants. I had to take a whole day making the Croissants because I had to let the dough proof, and do the four/three folds. To make the final product, flaky and delicious I had to roll out some butter, and fold it in with the dough. Once I had finished the folds, I had to cut them into even triangles, and start rolling them up. I let them rise a little bit, and then baked them. I was really happy about the finished result, and how delicious they were. Next time I would want to add some kind of filling or glaze for the croissants. This week I made another Danish dough, and this time I made actual Danishes. After I cut them into squares and folded them, I added almond filling in the middle. Once I had baked the Danishes the filling had spread all over the Danish. Since that didn't work out I added a scoop of raspberry jam, and drizzled the Danish with icing. I am happy how they turned out but next time I would try to organize my time a bit more. 

Black-box Challenge

Monday morning after we finished the big order for the Katie Care so we slowed everything down and did a fun Monday where we decided to do a Black-box surprise ingredient challenge. The surprise ingredient was Pumpkin purée. I decided I would make cute little cupcakes . I found recipe on the internet and which had the cupcake and the icing in one recipe. There was a delicious pumpkin spice icing that was supposed to go on top to decorate in the end. It ended up being too liquid to pipe on top so I used it as filling for the cupcakes which added a very creamy taste to the cupcake. Instead I topped the cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting and added some of the liquid pumpkin spice just to add some of that same flavor in the toping. It was a lot of fun making them and I would recommend this recipe to others. 

a couple of weeks ago, we had a catering event. We spent most of may testing and making stuff for it, such as puff pastry straws, strawberry tuxedoes, and cake pops. I had a lot of fun and got some experience making lots of macarons. I also helped Mikayla decorate her cake pops.

Catering Event

On May 29 Vern Riemer had a retirement party. We got to cater for it. We made so many desserts. We thought we wouldn't have enough desserts but we had more than enough. I made the cream puffs. I was going to make swans but they weren't elegant enough. So we just filled them with whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate.

Other people made macaroons, mini tarts, cake pops, strawberry tuxedos, parmasean straws, chocolate truffles and apple roses. We had sooooooo many parmasean straws leftover we had to throw them out. All the desserts were delicious.

Photo Challenge

 After spring break we did a photo challenge where we had to pick a photo and try to recreate it. this is what I chose:

It looked like a chocolate mousse with a tempered chocolate disk, chocolate ganache rosette and a chocolate curl. This is what I created: 

I got to temper chocolate for the first time. It wasn't really that hard. I had made mousse before so it was much easier this time. I really enjoyed making this.

Frozen Choc. Hazelnut Mousse

                For the frozen dessert practical I made chocolate, hazelnut frozen mousse. I made the mousse and a chocolate cage to surround it, added some whipped cream and toasted hazelnuts on top and I was done.  The mousse took longer to freeze then I expected but it was just frozen enough to handle when I added the chocolate cage.

                A requirement  for the practical was that we make just enough for two desserts,  so the amount of hazelnuts I needed was very small, too small  to use the food processor. I thought if I used a knife and tried to chop the hazelnuts into small pieces it would work, it didn't. Most of the nuts sunk to the bottom before the mousse froze. Next time I would try using a coffee grinder,  and maybe find a faster way to freeze the mousse. The good thing about making such a small portion was that I could use couverture chocolate, which was great because when I tried making the mousse with regular chocolate chips it was grainy and not as smooth. All in all I think I did okay.