Blast from the past

Nothing like waking up late, missing two busses, getting on the third knowing you're going to arrive late and realizing you've forgotten your bus pass to start the day.

Knocked up a black forest gateau. This is a cake with absolutely nothing to recommend it. Except we did, however, use nice sour Morello cherries macerated in Kirsch which at least took it out of the glacé gutter.

And a Pithiviers for good measure.

And my, oh my, the old PLF is starting to take shape. The croissants almost turned out all right even if the pains au chocolat lacked a certain photogenicity. Still quite a struggle to get things right, though, and after a quick troubleshoot with the honcho have decided to go for a wetter detrempe next time which I am very keen to try. Desperate to get this pastry nailed.

Herpsichore - inspiration in cake

We made babas/savarins for the first time today (not finished) and whipped up some puff pastry to revise Pithiviers, conversations and latticed apple tarts.

Not too inspiring. This makes you think, though:

Immature cheese

No patisserie today. A cracking schoolboy snap from the supermarket at lunchtime though.

Service Station

Today we took the shuttle back to France after Mum cooked us all a delicious Sunday roast. We stopped at a rather stylish service station with ducklings.

This is England

Trooped around London today with my French family. We walked from Victoria to Hamleys (amazing shop) via Buckingham Palace, St. James's pelicans, Parliament Square (picnic), Downing St./Horse Guards, top of lion in Trafalgar Square, St James's Palace, Christies, Piccadilly Circus and Godiva. No one complained about walking so far which was quite fantastic, then we hopped on a bus back. Simply glorious weather.

I then pushed off to a bash in Harrow, unfortunately, and was struck by this poster in the tube. A little tricky to make out, it reads, "Simply eating less pastry can help reduce your saturated fat intake." How much pastry do they think we English munch? Scarcely a patisserie in the country. They should come to France.

Before I got on the tube, I spotted a trio of sizable Americans struggling with the ticket machine as though it were the most alien thing in the world; rather like goats might struggle with a bottle of ketchup, perhaps.

I pressed all the right buttons for them and one of them suddenly whipped out a little blue, red and white Texan shaped key-ring and thrust it into my paw. "We're from Texas," she said. "It opens bottles [indicating the key-ring]. Thanks."

Extraordinary. Was she actually trundling around the country with a large collection of Texan key-rings to offer to unsuspecting Brits who happened to take pity? Or had she given me her personal key-ring in an act of disproportionate gratitude? I am not sure which would be weirder.

I've been hankering after a bottle opener and a key-ring in the shape of Texas for some time, so this beauty kills two birds with one stone.

L'Écriture au cornet est une ordure

Yesterday's vexation over, nougatine now enters the fray. Nougatine is a staple of French patisserie which I've never seen in England. Essentially it is a brittle made from nuts (typically almonds but possibly hazelnuts or even seeds) set in caramel. Immediately after cooking it is kept warm under extremely hot lamps. In this molten state, the nougatine can be rolled out and cut and shaped. You can then assemble 3D structures using caramel as glue.

You can attach choux to these structures to make what is known as a croquembouche or you can use them for serving petits-four or chocolates.

Today we were just playing around and here is my first attempt. It's nothing in particular. You have to work the nougatine very quickly before it cools because it is extremely brittle. Quite morish, too.

You can see the rolling pin is covered in cling film to prevent sticking (some people use metal or plastic rolling pins). Making a cornet with liquid caramel to do the gluing is not something I want to do again in a hurry.

We also took on a new entremets called a Royal which is a posh crispy cake (made with praliné, white chocolate and feuilletine) layered with a hazelnut biscuit joconde and chocolate mousse. This will be finished tomorrow, so photos then.

With yesterday's puff pastry we made some little vols au vent and some apple turnovers. With the time we had left, we practised our decor with the cornet. Here are some borders:

TLC

Today was my worst ever birthday and my worst day in France yet.

I woke up late, missed my bus, got on the next one to discover my monthly travel card had expired and arrived late for lessons.

Our morning class was art which was particularly uninspired as we were simply doing elaborate capital letters.

I took my lunch break by the balls and went off to visit a shop I've had in mind for some time only to find it was shut. Arrived back in the labo to find we had nothing new to make and were revising just brioche and puff pastry. Boring.

Something went wrong with my brioche dough (I think I must have mis-tared the balance) and it ended up extremely runny so I had to start all over again and my puff pastry went wrong for the first time EVER. This was due to the excessive heat in the labo since the other group were working on nougatine. There were 8 industrial gasses on full blast and 8 600 Watt heating lamps filling the room. This reeked havoc with my butter - everyone else had already done their feuilletage by this point because they hadn't had to restart their pastry...

By the time it came to shape my second batch of brioche dough the room was like a furnace and made things very hard... and I was so far behind there was not enough time to properly prove the dough (don't care about that split infinitive) so once baked it had to go straight into the bin.

Was so bloody angry. What a waste of a day.

I had decided I would go and see a film I've been eying up for some time to cheer me up, a French film called Welcome about an Iraqi immigrant who wants to swim the channel to England. My family couldn't come with me (no films on school nights) so it looked like a lonely trip. But I was quite resolved, and the cinema is not really about company anyway.

So I was just preparing an extremely swift getaway from scrubbing the labo (hiding round the corner listening to some lovely birthday messages from my parents) when Marion came dashing over saying, Don't leave, the prof has put some petits-fours in the oven, we're going to celebrate your birthday.

The petits-fours were lovely and were accompanied by a mildly suspect champagne which was very touching (the done thing at school for celebrations) but by the time it was over I'd missed the first 20mins of my film. So there was no point in going.

So I decided to try a new bus route home which is on a much more direct line. I got to the bus stop to find I had missed the last service (it was only 20.30 for goodness sake) so had to walk 15mins across town to my usual one. En route, I dropped a whole pack of cards which scattered everywhere.

Need some TLC.

I'm going to bed.