Laminated doughs finished nicely at the end of last week, the doughnuts and beignets were delicious and the exam went well, gaining me a nice A overall. We then fulfilled our tradition of going out for dinner at the end of the block, 9 of us this time, crowding into Magnolia eating and chatting and having fun.

We had a good weekend, Saturday it was a friend’s birthday so we went to Bucco de Beppi for dinner, an Italian place that does family style meals, lots of huge plates so you can try bits of whatever you want. That was followed by a trip to the cinema to see Zack and Miri Make A Porno, which was funny, I feel that Jason Mewes stole the show *grins* not that that’s a bad thing, just an observation. We finished the evening with dessert at Chez Zee, where I was impressed enough with their dessert selection and bakery that I’m planning on emailing them about my externship.

Sunday DmentD made a Chicken Andouille gumbo and we had people round. The gumbo (my first taste of it) was delicious. Good job too really since we have leftovers in a freezer *grins* He also made ribbon cookies (addictive) and I had a blast at experimenting with recipes and made root beer cupcakes. I was happy, I found a good base recipe, that rose nicely and got a perfect dome on the top, and then substituted root beer extract in place of vanilla. It worked well, maybe could use a little more extract but they’re stronger tasting now as they sit. I made a cream cheese vanilla frosting to go on top and that worked splendidly.

Yesterday saw the start of my new block at school, with a new instructor. We’re onto custards now.. which is more exciting than it sounds! We made creme caramel, creme brulee and chocolate pot de creme, we’ll be finishing them today. We also made a lemon curd which was nice, and it’s a good recipe to sub in any citrus fruits. Today we’ll be doing stirred custards and then over the next 3 weeks we’ll be making all sorts of desserts containing custards, mousses, bavarians and bavarois. And then also some ice creams and sorbets since ice cream does have a custard base *grins*