The weeks are flying by so quickly!

The start of custards has been fun, we’ve made creme brulee and creme caramel, as well as bread pudding (with a bourbon sauce) rice pudding, and then Gateau St Honore and Religieuse, some very traditional French desserts, and well, it is a French school technically!

It’s gone mostly well, my Honore didn’t go so well as I forgot to turn the pastry cream into diplomat cream so I didn’t have enough of it, but my choux paste turned out really well in that and the religieuse, I was proud of that. We also got to make a cheesecake and then make our own flavours, whatever we wanted.. so I made a caramel sauce and mixed it with one half, and a ganache I mixed with the other and then swirled them together making a very tasty chocolate caramel cheesecake.

I’m still having problems with my tempering of chocolate, we’ll apparently be doing more of that this week so I’ll get to work on it some more and hopefully with one of the Chef’s help we’ll be able to figure out where it is I’m going wrong as I can’t figure it out! *shrugs* I’m not too bothered at this point, it’s why I’m paying tuition – to learn this stuff!

The exam was successful, we made creme brulee and religious, both of mine turned out pretty good so I was happy, and I got 100 on the theory so a nice start to the unit!

Friday after class DmentD and I took a road trip to Houston.. well, just outside, to stay with friends. We were making good time when just as we were coming into Houston we got held up. There had been a crash, probably not long before we got there, we were the third car back, already there were several police cars, and more soon joined them. We sat there for a while wondering what was happening when we heard what sounded like a motorbike (this story works best with DmentD doing the sound effects! *grins*) weaving between all the traffic.. Then we saw the helicopter coming in to land on the road! We waited some more while whoever was hurt was loaded into the helicopter and flown off, and then the police checked the road and started letting us pass.. About a half hour delay in all.

Saturday (after 4 hours of sleep) we were off to the Texas Renaissance Faire, piled into the car we made our way there after a breakfast of kolache and doughnuts! It was a fun day, and the weather was definitely in our favour, bright and sunny but nice and cool!

They have a ‘Medieval’ village they’ve built that we wandered about, looking into shops at the weaponry and costumes and leather. We got to see the Mud Show which was funny, and the jousting which I wasn’t all that impressed with.. It was very short and so obviously staged they were throwing their lances down and jumping off their horses. I got to admire all the costumes, I would have liked to go in costume, hopefully I’ll be able to get something sorted for next year. And I got to laugh and cringe at people’s accents! The Ren Faire accent is a horrible bastardisation of English, though my highlight of the day was when we were in a shop admiring corsets when a woman came up and asked in her best ren faire accent if I’d been measured.. I replied taking a good 10 to 15 seconds saying I had been but I didn’t recall it so I didn’t mind being measured again and then when she spoke again the accent was completely dropped and she was speaking normally *laughs* That’s still making me happy!

DmentD being all manly showed off and did one of the strength things when you hit the base with the hammer and try to hit the bell… he succeeded in hitting the bell all three times, he won a little card saying he was entitled to one free kiss from any willing man, woman or beast.. so he cashed it in with me *grins*

I would have liked to see more of the place, we didn’t make it round all of it, but it was a fun day. We went out to dinner in the evening with a couple more people form Austin joining us.

Next year, as well as a costume I want to take some pound coins! About half of the places use pound signs rather than dollar (even though they mean dollar) to add to the atmosphere or something *grins* Just once, I want to hand over pound coins and see what they do!

We drove back Sunday morning, it was nice to be able to see some of the scenery that I couldn’t see in the dark Friday night. We got back and after going grocery shopping, and picking up pizza for dinner we spent the rest of the day crashed on the sofa being lazy and watching films, interrupted only by changing the laundry loads.

This week at school is based mainly around bavarians and bavarois and we’ll get to make the decision on what we’ll make for the final exam next week, we have from 6 different mousse-sponge cakes to choose from.