On Sunday the 14th, I Skyped Victoria and she told me to watch The Grand Budapest Hotel, which I had not yet seen. I then watched it, watched it again, bought the soundtrack, and this is where the pastry craze that has seized my life began.
That next Tuesday, I had a free morning, so after heading to Monoprix and getting my hands on pastry bags and the relevant groceries, I started my pate-à-choux, the dough used to make little cream puffs. The dough was incredibly easy and the custard to fill the little puffs was even easier. I spent most of the morning in the kitchen, piping dough onto sheets, then piping cream into puffs, and then brought the leftovers to conversation club.
On my way home from conversation club, I bought two bars of flavored chocolate and a carton of eggs.
The next morning, I started working on two more batches of custards--Lindt chocolate orange bar and blueberry bar went into two different pots. You only need yolks for custard, so I whipped the whites and stuck them into the oven as meringues, which were flat and sad and burnt, but still sugar, so I ate them anyway.
After ballet on Wednesday, I made two batches of pate-à-choux and produced two enormous batches of puffs, glazed them in raspberry royal icing, and stuck them in the fridge. They lasted for an enormous amount of time and I brought them on the bus that weekend for my friends on the trip to the chateax de la Loire.
And after that, I just didn't stop with the pastries. The next week, I tried for choux pastries one more time and this time they puffed up, enormous and perfect and I filled them with the leftovers from the rest of the custard batches.
After spending some time on Pinterest, I decided to give puff pastry sheets a try, and after stocking up on three rolls and checking carefully on the Pinterest guides, I made little Danish pastries out of jam and kiri cheese, braiding the dough or just smushing the pockets of dough closed: apricot and cheese, cheese on its own, raspberry jam, strawberry jam, nutella with cinnamon...I had a pile of them. With the last sheet, I made a rose shaped apple tart--the usual French design with the thinly sliced apples and I glazed it with apricot.
Dany tasted it and then had another slice and then three little nutella braids and told me that I should leave my studies and start baking, and I think if a French woman tells you that your pastries are that good, you've accomplished something.
Today, I kept up with the puff pastry line, with a ham and goat cheese and kiri cheese and mustard puff pastry pie and a rose design apple and plum tart. I don't think I'm ever going to stop with this. There's something extremely satisfying about checking back on the oven and watching pastries puff up and brown under the egg wash and the apples and plums caramelize and then of course presenting it to friends and being all happy when they appreciate what you've made.
So once I move back into a dorm situation, come find me and I will probably have baked goods.
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