This week’s pastry classes were extremely frustrating and stressful, but I made it through. We made a ton of stuff, which worked out great, as it was my brother’s birthday this week. We made a cheesecake that I haven’t tried yet, but it looks quite good, except for the crack on top. I’m going to go ahead and take a lucky guess about the crack– just after we put our cheesecake in the oven, my partner and I noticed a certain measuring cup full of cream sitting on the tabletop. Oops! To make up for the lack of moisture, I made a nice gooey mixed fruit sauce to go on top of the cheesecake.

We also made 3 different kinds of danishes from one danish dough. We learned how to make rolled, or ‘pigs-in-a-blanket” style danishes, as well as pinwheels, and also diamonds. We filled the rolled danishes with frangipane, the pinwheels were filled with pastry cream and apricot halves, and the diamonds were filled with a fruit mixture. They got a bit squished on the ride home, but you’ll get the jist.

Adding to the panic, we were given 15 minutes to put together a black forest cake from start to finish, with no ingredients prepped. In the process, I managed to cut two of my fingers while cutting the layers for the cake. After digging up some bandaids and gloves, my partner and I pulled together our cake. Slightly sloppy, yes….but we did it.

Lastly, (and the best-tasting) we made a lemon sabayon tart with a Swiss meringue and it was soo delicious. I normally dislike anything ‘lemon meringue-y’, but I really enjoyed a bite of this. We used a pate sucree base, and created the lemon sabayon filling. The Swiss meringue was so fun to pipe on and then torch!