What a good class! I just got back from my practical and it was pretty good. For some reason I felt extremely nervous for this practical and I have no idea why. When I got there I felt so disorganized and lost and I kept forgetting what I was doing.

I felt like I did so many things wrong today. Chef Nicolas had to come over and show me/correct what I was doing more times than I would have liked. I made the dough fine, the pastry cream was good, but I had some trouble with the almond cream. I guess my butter was still not quite soft enough so it wasn’t as smooth as it should have been. Then when I had to roll out the pate sucree is when I ran into some trouble. My dough was still a bit too soft and everytime I turned it it was no longer a circle. So Chef had to come over and correct it. But then it turned into a non-circle again. So I had to put it in the fridge/freezer for more time. By this point I felt kind of blahh and really disappointed. It’s not like rolling out dough is anything new to me so I felt a bit like an idiot and I could feel my face all hot like I was going to cry cause I’m a weirdo like that.  Anyways, so since I was waiting for that I fell behind my usual pace so I had to work fast to make my coulis and the diplomat cream and all that. I accidentally put my egg whites in the egg white container completely forgetting that I needed them for the souffle mixture. Then I divided up my pastry cream and then made the coulis. After I made the coulis and the diplomat cream I cut up the berries for my gratin and set them aside and just waited for the dough to be more firm. When it finally wasn’t soft anymore I attempted to roll it out again. Chef obviously saw me struggling and came over and practically did it for me. After that was over everything started to go well from there. I plated my fruit gratin, thought it looked pretty ugly but Chef Nicolas ended up liking it. I used some of my coulis to put little dots on the side of the plate and it made it look brighter, I liked it. My tarte souffle ended up really well too, it was baked properly, my tart shell wasn’t too dark, and it was still pretty puffy when I presented it.

In the end I was really happy with how everything turned out. Chef told me that today my weakness was (obviously) the foncage (which is the whole dough thing) but that my tarte souffle and fruit gratin as well as my coulis were all good and that he had nothing to say. So yay! But unfortunately I forgot that my battery is dead in my camera so I didn’t get to take a picture! My tarte souffle basically looked exactly like Chef’s yesterday, and my fruit gratin was just a fun pile of strawberries, blackberries and blueberries with some torched diplomat cream on top and the coulis decoration I made on the sides of the plate. I guess I should charge my battery!

Next week I only have class on monday and wednesday. I really really really REALLY wish we had class more often than that. I want to learn more!

**Okay, so I charged my camera and I took a picture of my tarte souffle. There is not fruit gratin though becuase I ate it.

**somehow lost the picture? who knows…

Butter used: 135gms
Total: 2735gms