Chocolate class...

Right before the Christmas break, I had the last of my baking classes; chocolate...
I was a little rushed, which I do not like, but we were heading to the airport afterwards. I had to miss the best part of the class: eating at the end.

We made several things; chocolate mousse, which is to my surprise has raw eggs in it.

Caramel/pecan/white chocolate ice cream...

Chocolate truffles...

And lava (also known as molten) cake, which is my husband's favorite.

I was really interested in learning the tricks around that recipe. I did not get a chance to bake mine in the class. So I brought them home and put them in the freezer. I baked them after our trip. They were sooo good, totally out of this word. I am planning to make them home at our next dinner party.

So the recipe to follow...

Cooking class 2...

Second class that I went to covered cookies and confectioneries. It was right up my alley. They separated us into groups and gave us the choice of choosing one of the cookies. I opted for coconut macaroons.

It was a lot of fun. Biggest thing I learned was the importance of consistency of the size of the things that you are baking. That being the cookie size or the how much you fill in the muffin papers. Again, having the right equipment is crucial.

We did not know any better and experimented with a lot with different sizes and shapes of macaroon.

There was a lot of instructions at each table which allowed us to see the chef's perspective and touch.

The best macaroons were the small ones that shaped like a mountain (the ones on the far side of the baking sheet). They were baked evenly and was so much easier to handle with chocolate decorating later on.

This was my presentation...

We also dipped them in chocolate so that the bottom's of them were all chocolate...

We got to bring lots of cookies home. We had some friends over that night and got to taste them all. It was lots of fun but not great for my waist line...
I have gained few pounds since I started the cooking classes. If I want to eat like this, I have to increase my exercise hours for sure... ;-)
I will certainly make all of the cookies in the next couple of months... Stay tuned for recipies...

Cooking Class 1...

This year, I have signed up for three cooking classes at the Le Cordon Bleu. It is a part of the Master Chef Cooking Classes program. They are 3 hour classes which are held at the local Le Cordon Bleu Culinary school.
The first one was poultry and meat...

I went to this one with a great friend who is also our neighbor; Shane. He is a stay-at-home dad and a wonderful cook. He was very excited about learning about de-boning a chicken and fish. I was not crazy about the de-boning part but I was interested in different ways of cooking meat.

The chef first showed us how to prepare chicken for roasting and then just cutting up the chicken into various pieces.

We covered chicken, steak, and veal...

This is what he cooked... Chicken breast with mushroom sauce and chicken scallopini with capers.

And steak with black peppercorns. Yum...

Here is Shane with his veal creation...

And me trying not to burn something... (Next time I have to remember to tie my hair)


Things I learned....
1) Equipment is extremely important
2) I need new knives (sharper) and saute pans (lighter)... (The knives are in mail as of today)
3) I miss gas stove
4) It is so much fun to cook when you do not have to worry about cleaning up
5) It is also so much fun having your pan catch fire... Thank you alcohol...
5) Fennel is very tasty and goes great with both meat and chicken

We were supposed to split a chicken but they ran out of chickens... Go figure... We ended up making streak and a veal dish...

I first made steak with mushroom and brandy sauce and ate it  (Really, I ate most of it)


Then I made veal scallopini with fennel and capers and ate that too. This was so good, I ate the whole thing...