Butter Butter Butter Butter

Yesh. This has been an awesome yet terrible week. As the wedding grows ever nearer (T-10 days), I've spent a large majority of my free time tying up loose ends, meeting with people, trying to keep things under control... All of that, coupled with school and work, has been a little stressful. Unfortunately, I've found that I have some what of a nervous eating habit. Habits like this just are not good, especially when you're wearing a rather tight fitting dress in a few days AND you're surrounded by butter stuffed pastries every day!!! AAAAHHHHH!!!!!! NO.NO.NO!
The batch of croissants you see above are made with one entire pound of butter. Not only that, but it is then filled with banana/chocolate, honey/banana, chocolate/peanut butter, cheese/basil. Arteries clogged yet? These things are so unbelievably tasty, but I need to not be surrounded by them for 3 weeks!!! Eesh. I'm getting lots of practice on them though!
Almost there. Almost there. Almost there.

Back in the Kitchen

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!!!!!!!!!!
We are now back in the kitchen and I am so so so happy for that! The new class is Laminated Doughs, and we've started with Puff Pastry. This really is not my favorite thing in the world, but I don't care because I miss being in the kitchen so much! My new chef is much more of a challange than my previous instructor. She is meticulous and demanding and it's great. I actually feel challanged for the first time. She doesn't like to hold your hand through anything. Today she gave us a list of what we had to do, which was 5 different things, and gave demo on only 2 of them. It was actually great because it forced everyone to use there brains for once to figure out what to do. Everything turned out great. Today I completed four things:

a Pithiver a Fruit Bar a Tarte Tatin,and a Napoleon(which turned out a little poofier than it should have. heh heh). None of these things are particularly difficult if you have to patience to deal with Puff Pastry.