It has been one crazy week!!!! We started with our new lab instructor and things have definitely changed. He was not too pleased with the class yesterday. We were making passion fruit cremeux tartlettes with Italian meringue, and raspberry chibouste tartlettes. These recipes were a fair bit more challenging than what we have had before, and everyone had the same issues. See, the instructor is a PASTRY MASTER! He is so incredibly talented, that it seems as though he doesn't always understand how something could be difficult for us (who are inexperienced!). He makes everything look so incredibly easy!!! The meringues we needed to make for both of the tartlettes needed to be whipped to a specific peak, then have a boiling water and sugar mixture added at just the right time. This is easy for someone like him who has done this for years and also has a laser thermometer (which is very helpful in times like this). However, seeing as we all have none of these things, we all made the same mistakes. He was not happy. At all. Not in the least. In fact, he yelled. Everyone was very deflated after this lab. No one was looking forward to the next baking day. It was quite disheartening. These recipes were very difficult, time consuming and very different from what we're used to. We all tried our absolute best to make a good impression on this instructor, and we failed miserably. All though I was feeling like crap after this class, I went home and showed Mum and Margot what I made and they thought they looked wonderful. It was true, they looked very cute. They also said that they tasted good, and that's what matters to me. Fortunately, I felt a little better after that. Everyone today was very worried about what was to come with today's lab and how the instructor would be. Luckily things were better. I will post tomorrow about today's SUCCESSFUL lab!

Here are my tartlettes!

the passion fruit cremeux with Italian meringue

the raspberry chibouste