Fire Drill! (Day 9)

I know, I know...I haven't written in a while...but so much has been going on!! I have so much to tell you...and show you. :)

First a few pictures of our creations of the past couple of days: below please see a picture of our tarte aux noix (nut tart), which is my favorite so far.  The first pictured is mine, with a beautiful powdered sugar maple leaf.  The second picture is of my classmate's, Hunter (and resident class clown for all obvious reasons :)).

The next is a mini fruit tart. The other one in the picture was smashed during rush hour in the subway...hey that's what you get in New York City!

One of my favorite endeavors so far was piping our Spritskakor cookies (a Scandinavian butter cookie):

We also did: a savory tart of caramelized onions, gorganzola cheese, and tomatoes; tarte aux citron (lemon tart), with beautiful confit de citron as a garnish, which I gave away to a homeless person on my way home (didn't want to carry it around Eataly - see next blog entry :)); and of course learning how to brulée.  All creations are pictured below, including a picture of Chef Michael demonstrating the brulée technique, and my fellow classmate, Jennifer, practicing said technique.

Our days as pastry students are extremely intense.  You have to LOVE what you are doing or else you will surely fail.  This presents a certain stress within our days, however it also reinforces our dedication to the art.  During our first week or so of class, we have all been walking on egg shells (no pun intended) and quietly learning our way, not only around the kitchen, but around each other.  Last Friday some of the class went out to the "dedicated" student bar, O'Neil's, and got to know each other a bit more.  I learned that my fellow classmates are pretty cool!  We also got to mingle with more seasoned pastry students, as well as some of the culinary students.  Every single person I met had a fire inside them when it came discussing food...a true inspiration and motivation! One of the pastry II students even visited me the following Monday and blessed us with his passion fruit macaroons...yummm!!

With every passing day I am loving pastry more and more...as well as loving my peers more and more! We find time to laugh a bit during the day...especially today when we had our first fire drill.  Whilst filtering out into the street and seeing a sea of white, we could all not help but laugh...and secretly all be proud of what we represented!

Congrats future chefs!!