It's All About the Apron

Yesterday I spent four hours in one of my ideas of heaven - three hours in a cooking class then an extra hour shopping up a storm in the kitchen store.

I love cooking classes, so when my friend suggested Classical Desserts with an Asian Twist I was sold.

On the menu: Lemongrass Crème Brulee and Mango & Ginger Pavlova.  I don't usually make desserts, so I hadn't attempted any version of crème brulee or pavlova/meringue before... I knew it would be fun, but I was still a little intimidated.

Things were on the up when I arrived and saw a coffee machine and our purple aprons (which we got to keep)!

Our chef was brilliant at sharing all sorts of handy tips from his restaurant. 

For example, did you know that the best way to separate egg whites and yolks is with your hands?  If you break your eggs carefully into a bowl you can separate out several yolks with a simple scoop of your hand - brilliant!

  

Scoop and separate - it's that simple

Or, did you know that the easiest way to peel ginger is with the edge of a spoon?  And that older ginger root is much more pungent and spicy than it's younger version?

Or to quickly remove the bubbles on top of your crème brulee before popping it in the oven, just blast it with a blow tourch?  That sounds far more dramatic than it actually is...

Our meringue mixture was a bit wet so didn't quite reach the 'stiff peaks' milestone in the blender, so they wouldn't quite hold their shape on the baking tray, but the raw batter still tasted delicious.

End result: mixed.  My meringues over-cooked I think (they weren't the same pristine white as the chef's) and most of them broke trying to get them off the baking paper.  Probably because they blew up to the size of small houses... oh well, I can't be a domestic goddess every day.

The indentations were for
the mango and ginger...



In the oven, expanding rapidly



The crème brulee was much more successful.  The flavouring comes from infusing the custard, so we infused a hell of a lot of lemongrass and poured the delicious custard mixture into the cutest little ramekins (mine were blue). 

 The blow tourch bit was fun!  The chef's examples were naturally far superior (here's a little something I prepared earlier") but I'm sure mine tasted just as good!

So tasty I wasn't worried about uneven browning

 But the best part?  The best part was not having to clean up!

Before                                   After

Next class - macaroons!