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Admittedly, I tried to make pate a choux on the Friday before class and it turned out terrible. I tried to fry the dough to make zeppoles and it turned out more like funnel cake. So I was pretty curious how it was going to turn out in class. Pate a choux is like poor man's dessert. It is eggs, flour, butter, sugar and water. Who doesn't have that laying around? The trick was to get the dough to the right consistency by adding just the right amount of eggs. We successfully piped the dough onto baking sheets and baked into the beginnings of profiteroles and eclairs.

While the Pate a choux baked we prepared the creme patissiere for the filling and the caramel and custard for creme caramel renversee. The custards used the same basic principal of tempering eggs into hot milk and baking in a hot water bath. I was a little nervous about making caramel as I have screwed this up before too but it turned out beautifully! We poured the caramel to cover the bottom of ramekins and filled the rest of the way with the custard.

While the creme caramel baked, we finished the creme patissiere by folding in fresh whipped cream. We carefully piped the filling into the eclairs and dipped in glazing chocolate. We filled the profiteroles with whipped cream infused with vanilla. It was like a small taste of heaven.

The last thing we made was chocolate pot de creme and will get to finish and eat it at the next class after it chills in the fridge.