This is it...

The last cake from my decorating class. Some of the royal icing flowers I saved and a bit of marzipan made it onto this vanilla buttercream cake.

Not-so-dynamite Napoleons

Cutting these Napoleons into pieces killed me. To make them, we rolled out some more of our puff dough and baked it with a cookie sheet on top to weigh it down. Once cooled it was cut in half and layered with French pastry cream {milk, eggs, sugar, cornstarch, butter; whipped cream is then folded in} and strawberries. To decorate, melted white fondant is poured on top and chocolate fondant is drizzled across and scored with a paring knife. THEN this perfectly layered and decorated pastry had to be carefully cut into pieces, which caused the fondant to smear all over the place. Sigh. Better luck next time.

Fresh strawberries & mascarpone

I got the best Williams-Sonoma book on sale - The Essentials of Baking. It turns out that some of the recipes were developed by Elinor Klivans, author of another one of my favourites - Cupcakes!.

Ontario strawberries are in season now, so I used them to try this Strawberry and Mascarpone Cream Tart. The filling consisted of mascarpone cheese, heavy cream, icing sugar and vanilla, so that - along with the strawberries - made it really rich and sweet.

Marzipan roses

We've moved on to marzipan from icing - kind of like working with Play Dough, but more annoying. Next week is our final cake!

Apples & puff

My pastry class will be the last one I take this summer - then back to school in the fall. This was my first attempt at making and working with puff pastry. Good god - the fat! I knew there was a reason that danishes taste so good. The fat is "rolled in" and the dough is folded four times (single and double folds are alternated) and then refrigerated for at least an hour before being worked with. We froze ours as we made enough to last a few classes. The dough for apple strudel is rolled in a rectangular shape and diagonal tabs are cut on down the sides. A mixture of bread/cake crumbs, apples, lemon zest, raisins and cinnamon is poured down the centre and the strips are folded over the top to form a crisscross pattern (after being brushed with egg wash). The top is brushed with egg wash and coarse sugar is sprinkled over the top. The strudel is baked for 35-40 minutes for at 350 degrees. Yummy.