Gourmandise School Pastry Class

  

This month I started the first level of the Pro Pastry Program at The Gourmandise School in Santa Monica and I LOVE it! I have already learned so much not only about baking and chemistry, but also about the history of the food industry.  My teacher is amazing and so far everything we've made has really turned out great.  This photo was from the first class where we talked about chocolate. We tasted several different percentages of chocolate, pure cocoa nibs and even cocoa butter (the white block in the middle) which was revolting.  I think my teacher might love chocolate as much as I do...

 Cheddar & Chive Biscuits, Lemon Poppy Seed Cake, Carrot Cake with Pistachios, Blueberry Muffins

 Triple Chocolate Brownie Cookies

Homemade Toffee

Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies

Dark Chocolate Brownies (severely undercooked and OUT OF CONTROL amazing)

"Lemon Bars" shaped as a cake, with Vanilla Meringue

I never like lemon desserts, ever, but something about this really stood out to me!  Maybe because we used very sweet Meyer lemons, but this was seriously an amazing dessert.  

The crust was salty and fluffy and filling was dense and sweet.  I was super excited to use a torch on the meringue!  

Arlington Club

 

While in New York for the holidays I stopped by the recently opened Arlington Club for some drinks and desserts.  I love ALL of the restaurants by the Tao Group so I was extremely excited to see their new steakhouse.  The space was so beautiful and the food looked amazing, I definitely have to go back for dinner.  This was the Peanut Butter Chocolate Bar which was served with milk popcorn ice cream.  It was so good!  It was like a Reese's version of the ABC Kitchen sundae. 

This Sticky Date Pudding was to die for!! It's not something I would normally order, but it was exceptional.  This blurry photo doesn't do it any justice.  It was served with ginger ice cream, kumquat toffee, and was topped with amazing crunchy candied nuts.