Inhaling Warm Pâte á Choux

I never thought I’d live to say this, but I am too excited to blog right now. The first night of pastry class at L’Academie de Cuisine was so wonderful that I’m walking on a little whipped cream cloud. If I try to tell you about everything, I’ll never get to sleep and I’ll never wake up in the morning, and that means I won’t get my story done tomorrow, and that means there will be a big awful scary blank space in a national newspaper with my name attached to it.

So I will tell you all about class tomorrow when I can write a longer post. But let me leave you with a couple pictures of our first night’s work: miniature pâte à choux (that’s the dough used for eclairs and cream puffs) filled with raspberry jam and creme Chantilly (that’s sweetened whipped cream).

And yes, in answer to your most pressing question: YES. We ate them. We ate lots of them.

Here is your CurvyMama with Chef Claude Perdriolat, a gracious fellow with quite an impressive resume. He was the pastry chef at D.C.’s Lion d’Or, at Michel Richard Citronelle, and at Red Sage. He’s been a pastry consultant to the White House for the past decade.  Tomorrow I’ll tell you all about how we made and piped the dough, and exactly how Chef Claude and all his assistants created the little swans. I’ll tell you what the class was like, and I’ll share the advice we got from our teachers. Tomorrow! Tomorrow!!

But now? Whipped cream and pastry dreams.