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When Melissa wrote in about her pastry cream crisis, I felt her pain. I had just had the same experience: Hours before 25 guests were to arrive at my house for a pie social, I awoke to find that the lovely pastry cream that had set up so nicely in the refrigerator at bedtime had turned into a pourable custard. This meant that instead of enjoying nicely formed slices of honey-vanilla pie with gingersnap crust, my gues

If you sneaked a peek at this blog late last night, or raced to check it early this morning (ahem), you already know that session 2 of my pastry techniques class at L’Academie de Cuisine was a bit of a wild ride. We crammed so much pastry dough into a brief period that our little heads were spinning. And in all the hubbub, my fellow students and I managed to make batches of pastry cream so tough you could slam