Today was "lets get drunk day", well maybe not drunk but at least at that really, really happy stage. Were making Napoleon, Raspberry Soufflé, and Granité de Citron et fruits. We started with the puff pastry for the napoleon. We had premade this yesterday and had it in the fridge overnight. We took it out of the fridge and rolled out a piece of the dough so that it covered most of the cutting board. We then rolled some holes (for ventation) into it and then put it into the oven. The one thing that is different when we put this dough in the oven then the other times, was that we put another cookie sheet on top of the dough to make a sandwich with the cookie sheets. This is because we want the dough to rise (this is the same dough as croissants) but we still want it to stay flat and not have an air bubble or something. We then made the vanilla cream for the napoleons and the lemon granites. The lemon granites was the first thing today that had alcohol in it today. Granites containes lemon juice, sugar, water, and dry vermouth (oh yeah baby!, were's the rest of the ingredients for a MARTINI) The funny thing was the girl that was pourinng the dry vermouth someone bumped into her. Of course nobody belived them when they said that it was an accident, (of course, ok what ever you say), I'm sure you wouldn't even be on that side of the kitchen if she wasn't pouring the vermouth. We put that in the freezer and started on the raspberry soufflé. I have never made a soufflé, but can I say it is very cool not only to make but to watch being made. First we had to press on the raspberries, like we did earlier in the week, so there was only the juice. Put this into a pot with the sugar and potato startch and stirred this till it reduced. If your asking how do you know when it's reduced, well let me tell you, you'll know. The mixture will go from a sauce, boil, then turn into a sticky, gooey concoction. You take this and fold into the beaten egg whites, this looks like pink and white clouds (see the pictures), at this stage, it's one of those make it or break it stages. You want to mix the egg whites with the raspberry mixture so it's all a light pink color, but you don'twant to mix it to much, because then the air bubbles in the egg whites will go away and then the soufflé won't rise in the oven. We put this puffy mixture in the ramekins that we had previously sugar/buttered and then put Kirsch soaked (another alcohol for today) raspberries on the bottom. After filling up all the ramekins put them into the oven. If your wondering about the puff pastry, it has to be in the oven for a while, so we took it out after dealing with the soufflés. We set it aside to cool and then had our tea and coffee break. Before we finished with the break the soufflés were done, so we dabbed some raspberry sauce ontop and had it with our coffee. With the left over puff pastry we rolled it out and sprinkled it with cinnamon, sugar, and some chopped up almonds, cut the dough into strips and then twisted them and popped them into the oven. Going back to the napoleons, we took our puff pastry and cut it into small rectangles. With our rectangles and pipped the vanilla cream onto the first layer, then putting some of the leftover Kirsch raspberries (more alcohol). Then put another layer of the puff pastry, then another layer of vanilla cream, then last another layer of puff pastry, then put some icing sugar on top. We decorated the plate with the raspberry sauce from the soufflé and some of the passionfruit sauce and then placed the napoleon on the plate. Very Pretty! Last thing of the day was the Granité de citron et fruits. This didn't take long, we took the rest of the strawberry "jell-o" from ealier in the week and put it into the glasses and put that into the fridge. While they were jell-o-fying we cleaned up the kitchen. By the time we were done so was the "jell-o". We then put the fruit on top filled the glass from the "jell-o" to allmost to the top with champagne (even more alcohol) then topped it off with the granités. Afterwards, we had some champagne left over, so while we all said our good-bye's (I'm the only one coming back next week) we finished the champagne. We then bagged the twists that we made earlier and left. Today of all days I had to were heels, now these heels are not normal shoes, there a bit to big. See I got them while at school in Miami and I must of got them on a hot day, because I know that my feet have not shrunk, but when I bought them they were kind of on the tight side. Well now I was having even more trouble because of all the alcohol, and I had gotten some extra money for my birthday so I went to my second favorite store, Zara, and bought some new shoes, that not only I love but also happen to go with my outfit, you know kill two birds with one stone. Then if my day was done I still had do get my train tickets for Monte Carlo, Monaco, which is were I'm going for my birthday. I get to the train station to buy my tickets and go up stairs to were the Eurostar ticket counter is and wait in line. After waiting for about 20min I finally get up to the counter and find out that the tickets for Monte Carlo I have to get them downstairs. So I go downstairs and wait in line, thankfully not that long and get my tickets. Since I have the EuroPass I only pay €23 total. I look at the time and see that I only have 1/2hr before the grocery store closes. So I run and take the metro back home. I get to the grocery store with only a couple minutes to spare, thankfully their better at letting you stay a bit overtime if your already in the store. I get my groceries and finally go home. Where I watch some TV, and don't ask what I was watching because it was in French, and had some dinner.
((( For some reason I lost my photos, sorry about it, I'm just as sad :( )))
