Week 3..... Apple Pie, Fruit Tart and Banana Cream Pie!!!

So Wed. night class was major drama for me. But I made it thru....

Let's start out by discussing how much pain I am in right now. PAIN, people, PAIN. My ribs hurt, my legs hurt, my ankle hurts, my knee hurts, my arm hurts, my shoulder hurts..... But for once, I don't have a headache!!!

So anyways, during class, I fell. Which, to some of my friends, isn't a big deal b/c I ALWAYS fall. Or bump into something, or burn a body part, etc, etc, etc. You get the picture. But I had tears streaming down my face and I BRUISED!!!! No matter what I do, I never bruise! But yep, I did. I have some on my forearm, my knee, had one on my ankle, but it went away just as fast as it showed up, and a few on my hip. The bruise on my arm was the only one that came out in a pic.... Wanna see?

Isn't is gorgeous? Only a couple days old, but it is def getting better looking. It still hurts though. My one co-worker thought I got beat up when she saw me. I woke up Thurs morning feeling like I got hit by a Mack truck. Now I understand when claimants tell me that they didn't start feeling really bad until the day after their accident....

But on the bright side of things, I made it thru the rest of class, despite almost crying again when Chef was grading my stuff. (I got a good grade so that wasn't why I was tearing up; the ankle was shooting sharp pains all up and down me....)

I am actually pretty happy about how mostly everything came out. Mostly b/c I didn't like the banana creme pie. Not b/c the filling wasn't good.... But b/c it had a graham cracker crust. Not a great combo, but the filling was great, the banana's were just how I liked them, firm and still a bit green. I like whipped cream on my pie, not meringue but it was easy coming off. I sat and ate the filling when I got home. It was yummy.I did love love love the pie crust recipe! Chef made a def good choice with that one and it will be the only one I use in the future. It was flaky and flavorful. The filling seemed a bit more tart than I am normally used to.... I wasn't sure what it was that I did wrong on that. I have never added apple cider to my filling before, but maybe that was what made it super tart. I'm not sure. But it came out great and I am very exicted to use it again.

Finally, we made a fruit tart using our pastry cream and the sweet dough for the crust. I really liked the dough we used, although it reminded me a lot of the butter cookies I made at Pierre's last week. Same falvor, just a bit of a dif texture. But it was def good. I kind of felt like my pastry cream was a bit too thin, like it could stand to be a little more solid, but it tasted good. I added cocoa to the cream right before I used it and it was def good. Next time I am going to try and add come straight up chocolate to it while it is cooking. Just to see if that makes it even more chocolatey.
I also would have liked to have a cooler shell before I put in the cream, but we were running out of time, so the pastry cream ended up even more liquid-ish. I tried to make it more firm by putting it in the fridge asap when I got home, but it still oozed a bit. But it was still delicious!