Week 1: Lemon Blueberry & Sables

Last night was my first class at Chez Boucher French Cooking School!! I was totally "in my element" as dad would say. I felt so at home with my hands all flour-y and messy. :)

There are only 4 students in this particular class- that's nice because we are able to get some serious one-on-one attention and help if need be.

The instructors are Jon and Leander. They're pretty great so far- They gave us their phone numbers and emails just incase throughout the week, we need help with anything of have any questions. Thought that was pretty cool.

The facility is very, very nice. There are eight ovens! 4 convectional and 4 regular. All full size. They have a walk-in fridge too! They gave us a tour before we started and said that pretty much everything there is for our using. So it's our responsibility to get the ingrediants needed and stuff.

I thought going into this that I would do alot of watching and that they would be doing the cooking... NU-UH. Us students are doing everything they are. We each have our own kitchen set up complete with: trays, towels, spatula, bowls, bowl scrapers, measuring cups/dishes, apron and a our own Kitchen Aid mixer! I love that thing...

The gave me this incredible book called 'Professional Baking' by Wayne Gisslen. This book is huge! And all of it's 27 chapters sound amazingly informative. It's crammed with information. It shouldnt be called a recipe book beacause it really isn't. There are ssome recipes that compliment what you learned in that particular chapter. It's nearly 800 pages! I've never seen a book that think before let alone owned one!

The class is roughly 4 hours long-- from 6pm-10pm. It's super concentrated too. Jon and Leander's mouths are moving all the time with information and instruction. I LOVE IT. I'm soaking it up-- like a dry sponge to water. :)

Here are the two cookies we made last night:

Lemon with blueberry jam in the middle. The consistency of this cookie is like nothing I've tasted before. So smooth and light and airy.

This one is a chocolate-vanilla swirl cookie. You know, the ones you roll and cut. This one was more work overall than the lemon. More steps until the final product.

Both of these pictures are actually pictures of what I made. What I love about both of the cookies is that they aren't that sweet! There isn't a lot of sugar that goes into either of them. I guess that's a good thing and a bad thing--- you can eat more without feeling sick from the sugar. ;) lol.

So, I very much LOVE this class. Thanks for reading!