A crate of pecans costs $300*

Today we made pecan pie, which was totally awesome. We started the day off by rolling out our sweet dough from yesterday and placing it into one tart pan and one tart ring (the pan has a bottom and the ring doesn't). Easy enough. I am getting much better at rolling out dough that is mostly even and in a sort-of round shape. Once the tart shells were ready we scooped out our pecan pie filling from yesterday into the shell and arranged the pecans on the top. Then into the oven they went.

 
While those were baking, we made German buttercream which was actually so delicious that I just wanted to eat it with a spoon. It is essentially creamed butter and whipped pastry cream mixed together and we also added melted chocolate. We used about half of our pastry cream from yesterday. What we will do with the rest is still a mystery.

Then we got out our chocolate sponge cakes from yesterday and we had to cut them into three even layers. Jean-Luc must have seen the fear in our eyes because he said, "Well, you wanted to be bakers? You have to start somewhere." I think we were all worried that our cakes would break and we would have to start all over again. But that didn't happen to anyone and then we let out a collective sigh of relief. Once the cakes were in three mostly even pieces, we brushed a light syrup (1 part sugar, 2 parts water) onto each layer, followed by a generous coating of buttercream. We did a crumb layer on the top and sides, which sounded familiar only because of that time I was addicted to Cake Boss. Then they went back in the fridge, to be continued tomorrow. [I would take before and after pictures but it's hard to pull out a camera when you are in a rush and also covered in flour / sugar / butter / icing / miscellaneous.]

Once we got back from break, we thought we were pretty much done for the day... but we weren't. Our group was leaving slightly early (at 11:30) to go to The Dining Room (aka the fancy restaurant) and it was 11:05, so we started cleaning up. Then once that was all done, Jean-Luc came over and said we were going to be making one more thing before leaving. I really need to get used to the feeling of being rushed (and not hating it) and also being okay with being the last person to finish things always. The final thing we made was a frangipane cream, which is basically a "traditional almond cream." Essentially, butter, sugar, and almonds with some other ingredients thrown in. I'm not the biggest fan of chopped nuts of any kind in anything, so this didn't look particularly appetizing, and I also came really close to overheating my butter initially so my cream wasn't as fluffy as it could have been, but I think it was okay. We'll find out tomorrow when we use it to fill our second tart shell.
 

I didn't make this, but here is one of the plated dessert from lunch in The Dining Room.
This crème caramel was made by the restaurant section. Note the sugar cage. 

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Today's Recipes

Sweet Dough
400 g flour
200 g sugar
4 g baking powder
200 g butter
2 eggs

Pecan Pie Filling
150 ml cream 
150 g brown sugar 
30 g glucose 
3 eggs 
60 g butter  
 

*That is what Jean-Luc told us before we started arranging our pecans.