Wow…what a day!

Everything that I was excited about making…..we made today.  We can take home everything that we make in class, so it is so difficult to be visiting San Francisco and not have anyone to give these beautiful desserts to.  Thank goodness that the SFBI gives unclaimed pastries to charity.

We started with baking our lemon bars (who doesn’t LOVE lemon bars).  We pre-baked our dough that had been resting in the refrigerator overnight.  Our finished product was SOOOO delicious.

After finishing our lemon bars, we baked our angel food cakes.   This was an interesting process requiring very gentle mixing.  The cakes turned out amazing. There is such a big difference between angel food cake baked at home and those that can be bought at the grocery store.

Next on the agenda….rustic tarts.  We filled the inside with almond paste and fruit.  The dough that we rolled yesterday turned out SO flaky (yay, I CAN do it!).  I’m so excited to make this at home!

Can you believe that there was more on the agenda?  Next stop…fresh fruit tarts.  The fresh fruit tarts had a pastry cream filling and did not require baking after filling.  We had a beautiful fruit ‘buffet’ and could personally choose how we wanted to decorate our tarts. These were so much fun to make (and even more fun to eat!)

And there’s more….  We couldn’t finish the week without cheesecake.  And, this was not just any cheesecake.  This was the BEST cheesecake that I had ever had.  I almost cried giving this away at the end of the day.

and finally… lemon pound cakes.  I’ve made pound cake but not like this.  This pound cake was dense but moist and so yummy!  I even gave my pound cakes away : (   cry cry sniffle sniffle.

I had one terrific week of baking.  I can’t wait to show off the skills that I learned as soon as I get home.  I would definitely recommend the San Francisco Baking Institute for those of you wanting to improve your skills at pastry arts.   I have one more week of courses (after my week interning at Starter Bakery in Oakland) focusing on various cakes.  I can’t wait!

Happy Baking everyone!