Octobler 9, 2017

Octobler 9, 2017

You'd have thought it was March 14 with all the pies we made today!! Holy Cow! McKenna and I divided and conquered combining the lab plans for today and tomorrow into one. I made a coconut cream pie, a caramel banana cream pie, 2 pecan pies and caramel sauce.
I made the pastry cream for the pies while McKenna did the doughs. It was fun to arrange other flavors with the classic pastry dough. For my coconut I combined the shredded coconut with some of the pastry cream and spread into my blind baked flaky pie crust. It looked lovely after I piped some cream on top and sprinkled a little toasted coconut.

The banana cream pie began with a layer of sliced bananas on the bottom of my bind baked flaky pie crust. If I could do it again, I would have made sure the bananas were more ripe before I used them in my pie. The riper bananas have a stronger banana flavor and they are sweeter with less starchiness. I drizzled some of my caramel sauce on top and that combo was really lovely.

Pecan Pies- those were pretty straight forward and I think that the real test is to make sure that they don't collapse with air bubbles in the oven. Make sure the filling fills in all the little holes in the pecans. Mine had good color and form. Man those things have a TON of sugar!

Caramel Sauce- I really like caramel. I really like this sauce. It was SO GOOD. When boiling the sugar and light corn syrup, I was initially concerned that it would never develop color, and then boom it did! You definitely cant leave caramel alone, it needs to be watched.

WHAT I LEARNED: This day was exhausting but I love working as a team. McKenna and I really got a lot done and together it was possible. Cooking alone is fun but cooking with someone else is also very enjoyable.