I have a confession to make right off the bat.

I have a HUGE sweet tooth. It gets me in trouble all the time. Every meal needs a sweet ending. Sometimes I'm good and a fruit will take care of it - especially it's summer and early fall, and there's an ton to choose from. But sometimes . . . nothing but a Twinkie or jelly roll or Jo Louis or 1/2 Moon (I swear there must be crack in those Vachon cakes!) will do.

Due to this sweet tooth, or really the "processed sugar with whipped cream and jam filling if you can swing it" tooth, I was pretty excited to see that the Culinary Desserts class at GBC would fit into my crazy schedule - naturally I signed up for it as soon as I could.

The first week of class is always more of an orientation - everyone scoping each other out to see who would be the best partner for following weeks, meeting the instructor, Chef D. who was all business and no messing around, getting the syllabus with and checking out the equipment. Nothing too exciting.

The second class - to which I forgot to bring my camera (sorry!) - we were all in uniform and I managed to score a decent partner. A good partner that (pardon my bluntness) speaks English, has some common sense, a sense of humour and can follow directions, from experience in the past couple of practical classes, is a HUGE factor in enjoying coming to class, especially one that's after work on a Friday night for 3 hours. In that class, we made royal icing with a touch of gelatin, and practiced our piping skills.

Piping, essentially, requires a piping bag and piping tubes or tips. Tubes, you can push straight into the skinniest part of the bag, then cut an opening for it to poke out. Piping tips are shorter and slightly skinnier, and require a coupler to attach them to the piping bag so that the icing doesn't ooze out the sides when squeezing. A coupler, though, makes it easier to change tips without having to start a new piping bag or get icing all over yourself. Not that I didn't do that anyway. I'm not the neatest baker.

At any rate, we used a #6 star tube, and an 18" piping bag.



You can tell it's a #6 because the last digit on the tube is #6. This is fairly consistent brand to brand, so there's not much guess work involved




We piped rosettes, eclairs (essentially a straight line that goes back on itself a bit), shells (they look more like teardrops), shell borders (a line of shells connecting at the tips), crescents and hearts (2 shells side by side). We piped them onto the back of a baking sheet over and over again. Did I mention we did this for almost 2 out of the 3 hours we were in class. Nothing too exciting, except for the fact that I didn't have dinner before class and kept eating the icing that escaped the piping bag on my hands and onto the utensils. Yeah, not such a hot idea. Glycerin plus pure icing sugar royal icing doesn't taste so good, and doesn't react well later with your digestive system. I'll spare you the details, but trust me - it wasn't pretty.

Anyway, the most recent class built on the piping skills that we practiced (and practiced and practiced some more) the week before, and we made . . .*fanfare please* . . . piped shortbread cookies. I know, you're riveted!

Now, here's the thing. I usually don't like shortbread cookies. When the holidays come around, I tend to avoid them like the plague - those pale, powdery, anemic looking little pucks, garnished with a piece of maraschino cherry or candied fruit (*shudder*). The texture, and taste usually gross me right out. So, needless to say, I wasn't super excited to make shortbread, especially piped shortbread, since my piping skills proved to be a bit . . . lacking, shall we say?

However, not to toot my own horn, especially since it wasn't MY recipe, the cookies turned out tasty, though I braced myself. My partner, S. and I mixed up the dough, shoved a bunch in the piping bags, and made a bunch of the same shapes from last week: rosettes, eclairs, shells, crescents and heart.

After they baked, my tray ended up looking like this:



Not bad, eh? Not the prettiest, but seriously, if you saw some of the blobs that some of the other students made, you'd think I was friggin' Nigella (though somehow my booty would still be smaller!)



Anyway, I totally thought we were done at this point. But Chef D. was all, now you have to decorate them with coating chocolate and raspberry jam. Oh ya, and be creative! Pssshhhh, now we're talking! So, I went buck wild, as you can see.

So I've been thinking about doing this blog for a while, I must admit.  Mostly was prodded into it by friends and family who, when they ask what's new, know that it's never a "Not much, you?" kind of answer.  There's always something brewing, something happening, something new that I discovered and am dying to share.   So now, time to fulfill the dream of having a place to talk about my favorite things: food, running and wedding planning (at least for now)