C...is for Croissants and Conchas!

I know I've been absent from the blog for a while, but things have been busy. Lame, I know. Anyway, I wanted to catch up a little on what has been going on. I finished my baking class and I absolutely loved every minute. I set a new school record on highest score on the test ever. But here are the two things I am the most proud of...

My Croissants were beautiful. Chef said they were textbook, picture perfect. They are pretty tricky to make and use LOTS of butter, but there is nothing better than a homemade croissant fresh out of the oven. It's mostly a process of rolling dough and folding in butter to make all of the little layers, which eventually give it it's puff and flakiness. The little pockets you can see on there are how you know they are made properly. Someday if you are really special....or you give me something really awesome...maybe I'll make you homemade croissants.

The next fave is Conchas. Conchas are a Mexican bread that I have really come to love. They are little "shells" and have a design on the top that looks like a shell. Everytime we are in Mexico I always have to hunt down a panaderia and find some...I LOVE them. We even had a little place in Dallas where we could find them, but it closed. :( Anyway, I thought they would be such a fun thing to learn to make so I asked Chef to teach me. They turned out really well. I wish I had scored the topping (shortening, sugar, flour and food coloring = YUM!) more so it would've cracked more, but they really tasted wonderful. The dishwasher ladies LOVED them and they are both Mexican, so I felt like that was a big compliment.

Anyway, all good things must come to an end and baking did. Luckily Chef has asked me to help him on some outside projects so I will get to keep baking. I am helping make all the desserts/pastry for graduation and also doing a charity Gingerbread House event for the holidays. Should be fun!