Pastry 3 and Spring!

We have moved into our very last level in the program, of which I am so excited about. Time has absolutely flown by! Here is how we ended Pastry 2...these are our pastillage (sugar decoration) cake stands:

This is my stand. The theme was First or Last Initial. Birds don't start with an M, but they are pretty, and "monogram" does, so hey, it works.

My cake that went on the stand.
They even kept a few stands (minus the cakes) to display in the theater, and mine was one of them!

The following are various classmates' stands:

Our first week in level 3 has brought us back to chocolate - it's not going so well this time because the room is so hot! 2/3 of us have constant problems with tempering, so that makes us worried because we have another chocolate stand project coming up this week. I have yet to pick my idea, but the less I have to use as structural support, the better. However, it's been so fun to learn candy-making. We made caramels, toffee, and bon bons. Yum! We also had to come up with our own bon bon flavor, so I chose s'mores. They were fabulous!

My partner dipping peanut butter nougat squares.

Also, now that I'm interning on weekends, I have my afternoons during the week free again. Spring here is absolutely gorgeous, as depicted in the following pictures from the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.