Choux Paste Day 3, Back to the Tasty Tasty Grind

Back into the lab! I'm sure I wasn't the only one happy to be baking again.

Even the egg yolks are happy!

Tasks got a bit of a new twist as our Chef requested our group make 150 portions of cold cheesecake and 150 cream puffs.

Instead of the individual cheesecakes we usually make, we made a giant sheet pan of it and the Chef cut them into portions. It doesn't look like much, but oh man, it weighed a lot. We triple teamed this sucker when we had to transfer it back and forth between the fridge and our work bench - one person to open the fridge door and the other two to carry it.

So much cheesecake

Here's our big batch of choux paste for the cream puffs! I don't have a picture as a point of reference, but this was 4x our usual amount. We got a lot of laughs from us trying to mix this giant mass. To make choux paste, you bring water, butter, and salt to a boil, then dump in all your flour. At that point, you mix and mix and mix while on the heat, until the flour is pre-gelatinzed, or when the bottom of the pot gets coated. V decided to do one giant 4x batch instead of two 2x batches because she's a glutton for punishment and hard manual labour. Perhaps with a touch of masochism? :P

How to build muscle

The cream puff shells were all transferred to bags after cooling but to save some space in the mean time, we dumped them all into some hotel pans.

Those shells won't get filled until next week as the event is on Tuesday and we don't want them getting soggy before then.

We also made baked cheesecakes today. These were swirled with raspberry. D felt inspired and made one special one. I think this one might sell first. :)