Last night I had a terrible ordeal with moths in my apartment. The previous night, there was a moth that flew right into a lamp and it burnt in the heat. There was even smoke. Yesterday, while I was blogging, a huge ass moth flew right in front of me and then towards the toilet. I panicked. Do not laugh at me, please. I have a phobia of butterflies and moths. I was born with it. I told my friend and she couldn’t stop laughing at me! Anyway, I quickly shut the door because I didn’t want it flying back into the bedroom area. Unfortunately, that meant that the moth couldn’t get out of the apartment because there is no window in that part of the apartment. It flew into my wardrobe. I opened the door quickly and hit the wardrobe to scare it out. It flew out and I quickly shut the wardrobe door, as well as the door dividing that corner of the apartment from the bedroom. Then I spotted another moth, but it was quite tiny so I grabbed the broom and chased after it. I managed to kill it. Phew, or so I thought. When I went to take a look at the bigger moth, it had disappeared. Like WTF?! Where did it go? It must have gone into the toilet, right? After about five minutes, I finally mustered enough courage to open the door and went into the toilet. But nope, it wasn’t there. I still have no idea where it is! I slept with my hoodie over my head and my blanket up to my eyes last night. I was so afraid that it would fly into my face in the middle of the night. This morning, after doing some research, I went to the mall and bought some cedar incense. Apparently, moths hate the smell of cedar. Sigh. So upset about it.

Ok. Back to school. We had demo on Pithiviers, Galette des Rois (Three King’s cake) and Sacristains (puff pastry twists). Once again, we were working with puff pastry. Pithiviers are filled with crème d’amande (almond cream), Galette des Rois with frangipane, which is a mixture of crème d’amande and crème pâtissière (pastry cream), and the puff pastry twists are made with the trimmings of the pithiviers and Galette des Rois. Chef remade a new batch of palmiers for us too because of yesterday’s mishap with the salt. They were so delicious. Palmiers are seriously addictive. I had to give mine away this morning because it was a hazard to my waistline.

Practical was right after demo class, and we were to make a pithivier and the puff pastry twists. The pithiviers were relatively easy to make. The only tricky part is scoring it decoratively and making the petals around. I like the look of smaller petals, so I made mine smaller. For the puff pastry twists, we sprinkled nibbed sugar and chopped almonds with some ground cinnamon before twisting.

Pithivier

Pithivier – Crème d’amande filling

Sacristains

I was not too happy with both my pithivier and the puff pastry twists. The scoring was not well done and the petals were not regular. Chef said the number of petals was good, but they just need to be of equal size. I also used a little too much egg wash, so the definition was not great. For the puff pastry twists, I should have used less sugar when I did the fifth turn. When they came out of the oven, there was quite a bit of melted sugar on the baking sheet. Well, now I know what I should do in future!

This is the last of puff pastry for now and we are moving on to pâte à choux for next lesson! Can’t wait to make some chouquettes and choux craquants!