First, I made pastry cream. I made it first because it needed time to cool after cooking. I heated the milk with vanilla bean in it. Then, I mixed egg yolks, sugar, and corn starch. When my milk started to bubble, I took it off the heat and whisked part of it into the egg mixture to temper it. Then I added, the rest of the milk and put it all back on the stove. I stirred the mixture until it started to thicken. Then I strained it and put it over a water bath to let it cool.
I also made palmiers this week. To make these, you take puff pastry dough and roll it out. Then you sprinkle cinnamon and sugar over it, fold the ends in, and then fold it together again. Next, you cut it into thin strips. When they bake, they puff up and make kind of a heart shape.
I also made eclair paste, which is also called pate a choux. First I melted butter in some water. Then I brought that to a boil and mixed in flour. After that, I realized that for some reason I had measured the full amounts of water and butter, but measured half the amount of flour. So I quickly measured the other half of the flour and added that to the rest. I cooked the flour mixture for 4 minutes, and then put it into a mixer. I ran the mixer on high speed for a little while, until the flour mixture stopped steaming. Then I mixed in eggs one at a time until the mixture was the right consistency. Next, I piped the dough into circles and necks for my swans and thick lines for eclairs and baked them. To make the swans, pictured above, I cut the round pieces of dough in half, and then cut one half in half again. I used the half as a base and spread some pastry cream on it. Next, I stuck the swan's neck in the pastry cream. Then, I piped some chantilly cream (heavy cream whipped with sugar and vanilla) and put the two quartered pastry pieces sideways on it for the wings.
For the eclairs, I piped pastry cream into them from the bottom and then dipped them in chocolate.
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