La Bonne Vie Pastries--Part I

I've been having such a blast at my new job that I've been neglecting my blog...

I absolutely love it.  It's (minimum) 8 hours of nonstop production of high-end pastries and/or confection.  It's what I went to school for.  It's what I switched my career for.  It's (so far) everything that I've wanted.

I'm getting trained to make pastries for a small pastry shop, named La Bonne Vie ("The good life" in French) located inside the hotel.  Every morning shift starts with restocking the store.

 

Here they are....

 Left: Strawberry Mousse Bombes.  Strawberry mousse, chocolate mousse, sitting on a disc of almond sucre.
Right: Nutella Tart. Almond sucre tart shell filled with ganache, topped with creamy nutella mousse, garnished with a hazelnut.

Lemon Chiffon. Layers of luscious lemon cream on vanilla chiffon, topped with Italian meringue.
This is our most popular pastry.

Fruit Tart.  Almond sucre baked with frangipane filling, topped with chocolate pastry cream and a half-moon of vanilla bavarian cream and assorted berries.  This one doesn't seem to sell well...

Eclairs.  Yep, these are eclairs.  Definitely much more refined and sophisticated than the (although delicious) giant behemoth of an eclair that I used to make at Pierre's.

Napoleons.  Layers of puff pastry and vanilla bavarian, topped with chocolate mousse and chocolate plaque.  Garnished with a bit of goldleaf.  So pretty!

I'm definitely honing my skills here.  My ultimate, personal goal is to become better and better...until I become the BEST.  Well, I seriously doubt I'll ever reach Pierre Herme or Jacques Genin status...

But my reason for wanting to become the best at what I do...is so that whoever eats my pastry will be happy.  Every chefs/cooks live for that moment, when someone eats the food that they just prepared, and instantly "melts" in their chair with a look of euphoria on their face.  It's for that moment that a chef will toil in the sweltering kitchen for 10 hours--sometimes more.  Because knowing that s/he just made someone happy with what they just cooked makes all the hard work worth it.  I feel the same way.  That's why I want to continue to improve my skills, so I can be certain that whatever I produce are guaranteed to taste good--and thus make people happy.