My Classmates at the French Pastry School.

It's been almost 4 months or so since I've attended the French Pastry School in early July and time is sure flying by fast. I still remember back in February when I was still in Taiwan, pondering if I should spend $22,000USD on attending the French Pastry School to further my pastry knowledge. And I can tell you with a proud mind set that, I've made a right decision.

Here at the French Pastry School, I met some of the best Pastry Chefs from around the world. From Chef Della, who was the Head Pastry Chef at 'Charlie Trottors' for many many years to World Pastry Champions like Chef Dimitri, who've just recently returned from competing at the MOF semi-finals in France. We have Chef Josh, who is super talented at everything to anything chocolate, and he has an awesome chocolate milk drink that he made for us at the end of the chocolate class. Chef En-Ming, who is another World Champion, competed for Team USA and won 1st place. And many, many more passionate Chefs, like Chef John and Chef Pierre who will be soon teaching us the the art of artisan bread making!

I enjoyed meeting everyone in my class, 4 months together have really brought all of us from strangers to almost a family-like relationship. We look forward to seeing each other everyday, look forward to making French pastries together and most of all, we are always looking forward to tasting our delicious desserts at the end of class!

Every table at school has a Kitchen Aid Stand mixer and an induction burner, along with multiple baking trays of different sizes, and stainless steel bowls and plastic bowls for mixing. There are always tons of tools and equipment for all the students to use, so none of us would have to really wait for major appliances to mix our cake batters or cook our pastry cream.

The French Pastry School does a really great job of making sure that each and every one of their students are getting the chance to use tools best suited for the task. They spend thousands of dollars on kitchen appliances, like the blast freezers that will freeze anything into a solid within a matter of minutes! And this will assure the best quality is of our work is preserved for the next day or to take home to eat. They buy the best ice cream making machines, and deck ovens that will bake anything from tarts to breads with the most prefect condition top and bottom.

There are 18 students per class, 2 students per table and at the end of each day, all 18 of us will do a thorough clean up of the kitchen classroom. We are all assigned a duty or task to go about our cleaning, from sweeping the floors, to mopping. All the fridges are wiped down with special polishing material, and all the tables are scrubbed and sanitized with the proper sanitizing solution. Every table gets reset at the end of class, meaning all the trays of different sizes are restocked, all the plastic containers and stainless steel bowls are neatly placed underneath the table. All is prepared and ready for the next day!

We have tons of kitchen aid mixer bowls, and stainless steel rings and plastic containers to scale our ingredients in. And at the end of class, they are all washed through a 3 sink dish compartment, 1st rinsed out with hot water, then it's scrubbed with soap, and it's rinsed again in hot water and then finally it's soaked in a sanitizing solution. Afterwards, we place them on the racks and hand dry them! It's a really fun job! I promise! =D