An update

It's been a while since I posted anything after my red velvet cake. The last week has been absolutely manic. A journey back to the UK took me almost 24 hours. I had a cold throughout that journey. My term started the day after I arrived with lectures from 8 to 5. On top of that I just found out that my results this year will contribute the most to my degree's final classification. Did I mention the pressure? If that's not enough I was greeted by a broken oven door on the first day back in my flat.

But I do believe there's a silver lining to every cloud. At least I'm now back on my proper degree and I'm currently learning about some very interesting subjects (hint: women and babies). On top of that my landlord has allowed me to use her oven (which is a million times better than the other standard student flat oven) while she tries to either fix the oven or get a new one. The temptation now is for me to bake some of the croissants that I've made and frozen much earlier in June before I left the country. Should be interesting since my landlord's got a fan oven which should theoretically allow my croissants to bake more evenly. I will, however be on placement somewhere 2 hours away from where I currently live and so it'll be a while before I do any serious baking.

While I was at home during summer I managed to bake a chocolate and caramel cake, which I (at that time) thought was too ugly to be taken picture of, which in hindsight I regret. I also made more croissants few days before I left home and they were very well received, which is always a good ego boost. :D

Anyway here are the pictures:

Unfortunately due to the intense tropical weather at home I simply couldn't waste time in taking pictures of the slices of cake as the buttercream was melting by the second. Plus as I said the cake really wasn't decorated as well as I wanted. That said I think the message got through to my family pretty clearly.

Of all the baked goods that I have attempted so far, I find the process of making croissants the most therapeutic. Seeing the beautiful layers appearing in front of your eyes as you slice through the croissants never fails to put a smile on my face. That, with the yeasty aroma during the rolling process and the buttery fragrance during the bake are just more reasons why I like to make them.

By the way, these croissants were actually made in the midst of tropical weather, with temperature soaring high at 35C at its peak. Fortunately I made these in an air conditioned room but even man-made technology stands no chance against mother nature's heat in the tropics. As such I was practically rolling the dough at about 25-26C so it was inevitable to see some of the butter melt and the outer layers tear. I was actually surprised at how well they turned out from the oven considering they weren't the best croissants I've rolled.

Anyway depending on how things go on Saturday I may well flood my blog with even more pictures of croissants (hopefully really good ones!). It's not difficult to see my obsessive character through these blog posts. First there were macarons and now it's croissant. In case you haven't noticed. :)

Adel