Day 78--Buffet Day

Well, today was it.  It was the last real day of class and I am so very done!!!  I finished most everything in time and I'm happy with the score I got (140 out of 150).  Monday we clean and get ready for Tuesday and then Tuesday is the luncheon and it's over by 2pm.  I am looking forward to a few days off!

Anyway, to the good stuff.  There were some really excellent displays today

This was Amber's.  Unfortunately I got a picture before her set up was complete. Sorry Amber!

Ellen chose to honor Portland with a bike theme

Erica duplicated her furniture in chocolate :-)

Dana's Italian theme was awesome!

Viva Las Vegas from Jennifer

(yeah, unfortunately I didn't get a shot of the side of the house of cards.  She hand-painted them and they looked wonderful!)

Jessica danced through her buffet, just as she does with everything else. :-)

Mary went all-out and brought real china from home!

Adam honored the love of his life, Dolly Parton

Nicole showed her passion for baking

Celeste's Disney theme was great, right down to the Mickey Mouse cookies and the Pate a Choux mice! Love it!

I started off the day by going in a couple of hours early to try and get my sugar showpiece done.  If you remember, it has three components; cast, pulled and blown.  They all had to be put together to make one piece so I was going to do a ? cube from Super Mario with a mushroom coming out of it.

I did 3 cast pieces to make the shell of the cube since I didn't have time for the full thing

I started with a nice lump of melted sugar for the pulled and blown piece

Managed to make it into this (the pulled piece)...

...and this (the top of the mushroom and blown piece)

Now, unfortunately, sugar hates me apparently and decided to break two of my cast pieces...so there went the cube.  But it was alright.  Through the burned fingers (melted sugar is HOT...also, when your latex gloves catch fire and melt...that's bad) and the dropping stuff, I still had enough to get everything checked off, all I had to do was put it together....then I reached for something, brushed the ball you see above and it shattered. Yep.  I was out of time for the sugar piece, I needed to get my actual buffet together...so I finished what I was doing with the cast and pulled and gave up on it.  It means my sugar piece didn't get checked off but...it's one point. Oh well.  Onto the food.

Here we have Key Lime-Tequila Parfait, raspberry rum truffles, puff dough cups with Irish Cream creme Chantilly and mini bourbon-pecan pies

Below the pies are apple turnovers (apples caramelized in Apple Jack Brandy) and next to them are chocolate covered brandied cherries

Candied orange slices (in the brandied cherry juice), chocolate fudge cookies with creme de menthe icing and coconut rum macaroons top it off.

After it was all graded I was able to put all of my pieces together (we were only allowed to have one of our showpieces up for grading) and here's how it all came together...

TADA!

Well, that's it for projects!  Thank goodness it's all over and I can relax this weekend! I plan to have fun.  Yes. Me. Fun. Wow. ;-P