Bread & Baked Goodies for the Home Baker IV

The most recent class I attended was Bread & Baked Goodies for the Home Baker IV by Chef Daniel Tay at Shermay's Cooking School. This could possibly be my last class till next year as it may be tougher to sit through a few hours of class subsequently, well maybe.

There are a Bread for the Home Baker III class but I missed it due to some reasons, couldn't remember. Anyways, was attracted to this class particularly for the Pecan Cinnamon Bun. I LOVE Cinnamon Bun! But I know it's a very complicated recipe to attempt after browsing several online recipes. Still, quite keen to learn Chef Daniel's version.

He's really humorous, kept saying that Pecan Cinnamon Bun recipe is extremely tough and asked the class who requested for it, make his job so difficult. Well, most of us just blushed and no one dared own up :p

5 recipes were demo-ed in this class, which is actually a lot to cover within 3.5hr. So some of the ingredients were prepared in advance and at some point, 2 demos took place at the same time where both Chef Daniel and his assistant demo-ed different recipes/techniques, keeping us very busy shifting attention from one chef to another. Talk about multi-tasking!

• Pecan Cinnamon Bun
• Pecan Pie
• Deep-Dish American Apple Pie
• Thin-Crust French Apple Tart
• Biscotti

Seldom eat pecan pie as I'm not familiar with American cuisine. But this pie tastes good with sweetness of maple syrup and nutty crunch of pecan nuts.

This is the chunky type of biscotti, unlike the wafer-thin ones taught by Chef Joycelyn. Good for dunking into coffee and tea.

The 'star' of this class. I remember there used to be a craze of cinnamon buns a few years back but can hardly find any shops selling this nowadays. Provence at Holland Village sells it (without pecan toppings) so I'll go there for a quick fix whenever there is a craving.

Beware though, you'll be shocked to find out the amount of fat (butter, sugar, cream cheese) that goes into this bun. That's why it tastes so good :p Haha.

This is a relatively easy recipe using store-bought puff pastry as base, topped with apple slices and sandwiched between almond cream.

An American version of apple pie. Apple chunks are first cooked and then encased in a tart dough for baking.

Tart dough is really quite tough to handle in our humid weather. Have experienced it myself when I attempted an apple tart recipe previously.

Would really be keen to attempt the Pecan Cinnamon Bun but rather hesitant due to the tedious steps and the fact that it is laden with calories.

P.S. Phew, finally posted the entries on overdue classes... and actually there are still a lot of overdue entries. Will take it slowly... jaa matane!