Thanks to a recent-ish Easter egg hunt over at Savoir Faire Paris, I won a spot on Cook’n with Class French desserts session. I duly made my way to Montmartre one Saturday afternoon, met three other fellow bakers (of which one was a fellow countryman – talk about a small world!) and started working under the guidance of Chef Pino, a wiry Italian with a passion for food, of course.

In the gleaming kitchen, we went through the work plan for the afternoon. In a short few hours, we were going to make five different classic French desserts – moelleux au chocolat, strawberry and chocolate roulade, crème brûlée, (reconstructed) tarte au citron and choux puffs – and in the order they were listed, due to some refrigeration time needed for some of these. Most of the ingredients were already weighed out and prepared ahead of the class, so we were able to efficiently churn out one dessert after another.

The small sized class means we had a very hands-on session and everyone get a piece of the action for every dessert. We worked relatively quickly, and despite regular short breaks for photographs to be taken, we managed to stay on track time-wise. We also chatted with one another about random things and goofed about a little as we cooked/baked, although not when the blowtorch was in use! Time flies when you’re having fun and before long, we were plating up what we’ve made.

We got to taste the fruit of our labour, although eating five portions of desserts in a few minutes would be a bit too much. As the sole Paris resident among the students of the class, with all three others flying out of Paris the following day, I ended up with containers of left-over desserts to bring home with me. Not that I was complaining, and nor were F, who happily shared the bounty I brought home.

Chef Pino emailed us the recipes which we used that afternoon, so we didn’t actually need to frantically write things down and could concentrate on just learning and cooking during the session. He also sent me an extra recipe for tiramisu on request, which we chatted about and I was asking for tips on how to rescue the version I usually make that somehow ended up a bit too runny.

Now, time to practice more dessert baking at home!