The boys took a trip to beautiful The Gallery Grill at Hart House in The University of Toronto this week to cook with Chef Suzanne baby! Over the years, club has been lucky enough to cook with Suzanne five times before – the first time we made choux pastry, the second visit was a ravioli-making extravaganza, third time we made soufflés and in the spring we made two soups together. and last year we made ricotta gnocchi. Hear that – choux pastry, ravioli, soufflés, not one but TWO soups and gnocchi – all “difficult” to make dishes but Suzanne shares my philosophy that kids can do anything (until they are told it’s “too hard”) so when she told me that she had a plan this week for showing them how to make maple crème brûlée, I was all for it (though many might shy away from a dozen boys separating over 100 eggs, right?).
We worked very carefully with those eggs…
And worked in teams to ensure everything got measured properly…
We reduced our maple syrup (it makes the final product less sweet)…
We carefully added our cream to this pot…
… and gently heated it so we could temper the eggs…
The boys did a great job with this – NO scrambled eggs in sight! We did strain the mixture though (it’s always best to – we caught a couple of pieces of shell!)…
We ended up with a beautiful custard that some of the boys brought home to cook off. The rest I cooked off and sent home the following day for the boys to brûlée themselves…
Speaking of brûléeing…
YES! The boys got to use the kitchen blow torch (under close supervision!) to brulée mini versions of the dessert. They did a great job (and this activity convinced me I need a proper blow torch in my kitchen – so much more efficient than the dinky ones you get for home kitchens!). Aren’t these beautiful?
These were devoured (after we’d waited for the molten caramel to cook a bit!) and declared “so good”.
Huge thanks to Chef Suzanne and the whole team at The Gallery Grill for working with the boys this week. It’s so wonderful to get out into the community and cook in different kitchens and we’re beyond grateful to chefs like Suzanne who open their doors to us a few times a term 🙂
Oh boy… these little guys are so lucky.