My last day in Sydney was pretty much packed with activity. In the morning it was off to darling harbour and the sydney convention centre for the Good Food and Wine Show. We went there with high hopes, but were a little disappointed by the few number of quality booths, with quite a few of them marketing ready-to-eat/ instant foods..even down to instant duck and instant noodles. Anyways, it was interesting nonetheless - very similar to some of the large scale fairs that we have back home. There were also live cooking demonstrations. That is one hell of a familiar chef..I saw her show on YouTube before, but I just can't remember her name for nuts.

A sunny day with a beautiful view to boot at the harbour: ferris wheel (with nobody riding on it)

Browsed through Paddy's market...

Had yum cha at Zilver and had a "behind the scenes" exclusive at the Intercontinental, before heading off to a stroll at The Rocks weekend market and ending on a sweet note with some fluffy dessert pancakes at Pancakes on the Rocks.

To everyone that has been following my blog, thank you for reading. To my chefs at Le Cordon Bleu, thank you for all your guidance throughout the past 9 months. To my fellow patisserie classmates and friends, good luck and may you find joy working in this industry. Goodbye...

All good things come to an end..and here I am at the end of the first stage of my dreams.

We had a great time on Friday with Chef Joseph, making a delicious flourless chocolate cake and equally yummy orange ricotta filo rolls. My god..the ricotta rolls are super yummy both baked and fried..totally addictive snack! My plate-up:

I'm also happy that on the 4th attempt since I entered this school, I finally managed to get feet for my macarons..ok, practice does help..

And I made another marzipan figurine for chef gert..

Last day of school was an immensely satisfying lesson on sugarwork, where we produced a small sugar showpiece. Chef Gert made a lovely piece during demo:

In class, I thought it would be difficult, as it was only our second lesson working with isomalt/ sugar. But everyone still managed to produced a showpiece in our class. :) I made one with a little bird's nest.

a) Poured sugar: the base is made simply by colouring some melted isomalt and pouring it into greased cutters to set. I only swirled the colour partially in to get a textured finish. Pouring sugar produces a glass-like finish.
b) Blown sugar: the bird is made using a sugar pump where we pump air into a round of isomalt to blow it up into desired shapes.
c) Pulled sugar: the rest of the piece is made by pulling the sugar, which produces colours with a metallic sheen finish.

The good thing about using isomalt is that the showpiece can be kept for ages and it doesn't melt etc, but the bad thing is that it loses its shine real fast (like in a couple of hours you can say goodbye to the shine). Anyways, a great lesson to end my journey at LCB, I must say.