Real Party: Bakin' Bachelorette

I have to tell you about a fun party I attended recently. 

Bride-to-be Lisa loves to cook.  So, when it was time to plan a celebration for her upcoming nuptials, her girls had the perfect activity in mind.

The night started with a private baking class. 

This culinary-genius-of-a-man teaches numerous classes in San Francisco. He did a private party for Lisa and her friends, where they learned how to make tarts.

Class description from the website:

Precious Tarts and Pastries

Beautiful European style pastries await you. Students will learn to make delicate, crisp and lightly sweetened tart dough and techniques to roll out perfectly even pastry to fill individual tart shells. Together we will make fruit tartlets filled with fresh vanilla pastry cream, glazed to give shine and garnished with shaved white chocolate.

Check out all the classes offered here. 

 

We had a light dinner to start the evening, and Sangria cocktails. 

Of course, I made a banner for the occasion! 

 

Remember, custom banners are available in my etsy shop!

 

We learned how to make tart dough (which was delicious- look at all that butter!), and vanilla pastry cream.

 

Then came the decorations...

Aren't they beautiful!?

 

Here's a couple tips and tricks for tarts that I learned:

1.  The key is to roll dough out very thin.  Use 1/8 inch thick flat sticks on either side of the dough, and roll until the rolling pin is flat on the sticks. 
2. Melt jam in the microwave and apply with a pastry brush to make fruit toppings shine.
3. Chocolate shavings over fruit make a perfect topper for tarts.   Hold a chocolate bar with a kitchen towel (to avoid melting the chocolate) and shave with a standard vegetable peeler.  If the chocolate is just slightly warm, the shavings with be longer and more curled. Cooler chocolate will result is shorter and straighter shavings. 
4.  If you are making a tray of tarts to serve at an event, decorate them all the same.  A variety of designs will look childish at a classy event. 

 

The bride-to-be had a fabulous time. 

Here she is, piping the tart cream into the little flaky shells.

 

As any good bachelorette party should: the night ended with a little dancing, and a lot of attention for the bride-to-be.

Even if there is not a similar baking class available in your area, this bachelorette party can serve as inspiration.  Getting the girls together for any kind of baking adventure before hitting the town is a fun addition to the standard bachelorette traditions. 

Congratulations Lisa!