What is your idea of a "masterclass"?

marilynfl

Moderator
I love Peggy Porschen's work. Really, I do. I have her book, filled with good basic recipes, details, & pictures. She was my Royal Icing saving grace during last year's virgin GBH, back when I couldn't spell Royal Icing. I even have a batch of her gingerbread dough in the frig chilling as we e-speak.

Recently, there was a blog about her masterclass and 10 lucky students who learned to decorate in the Porschen style. I was thrilled to imagine what one would learn sitting at her feet, so to speak.

Well, from the blog (see link), I'm sorry to say it doesn't seem like much. For the first half of the class, you cover a provided fruit cake with provided marzipan that the student rolls out, then you cover that with rolled fondant (provided), then you decorate that with fondant leaves that the students cut and touch up with edible glitter.

Second half of the class? Decorate provided snowflake cookies with provided icing. Add more glitter.

That's it. For £165.00 per person.

(Let me save you the Google. That converts to $255 americano dollars.)

Now substitute construction paper and rounded scissors and doesn't this sound vaguely like the stuff you made in 2nd grade Arts & Craft? Minus the painted macaroni, of course.

Oh I forgot, you get a glass of champagne too.

So my thought on this particular masterclass is this: that one is not paying to learn master-level techniques and skills; rather, for $255, one gets personal face time with a foodstar who bakes cakes for Elton John and Stella McCartney.

http://www.weebirdy.com/London-cakes/

 
did you want to replace it with another alcoholic liquor or trying to not use alsohol???

 
This reminds me of a food event the NC group attended years ago

There used to be several from epi in eastern NC: Bonni, Andie, Deb and myself. We met up a few times, and one gathering was at a foodie event that was supposed to have cooking demonstrations, new gadgets and the like in Greenville. Looked quite promising but turned out to be something that would rival SemiHomeMade with Sandra whats her face.

The cooking demos were "how to put these pre-made items together and call them something else". The gadgets turned out to be water purifiers and things like that on display. Thankfully the company was good!

 
I would expect more, of course. But I've seen people drop $$$ for 5 minutes of

face time, a book and dinner. The Tony Bourdain dinner we hosted at the restaurant was $175 + tax and tip. We had 2 seatings and they sold out before we even made a public announcement!

For the dinner we had that was filmed on No Reservations, the chef got 2 of those seats to plug in who he wanted. I believe he sold them to the highest bidder. I balked at the idea but in the end, the opening bid started at $1,000 and went up drastically from there. By that time I was so sick of dealing with the chef, I never bothered to find out what the total was. But I knew he was strapped for cash and people were willing to pay big bucks for a seat at the table. (I gave away my "guest" seat so I didn't have to piss anyone off for not getting invited.)

It's astonishing what people with money will pay for.

 
Hi Dahia, you can use brandy to moisten the cake layer. Or you can soak some

dried sour cherries in a bit of warm gin and use that result.

You can even use "simple syrup": 1:1 ratio sugar:water boiled for 5 minutes, then cooled. But this will be adding sweetness and kirsch isn't sweet....just flavorful.

Overall, there are so many wonderful flavors going on in a Black Forest Cake that this one step won't change things radically. It's just to moisten the cake layer. If you think the cake is moist enough already, you can even skip this step.

 
Tony's in big demand. It cracked me up to see women falling all over him! He was like a rock star.

 
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