Bon apetite!

For my birthday recently my husband Kim organised for my friend Kylie and I to attend a workshop at Mulots, a lovely little French patisserie here in Adelaide.

This patisserie is located across the road from where I was taking yoga classes while pregnant with Lola. So every Saturday morning after my 90 minutes of pre-natal exercise I'd treat myself to one (or more!) of their mouthwatering pastries, in particular their croissant aux amandes (almond croissant), pain au chocolat or pain aux raisins (snail). Of course, I'd take home extras for Kim and Ava as well. Ava loves the snails - I think partly for the name as well as the deliciousness!

In addition to selling their delicious pastries, Mulots run workshops throughout the year to teach the art of pastry and French desserts.

So last night, while the wind and rain were playing havoc outside, Kylie and I found ourselves in the warm and inviting kitchen of Mulots learning the art of the croissant. Mmm... croissants!

Mulots sign glowing in the dark, stormy night

Our "menu" for the evening was as follows:

Croissants (plain and chocolate)
Crossants Alsacien
Vegetarian Quiche
Grape Tart

The finished products ready to take home

Mulots' master Artisan André took us step by step through the process of making the three different pastries  required for our menu. His instruction was very informative and he gave us the opportunity to be hands on throughout the process. We scribbled away at our recipe notes as he provided us with expert tips and told us the "whys" as well as the "hows" when it comes to selecting ingredients, mixing, rolling dough etc etc. Knowing why a particular ingredient is required or why the dough needs to be mixed at a certain speed make it much more likely that we'll have success when repeating the recipes at home.

André shows us how to roll a croissant.
I love all the giant whisk attachments on the wall in the background!

Kylie rolls a croissant

That's me (somewhere under the hair!) rolling a croissant

All of the food that we made was delightful. It smelled so good while baking that I'm sure there was more than one belly rumbling while we waited for it to be done. It was well worth the wait though. The quiche was the best I've ever tasted, the grape tart was sublime and the croissants melted in our mouths. We were all well and truly stuffed by the end of the evening!

Croissants fresh out of the oven 

Pain au Chocolat

Croissants Alsacien

Grape Tarts

The most delicious quiche ever

I can't wait to try out the recipes at home. The croissant pastry in particular is quite time consuming but most of that time is leaving the dough to rest. I think I'll have to get the girls around for a baking day. I'm sure the results might not be quite as "professional" as what we made last night but it will be fun and they're sure to taste great.

I can't recommend the workshops at Mulots highly enough. I'll definitely be going back for more - especially seeing as the next one is on macaroons! With special guest Maggie Beer no less!

André shares some tricks of the trade

Kylie's turn to make a quiche base 

André preparing the small quiche bases

Ready to go in the oven