busy times

Well, White Sale week is done. We were very pleased with the turn out we had. Our customer count was up 6.94% over the previous week, and for the week, we were up 12.64%, over last years' White Sale week. With all our wonderful, computer generated reports that tell me how many of this and how many of that, I don't keep good records of the weather. Last week was great, no snow! It seems last year, we had awful weather in December, buy January was good to us. Baker buddy, Mike Weber keeps good track of the weather. If I wanna know, I can call him. I'm not so good with keepin' notes. Even when I save it in a computer, I never can remember which one I used.

A lady called me last week, this is another example of my office skills, one of those, "Been comin' to the bakery for years. I knew your mom". If it's true I would recognize her, I'm sure. Said her husband "Really likes the tart au citron, they eat in Paris. It's his birthday and I'd like two for Sunday". No problem, I always wanted to make that. My buddy William, out in Seattle, makes loads of it. I have a great formula for lemon filling, so, let's give it a shot. Straight up, sorry, in a word, bada_s! I used an all butter tart dough that Jennifer uses for her fruit tarts. Lined a few tart rings, and baked em'. I cooked a "Lemon creameaux" filling. French for "Super creamy, like never before, lemon pie filling". No water, lemon juice, eggs, sugar, butter, loads o' butter, vanilla bean, and a pinch of gelatin. You cook the eggs, sugar and lemon juice over boiling water, to 80c. Allow it to cool to 60c. You add cubed butter with an immersion blender, so it gets really smooth. Pour the filling in the baked tart shells, and allow it to set overnight.This recipe has it all,cloudy from the butter, intense yellow from the eggs, specks of black gold(vanilla seeds), crunchy almond infused tart shell, under toasted meringue. I talked to Jennifer, we're gonna start makin' four inch versions for the store. Oh, as for my office skills. I never wrote down her name, just relied on my memory to have them ready for yesterday.I assume she came in. All the tarts are gone. Dey some lucky folk!

Gotta get upstairs and get this thing started. Got cleaned out, over the weekend. Or as my dad would say "We took a severe beating about the head and shoulders".