I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July weekend.  Me?  I had a great weekend, except for the 20 bazillion mosquito bites I’m suffering with as a result of being in a mosquito-infested area.  Why can’t they just leave me alone?

My husband and I went to a friend’s place for a barbecue and I decided I wasn’t bringing anything–even though my husband tried to convince me I should.  Well, you know what?  I didn’t feel like it.  I knew there would be plenty of food and dessert (there was) and I just wanted to go and have a good time.  Just because I make desserts for a living does not mean I need to provide for every get-together.  Plus, I was feeling really crabby late last week and could not be bothered.

Today, however, I was back in the kitchen with a vengeance.  For one, I just bought a Crock-Pot and I’ve been dying to try it out.  Two, I have a party on Wednesday coming up and there are a few things I’m able to do a few days ahead.  The key to making sure things go smoothly is prep.  Whenever I have a large amount of desserts to make, I always plan a schedule and do whatever I can ahead of time.  That way on the day of the party I just need to make the items that need to freshly made and assemble.

As soon as I finished putting together the ingredients for Slow Cooker Pork Tenderloin and threw it in the Crock-Pot, I got to work on my dessert to-do list: pate a choux puffs, tart shells, and lemon cream.

Last week I caved and bought the all-famous Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan.  I have heard such good things about this book from fellow food bloggers (heck, there’s an entire group dedicated to baking recipes from it), so I figured it couldn’t be too bad.  As soon as I received the book, I looked through every page and loved how accessible all the recipes seemed to be.  Nothing in there seemed overly intimidating or required a bunch of exotic ingredients.  I decided that I’d use some of the recipes for my desserts.

I started out with the pate a choux recipe used in the Paris-Brest recipe.  I love pate a choux, especially the smell of the dough.  The whole thing from start to finish took about 45 minutes (including cooking time).  And look how pretty they came out!

Then I started on the tart shells.  I used the sweet tart dough recipe (also known as pate sable) in the back of the book.  It was super easy to make, but I used the dough to make 36 small tart shells of various sizes.  It was very tedious work pressing the dough into the pans.  I put the shells in the freezer and left them there a few hours and then baked them off.

Thanks goodness they all came out intact and not shrunken.  I really did not want to have to make more of these.  They are so freakin’ adorable.

After I had made the tart shells, I made the lemon cream also from the book.  I’ve made lemon curd a bunch of times, but never lemon cream.  I really love this recipe, except for having to use a blender.  I have one of those “retro” blenders, so when I turn it on, it sounds like I have a jet engine in the kitchen.  I mean, it’s loud.  And the recipe calls for keeping the blender on high for 3 minutes straight.  I heard ringing in my ears afterward.

After many dishes having to be washed and a couple of cycles of the dishwasher, I was happy to be done for the day.  I love baking–it’s the cleanup that I hate.

Oh, and that pork tenderloin?  The best I’ve ever tasted.  And I don’t even really like pork.  Trust me–click on that link above and make it if you have a slow cooker.  I’d have taken a picture, but pork and potatoes in a Crock-Pot is not exactly a piece of art.