Now I Can Die Happy: Milestone Foods

Last night we threw our 30th birthday bash, for which I finally made my croque em bouche. I made the final touches to it (the caramelized sugar assembly and spun sugar nest) under less-than-ideal conditions, i.e. with only 1/2 hour to go before guests would arrive and the kitchen in meltdown. So, now I have a burnt finger tip (caramelized sugar is HOT, and it sticks onto you like a mother, thus making any burn worse since you can't just take your finger away) and a finger I cut on hardened sugar, of all things! But, it was finished, and it was yummy. The only things that matter. The components were:

The pate a choux

roasted pecan pastry cream - you roast the pecans first in
the oven, then grind them in a food processor, steep them in
cream and vanilla...it's recipes like this that help me believe
in the goodness of humankind

spun sugar - so pretty, exactly the kind of pretty I like: delicate,
glasslike, mystic almost

here it is, in all its (messy) glory

and, just for fun, here are the gin-and-tonic jellies I made - I'd like to
thinkthey're a step up from Jell-O shots, being a real cocktail
with lime segments I separated out painstakingly

and brie en croute - so divine in its easiness and yet also its

yumminess: brie, wrapped lovingly in puff pastry, with a grape
design of puff pastry on top, baked to a golden flaky ooziness!