Arrival after lunch and check into and settle into your accommodation

Dinner A welcome champagne cocktail and the opportunity to meet and get to know your fellow, Culinary Adventurers’ followed by Alison and Sidney’s ‘Taste of the Loire Valley’ dinner in the ‘Old Stable’ at le Calabash

• Traditional French Breakfast

Our culinary adventure starts with a full day Chocolate Masterclass.

Learn the techniques of tempering chocolate and filling and moulding chocolate bon bons.

• How to use coloured cocoa butter to enhance the presentation of your bon bons
• The method and recipes of bon bon fillings

• 13.00 A French Light Lunch
• 19.00 Dinner

• Traditional French Breakfast
• This morning we will continue on our hands-on Chocolate Journey making the elements to create stunning plated desserts

• Chocolate Marshmallow
• Aerated Chocolate
• Chocolate Caramels
• Chocolate Soil
• Chocolate Jelly
• Chocolate Créme Brulee
• Chocolate Shortbread
• Hazelnut Streusel

Lunch

• Decorating Chocolate
• Chocolate Sauce
• Salted Caramel
• Maltese Sugar Tuiles
• Chocolate Mousse
• Chocolate Spheres
• Spicy Chocolate Ice Cream

Dinner Tonight is a demonstration of one of Sidney’s latest main course creations and a cheese board

Breakfast Traditional French Breakfast

After Breakfast we depart for Tours

This morning we explore both the indoor ‘Les Halles Food Market’ and the twice weekly outdoor market.

We visit the old town which clusters around Place Plumereau; its old houses restored to their former glory. Today this is the place for pavement cafes and people watching in the summer but stroll the smaller, narrow streets like rue Briconnet and you step back into the historic medieval city. To the south you’ll find a Romanesque basilica, the Cloitre de St-Martin and the new Basilique de St-Martin. You’re in the place which was once on the great pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. St-Martin was a soldier who became bishop of Tours in the 4th century and helped spread Christianity through France. His remains, rediscovered in 1860, are now in the crypt of the new Basilique.

The other old part, the cathedral quarter, on the other side of the main Rue Nationale, is dominated by the Cathédrale St-Gatien, a flamboyant Gothic building with 12th-century decorated stonework covering the outside. Inside the highlights are the 16th-century tomb of Charles VIII and Anne de Bretagne’s two children, and the stained glass.

Lunch

We head back to Le Calabash to enjoy a traditional French lunch
This afternoon we start to make our entremet dessert and prepare

• Crème Praline
• Crème Citron
• Buttermilk and Rosemary Panna cotta

We also prepare our Brioche and Vienna fermented dough which we will use the next day.

Dinner in the School and a dessert that we have prepared for during the class

This morning we learn to make choux pastry and enter the world of Viennoiserie

• Caramel Brioche
• Lemon Meringue Cruffin

For Lunch you will enjoy a classic Croque Madame followed by Pain Perdue.

Lunch

This afternoon we will enter the world of Ice Cream and frozen desserts
• Salted Caramel Ice Cream
• Chocolate Ice Cream Lollies
• Lemon and Coconut Ice Cream
• Raspberry Parfait
• Lychee Granita
• Raspberry Iced Tea

19.30 We return to Le Calabash for a Cheese and Charcuterie Evening

We will also present and plate our chocolate dessert including all the elements that you have prepared in class.

08.30 Traditional French Breakfast

This morning we show you how to make two of our favourite Soufflés

• Chocolate soufflé
• Passion fruit soufflé

We enjoy lunch in a traditional bistro

• We use our choux pastry to make a classic Paris Brest.
• We finish our Entremet, a stunning dessert for your dinner party.

19.30 Certificate presentation and champagne at ‘le Calabash’ and tonight we enjoy a BBQ.

Traditional French Breakfast

Departure by 11am