Popular Classes
Eat The Art's most popular classes show the wide variety of lessons we are able to provide our students. Being a graduate of the French Pastry School and a Professional Chocolatier, Chef Heather offers excellent instruction in the making of French Macarons and Eclairs. Chocolate lessons and Cake & Cupcake Baking and Decorating are also at the top of the list. The classes are customized for you and your culinary experience. Once you have mastered the skills in these classes, there are many more to explore. In our series of chocolate lessons, for instance, we start you off with Chocolate 101 and continue on, if you choose, to Chocolate 102 so you can dive deeper into the science while honing your skills. We also offer chocolate lessons for children. Chocolate Pizza is a great class for children under 8 years of age. Please contact us if you need help deciding which class is best for you.
Chocolate 101
You will sample chocolate, learn about different types of chocolate, temper chocolate, hand-roll truffles, dip cake pops. You will go home with a large box of fine Belgian chocolate confections to share ..... or not!
Cake or Cupcake Baking
Learn to make a delicious cake. We will pair the cake or cupcake baking lesson with lessons on making fillings and frostings.
Cake or Cupcake Decorating
We teach you to make a cooked filling and a cooked buttercream frosting, then show you how to build your cake professionally, and teach you to make modeling chocolate and your own 3-D cake or cupcake toppers.
French Macarons
Learn the Italian Meringue method of making macarons. You will make the beautifully colored shells and premium fillings, build your delicious confections and take home a large box (approximately 36) of macarons.
Eclairs & Cream Puffs
Learn to make eclairs and cream puffs with firm shells that are easy to fill and dip into a glaze. In this class we make a chocolate pastry cream filling, a whipped cream filling, apricot glaze, chocolate glaze and vanilla whipped cream topping. Students take home a large box of these absolutely delicious confections.
Breads
We teach a wide variety of breads including French baguettes, artisanal breads, French fougasse, Italian focaccia (think deep-dish pizza style bread), challah (a braided egg bread) and sour dough (with yeast and without).
Pasta
Fresh pasta is wonderful. Learn to make spaghetti, fettuccini, tomato sauce and, as a bonus, we also teach French baguette. Take home a complete meal. This lesson is 3 hours in length.
Gnocchi
Gnocchi is made with potatoes. They are light and pillowy. We add ricotta cheese to ours to add depth of flavor. In addition you will make a tomato sauce. As a bonus we also teach French baguettes during this class. This lesson is 3 hours in length. Students take home all that they make.
Crepes
Learn to make sweet and savory crepes. We teach you to make fruit fillings for the sweet crepes (chocolate drizzle optional) and cheese and herb fillings for the savory. Pair the savory crepes with a salad and French bread and you have a meal. Serve sweet crepes for brunch or as a dessert. They are very versatile.
Cake or Cupcake Baking
Learn to make a delicious cake. Choose your favorite cake (or select cupcakes) from the following lessons.
French Cakes:
- Biscuit (pronounced bis-kwee), this is a French sponge. We suggest you start here.
- Génoise (hot and cold process)
- Progres
- Succes
- Japonais
- Dacquoises
European Cakes:
- Doberge
- Sacher Torte
American Cakes:
- Gluten-free Vanilla and fruit flavors
- Flourless (gluten-free) Chocolate
- Egg-free
- Dairy-free
- Carrot
- Pound
- Chiffon
- Bakery-style
- Cupcakes
We will pair the cake or cupcake baking lesson with lessons on making fillings and frostings.
Fillings may include: pastry cream, mousse, cremeux, truffle (dark, milk or white chocolate), or citrus cream (lemon, lime, orange or grapefruit)
Cooked frostings will include either Swiss, Italian, French and German buttercream. We also teach American cold-process frostings and cream cheese based frostings (plain or flavored).
Chocolate 101
We start with a fine Belgian couverture chocolate tasting. Students are taught the difference between the various types of chocolate and cocoa powder and all those confusing percentages that appear on the chocolate bar wrappers are explained. You will learn what chocolate is and what it contains so that you can work with it properly when making chocolate confections, decorations, candies and when baking with it.
You will go on to learn to temper/crystalize chocolate. If you have ever melted chocolate and then tried to drizzle cookies with it only to find that later all the cookies stuck together or the coating on your cake pops went soft ... no more! We will teach you a very straight-forward method to tempering chocolate (the Seeding method) so that you will be able to create your own chocolate bars, cute confections and cake decorations at home.
Together we make hand-rolled truffles, we learn to dip cake pops/cake truffles in chocolate the way the pros do it. We go on to make solid chocolate shapes and bonbons. You will also learn to work with cocoa butter transfer sheets to make very cute and sophisticated decorated chocolate discs.
Note: we use equipment readily available to people who want to work with chocolate in smaller amounts in their own kitchens.
You will go home with a large box of fine Belgian chocolate confections to share ..... or not! along with very detailed instructions and recipes.
Cake or Cupcake Decorating
In this class we have the cake layers or cupcakes baked and cooled in advance.
We teach you to make a cooked filling and a cooked buttercream frosting, which makes all the difference in the world when it comes to taste, texture and workability. We then show you how to build your cake professionally to achieve a Pinterest-worthy finish with straight sides and sharpe edges or to frost your cupcakes beautifully. We go on to teach you to make modeling chocolate and you make your own 3-D cake or cupcake toppers.
You will go home with a delicious, decorated cake or cupcakes, recipes, tips and very detailed instructions.
Breads
We teach a wide variety of breads including French baguettes, artisanal breads, French fougasse, Italian focaccia (think deep-dish pizza style bread), challah (a braided egg bread) and sour dough (with yeast and without). We give students some sour dough starter to take home, which is over 100 years old! Students learn to work with starters and a variety of yeasts.
Bread lessons are 3 hours in length. Students may choose one type of bread from the following list. This bread will be paired with French Baguettes so that each student makes two types of bread.
- Sour Dough
- Artisanal
- Braided Asiago Cheese Bread
- French Fougasse
- Italian Focaccia (think deep-dish style pizza bread)
- or
- Challah (a sweet, braided egg bread), which may be paired with cinnamon rolls instead of French Baguettes.
Welcome to our kitchen.
Address
By appointment only
Teaching kitchen is located in Forest Hills
Nashville, TN 37215
Phone
615-948-7732