Today was insane!  I went in to class expecting to make two pies and came out making 4, not to mention the caramel sauce, pastry cream, and 6 fruit tarts!  The deal was that if we could get everything done that we needed to today as well as tomorrow, we could cancel class the next day (woohoo!!!!!)  So my friend and I divided and conquered (which is the only reason we were part of the six people who got to skip class).  One thing I learned today is that when you make caramel, you can cook the sugar first before adding any other ingredients and it will be a MUCH shorter process than if you have to wait for everything to get up to temp/color.  The only problem with doing that is you have a higher probability of crystallizing the whole thing.  I also caramelized white chocolate for the first time, which was interesting.  It took about an hour and a half, but it made the white chocolate taste soo much better.  I definitely recommend giving this a try!  I put in in my vanilla cream pie with raspberries and caramel sauce.  Unfortunately, I dropped to whole thing on the ground outside.  That was sad.