Tartlets Galore. Bite Sized Heavens.

The cutest day of pies & tarts so far...tons of tartlets (baby tarts!).

Who doesn't love miniatures? Kittens..... puppies..... cupcakes.... tartlets!

We each had to make four different types (eight at least of each).

-Lemon Curd

-Fruit (with pastry cream)

-Frangipane

-Ganache

Lemon Curd Tartlets

To make the lemon curd, you create a double boiler. And in the bowl over simmering water, place eggs yolks, sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest. Whisk this until it becomes very thick, almost the consistency of pastry cream. Pass it through sieve and stir in the butter.

Spoon or pipe the lemon curd into the blind baked (cooled) tartlet shells.Top with a common meringue and then brown.

Finished Lemon Curd Tartlets

Fruit Tartlets

To prevent the shell from getting soggy, brush the bottom of the tartlet shell with melted chocolate.

Make your pastry cream as usual. Milk and sugar to a boil, temper into egg yolks,cornstarch, and additional sugar. Bring to a boil and heat until thick and creamy.

Cool the pastry cream before using. Pipe it into the shell over the chocolate layer. Fill to the brim. Then select desired fruits (berries, mandarin oranges, pineapples*,kiwi) and arrange in any desired fashion. To add sweetness, shine and shelf life glaze with a slightly thinned out heated apricot jam.

Finished Fruit Tartlets

Frangipane Tartlets

These are the only tartlets in which the filling is baked inside, rather than added after the shells have cooled.

To make this frangipane, cream the butter and sugar. Add the almond paste, eggs and then finally the cake flour. Pipe this mixture into the raw dough, top with slivered almonds (crush if desired) and bake until lightly golden brown and the filling is firm to the touch. Once they cool, garnish with powdered sugar.

Finished

Frangipane Tartlets

Ganache Tartlets

These tartlets are by far the easiest and (to chocolate lovers) the tastiest. You start with a basic ganache. Heat the heavy cream and pour over equal amounts (to the weight of the cream) of dark chocolate (or white) and a little bit of butter. Stir until it comes together. Pour directly into the cooled prepared tartlet shells. Before setting add any garnishes that will not stick by themselves, such as fruit or nuts. After it sets pipe with chantilly cream or dust with powdered sugar, if desired. (yeah, that's literally it)

Finished Ganache Tartlets

More Assorted Tartlets

And now, for the most EPIC tartlet EVER.

Why yes, that is ganache, pastry cream and chantilly cream. And yes, it was amazing.

My partner and I (both self proclaimed Fatties) got a litttttle excited. And made a snack for ourselves.

When life hands you lemons, make lemon meringue...

What do you do with the juice and zest of four lemons? you make lemon meringue pie.

Lemon Filling Procedure

Making the lemon filling is very similar to most of the other fillings made previously. You boil the water, sugar and lemon zest. Then you create a slurry with eggs, cornstarch and reserved water. Temper the egg mixture in and then whisk constantly until thickened and clear looking. Then take it off the heat, add butter and lemon juice. ( I know sounds kinda weird, but its good). Transfer directly to pre baked pie shell and cover immediately with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming. It is to be finished with a common (aka cold/french) that is torched.

Unfinished filled lemon pie

Cream Pies

We also made cream pies, pretty much any kind of cream pie you want to make you can. Chocolate, vanilla, coconut, white chocolate, banana, anything and any combination. I chose to make half chocolate half coconut (like a mounds bar!). Making a cream pie, is basically making pastry cream and putting it in the a pie shell (delicious!). So the same procedure as before... Boil milk and sugar (and chocolate). Create a slurry with eggs, cornstarch and some reserved milk. Temper the slurry in, and heat until thickened. Add flavorings (vanilla, coconut, bananas, liquors). My partner added dark chocolate to hers and I added toasted coconut to mine. And the mounds pie was born.

Unfinished Mounds Cream Pie

~To be finished with chantilly cream~

Finishing the Turtle Pie

To finish the turtle pie, apply a thin layer of chantilly cream to cover it all up, and then pipe as desired. We did rosettes all the way around and then several in the middle.

Finished Turtle Pie

**don't mind my bad piping, was in a rush!**

We ate the turtle pie, but I didn't have time to take a picture....I ate it too fast.

Cream, Sugar, Butter, Yum.

Monday was an pretty easy day, we made only a few products and finished up anything else that needed to be don e.

Diplomat cream

Again we made diplomat cream (see previous entry for how to) only this time the one to one ratio was stablized with several sheets of gelatin and then cooled until very thick. This was to be used to napoleons annnnnnd to be piped onto my finger and into my mouth after.

Napoleons-Day 1

Napoleons are a very good way to use up any large scraps of puff dough. Or you can use a new piece of fresh puff.

Start being using pieces of the puff, sort of piecing together like a puzzle forming a rectangle shape about the size of a half sheet pan

Piecing the Puzzle

Once you have created your rectangle, roll it out a little thinner focusing on the overlapping parts. This will also help bind the pieces together. Poke many many holes in the dough. After this place on a parchment lined pan then cover with more parchment and place the same size pan on top and bake until very golden brown.

Once it has cooled, trim the edges of the width. Then measure the width of the baked sheet and cut into the equal thirds.

Place the largest pieces of puff down and fill a pastry bag with the diplomat cream using a medium sized round tip to pipe with. Pipe the cream from left to right in a snake like pattern continuously all the way down the length of the puff piece.

Piping the diplomat cream out

Place the second piece on top lightly (placing any broken pieces in the middle layer). Pipe as before, and freeze until the next day (you will find out how to finish it next entry)

Final layers of the napoleon

Cream Horns

Roll out the puff pastry to the same thickness as always before (about 1/8 inch). Clean up the edges of the dough so you get a very near perfect rectangle shape. Then cut strips of the dough (either way length or width) the width of the ruler (about 1 inch).

Lightly egg wash these strips of dough, this will keep the dough from unraveling.

Egg washing the strips of dough

To Shape the horn, you must have a metal tube (tapered is best) as shown.

Wrapping the dough around the tube

Once the dough is wrapped all the way around, slightly overlapping each edge, place seam side down on the pan and sprinkle with sanding or coarse sugar.

Ready to Bake

Bake until golden brown, and while still warm, gently rock the tube back and forth to remove from the pastry. Or you can try pressing up on the flat surface that is baked on the actual sheet pan. Be careful, they are fragile and may break.

To finish these, we used Chantilly cream stabilized with gelatin again. A flavor can be added to the reserved cream used to heat up and dissolve the gelatin. Basically, you make Chantilly cream as you would usually except you reserve some cream. Bloom your gelatin in cold water and add to the reserved cream. Then heat slightly to dissolve the gelatin. Add flavor now if desired, heat with melt down solids if using a jam. Then before you have achieved soft peaks on your cream, slowly poor this mixture down the side of the bowl and then continue to whip as usual.

Pipe the cream using a medium star tip ending with a little rosette at the end if desired

Finished Cream Horns

Finishing the fruit strip

To finish up the fruit strip from thursday, you spread a fair amount of pastry cream onto the puff, however not on the little walls on the sides. Then you slice/peel/segment any fruit you wish (I used kiwi and strawberries) and arrange tightly and in an appealing way on the along the length of the strip. When done with this, finish with an apricot or mirror glaze this will extend shelf life and create a sheen. Slice to serve.

Finished Fruit Strip

These are a personal favorite of mine. I consider myself an advocate for pastry cream and this is putting it to good use. Pastry cream + Puff Pastry + Strawberries= amazingness (not even chocolate is necessary)

Fundamentals...a wrap up.

I created this blog, with the intention of daily entries about class. However, with fundamentals....there was not much to blog about.

Lets just say fundamentals was kind of..."low production".

We spent several days just practicing piping butter cream and chocolate as well as our knife skills and anything else we felt necessary for our practical.

Some of my piping

Day 8, Thursday (the day after ST. Patty's Day)....terrible day in South Hall.

Some JERK (to be kind) decided it would be a splendid idea to play with the fire extinguisher at 4:40 am....setting off the alarm and leaving all 500 of us residents outside, on the green for an hour and then we spent ANOTHER hour inside the gymnasium. No one was happy. And then just when i got back to sleep and had about another hour or two, the alarm went off AGAIN. It was like a sick joke.

So with four hours of sleep, I went to my SIX hour lab, to take an exam he told us nothing about and a very vague practical. Not my best day, curdled my first creme anglaise...ohhh well. Raced around frantically the whole day, it was ridiculous, 6 burners for 18 students making 2 different items on the stove. Not to mention, about 8 mixers for the room, each of us had to make an item in that as well.

For Day 1 of our practical, we had to make creme anglaise, pastry cream (both of which we had to monitor and record cooling temps) as well as butter cookies and roasted pineapple. By the end of the day, I just wanted to sleep and nothing more. I kind of, lost my steam. Not to mention, the class also curbed my enthusiasm about labs.

For Day 2 of the practical (last day of class) less stressful and less hectic. First, I cut apples into the four different cuts we were being tested on, once my chef inspected them (did well on most cuts) I went back to the stove and sauteed the apples with a little bit of brown sugar and clarified butter (yumm!).

Sauteed Apples

These apples were to be used in our diplomat cups. But in order to make the cups you had to make the cream. Which was just pastry cream folded into whipped cream, good stuff! So first you put down a play of diplomat cream, then the cooled sauteed apples followed by more cream and is topped off with a rosette of whipped cream and a chocolate filegree.

Diplomat Cream (not entirely incorporated yet!)

Finished Diplomat Cups

After this, I had to temper chocolate using the vaccination method. And with the tempered chocolate I had to pipe about 60 filegrees and then finish my butter cookies. When it was all said and done it all had to be presented to our chef one person at a time.

Finished Butter Cookies

Overall, i'm quite glad this class is over. The practical went well, I think and I won't know for sure until about thursday or friday. Wish me luck!