This week in school, we found ourselves smack-dab in the middle of the pies and tarts unit, and I think this has been our busiest (and longest) week to date! I feel like I say that every week, so apologies if I do, but it's really hard to believe how hectic the days can be. This week, each person made 9 tarts! That's an average of 3 tarts a day, which is totally insane. I'm bringing so much food home, it's hard to believe that it all actually gets eaten.
The end of this week also marks my 4th week (aka, first whole month) in school, which is pretty exciting! It seems like time is just flying by -- I mean, one month gone, already. Last night, Chef Stephany said that she thought that the night classes go by so slow. Maybe I don't feel that way since I have no basis of comparison, but I really feel like I'm going to be finished with this program before I know it.
A creamy almond pillow
But all that aside, let's get into the baking this week! Monday started off with making some cherry compote and a brand new batch of almond cream. Remember how I described it as a small pillow last week? Well, this time around I actually managed to get a picture after it was all wrapped up! See? Pretty pillow-like, I think. This batch seemed a little smaller than the one that we made last week, but I could be totally wrong. We used a different method to make this one (using almond meal instead of almond paste), so that could be why... less voluminous.
A nice stiff-peaked meringue.
From there, we went on to make our first meringue of the course. For Monday, both the tarts that we made were pretty much entirely based around meringue. We made a Galette Flamande, which is a thin layer of tart dough on the bottom, then that cherry compote we made is sandwiched between two layers of a meringue / almond cream mixture, then the top is sprinkled with almonds, and finally is dusted with powdered sugar. Our other tart of the night, the mixed nut tart, was the same meringue, except this time it was mixed with a combination of almond cream, almond flour, and hazelnut flour all spread over a very thin layer of raspberry preserves and sliced almonds. We had to whip our meringues to stiff peaks, so that it would stand up on end, like so.
The Galette Flamande was pretty before it even went into the oven, so I could only imagine what it was going to look like after that meringue had gotten a nice golden brown color on it. As expected, it was even prettier after it came out of the oven. It was so tasty, too! Chef Jeanne cut her tart into a bunch of little pieces so we could all try a bit, and what a treat that was.
Galette Flamande, post bake. Y U M !
Mixed nut tart, inside and out
When we moved onto the mixed nut tart, it was a pretty simple tart. This one sort of had a "brunch" vibe. Not overly sweet, and you probably wouldn't feel too guilty about eating a big chunk of it for breakfast. Just from looking at it, you'd never know that it had a really beautiful layer of raspberry and almonds on the inside. But I guess the saying stands, never judge a book (or a tart, in this case), by it's cover!
The last thing that we did on Monday night was make a new tart dough that we would be using on Wednesday, and that was a pretty quick, easy thing to do. By now, we're all pros when it comes to making dough. This dough in particular was a sablée, and much like the cookie dough we made back in week one, it had a very sandy texture, hence the name (sablée means "sandy" in French).
Sablée dough! Nice and sandy
Wednesday definitely was the busiest day this week -- so much so, that we didn't even leave the classroom until 11:50, which is almost an hour later than we're supposed to be finished. Since we had so much to do, I didn't get a chance to snap too many pictures, but I was able to get a few.
Making candied lemon peel
The first thing that we got started with on Wednesday evening was making our candied lemon peels for our lemon curd tartelettes. We made sure to get this going first, because according to our recipe, it had to cook in the syrup for up to two hours, which is almost half the time that we have in the kitchen each day. To get going on that, we peeled our lemons, removed as much of the pith as we could, blanched them 2-3 times, julienne'd them, put them in simple syrup, and cooked them over low heat for a little over an hour. After all that was said and done, we strained them from the remaining syrup, and rolled the lemon peels in sugar to give them that "candied" look. I thought that they sort of looked like Sour S'ghetti, which is one of my favorite candies. The lemon syrup that was remaining after we strained them could make something really delicious, I'm sure, I'm just not really sure what. Maybe it would be good in a cocktail or something, I dunno.
Caramel is in the works!
After we had our lemon peels simmering, we went on to making the caramel for our caramel nut tart! I've made caramel a handful of times at home, but it never sets up as much as I'd like (or need) it to, so maybe this will be my journey down the path of being able to successfully make caramels at home! Caramel is such a temperamental thing too, and it can go wrong so, so quickly. Fortunately, I didn't have to remake mine, and it went smoothly the first time, but it wasn't such for everyone. Chef Jeanne said that she wasn't even 100% sure why some of the caramels we're working right, they're just that temperamental of a thing. But when all was said and done, we mixed walnuts into the caramel (hence caramel nut tart). This gave it sort of a sweet / salty vibe. I decided to add an extra pinch of salt to my caramel, for a more enhanced flavor. I have to say, I think I made the right call. I realized after the fact that I didn't actually take a picture of the tart when it was finished, but I did get a picture before I put the almond cream on top. It has a nice thick layer of caramel, countered with a thin layer of almond cream. Very tasty, indeed!
Caramel nut tart, before the almond cream layer was put on top
Gelatin sheets -- almost invisible!
After those tarts were in the oven and baking we went on to make our lemon curd for the tartelettes. I have to say, I'm not usually one to like lemon-y flavored things, but this lemon curd was actually pretty delicious! We did a blind bake on the shells, since the filling doesn't get cooked again, so once the lemon curd was finished, we could just pour it into the shells so they could set in the freezer. The coolest part about the lemon curd was probably using the gelatin sheets. Whenever I've baked in the past with gelatin, I've just used the little pouches of Knox gelatin that you can buy at the store. I'd never seen a gelatin sheet (or heard of one, to be perfectly honest) before, so I was pretty excited to give them a try! You bloom the sheets, just as you would with any other gelatin, and then just stir them into your mix (lemon curd, in our case). I didn't think that they were going to dissolve, at first. They almost felt like rubber. But sure enough, with a little bit of stirring, they disappeared.
Lemon curd tarts, before we torched the meringue.
After the lemon curd was setting in the fridge, we made our Swiss Meringue. We started this just a little bit after 11:00pm, and we all thought that we'd be done by 11:10, 11:15 at the latest. The meringue took a little longer than expected to come together, and we all must've gotten caught up in the piping and torching of our meringues, because like I said, we didn't get out until 11:50! A late night, but well worth it, I think. It was pretty fun torching the meringue and watching it go from this pristine white fluff, to a nicely browned color.
On Wednesday, we also made two doughs that we would use on Friday: the Linzer dough and a chocolate sablée. The Linzer dough was SO MUCH WORK. We had to hard boil eggs, let them cool, peel them, and sift the hard boiled egg yolks. Yes, I did say sift. We basically had to smash the egg yolks through a sifter so they were a egg yolk-y flour type thing. It was super strange. Tasty dough, though. It was a lot of work, but well worth it.
Teeny tiny lemon tarts!
On Friday, we had a lot less intricate work to do, so it was going to be a nice way to end the week. We made two tarts, the Linzer and then a chocolate ganache tart. I was most excited about the Linzer tart, probably just due to the lattice top. It's one of those things that reminds me of pie, and I LOVE pie. It's my absolute favorite dessert, and it's what we'll be getting into next Wednesday when we come back for class (we have Labor Day off).
Bloo -- I mean, raspberry compote ;)
After spreading a thin layer of almond cream along the bottom of the tart shell, and then topping it off with raspberry compote, it was time to start the lattice! Before I get into that, interestingly enough, when we made the raspberry compote, one of the main ingredients in it was apple compote. We made the same apple compote as we did when we made the apple tart, and then added raspberries, pectin, and sugar. We cooked this mixture until it was nice and thick, and used an immersion blender to get the last of the apple chunks out. That's one thing that I really need to get. I've been meaning to buy one for awhile, and I think they're just super useful. Plus, I can get it in Candy Apple Red, which is my dedicated small kitchen appliance color ;) But ANYWAY, back to the compote. You'd have absolutely no idea that there were apples in this mix. It tastes amazing, and just like raspberry jam would. It's amazing!! When we poured it out to cool, I sort of thought it looked like a big 'ol pile of fake blood, which was pretty funny. Assembling the tart was pretty easy, then we just stuck them in the oven to bake and went off to dinner!
Step by step Linzer tart!
Chocolate on chocolate on chocolate!
When we came back from dinner, we assembled the chocolate ganache tart. That just sounds good thinking about it... who doesn't like chocolate?? This was like chocolate overload, too, because it was chocolate ganache in a chocolate crust. My table partner had some little gold flecks that he let me borrow to top my tart off which, so it was a lil' extra fancy! He and I were the first ones finished with our ganache and getting our tart in the fridge to set, so we helped Chef Stephany made a bunch of tiny cornets for the class to use to decorate our ganache tarts with white chocolate.
Pie dough, prepped and ready to go for next week!
The very last thing that we did on Friday was make our pie dough (!!!!). Like I said, I love pie! I'm so excited that we get to get started on that next week. We're going to be making 4 pies on Wednesday, which is totally crazy! Granted, they're 6" pies, so they're smaller than your regular pie would be, but that's still a ton of pie! Oh my gosh, I can't wait. I'm getting toward the end of the tarts and pies unit, so our test is coming up pretty quick. I know for sure that we have the Tarte Bourdaloue as one of the items on our practical, but I'm sure that there will be something else. We just don't know what yet. After this unit, I think that we move into Pate A Choux.
Stay tuned for my blog next week, and if you want more frequent updates, you can check out my Instagram.
Thanks for reading!