Pastry Pro I: Week 12: Finished Product

My sad looking banana cream pieIt's really Week 13 for the class but 12 for me since I missed a couple classes. Today was a make-up day because I was out of town earlier in the week and missed class, but it's finished product class so it really doesn't matter. My assignment was to make a banana cream pie and pots de creme. I have never made pots de creme before which is not a good idea, since I wasn't quite sure how it should taste and I had never tried the recipe. The pots de creme was rather grainy tasting, probably over cooked the custard, although I did it in the bain marie. I topped it with a chantilly cream mixed with cherry preserves....

Read more »

Pastry Pro I: Week 11: Finished Product

At 10:00 PM it's hard to get excited about eating cake!I thought today would be fairly simple--make cake with mango lime curd filling and Italian Meringue. I figured I'd even have time to make some other types of cake. After all I had already made two types of cake--"magnificent butter cake" and pound cake. My cakes seemed OK so I started on the mango lime curd. Now I made this at home but for some dumb reason I messed it up at school by adding some simple syrup to the mangos when I pureed them. Then when I mixed the mangos with the lime curd it became too thin and watery. Still tasted very good though. I was successful with the Italian Meringue,...

Read more »

Pastry Pro I: Week 10: Finished Product, week 1

Pastries at the end of class--how would you like to sample all of these at 10:30 PM? Apple Peach tart with frangipane and peach coulisChocolate Croissant with chocolate sauceMixed berry turnover with berry creamWe are taking the next three classes to use various components we've made since the beginning of Pastry Pro I. We've made pie dough, tart dough, croissant dough, and various fillings and sauces. We can use the components we've already made or we can start over and make them fresh. If we wanted to we could have made puff pastry or croissant dough and brought it in but I didn't choose to do that. I decided to make blitz or quick puff pastry...

Read more »