Pastry Pro I: Week 12: Finished Product

My sad looking banana cream pie

It'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. My pie should have been a cinch. I have practiced making several pies over the semester and know how to make a good pie. I made the first mistake by putting the dough in the freezer. When I took it out it was so hard and dry. It took a while to work it out and then it didn't roll out well. I ended up with a rather shrunken crust and not very nice looking. I made the pastry cream but I was trying to make extra in case on the pie crusts didn't work out. By making a big batch of pastry cream and not cooling it fast enough it overcooked some and tasted "eggy". I also made an orange caramel sauce which tasted bitter. So nothing worked out right in the end. The pie crust was slightly underdone, the cream overdone with a bitter sauce! But, Julie, the office manager at the school ate a piece and said it was tasty! I know I can do much better though.

Next day:

I had to make another pie so I made both a fruit tart with a pastry crust and a chocolate cream pie. They both turned out very nicely and got lots of compliments at the dinner party.

Sometime I'll post the chocolate cream pie recipe. I would make it again and may make it for the final.

In my "real" life I am going away for a week for a deployment training exercise. No gourmet food there!

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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, however, and had learned from previoius experience that I should be sure to heat up the sugar/water to a high enough temp or the egg whites would be dull. I made great meringue, however by the time I used it changes had occurred in it and the texture was not quite as nice. I made a 4 layer butter cake with the mango curd filling but when Chef Kurima cut into it you couldn't see the layers. She suggested trying some raspberry jam as a thin layer to make the filling more visible. The pound cake was so dry even the curd didn't and simple syrup didn't help. Over all, OK but not great night and I sure won't be making this cake for the final.

I found out my partner for the final will be Tela. I'm very happy to have her as a partner. She is very skilled and reliable. We have to make enough to earn 100 points but after tonight when it took 3 hours to make a couple little cakes I'm wondering how in the heck I'm going to make several things in 3 hours. It is not going to be easy.

Butter cakes with mango lime curd and Italian meringue

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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 coulis

Chocolate Croissant with chocolate sauce



Mixed berry turnover with berry cream

We 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 instead. It doesn't rise as much as real puff pastry but it's close enough. We were able to choose the finished products to make and for the first week I made blitz puff pastry and chocolate croissants and apple pear tarts with fangipane. I also planned to make berry turnovers if there was time. I didn't have any trouble with the blitz puff pastry. Fortunately I had practiced a few times at home and even as soon as the night before class so I felt confident in making the pastry. I also decided to use the croissant dough I had in the freezer and make croissants with both blitz and the croissant dough. The first batch of croisssants came out kind of dark but Chef Sively said they looked fine.

I plated one with chocolate sauce I had made in the previous class and some toasted walnuts.

I used the peach and apple filling Kristin and I made in a previous class, as well as the frangipane to make some free form tarts. I made one larger one, about 6 inches, and the rest 4 inch.

One secret I learned is that puff pastry cooks fast on the outside but the inside is often undercooked (convection oven) If I put the pastries in the still oven at a lower heat for 15-20 minutes and covered them with foil then the insides were fine. I added some peach/ginger coulis to the apple peach tarts. I had time to make berry turnovers as well. The blueberry, raspberry, strawberry pie filling I had made during filling class was still very nice. I added some fresh blueberries to it, thickened it with some cornstarch and the texture was good. Since I had practiced I learned that egg wash was important for putting between the folded sides so it would stick while it was baking. I also brushed everything with egg wash and sprinkled sugar on it. With the berry turnover I made berry chantilly cream--an idea I got from a class I took from Jon Bonnell where he made huckleberry empanadas with huckleberry cream.

All my dishes were good for a change (except the chocolate croissant made with blitz--it was undercooked). I was relieved and happy and even enjoyed making the pastries. I think using the ingredients we worked so hard to make in earlier classes was the key to having good finished products. I'm glad to didn't have to start over with everything--and knowing I can take a frozen filling and add some fresh berries to it was something I never would have thought of.

I also realized that the reason I didn't like puff pastry before is I didn't cook it properly. If it was underdone inside I didn't think about putting it in a lower oven for a few minutes.

I'm looking forward to next week's class but somewhat concerned about the final exam. More on that next week.

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