BAKING AND PASTRY TECHNIQUES

May 1, 2013

We started in the kitchen with making free form apple pies. We rolled the dough and put them either in a shell or free form on the parchment and filled with apples soaked in a liqueur,  cinnamon, sugar, topped with butter and streusel. Unfortunately, our team member who put them in the oven did not note the time and the pies were taken out before they were complete. They were put back in oven and did cook more but in the end they were not done and ended up in the trash.



After apple pie, we moved on to lemon meringue pie.  Another unfortunate insistent as one of our other team members scaled the cornstarch incorrect and the lemon filling was not thickening appropriately.  Fortunately, this was a fixable mistake and the filling turn out good.  The pies were left to cool before moving on to the meringue. We ran out of time to complete the meringue so they were placed in the refrigerator for  completion tomorrow.



After lemon meringue we moved on to sweet dough and made the crust for fruit tarts.  After rolling out the dough, we used a cutter to measure and cut the dough in circles and then pressed them into the tart shells and baked.


We also made a caramel sauce to drizzle over the apple pies.  This was a bit difficult to make as it requires that you use a thin aluminium pan so it does not scorch, brush the sides of the pan down with warm water so there is no loose sugar, and skim the top of the sugar during cooking for better clarity.
Also once the sugar boiled to an amber color, it is removed from heat to add the cream and butter, but have to move very quick otherwise the caramel will scorch. The Chef's demonstration batch did scorch and tasted burnt.  The batch our team made ended up turning out good although I would say it is not a preferred recipe for a good caramel sauce. 

By the end of class, the only completed item for the day were the apple pies (with the exception my team's underdone pies).