AMERICAN & EUROPEAN PASTRY

September 11, 2013

This week is pies and tarts. We were all required to make a sweet dough using the creaming method by hand. When I say by hand, I mean literally creaming with your hands. That was interesting, messy and tiring on the arm. I now know that if doing this, the powdered sugar should be sifted to make it easier to incorporated. I would recommend and prefer to use a mixer of some sort but in a pinch without a mixer I know it can be done this way.

The agenda today was making Key Lime Tarts, Frangipane Tarts with Poached Pears, and Fruit Tarts.  After mixing the sweet dough and let it set in the refrigerator for a bit, we rolled out the dough. 

We then used different methods to make the tart shells. One method was placing the rolled out dough on top of individual tart molds and pressed down with hand and then a rolling pin to cut the dough.

After the dough was cut the dough was lightly pressed into the mold. 

A second method used was cut the dough with a cutter and then placing the dough on the outside of a sprayed pan. 

The third method used was placing the dough over a tray mold and lightly pressing the dough into the mold.

Then the excess dough was cut away from the mold.

All methods resulted in a nice baked tart shell.

While the tart shells were baking and cooling, we made the fillings for the tarts.  The fruit tarts were lined with chocolate, filled with pastry cream, then top with fresh fruit and a clear glaze.

Fruit Tarts

The key lime tarts were lined with white chocolate, filled with a key lime filling and topped with Creme Chantilly and then torched top. 

Key Lime Tarts

For the frangipane tarts, we created the frangipane to fill the tarts which is an almond paste mixture. We had poached pears in a red wine liquid.  For the pears, we started by peeling the pears and coring the bottoms.

We created the poaching liquid from a red wine zinfandel and added sugar, vanilla bean, black pepper and orange zest and then added the pears.

The pears were then covered with a parchment paper to capture steam (not with a lid which would capture too much steam and over cook the pears).

The pears simmered for about 25 minutes on the stove and came out with a nice red coloring on them.

The poached pears were cut into thin slices and placed on top of the frangipane filled tart and covered with a clear glaze.

Frangipane Poached Pear Tart

I had never had poached pears before and they were really quite good on there own and even better with the frangipane tart.