In the classroom: classic doughs and fillings, Jan. 2011

This is sort of a part 2 of the previous post and my adventures in keeping busy during this snowy January.

In first week of the classic doughs and fillings class with Chef Delphin, we focused on the doughs. We learned to make pâte foncer and pâte sucre. Pâte foncer is a great all-around dough which gives you a gorgeous flaky crust and would work for both sweet and savory fillings. Pâte sucre is a sweeter dough, with an almost shortbread-like finish. If made with powdered sugar, it produces a super smooth and very easy to manage dough (it was beautiful), if made with granulated sugar, the dough finishes with more of a sandy texture.

To fill our beautiful doughs, we made a pear and almond creme tart, a brown butter and apricot tart and pecan tartlets. Everything was delicious. I love almonds, but I normally don't like things with almond extract flavoring or almond-flavored food (marzipan - yuck!)...however, Chef Delphin's almond creme filling has turned out to be one of my favorites. It's made with almond flour so the almond flavor is not too sharp and overpowering. In class we used canned pears - they were too soft and flavorless - if I make this one again, I would use fresh pears and poach them myself.

pear and almond creme tart in a pate sucre crust

pecan tartlet

brown butter and apricot tart in a pate foncer

my three tarts

In week two, we made more of the above doughs and made lots of little tartlets. We made an Italian meringue (to use as a stabilizer in the mousses and on top of the lemon and orange tartlets), chocolate mousse and caramel mousse, lemon cream tartlets and orange cream tartlets, a chocolate tart with fruit and nuts and mixed fruit tartlets topped with a sabayon.

We made so many different items - I felt like we were in a bakery when everything was done and all laid out...so beautiful!

caramel and chocolate mousses, sabayon topped fruit tartlets

sabayon topped fruit tartlets and chocolate tarts with fruit and nuts

delicious!

orange tartlets and a few lemon tartlets on the right

Bye for now...