In the classroom: petit fours, Jan. 2011

Last weekend, my sister-in-law and I took another class at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, Petit Fours with Master Pastry Chef Delphin Gomes. And once again, it was fantastic. Primarily we made pâte à choux and baked it in puffs and éclairs and also made some tiny fruit tarts with pâte sucre and almond cream base.

Chef Delphin taught us his method of making pâte à choux in a mixer instead of mixing, mixing, mixing like mad on the stovetop. It worked wonderfully, of course.

Here is the "mashed potato" stage: water, butter and salt have been brought to a boil (butter completely melted) and added to the flour. It really does look exactly like mashed potatoes! Sixteen eggs are also ready to go into the dough.

mashed potato stage

eggs at the ready

The dough gets mixed for about 1 minute to bring it down to 155 degrees and then the eggs are added, two at a time.

adding the eggs

With the addition of the two eggs at a time, the dough will kind of fall apart before coming back together. Once it starts to come back together, add the next two eggs. You may need +/- an egg. The dough is done when it is smooth and shiny. Another way to test whether it's ready is to take a pinch between your thumb and forefinger and start to separate your fingers. If the dough forms a thick thread as you pull apart, it's ready. Here is our finished dough, ready to pipe.

smooth, shiny, beautiful!

Here are Chef's samples for us to copy. They're perfect...might be hard to live up to that!

Chef's samples...very nice

Here are mine...not too shabby!

looking good so far...

mine look just like Chef's...I wish! Better keep practicing.

After sis-in-law and I piped three trays of pâte à choux, we made a recipe of Almond Cream filling and piped it into tiny tart shells.

tiniest tart shells I've ever seen, filled with almond cream

almond cream tartlets baked and turned out of the tins

The class has been busy. Here are all of our puffs and éclairs, waiting to be filled. Wow, that's a lot of puffs!

are we really going to fill all of these?

éclairs, waiting to be filled

more puffs - the ovals are for the swans

Sis-in-law and I preparing the fruit tarts. Each piece of fruit is dipped into an apricot glaze and then placed on top of the tiny tart.

we only had about 80 to do...how long would hundreds or thousands take?

it was slow going, but we're almost done

meanwhile, Chef made these beauties with lemon curd and meringue

it's all about the presentation...they are pretty adorable all lined up in their little paper cups

Everyone in class is done now. All together we made the tiny tartlets, swans filled with Chantilly cream; two types of éclairs filled with coffee and chocolate flavored pastry cream; and creme puffs filled with four types of flavored pastry cream: rum, cherry, orange and hazelnut. They all look so nice!

swans filled with Chantilly cream

filled with orange pastry cream and topped with fondant icing

filled with rum flavored cream and topped with caramel

filled with cherry flavored pastry cream, topped with fondant icing and drizzled with chocolate

boxed up to take home

more pastries

the tiny ones are so cute!

yum!

a solitary swan...

Bye for now...

In the classroom: techniques of baking, Jan. 2011

We've had so much snow this month - more than is normal for the entire season in most years! And, sadly another foot is predicted for this week. I'm definitely on the big countdown to spring. Here springy springy...here spring...

this was after the first nor'easter... in one month we've had FOUR more storms

So, to keep me busy on these cold winter days, I signed up for some more classes at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, a 4-part class on the techniques of baking and a 2-part class on classic doughs and fillings (with Master Pastry Chef Delphin Gomes - he rocks!). See here for the entry on the classic doughs and fillings class.

In techniques of baking we spent a class on each of the following: pâte à choux, pies/tarts, breads and cakes (although, sadly I was really sick and had to miss the cake class). The pâte à choux was much easier than I had anticipated from having read the directions in a Julia Child cookbook. We made creme puffs with a light pastry creme filling and gougères, a savory puff with gruyère cheese and chives. The gougères were so delicious and easy enough to make as appetizers for a dinner party.

creme puffs with a small hole on the bottom to cool them thoroughly and then to pipe in the filling

pastry creme

whipped cream to add to pastry creme

finished pastry creme, ready to pipe into the puffs

finished puffs, all in a row

boxed up to take home

I made the gougères again at home but they were not quite as delicious as in class. I think the teacher used a different second cheese and I also overcooked them and they collapsed a bit. I'll keep trying though, because they tasted great.

ingredients ready

my mise en place (translates to everything - measured ingredients - in place)

piped onto sheet pan

topped with more cheese and ready to bake

slightly deflated, but still delicious

I forgot to bring my camera to the second class, but I made a fantastic lemon curd tart. The lemon curd was so delicious that I've made it again in the two week since class. Instead of using the lemon curd for a tart, I'll stir a couple of tablespoons into plain, Greek-style yogurt. It's incredibly good.

The third class was breads. I've made regular loaf bread at home, mixed in a breadmaker and then formed and baked in a loaf pan, but I hadn't experimented much so I was really looking forward to this class. I made a whole wheat rosemary garlic bread and some goat cheese scallion biscuits. The whole wheat loaves were a little heavy - I would use less whole wheat and more white flour next time - but the flavor and texture were really nice. The biscuits were fabulous. They were easy to make and baked up light and flaky, but moist (from the goat cheese).

mise en place for whole wheat rosemary garlic bread

my dough, after the first rise

shaped and midway through the second rise

heart-shaped goat cheese scallion biscuits

round biscuits

A few pictures from my classmates' creations.

pizzettas - these crisp mini-pizzas were fantastic and I definitely plan to make them myself

focaccia topped with fresh herbs, garlic and cheese

jalapeno cheddar corn bread - yum

Bye for now...