Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Viennoiserie Ends On A High Note

Hey everyone,
Well, sadly, this was my last class of the Viennoiserie unit, definitely my favorite so far. Our next class begins our first unit on cakes, though.which I'm super excited about. Ok, on with the show.

Speaking of cakes, tonight we got our first taste at cake decorating, with our ruches, or beehives. I had never seen this dessert before, which is suprising because I feel like they'd be very popular. They're really cute and super sweet. It's a brioche that has been slice into three layers, soaked with a honey lavender syrup, filled with pastry cream, and covered in an Italian meringue. And to top it off, a decorative marzipan bee or two! It's pretty good, if a bit too sweet for my tastes.


Ok, so mine isn't the prettiest. Stop judging!

Next up, we have one of my all-time favorites: the pannetone. What can I say about this one, except that I hope mine tastes better than the ones you get in the grocery store around Christmas?


Also tonight, we made a pain de mie, or pullman loaf. I can't wait to try this one with some jam tomorrow with breakfast. What I never realized about this bread is that it's baked in a loaf pan with a cover (hence the pullman reference, I guess) which forces the bread to bake in a perfect square, perfect for sandwiches. I thought it was interesting, anyway.




What else, what else...OH! We made yet another fruit tart. This time we used brioche dough, which was baked with pastry cream and apricots. I actually ended up giving this one to a woman on the train going home from school. She had jokingly asked me for it (something that happens quite a bit...you can't believe the looks and stares you can get walking around with tons of pastry) and it was one less thing to carry home tonight in the snow and ice. Anyway, she was really appreciative.


The last item we made tonight were the croissants aux amandes, almond croissants. We had saved some croissants from last class, and we brushed them with a grand marnier syrup, piped some almond cream on them and sliced almonds, and re-baked them for a little bit. Not bad, eh?


Well that's it! Wish me luck as I begin the cake unit...I'm gonna need it!

Friday, December 24, 2010

Viennoiserie Is Pure Awesomeness

Hey everyone,
So, it's been a while since I last posted. I've been really busy with the holidays and all, baking and traveling to see family and whatnot, but I wanted to give you a quick update on all the awesome stuff we've been making in class. First off, I have to say that as expected, I'm really loving the Viennoiserie unit. I'm totally enjoying making all the sweet breads and working with yeast doughs. I won't go into too much detail about it, but I did want to give you some pictures to drool over.

First we have cinnamon swirl bread. It has some orange zest in it, which I wasn't so sure about, but it really added to the overall flavor. I wish I had taken a picture of it sliced open, so you could see the delicious swirl, but you'll just have to imagine it!



 Next up, we have pecan sticky buns. Yes, they were drool-worthy and delicious! These were actually made with the same dough as the cinnamon swirl bread, but this has a whiskey pecan sticky topping. Yes, you read that right!


 These are some Sally Lunn rolls. Basically, they're dinner rolls, and no one was really able to tell us why they're called Sally Lunns. They were pretty good. Basic, but good.


Ok, this was one of my favorites so far and one that I know I need to perfect, for the sake of staying in my parents' wills...challah. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of it baked, but I was so excited to learn how to make challah. And my family loved it at our belated Chanukah dinner. It was perfect!


Ok, so these are mini fruitcakes. Now, I had never had a fruitcake in my life, but I certainly knew of their bad reputation, but I have to say, I really enjoyed these. They were brushed with brandy, and while they were dense, they weren't THAT dense, and they were filled with lots of dry fruit. Really tasty.


Next up, we bade some brioche. These brioche are in a loaf. They were pretty good, although I honestly think they could have used a little bit more butter, if you can imagine that! We also made the individual brioches, the brioches a tete, but again, I dropped the ball and didn't take any pictures. It's ok, though, because I'm not so proud of how they looked. I'll get a lot more practice on them, though, so I have no worries.



KUGELHOPF!!! Yes, it's a very fun word to say, and it's also a really nice bread that goes great with a cup of coffee!

And now the main event: CROISSANTS! I was so excited to get to make croissants and pains au chocolat. It really is such a basic French pastry. I don't think you can call yourself a pastry chef, if you don't know how to make these. I know I need practice on shaping them, but for my first time, I think I did pretty well.


Lastly, we made scones. These were actually my favorite. I even liked them better than the croissants, if you can believe it.

Well, that's it. Sorry it took so long to get these up, but it's the holidays, so cut me some slack. Next up, panetonne, pullman loaf, and beehive cake!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

I have run out of puff pastry related puns

Ok, guys, I was too busy to post on Friday, so I’m going to combine two classes into one post. I know you’re just here for the pictures, anyway.
So Thursday night was chocolate puff pastry night. To be honest, I wasn’t crazy about the chocolate puff pastry. To me, it was very dry and brittle, and it tasted a bit bitter to me. That being said, people seemed to love the chocolate napoleons we made.  The filling of the chocolate napoleon, or mille-feuille au chocolat if you prefer, is crème d’or, or “golden cream,” which was whipped cream and dark chocolate…essentially a whipped ganache. Very, very rich. The mille-feuille was topped with ganache and a little melted white chocolate for decoration. This was a very dense, very rich dessert.


The other item we made on Thursday was the Chocolate Banana Tart, which we made individually to plate. We put a layer of ganache on the puff pastry, layered sliced banana on it, and then bruléed sugar over it. Fun stuff. We served homemade peanut butter ice cream on the side. I think my plating needs some work, but the tart was very good.

On Saturday, we worked with classic puff pastry again. We made several items…a Dartois aux Pommes, a classic Napoleon, and “speedy” vol-au-vents, which were not very speedy. The dartois is very similar to the apple tart we made earlier in the unit, although this time we filled it with apple compote, and we covered it with a lattice crust. Keeping the crust cold this time definitely helped me make a nice lattice, as opposed to the pear tart I made which was kind of messy. Anyway, the dartois was good, especially with coffee this morning.

We also made the speedy vol-au-vents, which were almost more complicated than regular vol-au-vents. However, I really like the way these turned out…they look great! While last time, we made a savory filling of spinach and mushrooms, this time we filled them with crème légère and topped with raspberries. Just goes to show you could put just about anything in puff pastry, and it would be great.

Finally, we made the classic napoleon. This is the one everyone thinks of when they think of a napoleon. It is layered with plenty of crème légère and topped with fondant and melted chocolate for decoration. It’s fantastic!


Well, that’s it for puff pastry! Our exam is on Tuesday, so wish me luck. I can’t say I’m sorry to be done with this unit…I think I make it well and all, but it’s really tedious to prepare, and all the stuff we made got a little repetitive. It also doesn’t help that we start Viennoisserie on Thursday, and that’s one of the units I’ve been looking forward to the most. Mmmm, croissants and brioche…drooool.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Hey, Jalousie

Ok, in last night’s class we got to do one of my favorite activities…making caramel. Honestly, it’s really fun! But I’ll get to that later. On with the show.
Well, we’re still working with puff pastry, and it’s starting to wear on me, especially since our next unit is the one I’ve been waiting for, Viennoiserie. In our last class, though, we made gâteau Pithiviers, jalousie, and a tarte tatin.
The Pithiviers is puff pastry filled with frangipane, which is almond cream mixed with pastry cream. There’s also a cockamamie story behind this dessert about a the king of France and his mistress, but something tells me that story was invented to sell more Pithiviers. However, the cake is also known as a “king cake,” and it’s supposed to look like a carriage wheel, although I think it looks more like a sunflower. In any case, it’s delicious. Take a look, but please don’t judge that part of it got damaged when it was removed from the oven!


Next up is the jalousie, which French for “jealousy,” in case you couldn’t tell. This one also has a ridiculous story behind it about a jealous lover peeking through the blinds, which is a pretty creepy reason to make a tart. Still, though, if you squint really hard, it looks like you’re looking through blinds into the filling, which in this case is raspberry jam and more almond cream. The French really love almonds, it seems.

Our last dish of the evening is the tarte tatin, which we also previously made in the tart and cookie section. Tarte tatin is a traditional, yet rustic upside down tart. This one is interesting, because you cook the filling in a sauce pan, cover that with puff pastry, and then bake the whole thing in the oven. The traditional filling for the tarte tatin is caramel apple. This time, we learned to make the caramel using a dry technique instead of wet. This means that instead of dissolving the sugar in water when cooking it, we just put the dry sugar in a pan and melted it. It’s much more testy and fast, so you really have to keep an eye on it. Anyway, it’s bubbly, caramelly goodness. Take a look!


It's a mess, but a tasty one! Oh, and here I am with my caramel apple mixture.

That’s all for today. Next class, we’ll be using chocolate puff pastry, which should be interesting!

Sunday, December 5, 2010

A Little More Conversation

Ok, we made so much great stuff yesterday! It was really fun and interesting, not to mention tasty. After rolling out our dough for the day’s projects, we got to work making our “classique” dough which will be used next class. With all that out of the way, we got to work on the individual desserts. We made tartes aux poires en cage, conversations, and galettes aux fruits de saison.
Much of the preparations yesterday involved group volunteer assignments. Some people volunteered to make almond cream, some fruit compote, but I volunteered to poach pears. Everyone had to peel and core their own pears, and then we put them into these enormous pots with the poaching liquid. My teammates and I decided to poach them in white wine, cinnamon, ginger, clove, cardamom, and black peppercorns. Yeah, it was perfect for the season. Once all the components were completed we got to work assembling our various pastries.
First up was the tarte au poire en cage, a puff pastry pear tart, filled with almond cream and covered with a lattice (cage) crust. We cut our dough in the shape of a pear and placed a whole pear half on top. We then took a tool that looks similar to a pizza cutter that cut the lattice design into the dough. This dessert was really good, and I think the pears were cooked really well, if I do say so myself.

Next is probably my favorite, the Conversation. This is simply puff pastry filled with almond cream, covered with a little royal icing. I think I was overly zealous with the almond cream, because it kind of rose too high, but man, did it taste good!

Finally, we made the fruit galettes. These are just free-form tarts that were filled with cherry compote and apple/cranberry compote. They were very good.

So, that’s everything we made in yesterday’s class. It worked out really well, too, because Adam and I had a couple of friends over for dinner, and we were able to provide them with a nice dessert tasting menu!

Friday, December 3, 2010

HR Puff N Stuff

Wow! Last class went really well! We got so much done, and although puff pastry is still kind of tedious to make, I really think we’re all getting the hang of this dough. Not only does it taste great, but it’s so versatile, allowing both sweet and savory fillings that just go so well together. Last night, we made palmiers, vols-au-vents, a round napoleon, and an almond-pineapple bar tart.
First up is the napoleon. Now, I’m used to seeing napoleons in strips, with a fondant icing on top, but here we made round napoleons, and the top was covered in powdered sugar and crushed puff pastry was pressed around the side. The fun part really came when we took red-hot skewers and pressed them on the sugar to caramelize it, a technique called “quadrillage.” The entire classroom smelled like roasted marshmallows! Sadly, for one reason or another, my dough only allowed for two discs of pastry, not three, so mine was a little short. I told the chef that the dessert’s lack of height was my homage to its namesake, but I don't think he bought it. Whatever...it was delicious, no matter what.

We also made an almond pineapple bar tart. For this, we took strips of puffed pastry, spread some almond cream on down the middle, and layered pineapple slices on top, which then baked in the oven to caramelize. The decoration is chopped pistachios.

To be honest, I had my doubts about this one, but I have to say, I really enjoyed it. So did Adam’s office, from what I hear…those folks have been reaping most of the benefits of this class, as Adam and I usually only take a little taste for ourselves.
Next up are the vols-au-vents, which are little cups of puff pastry. We made our savory, with spinach, shallot, and goat cheese and also mushroom and shallot. These were amazing. Like, eat in the dark while crying amazing.

Finally, we sliced and baked our palmiers. These were kind of everyone’s favorite. They’re just puff pastry with granulated sugar on them, but that combination really works. Here they are sliced and ready to go into the oven.

And here’s one fresh out of the oven…yum.

Well, that’s all for the stuff we made in class. Just an addition, Chef Ron Ben-Israel was around doing a demo on his amazing wedding cakes, and my class got the leftovers.

It’s a spice cake with apple butter cream. Adam and I haven’t tried it yet, but there's a slice in the fridge waiting. This is possibly a once-in-a-lifetime slice of cake from one of the masters, so I know I’m going to savor it and look forward to having him teach us when we get to our wedding cake section!

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Puff The Magic Pastry

Hi all…sorry I haven’t posted in a while, but we had a test, and it was Thanksgiving, so I kinda lost track. Anyway, as mentioned, we had our pâte à choux test, which I did well on, even if it was rough getting there.
Our next unit is pâte feuilletté, or puff pastry. In our class just before Thanksgiving, we made two versions of this versatile dough, rapide and classique, and in last night’s class we made the inverse version. They’re all very similar in that it requires making a dough similar to pâte brisée, rolling it out, and then rolling butter into it. After that, you have to fold it up, roll it out again, fold it up again, before chilling it for a while. You repeat this step several times to get many layers incorporated into the dough.
Essentially, they’re almost interchangeable, and the rapide is not much more “rapide” than the other two, so I’m not exactly sure why we need three kinds. Not to mention that we were basically told that most commercial kitchens use store-bought puff pastry, because puff pastry is very labor intensive and store-bought is just as good. Sigh…I guess this is like Algebra for pastry—you need to learn it, but there’s no real world application for it. In any case, it’s buttery, flaky deliciousness.
Last night we made several items. The first thing we did was to roll out some of our rapide dough to make palmiers. Palmiers are very similar to elephant ears, and they’re really delicious. They are just puff pastry which has been coated in sugar and rolled up to form a cookie, of sorts. We’ll be baking those on Thursday.
Next, we rolled out our classique dough to make a fresh fruit “bar” tart and mini apple tartlettes. These are both versions of tarts we made earlier in the course, but now we’re using the puff pastry instead of the traditional tart doughs. Here are my pictures!


The other item we baked was a tomato tart. Now, I have no idea why they included this in the puff pastry unit, but the tomato tart is great…super easy and tasty, and it makes a great lunch! We started by making tomato sauce…which included a little knife-skills lesson. We then mixed in some egg to make a custard and a little parmesan cheese. When baked, it smelled like pizza and had the consistency of a quiche. Really delicious, and not completely terrible for you, if you can look past the butter in the pâte brisée!

Well I think you’re all caught up. I’ll be focusing on puff pastry for the next few weeks, so be prepared for pictures of vols-au-vents, napoleons, and much more!

Friday, November 19, 2010

Croquem-what?

Wow, what a day! Not only did a Top Chef contestant give me a tour of his bakery, but in class, we got to make a croquembouche!
My day started off in the afternoon, when a group of my classmates went to the Baked Bakery in Brooklyn, where we were given a tour by Eric, from Top Chef: Just Desserts. It was really fun and interesting. He talked to us a little bit about what it is like to run a bakery, gave us a tour of the shop and the kitchens, and we even got a tasting of some of their products! My favorite, I think, was either the pumpkin whoopee pie with cream cheese filling or the chocolate peanut butter rice krispie square, but really, everything we tried was delicious.
After that, we went to class where we began our final day of pâte à choux by making our croquembouches. A croquembouche is a huge cone of cream puffs and other decorations, held together by caramel, and traditionally served at French weddings. I guess they don’t do wedding cakes; they do croquembouches, and while many of them do have a bit of a rustic look about them, some of them can be gorgeous, ornate masterpieces. Go ahead, Google it.
We spent most of our class on this project, making the choux paste, piping the choux balls, piping decorations, and making caramel to hold it all together. I think mine came out pretty well. It’s leaning a bit, yes, but I do like the look of it. I dipped mine in pistachio and coconut, and I tried to alternate them with plain ones, but it got very difficult to keep the pattern going throughout! No wonder these things can cost thousands of dollars…they’re surprisingly complicated! Anyway, I tried to give mine a Thanksgiving theme, and my pumpkin turned out pretty well. Sadly, my hand turkey didn’t fare so well and shattered when I picked it up. Sadness.
Anyway, here’s my croquembouche!

Well, that concludes unit two of my pastry course. I have to say I’m pretty happy to be over with it; I’m not really a huge fan of the stuff. On the other hand, however, it's kind of amazing to me to see how far I've already come in just one month; I can already see progress, and I'm still kind of amazed at the skills I've learned.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Hell Yeah, I Want Some Cheesy Poofs!

Last night, we made two items. The first were gougères, which I have been very excited to make for a while now. I have had gougères a few times before, and they’re awesome. I mean, they’re cheese puffs…it’s a no brainer! They’re also incredibly simple to make, of which I have made mental note. All you do is make your choux paste (easy enough since we’ve spent the last few classes learning this dough), add gruyere cheese and some seasonings, and pipe out little blobs onto your sheet pan. Done! Sadly for you, I didn’t get any pictures of these savory delicacies, but since they taste better than they look, it’s no loss. It’s kind of like the opposite of Nuts 4 Nuts…those things smell amazing, but then you eat them, and they suck.  Plus, you totally know the vendor hasn’t washed his hands all day…just sayin’.
But I digress. The second item we made last night was a Gâteau St. Honoré, named for the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. Man, they’ve got a saint for everyone, don’t they? As far as this class goes, this cake acts as a precursor to Thursday night, where we make the Croquembouche, a tower of choux balls traditionally served at French weddings. This cake, however, is no slouch and is actually quite complicated to assemble. We had to roll out our pâte brisée, which formed the base. Then, we piped several concentric circles of choux paste. Additionally, we made several choux balls that would ring the cake. After popping those in the oven, we next had to make the cream that would fill the cake, a chiboust. A chiboust is pastry cream with added gelatin and an Italian meringue folded in to lighten. This was our first dabble in Italian meringue, and man was it complicated. It involves cooking sugar to “soft ball” stage, 238 degrees, and then adding it slowly to whipping egg whites. You have to be very careful, since 238 degrees is just a bit hot. Our chiboust thankfully turned out perfectly, thanks to some help from our chefs, and we put our cream in the fridge until we could have time to pipe everything.


BIG mistake!
When it came time to fill the choux balls and pipe our design in the middle, the cream had liquefied into a gooey mess, and we could barely fill the choux, since the cream was squirting out the sides of the bag. We made due, however, and after making caramel to use as glue to stick the choux to the cake, we spread the cream in the center (instead of piping), and it was fine. It’s not as pretty, but it will still taste wonderful.

Well, that’s it for today. Next class is croquembouche, as I said. That one’s a show-stopper!!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Pipe Dreams

Ok, so I was totally going to name this post “laying pipe,” but I know how my mom feels about vulgarity, so I’ll throw her a bone, this one time.  What it comes down to is that the pâte à choux unit is designed to give us real practice in the art of using a pastry bag to pipe things…which is really important if you want to be a successful pastry chef or baker.
On to yesterday’s class, though. Yesterday’s class was such a relief after the messiness of Thursday, and I think most people left the kitchen yesterday feeling positive about where we stand. We started class by preparing our pâte à choux, which we used to make three different desserts today, including a Paris-Brest ring and our first crack at plated desserts—swans and profiteroles.
After making our dough, we had to pipe out the different shapes for the three different pastries. First, we piped the dough into a teardrop shape which would ultimately become our swans. Going into this class, I was concerned that this would be very difficult, since the idea of piping anything to that would look like a swan seemed daunting to me. However, even though they’re not perfect, these were not as hard as I had envisioned, and my swans came out looking pretty good. They were filled with a crème Martinique, a whipped cream with rum-soaked pineapple folded into it. After assembling our swans, we plated them on a “lake” of chocolate sauce with sauce anglaise hearts.



I know! They’re like, totes fancy and stuff!
Next we plated our profiteroles, a perennial favorite. Leave it to the French to make ice cream sundaes seem snooty and dainty. These were filled with homemade vanilla ice cream and set on a plate of warm chocolate sauce with sauce anglaise. I have to say that I was not too happy with my plating here. My spiral was a bit off, but it tasted good, nonetheless.

Next, we piped rings to form our Paris-Brest, a very traditional French pastry. It is shaped to resemble a bicycle tire, as it commemorates the famous bicycle race between the cities of Paris and Brest. To be honest, I had never heard of this one, but man, is it delicious. To fill it (after all, choux dough is primarily used as a vessel for sweet cream fillings), we got to make our first buttercream, a mousseline called crème Paris-Brest. A mousseline is just a combination of butter and pastry cream and is also referred to as German buttercream. Classically, for a Paris-Brest, you make a hazelnut praline mousseline. We then piped it in a spiral shape. Doesn’t it kind of resemble tire treads?


Well, that’s about it. This class went much more smoothly than Thursday, which was nice. Also, Chef Ron Ben-Israel, a world-famous cake designer who also teaches our wedding cake section, stopped in to say hello. We were all a bit star struck, to say the least.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Pâte À Choux, Pas Du Tout!

Well, I should’ve known something was off today when I missed my subway stop and ended up in Brooklyn. But hey, it was the start of our second unit, pâte à choux, and I was really excited! Sadly, my excitement was to be short-lived.

Class started out well enough. We started making the pâte à choux, which is a really interesting dough! It's cooked twice, first on the stove and then in the oven, and its only real function is to hold cream fillings, in such tasty confections as éclairs, profiteroles, and croquembouches. So clearly, it’s a fan favorite. Anyway, we made the dough, which for me, came out pretty well.
My happiness soon dwindled as I began piping the dough into straight lines for éclairs, which I screwed up and had to redo, completely. Fortunately, the second time was the charm, and they came out well. For the record, it seemed that a lot of people had problems with this…I’m sure it’s something that comes with practice, of which we’ll have plenty, since we’ll be doing so much piping over the course of this class.
Next, my new partner Jackie and I got to work on our pastry cream, a new recipe this time that included butter. Well, that went ok, until I realized I had forgotten the butter. Cue sad trombone.
After that, it became apparent that  a) one of the ovens had been set to an improper temperature and b) one of the other ovens just stopped working altogether! Clearly, I was not the only one having an off night. Cue sad trombone again!
So, ultimately, after a long night of mishaps, my éclair shells were totally burned. Fortunately, I was able to use some of Jackie’s, and we filled them with vanilla, coffee, and chocolate pastry creams. Yum!


All in all, the night was just kind of a mess, and that’s ok. The good news is, it’s just pastry, which is one of my favorite things about my new chosen career path! I mean, yes, of course, you want to be the best, the hardest working, and the most creative, but in the end, you’re creating something  that by definition is fun, decadent, and silly. In my opinion, if you take this stuff too seriously, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Like Top Chef With Training Wheels

Wow, so I just completed my first test at culinary school, and I have to say, I kinda rocked it! We had a written and a practical section, and it was INTENSE! Everyone says the first test is the hardest, since the first unit is the longest and encompasses so many basics. I found the written test to be fairly straightforward, thankfully, but we'll see how I do when the results come back.

For the practical portion, we had to make one large tart, two tartlets, and five cookies. The kicker was that we didn’t know what types we had to make until we got there, so it was pretty hard to prepare for that section of the test. I was assigned a caramel nut tart, mini quiche lorraines, and shortbread “sablée” cookies. There’s not too much to report except to say that it was a whirlwind of activity from all corners. Everyone was trying to make their components and assemble their tarts, making sure that each component was done in an efficient order to ensure that everything would be done by the end of class! And we got it done, too! Here’s my final presentation:

Chef Cynthia really loved my presentation and raved about my products. To be fair, though, the presentations of my tarts were easier to achieve than others in my class since I didn’t have to do any piping, but it sure is amazing what a little powdered sugar can do. The chef had some critiques, of course, but all in all, my first culinary school test was a success…at least I think so, since I’ll have to wait to receive my grades!

Friday, November 5, 2010

Caramels And Finger Condoms

I reached a major milestone last night…my first culinary school injury. That’s right, I had an incident with a serrated knife, and it was stupid. To add insult to injury, I had to wear a freaking finger condom on my finger all night….fail.
Anyway, fun stuff in last night's class, folks. We started working with caramel, and it was awesome! We sliced apples for our mini tartes tatins, a quick upside-down caramel apple tart. We boiled sugar and water together, until the caramel turned almost black. The goal was to achieve a caramel that had a slight bitterness to it.  Chef Cynthia called my caramel “perfect,” which I only mention because I am my father's son. We poured the caramel into our tartlet molds, arranged the apples, and covered them with discs of pâte sucrée. Once out of the oven, we unmolded them, and here they are!

We then assembled our dough for our pecan bourbon cookies. What what!! Two of my favorite things in one cookie?! Yes, please! We haven’t baked them off yet, but I can’t wait to try them on Saturday.
Next, we got to work on our tarte aux noix et caramel, our caramel nut tart. Mom, this one’s for you! We made our caramel, which we then “slacked off” by adding heavy cream and a little bit of glucose, then adding chopped walnuts. We cooked the mixture further to thicken. Then, we spread it into our tart shells and then covered that with a thin layer of almond cream. I have not tried this one, but it looks AH-mazing. I didn’t get a chance to dust it with powdered sugar, so it's not quite as pretty, but take a look.


Finally, we made the dough for our Linzer tarts. We’ll be making these on Saturday, but we had to give the dough time to rest. Goody, more raspberry.
Well, that’s about it. You can all ask Todd how this stuff is, since I’m unloading it all on him today. What, you think Adam and I eat it all?! Are you crazy?!