Well today was eventful in the First Aid box kind of way. Every member in my group cut herself today. And all but one cut herself at least twice. Myself? I only cut myself once, but I also stabbed a finger and scraped another with a ruler (apparently ruler edges are sharp!). Three finger condoms for me. :P
As for our products today, we made pithiviers, cherry turnovers, and cream horns!
A pithivier is puff pastry encasing a frangipane filling. Frangipane is almond paste mixed with sugar. It's amazing how tall the puff pastry rises! Ideally, the final product should be flat on top. You can see in its pre-baked state it's quite rounded. It triples in height! My final pithivier was a bit lopsided because the top and bottom pieces weren't perfectly aligned, but you can definitely see the decorative scores I made! It's a great dessert if you want something not very sweet and different. : )
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Unbaked Pithivier
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| Baked Pithivier |
Cherry turnovers made with our own batch of puff pastry. The chef planned for us to fold the turnovers in the traditional way, but since his batch burst open, he told us to use a different fold. We were a bit confused so that's why there's two different kinds of folds in the picture. It still tastes good! Can't beat all-butter puff pastry. :3
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| Cherry Turnovers with Apricot Glaze |
Cream horns!! Below is a picture of our unfinished cream horns. We dipped both ends in chocolate and filled them with raspberry mousse. Soooo goood. And the color combination was very cute! We definitely need to work on consistency between member products though. Some horns were short and others were long, haha!
Oh the Napoleon. I made the filling for our group and definitely cut back on the booze. Boy was the filling made by our chef a little boozy. Not saying liquor is a bad thing. :P Anyway, we definitely indulged in the trimmings from these. For these napoleons, however, we used commercial puff pastry instead of our own batch. This commercial brand uses margarine as the fat for the layering and boy, can you tell the difference. But with the filling, it's still good. :3 Sorry for the poor lighting on the finished napoleon picture. I took that one while in the fridge. :P
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| Napoleon in the works |
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| Napoleons packed and ready to be sent to the Market Place |
Finally, here's a picture of some of the cookies the cookie station made today! Top down are checkerboard cookies, macaroons, and spritz cookies.
Yesterday and today completes one set of tasks for our puff pastry station. On Monday and Tuesday, we'll repeat the same tasks, then get tested on them on Wednesday. Third times the charm, right?
