I was in charge of the baked chocolate ganache tarts. It is the easiest of the tarts to make - simply bake the tart shells, melt some chocolate in milk and cream, fill the cooled shells, and bake again. Nope! My first mistake was despite the instructions in the book, I was not supposed to blind bake the chocolate tart shells. The Chef caught me early so I pulled the shells out and let them cool. I then had to go back and patch the sides of the shells. The pre-mature baking caused the sides of some of the shells to shrink or slump inwards. Next up, the filling! I didn't make a mistake, but I did do some things backwards. By backwards, I mean that instead of pouring the hot milk and cream into the chocolate, I was trying to dump the chocolate into the hot milk and cream. Did I mention the milk and cream was hot? Splashing hot liquids is not so cool, literally!
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| Despite the disasters, they still turned out tasty! |
While I was struggling with the ganache tarts, my team forged ahead with their tasks and started on their fruit tarts. By the time I got around to my fruit tarts, we had run out of apricots and kiwis. Too bad for me, no more kiwis. : ( I had to make a special trip to the food store in the next building to grab a flat of apricots, which pushed me farther behind schedule.
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| Beginnings of a fruit tart |
However! Team work to the rescue! V got the rest of my fruit ready for me, made sure I had apricot glaze (to finish the tart), and cleaned up after me! I simply cannot send her enough hearts. :)
When it finally came to the last stretch (final decorations), our whole team pulled together and pounded out the tarts. : )
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| Linzer tart filled with raspberry jam |
We even had some time leftover to help the Chef with some preparations for a special event taking place tonight. Silver platters were lined with lemon meringue tartlettes, brownies, cold cheesecakes, cream puffs, and spritz cookies.
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| Filling tartlettes for lemon meringue |
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| V piping out meringue |
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| Leaf colored white chocolate garnishes |
While I busied myself with the lemon filling and V made the unbaked ganache, S and D worked on rolling out tart doughs. This is our last week in Pastry Fundamentals II so the Chef pulled out all the tart dough and told us to roll it all out that had been leftover from previous groups. He also asked us to roll some cookie dough out into tart pans. Holy roly poly! Mountains of dough!
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| This was only half |
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| A mix of chocolate sable, short dough, and linzer tart dough - it looks like the milky way |
We ended up with 10 chocolate ganache tarts, and 5 each of fruit tart and apple custard tart shells and several linzer tart shells. This was on top of the 2 chocolate ganache, one fruit tart, one apple custard, and two linzer tart shells per team member per our regular production. V had to multiply the baked chocolate ganache filling by 14 to accommodate all the shells.
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| The biggest bowl in the lab |
I can feel the atmosphere of the class winding down. Up next is Pastry Fundamentals I, which focuses on cakes and pies. Despite the numbering, Fundamentals I is not a foundation for Fundamentals II. :P
The Chef for that class came into our class and gave us each a packet of recipes, schedules, and gradings for us to study. Just from looking at the schedule, this class looks like it is going to be tough. While Fundamentals II has been a lot of fun, I have always felt the grading was too lenient. Not only is Fundamentals I focused on individual work (no more groups), the grading scale looks much more strict. It seems a bit intimidating, but at the same time, I am very excited. We'll learn to work with fondant, lots of piping, and remember those marzipan fruit from the Movember Bake Sale? We'll learn to make those too!
Pastry Fundamentals I? Bring it on!
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