Tarts Day 4 & Test

Right at the start of day 4, we split all the up and set to work. I was incharge of the French apple tarts and with helping V finish the baked chocolate ganache tarts.

Baking in a Miwe deck oven

Uh oh! Custard leakage on the lower left

Here is V making the feathered design on the ganache tarts with a knife.

Making it pretty

More linzer tarts! We decided to only garnish them with one chocolate piece as opposed to two because the last ones were too tall.

The following day was our last day in Pastry Fundamentals II and also our last test. Right away we switched on the ovens and pulled out our linzer and chocolate tart shells. The chocolate tart shells are best baked when at room temperature as opposed to the other tart shells which should be baked when cold. We had a very sad incident when several chocolate tarts had air bubbles trapped underneath them and the expansion of the air in the oven caused the tarts to bubble and bake up ugly and unevenly. Four out of seven tarts had to be thrown out! :(

Putting the lattice on my linzer

We had lots of extra linzer dough left over so V and I made some linzer sable (cookies) while waiting for our tarts to bake. So good!

This batch was a bit burnt

Like mini versions of the tart!

Here are my finished tarts! I messed up the feathering for the ganache tart. :( I also was not satisfied with the glazing of my fruit tart. The apricot glaze which we used kept clumping while I was using it, resulting in areas with too much glaze and areas with not enough. Apricot glaze is essentially apricot jam. It is often used to coat fruit tarts to help delay the browning of fruits and to make it shine. It's also tasty!

I still did very well and the Chef told me ways to improve so I didn't feel as frustrated as I did with the choux paste taste. Sometimes I am very hard on myself when I don't perform as well as I want to, but I just have to keep reminding myself that I am here to learn and mistakes are expected. 

And that was the end of a very fun class! There were pros and cons with working in a group and while it was fun overall, I have to admit I'm also looking forward to working alone. That will really reveal my strengths and weaknesses. No hiding! What do I say that?

Bring it! >:D