Savory Palmiers

I've made plenty of sweet palmiers before but savory ones may actually be more enjoyable. They are extraordinarily simple to make; especially if you use store bought puff pastry. If you have the option, make sure you get all butter puff. This, I find, is really only an issue in the UK, but I suppose you never know. Speaking of British puff pastry, I find the store brand all butter puff sold at either sainsbury or waitrose (sorry, I don't quite remember which, though in a pinch I'd say waitrose) is brilliant. It's what I used to make the batch pictured above. It just puffs better than either brand (dalfour and pepperidge farm) that I've tried in the states. Plus it comes as a block rather than a sheet so you can roll it out to the right shape and thickness and you don't have to worry about the cracks you get with the sheets of puff.

Happy Bastille Day!

Yes, I know Bastille Day is in July. I completely forgot to post this...whoops.

I'm not French and, while I like France and speak a bit of French, I'm by no means a Francophile. But I really can't pass up celebrating a holiday that screams for French food (plus in London's Borough Market they have snail races and a full size guillotine slicing watermelons...how can you not get into the holiday?)

Wedding Reception Tea

Remember that wedding cake tasting we did? This afternoon tea was for that couple. Instead of the one cake, we catered an afternoon tea wedding reception for 30 people. For this afternoon tea, we served tea sandwiches and assorted desserts.

Pineapple Tart Tatin

This was nice. My puff pastry disk (that is under the baked pineapple with caramel) was pretty much perfect (the best I've ever made it!) The pineapple was a little under baked, I think, but it was still nice. The caramel swirl on top was pretty, the pineapple caramel sauce was nice, and the pate a bric cup with ice cream and a pineapple chip was an excellent complement to the wart tart tatin.

Kiwi and Milk Marmalade Mille Feuille

This is my favorite plated dessert so far. It is two disks of puff pastry with milk marmalade (a sweet almost custard made of condensed milk, evaporated milk, and coconut milk that's thick like a light buttercream) between them and on top, a scoop of delicious lemon frozen yogurt, kiwi coulis--a coulis, as it turns out, is a quasi-sauce that is made without heat--pieces of kiwi, and a tuile with a slice of kiwi baked into it. The sweetness of the milk marmalade, the crispy-ness of the puff pastry, and the slight zing of lemon and kiwi worked so well together. Yum! And isn't it pretty?!

Spinach Jalousie

This wasn't quite as much a plated dessert as it was a plated appetizer or perhaps a light main course. It was a spinach, onion, and mushroom jalousie served warm with chive béchamel and fresh chives. Yum! A jalousie, by the way, is basically a puff pastry tart that is typically filled with stripes of almond cream and raspberry jam--we made that version a while ago. Savory versions are quite common too, apparently, as the puff pastry lends itself to both sweet and savory fillings equally well.

Pineapple and Hazelnut Tart

We served this pineapple and hazelnut tart (baked on a puff pastry crust) with hazelnut ice cream, hazelnut creme anglaise, caramelized hazelnuts, and a pineapple chip. I've never been a huge pineapple fan. It's not that I disliked it, I just never really enjoyed it. It turns out that that's because I've always eaten plain old pineapple. I actually like it baked on a tart or made into a chip. I think I just prefer it when the acid is a little bit neutralized. I love hazelnuts--did you know that they are actually a seed not a nut?--and puff pastry, so even if I hadn't come to a realization that I like pineapple, I think I still would have liked the dessert. I do have one complaint though, I felt like the pineapple and buttery puff pastry completely overwhelmed the hazelnut cream on the tart. Still, as I've mentioned, this was a very nice dessert!

Petit Four Tray 3

Our final petits fours tray. This one includes: (from left to right) swirl sablée cookies, coconut palmiers, domed glazed petits fours, Russian tea cakes, pyramid glazed petits fours, checkerboard sablée cookies, square glazed petits fours, lemon cookies, caramel mou, and florentines.

We got our assignments for the petits fours exam in class yesterday. I have to make pyramid petits fours glacée, pâte de fruits, and lemon cookies. I'm not thrilled about having to make the pyramid petits fours glacée, but I'm quite happy with the other two. Plus I have to design and make a fourth petit four. I've chosen a chocolate sablée cookie sandwich filled with white chocolate and peppermint ganache. Yum!

Coconut Palmiers

Basically these are like every other palmier I've made, but so much better. They're better for two reasons. First, we used real puff pastry, not quick puff or demi puff (which don't have as much rise or quite as perfect a flavor).  Second, we mixed unsweetened, desiccated coconut into the sugar that we coated the puff pastry in to make the palmiers. Coconutty, buttery, sugary goodness! I think that these would be amazing with a tropical fruit something (sorbet, salad, grilled kabobs, something.)

Halloween Party

I went all out for my Halloween party this year. As one of my friends has a nut allergy and is also allergic to pumpkin, I had an interesting time trying to make things that seemed Halloween-y but didn't have pumpkin or nuts.

But pumpkins are so perfect for a Halloween party, so I made pumpkin shaped brownies (I made a pan of brownies and cut them out with a cookie cutter). And iced them so they'd resemble pumpkins.

I also made both chocolate and plain palmiers. Not that they are terribly Halloween-y...but they are good!

And with the left over puff pastry, I made cheese straws.

My friend with food allergies has never been able to eat pastries from patisseries, so she's never had things like a fruit tart. A classic pastry cream and fresh fruit tart seemed terribly un-Halloween-ish. But an apple tart seemed to work nicely. This is the same apple tart I made in class, just in a bigger tart shell and with better apple compote (I finally made it so that it didn't resemble apple sauce!)

Finally I made cupcakes; because who doesn't like cupcakes? I just made the vanilla cupcake from Magnolia Bakery's cookbook and decorated them with my favorite vanilla buttercream (which is my own recipe.) I decorated some to look like pumpkins and some to look like little gravestones in a grassy grave yard (I made the stones by slathering cut up brownie with gray icing and then carving "RIP" into the icing with a toothpick.) Aren't they the cutest little tombstones?

The desserts were all a hit. As was all the lovely real food that my friends so kindly brought, thank you guys!

Puff Pastry Exam

This went pretty well! I finished early and nothing came out terribly wrong, so I'm happy. Yes, my pithiviers wasn't quite as nice looking as it could be and my palmiers came out a little funky (according to the chef it's because I allowed the butter to melt when I was turning the dough, so it sort-of fried the palmiers in the oven. But still, I was very happy with everything, especially my vol au vents, which came out pretty much perfect! 

I'm happy to be done with this unit. I've really enjoyed some of what we've made, but it's been getting a little bit same-y. Plus we are going to be doing viennoiserie--breakfast pastries--yum!

Apple Dartois

This photo doesn't really do it justice--it was much prettier in person.

Yet another apple tart, an apple dartois is really quite good. It's basically apple compote filled puff pastry. It takes on this sort of elegant yet almost homey look and the taste is just lovely and classic. Delicious apple compote, light puff pastry, butter, yum!

Classic Napoleon

This was a traditional napoleon, or mille feuille, as they are called in France. It is layers of puff pastry and lightened pastry cream topped with fondant. I didn't have the easiest time putting the finishing touches on. You see, my puff pastry was really good and light and flakey. This, unfortunately, makes it difficult to spread fondant on without flaking off some of the top, which I did. By the time I finished fixing that, the fondant was too firm to make the chevron pattern come out properly. So you could see the drag marks from the back of the knife. Not that this is terribly, it's just the fondant is supposed to be liquid enough to fill them in. Ah well, the taste was not impacted by the slightly messy top, and it was certainly better for the better puff pastry. Overall, while not as perfect as the chocolate napoleon (though really there isn't any chocolate in this one, so it probably isn't a fair comparison), it is still pretty darn great.

Speedy Vol au Vents

These aren't the most exciting things we've ever made. Basically they are a pastry shell that are meant to hold either sweet or savory fillings. However we didn't fill them. So they were just shells--like I said, not very exciting.

Palmiers

I've made palmiers before, but these were better. As it turns out, using fresh puff pastry makes a difference. Plus, we chilled these for days before cutting them. This allows the sugar to turn to a syrup (from the humidity in the fridge). The syrup caramelizes much more evenly and reliably than plain sugar does.

We made plain palmiers with regular puff pastry and vanilla sugar. They were very nice; a classic.

We also made them with chocolate puff pastry and cinnamon sugar. These were amazing. I loved the chocolate puff anyway and I love cinnamon, and the combination was not a let down.  The only problem with these is mine were slightly underdone because we had to get them out when class was over, even though mine probably needed another 3 or 4 minutes. Still they tasted excellent, they were just not quite as crisp and caramelized as they should have been. Ah well, that didn't stop me from eating them!

Chocolate Puff Pastry Disks (and what to do with them)

Chocolate puff pastry disks.

The name pretty much says it all, they are disks of chocolate puff pastry. To make them, bake a sheet of puff pastry. Just before you are ready to take it out of the oven, you brush it with watered down corn syrup. After the corn syrup stops bubbling, take it out. (This makes it sweeter and somewhat water proofed.) While it is still quite warm, cut it into the desired shape (i.e. rectangles for a chocolate napoleon) or, in this case, rounds. At this point, you can do a number of different things with them.

The Banana Chocolate Tartlet, without the finish.

In class we made Banana Chocolate Tartlets. This is a terribly misleading name; they are not really tarts. Instead, they are a plated dessert. Basically you start with a chocolate puff pastry disk, top it with slices of bananas, top them with some sugar, brulée the sugar with a blow torch, and finish with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and some chocolate sauce. If I liked bananas, I'm sure I would have liked this!

The finished tartlet.

Since we made these to eat with dinner and I don't like bananas, I made myself a variation on this, sans bananas. It was a chocolate disk topped with the lovely vanilla ice cream that the chef made and the equally lovely fresh chocolate sauce. Then I just sprinkled some of chocolate puff crumbs on top for good measure. It was delicious!

Yum!

I still had more disks left, so I took them home. I happened to have left over lemon curd, so I made a quasi-napoleon with lemon curd and raspberries sandwiched between two disks. In the center of the circle of berries was a small and completely hidden scoop of ice cream, for a sweet surprise. Yum.

As it turns out, lemon curd pairs wonderfully with chocolate puff pastry.

Chocolate Mille Feuille

This was amazing! This is a classic napoleon with a chocolate twist. Instead of regular puff pastry, it's made with chocolate puff pastry. Instead of vanilla pastry cream, the filling is chocolate cream. The chocolate cream, by the way, is called crème d'or. It's made by folding melted chocolate into whipped cream. I've made that before, but I call it chocolate mousse (I do know that mousse traditionally has eggs, so I knew that this wasn't officially mousse, but it seemed like the best description, because it closely resembles the taste and texture of chocolate mousse,) but I digress. Instead of fondant with thin chocolate lines on top, we used chocolate ganache with thin white chocolate lines on top, reversing the traditional chevron pattern's colors. It was beautiful and delicious! This is one of my favorite things we've made all class, and definitely my favorite thing from the puff pastry unit.

Jalousie

Sorry, I didn't get the best photos.

This, for lack of a better word, tart is made with a puff pastry crust. The crust is filled with any number of fillings, we used crème d'amandes and raspberry baker's jam. The top piece of puff is sliced with a knife and stretched slightly to make a lattice that is apparently reminiscent of jalousie blinds, hence the name. It was very tasty and quite pretty, I think!

A top view of the lattice and the almond cream and jam underneath.

Tarte Tatin

I've never been a huge fan of tarte tatins. I mean I thought they were nice and all, but I never really thought they were that great. This was that great!  Seriously, if restaurants made tarte tatins like this, I'd order them.

Basically a tarte tatin is an upside down apple tart made with puff pastry crust. So I'm not sure why this was so much better than I'm used to. Presumably it has something to do with the fact that we made this very traditionally and most restaurants don't--while easy, the traditional method is time consuming and does not produce a terribly elegant final product.

First you sautée halved and cored apples in a pan (they should all fit when they are squeezed in next to each other) with butter until they start to get brown, add sugar, let the sugar turn to caramel, add calvados (or another liqueur), flambée them, and let them continue to cook, cut side up, until they are soft but not fully cooked through. At this point make sure all the apples are cut side up--rounded side down--in the pan. Then put a disk of puff pastry (obviously it's better with homemade puff, but defrosted store bought would work fine) on top of the apples and tuck it down the sides a bit. Put the whole pan in the oven and bake until the pastry is cooked. Unmold it as soon as it is cool enough to work with, but before it has cooled down too much. To be sure you can get the whole thing out in one try, heat the bottom of a pan over a gas burner on medium/high for 30 seconds to a minute. With a sheet pan held to the pan flip over the pan, and voila, a tarte tatin. Just slice and serve, perhaps with vanilla ice cream. Yum!

Gateau Pithiviers

This is not my favorite thing from this unit, but I did quite like it! It's called a Gateau Pithiviers or a Twelfth Night Cake, although it isn't very cake like. Basically it is two layers of puff pastry sandwiched around frangipane. Frangipane, as it turns out, is not just almond cream--it is in fact almond cream mixed with pastry cream. Yum.