Lesson 18 - Doughs and Tarts

For Lesson 18, we learned how to make doughs and tarts.  We learned to make a savory dough (pate brisee) and a sweet dough (pate sucre).  The pate brisee can be made with or without egg. We used the savory dough to make an onion tart (pate brisee without egg) and a quiche (pate brisee with egg). We used the sweet dough to make an apple tart and a pear tart. 

The onion tart is made with onions, butter, vegetable oil, and bacon. The custard filling is made with an egg, and egg yolk, milk, cream, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and egg wash. The pate brisee without egg is made with flour, salt, sugar, butter, and water.

The onion tart was surprisingly good.  This is me with our onion tart (Amy and I worked as a team):

A closer look at the onion tart:

2nd, we made the quiche.  The quiche is made with vegetable oil, bacon, and gruyere cheese. The custard filling is made with milk, heavy cream, egg, egg yolk, salt, cayenne, nutmeg, and egg wash. The pate brisee with egg is made with flour, salt, sugar, butter, and egg.

Here is Amy with our quiche:

The quiche was FANTASTIC!

The onion tart (left) and the quiche (right):

Next, we moved on to sweet doughs.  First we made an apple tart.  The apple tart filling is made with apples, lemon, water, and sugar (made into an apple sauce type of consistency).  The topping is made with apples, lemon, and butter.  The finish is made with apricot glaze and water. And the pate sucre (sweet dough) is made with powdered sugar, butter, eggs, salt, flour, and baking powder.

This is our apple tart before baking:

Chef Bruno spun a sugar flower to put on his apple tart.  This is his finished result:

This is the apple tart that Amy and I made:

Our final project was a pear tart.  The pear tart is made with almond cream, pastry cream, and the pate sucre.  Almond cream is made with almond paste, sugar, butter, eggs, almond extract, almond flour, and regular flour.  The pastry cream is made with milk, a vanilla bean, egg yolks, sugar, flour, and cornstarch.  The pastry cream and the almond cream are mixed together to make the filling and then the filling is topped with pear slices and brushed with apricot glaze. The pate sucre ingredients are listed above the apple tart picture.

This is our pear tart (very good if you like almond flavor):

That was the tarts and doughs lesson.  Only 4 lessons left.  The next lesson is mousses, soufflés, & bavarian creams. Yum!

Lesson 17 - doughs and custards

Lesson 17 was dough and custards.  I was a little worried about this lesson because Chef Bruno has been a pastry chef for many years, so I know that he would expect perfection from us (even more than normal).  

The cream puffs and eclairs are made using pate a choux, which is a pastry dough that is cooked twice; once on the stove top and then baked.  Choux is french for cabbage and refers to the hollow cabbage shaped balls that the dough makes when cooked.

Chef Bruno made these swan heads from the dough that we created:

These were the eclairs and cream puffs before they were baked:

Chef Bruno's eclairs - some with chocolate topping and some with caramel topping:

Chef Bruno's final plate with the eclairs, cream puff, and cream puff swan:

This is creme caramel custard, which is a lot like creme brûlée.  They were very good!

This is my swan (may I just say that nothing compares to hand made whipped cream):

My cream puffs with my swan:

My eclairs (eclairs are filled with pastry cream and topped with chocolate fondant):

We also made pots de creme, which is made with the same custard recipe as the creme caramel, but vanilla bean is added. Even though it wasn't called for in the recipe, we added coffee flavoring. The result was pretty tasty!

For dinner, Chef Bruno made us savory puffs with ham and cheese in them:

He also made us a fantastic salad with a mustard vinaigrette dressing: 

This is Amy Lee, my table mate.  We had so much fun together! 

The serious amateur pastry chef would come into our class from time to time to beg for food.  I called him 'the yelling chef' because he would come in and speak boisterously (i.e., very loudly and with many hand gestures) to Chef Bruno in French. Chef Bruno said that the reason he was so loud is because he is from Southern France (unlike Chef Bruno, who is from Northern France). He offered to pose for this picture:

He brought in this sugar sculpture that he made:

He insisted on posing for another picture (this guy cracks me up!):

Here is another picture of the sugar sculpture:

This is my classmate Coba Cao, a total sweetie who was always there to get ice and do the heavy lifting:

Classmate Sheryl Andersen, who is a total riot. We laughed so hard together!!! 

In the next class, we make doughs and tarts.

Lesson 16 - Eggs

I thought this lesson would be simple, but by the end, I was wishing we could go back to cutting chicken or fish!!!

We made 7 different types of eggs...  We went through these in no time flat (no pun intended):

We learned about rolled omelettes (french spelling) and flat omelettes. Rolled omellettes are runny in the center and not supposed to have color. Flat omelettes are firmer and lightly browned.  We were supposed to make a rolled omellette, but mine ended up a little brown (this was my second attempt because the first one did not work out at all!): 

Next, we made poached eggs.  Not so easy! Turns out I had to make them twice as well, because someone measured the vinegar, but not the water for me (though I will not name names!):

Because of having to do the omellette twice and the poached eggs twice, when we were getting ready to prepare eggs cooked on a plate, my classmate gave me two plates:  Ha ha.

Eggs cooked on a plate are just eggs cooked in a buttered dish in the oven until the white is no longer runny.  Here are mine:

Next up were scrambled eggs.  The french method for scrambled eggs are wet. A little too wet for my taste...  Okay, the trick is to break eggs, one at a time into a bowl and whisk. Add 2 tsp of cream per egg. Heat butter in a pan until hot. Pour the eggs in and lower the heat. Cook, stirring constantly. Remove them from heat when they are soft and thick. Personally, I like my eggs not to be wet, because wet eggs look and feel underdone. But we had to do what the chef wanted.  I took a picture after a bite was taken, and I think it looks kind of like pacman:

Classmate Coba missed this class, but we had a guy that was auditing the class to see if he would want to take it in the future.  His name was Alvin.  I took this picture of him and then sent it to Coba saying that we replaced him!  He wrote back 'who is that guy?!?!?'.  It was pretty funny.

Next up: baked eggs with cream. These were made with cream, cooked in a saucepan until reduced by 2/3rds. Then you butter and salt ramekins. Break eggs one at a time into a bowl, but do not stir or whisk. Place an egg in a ramekin, then pour halfway to the egg with the reduced cream. Place ramekins on a shallow pan and pour boiling water to half way up the side of the ramekins. Cook at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.  Yum! Actually, I don't know if they were good or bad - I had had way too many eggs to even consider trying these!

Next up was a basque style omelette.  I almost brought it home to see the look of horror on my husband's face because it has green peppers and long onions, which he hates with a passion... Instead, it went into the trash...  

Last up were stuffed eggs, chimay style.  They remind me of deviled eggs, but with mushrooms, cream, and cheese.  The eggs were boiled (the secret to boiled eggs is making sure the egg is room temperature, put in a pan and just add enough cold water to cover and bring to a roiling boil, then simmer for about 10 minutes). The stuffing is made with the yolks, parsley, and mushroom duxelles.  The eggs were then stuffed and covered with mornay sauce (béchamel with grated gruyere cheese). I wish we had made these first because they looked really good, but by the end, I never wanted to see another egg again!

Next lesson is doughs and custards - we begin the pastry portion of the course!!!