Pastry Camp - Day Three

I am learning to love the piping bag. When I came to the demo at the school, I was struck with how much they (over)used the piping bag. It seemed like anytime they wanted to put something somewhere, they would pipe it. Now that I have used it a bit more, I am seeing the wisdom of this -- It's a really easy way to portion things cleanly and quickly.

Today's first demo featured the bulk of the products for the day, with macarons being the day's big challenge (more on that later.) Only making lemon curd and filling the lemon tarts was set for later, and even that was optional (it could be pushed to the next day.) Because the macaron recipe made a large number and needed the smaller convection oven, we did them in shifts (this time working backwards from table nine so they weren't always at the end.)

We started out with making Earl Grey Ganache, which was to fill the macarons and be rolled into truffles. We steeped the loose tea in cream and it smelled so amazing. I love earl grey, and am really looking forward to tasting this once it's worked into the final products. This was a fairly straightforward process, and involved getting things to proper temperature and mixing.

Ganache is an emulsion (fat suspended in water,) which means that it is prone to breaking. We hoped that someone's would break so that we could see the fix for it, and alas that someone was us. We cooled it too unevenly, so that when we mixed in the butter it ended up looking grainy. Not to worry, however, because fixing it just involved heating a tablespoon of cream and slowly whisking in the broken ganache (which I refered to as 'making chocolate vinagrette'.) It ended up glossy and smooth and ready to go for tomorrow's products. I learned later that two thirds of the class had theirs break, so I didn't feel so bad about it.

Next up was Nougatine Crisp, which would decorate the top of the chocolate tarts. This is a hard candy, similar to brittle but thinner and with some chocolate flavor. We heated it in a pan, mixed in some cocoa powder and almonds, and then baked it in the oven until it was at the right consitency. It's not too sweet and very brittle, without sticking in the teeth.

We baked and cooled our tart shells, since they would be accepting fillings that did not need extensive baking times. Again the chef had us push the limits of done-ness with these, taking them all the way to the brown side of golden brown. At the end of the baking we brushed the bottoms with a little egg yolk and baked for an extra minute or two, which will help seal the bottom and prevent it from getting soggy when the custard hits it. I am hoping that this works, because the tart shells looked gorgeous and had a wonderful, toasty aroma.

The last thing we had to do before we took our turn for macarons was cut the Pate d Fruit from yesterday. There is a fancy device for this named a guitar, which is a frame holding a series of guitar strings in place, hinged over a slotted board. One places the candy on the board and draws the strings through to cut it. When we got to the guitar, however, I noticed that one string was pretty loose. Since I wanted nice, square candies (ever the perfectionist) I asked the chef if it was easy to tighten. Sadly, while doing so she snapped the bolt holding the string. Back to the drawing board for us. We ended up putting off the cutting until after the macarons, since the guitar needed extra tools to fix.

At this point, we took a break. The snack today was banana bread with banana butter, which was much better than it sounds written. We chatted about the beignets (how we all just had to finish them last night since they wouldn't keep) and other delights from the previous day. Everyone had nothing but raves for all the products we had created so far.

Back in the kitchen, we attacked our macarons. These are fussy, fussy fellows. For starters, the almond flour and sugar need to be left out for a day or more to dry out or the final product will not form a good shell. You then make a very rough dough with that and some egg white. At the same time, you make an italian meringue, which involves cooking sugar with a little water to the correct temperature and then whipping it into half beaten egg whites. I had tried making nougat once in the past, and when adding a similar mixture to my kitchen aid had managed to get some on the whisk, turning it into a very fast moving paddle which sent partially mixed candy everywhere. Thankfully, I avoided that this time thanks to the awesome demo of how to do it properly (when it says to drizzle down the side of the bowl, drizzle down the side of the bowl.)

With these two mixtures done, we gently combined them and then mixed until just the right texture. Mixing either too much or too little will result in macarons with cracked shells. This mixture is then put into a piping bag (of course) and piped into small circles. I have to say, it was here that I really grew to love the piping bag. We filled two and a half full sheet trays with quarter sized dollops of dough in several minutes, with almost no mess or spilling. After a few iffy dollops, I caught my stride and ended up very happy with my piping; I may get used to this after all. Once piped, the dough needs to sit out for ten minutes to help dry out the surface (again, it's all about the shell here) before going into the convection oven (a regular oven won't, that's right, develop the shell enough.)

If you have not commited any serious misteps to this point, what you will see come out of the oven is pretty amazing. Beautifully smooth domed tops, with a rough bit of dough peeking out from underneath. While not all of ours were perfectly smooth or round, the bulk of them were gorgeous. We had a few mutants near the edge that got smooshed into the side of the pan, so we tested these for taste -- they were richly chocolatey, but not overwhelming. Overall I am very excited to try them with the ganache filling.

We had just enough time before the second demo to cut and roll our pate d fruit. The guitar was back up, so we converted our sheet into little squares, which we rolled in sugar. These were flavored with passion fruit and apricot, and were delicious. It's a little bit like eating jelly (though more set-up in texture) but if you can get past that, excellent. These freeze well, and seem like a good way to preserve some of the spring berries for a fall treat. I can also see making some with pomegranate or orange and cranberry to send with our holiday cookies.

With the day almost over, we got a quick demo of making the lemon curd and filling the shells. This process went smoothly for us, though pressing the final curd through a sieve (to remove any lumps from egg or gelatin) did take a while. The tarts baked for just a few minutes to set up the centers, then went into the fridge overnight. They look great, and tomorrow we'll be decorating them with some of the meringue shapes from Monday.

Overall, it was another very busy day. This one had much more precision timing and temperature control, and I really enjoyed the challenge of it. I am particularly proud of the macarons, since there are so very many ways to go wrong and ours came out so well. I'm excited to finish those tomorrow, though I'm very sad that the week is over halfway done.