Week 18 - Puff Puff and away!!

A fun day with lots of pastry work. There were puffs, choux and tarts. We made 2 types of tarts with the sweetcrust pastry. One was raspberry frangipane tarts and the other was lemon brûlée tarts.

Frangipane is a paste that is made of almond meal, butter, sugar, flour and eggs. It is usually combined with fruits, we used raspberries. I tried to put in as many as I could. 

Ha Ha. The frangipane was filled into the raw tart case, topped with fruits and then baked.

Raspberry frangipane tart

We made 6 lemon brûlée tarts but these ones were a little different in that we had to blind bake the tart cases before filling in the lemon filling and rebake them until they set. Then we covered the top with sugar and blow torched them. That was the fun part. I think I did 5 and Susy did only 1. She has more experience with that so she gave me the chance to practise. Thanks Susy.

Lemon brûlée tarts & Raspberry frangipane tarts

 We had a big batch of puff pastry that we made the earlier week and this week we did the fun part , which was shaping and baking them. We got to use the laminating machine to flatten the pastry but I forgot to take a photo of it. Then we made palmiers which looks like a heart shape and a big band were we filled with fresh fruits.

Palmiers

Did anyone noticed that my partner's name was "Sugar"?Hahaha..... I think I must have been too excited about shaping the pastry that I wrote Sugar instead of Susy. Sorry Susy! Well at least it is a sweet name.

Chen & Sugar's palmiers

We made 2 bands but only filled one up with creme patisserie and topped with strawberries, kiwi and grapes. Then glazed it with apricot jam.

Unfilled pastry bands.

Palmiers ready to be eaten.

For our summative on Week 20, we will be required to make choux paste so we practised a batch and our trainer showed us a fancy way of serving the choux. It is a beautiful swan. I have never seen a choux shaped like this before. It was filled with chantilly cream and the wings were dusted with icing sugar. It was almost too pretty to be eaten. 

Swan choux

Pastry band filled with fresh fruits

Glazed frangipane tarts and lemon brûlée tart.

I took the rest of the choux home and assembled my swans the next day and had them for afternoon tea. The pretty swans were pretty delicious! Pun intended. 

Love Swans.