Week 11: Fruit Flan Tart

This week was fruit flan tarts.  The class ran a little differently since we had a substitute instructor.  Our instructor for the day usually teaches apprentices and ran the class on a much stricter schedule.  She had set times for demos and was very particular that our tarts look professional.  Here's how it went...

We actually started this a few weeks ago during cookie week.  We made the tart crust in advance so it would have time to chill.

A trick the instructor taught us is when you are going to put anything in the freezer that you want to eventually defrost, flatten it out first so that it'll thaw out quicker.

While the crust was thawing, I started on the pastry cream.  I boiled the milk, sugar and vanilla bean for a while.  To start, I used a rinsed saucepan since the water helps the milk not to burn.

I tempered the eggs and cornstarch with the hot milk then brought everything back to a boil while continuously whisking.  Once it had thickened, I cooled it in the fridge and started rolling out the dough for the crust.

I rolled it fairly thin and placed it into shells.  I covered it with plastic wrap and filled them with navy beans.  The navy beans could be replaced with almost anything dry.  They are there to make sure the tart shell doesn't collapse on itself while baking or puff up too much.

Once the shell had finished blind baking for a few minutes.  I removed the beans and chilled the shells briefly and then coated the insides of the tart with melted white chocolate.  The white chocolate helps prevent the bottom from becoming soggy.

I whipped the chilled pastry cream again and filled the tarts.  After slicing fruit, I arranged them on the top then brushed some apricot glaze on the top.  There was an option for sliced almonds as well, but I decided to go simple this time.




 

Week 5: Custards

This week we learned how to make custards.  Custards are a cooked mixture of milk/cream and eggs.  We made two this week, one set in the oven with eggs (Creme Caramel) and another with gelatin (Bavarian Cream).

We started with the Creme Caramel.  We made caramel to coat the bottom of the foil cups and drizzled extra on a cookie sheet to be used for garnish later when it hardens.  We made a wet caramel which is easier to make as it is less likely to burn.  The only difference is as it sounds, there is water added to the sugar at the beginning of the cooking process.  Adding the water gives it extra time before it browns as the water has to boil off.

The instructor taught us a good trick for cleaning caramel off the pot once you are done.  Just boil water in the same pot and the steam will loosen up all the hardened caramel.

The key with a custard is not to curdled the eggs.  This is done by slowly increasing the temperature of the eggs by adding the hot liquid incrementally.

We baked the Creme Caramel in a water bath as this helps to evenly bake the custard.

As that was in the oven, we made the Bavarian Cream.  For this we hand whipped the cream to stiff peaks, a first for me!  It helps to have your cream, bowl and whisk as cold as possible.

The Bavarian Cream came together pretty easily, just mixing the ingredients and doing the same slow heating of the yolks with the cream.  We had the choice of three flavours:  coffee, strawberry and chocolate.  I picked strawberry :)

To plate them, we unmoulded the custards from the foil and flipped them over.  With the creme caramel, we just ran a knife around the edge and flipped but with Bavarian Cream, it doesn't pop out as easily, so we had to rip the foil away.  

Once again, lots of food for sharing!