Tarte Aux Pommes

The voyage into pastry continued on Friday with our lesson on pâte sucrée, a sweet pastry crust. So far we have been mothered a bit at school and have had the same chef for all our demos. This lesson marked the end of our newbie era with a new chef for demo and a much faster pace. My notes this week are full of asterisks and arrows, which somehow form a 12 step plan to a sweet crust. Once we had the pastry crust in order, chef taughts us three potential fillings: pastry cream & fresh fruit, almond cream and the classic french apple tart

Feeling fruity

Almond and poached pear

Classic

Once the tarts were finished, presented and photographed, I waited with moderate patience to collect my now standard 3-piece-of-pie breakfast. Nom nom.

Seven hours and a brief nap in Starbucks later, it was time to make a tarte aux pommes. And this is what it consists of: a sweet pastry crust, blinded baked and egg glazed, filled with a layer of apple compote and topped with a decoration of fine sliced apples glazed with butter and sugar. At the start of class chef reminded us that this dish was simple and in his words could be made by a 4 year old, blindfolded, in the dark. No excuses then. Highlights included using the slightly vicious looking slicing device that is a mandoline and a classmate accidentaly snorting a vat of cinnamon. In other chef news, I managed to cut myself for the first time this lesson with my wielding chefs knife resulting in a few rejected blood soaked apples. Tasty. Et voila, before you knew it, we each had our very own apple tart.

Not sure if I can call myself a chef yet, but after this, I'm definately ready to take on the pre-school kids.