Friandises

In the last section of this phase the assignment was to make 12 of 4 different kinds of bite size treats, friandises. Everything available in the kitchen was allowed, plus some other selected ingredients as well. The treats have to be small and look pretty. 

At home I wrote out a whole game plan of what I wanted to make, what I needed for it and how it would do it. Turned out that things didn't totally went as planned. I was expecting the ingredients to be centralized available, but they were all over the place so it took some to find what I needed.

The game plan was:
- a lemon meringue pie with raspberry
- a lemon mousse ball covered with lemon glaze
- a lemon raspberry mousse on an almond cake
- an apple and lemon pie

I manage to execute two out of four since I was running out of time. 

First I started with making two different kinds of dough for my pies. 

For the lemon meringue pie I used a shortcrust pastry which normally would be made by 1 part sugar, 2 parts butter and 3 parts of flour. 

The recipe I used was:
- 80 gr sugar
- 80 gr light brown sugar
- 210 gr butter
- 290 gr flour
- 8,5 gr baking powder
- 2 gr salt
- teaspoon of lemon zest
- 20 gr egg yolk (or just 1)
oven temperature 180 C

I just mixed everything together and let the dough chill in the fridge.

On the bottom of this pie I piped a mixture of 30 grams of marzipan loosen up with a dash of water and 125 grams of crème pâtissière. After baking I put a little bit of lemon curd in the pie, a bit of lemon curd whipped cream and one fresh raspberry. Then I piped some meringue and used a torch to give it a bit of color.

Then for the apple and lemon pie I needed to make "sloffendeeg". I honestly don't know what this dough is called in English, but pies made with this dough are buttery, slightly chewy and soooo good. 

I used:
- 180 gr butter
- 170 gr light brown sugar
- 2 gr salt
- 1 egg yolk
- teaspoon lemon zest
- 250 gr flour
- 10 gr baking powder
oven temperature 160C but 170-180C is not a problem either

I mixed together all the ingredients and then add the sifted flour and baking powder last. This dough also has to be chilled in the fridge. 

For this pie I used a frangipane made by:
- 125 gr almond paste 
- teaspoon lemon zest
- 25 gr butter
- 37 gr egg (or 1 egg)

I mixed all the ingredients and poured it in a piping bag.

Then I cubed two apples, mixed them with some "spekkoekkruiden" (a mixture of several spices) since I couldn't find any cinnamon and head them up a bit so they could soften.

Then I went and made some lemon curd using my trusted recipe:
- 100 gr butter
- 200 gr sugar or more or less depending on taste
- 300 ml fresh lemon juice
- teaspoon lemon zest
- 2 whole eggs + 2 egg yolks
- pinch of salt

Mix everything together, cook till it thickens and chill in the fridge till needed. Very simple and almost fool proof recipe.

Then I also went and make some crème pâtissière:
- 250 ml milk
- 50 gr sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- 22,5 gr custard powder
- vanilla pot/essence/sugar
- pinch of salt

I started cooking the milk with some sugar. The rest of the sugar I mixed with the egg yolk, the custard powder, salt and vanilla. When the milk boils I poured some on the egg mixture to loosen it up and to elevate the temperature so I don't end of with scrambled eggs. Then the whole mixture went back in the pan to cook for a couple of minutes. 

After all this mise and place I started with making the apple lemon pies first. I used this round shallow pie mold and placed the dough and stuffing in. Unfortunately there was to much dough and the pies came out way to big and not evenly cooked. So I couldn't serve that. I had to use a mold with smaller cavities. 

Because I had to start all over I didn't had time for the mousse ball and mousse cake. Luckily I wrote down another recipe just in case I needed a back up plan. 

I had some apple left I decided to apple almond cakes using this recipe:
- 30 gr flour
- 80 gr almond flour
- 100 gr browned butter
- 150 gr icing sugar
- 95 gr egg whites
- pinch of salt
oven temperature 200C

I beaded the egg whites till soft peeks and mix the rest of the ingredients together. Then I folded it into the egg white, poured the batter in the molds and topped them with some cubes of apple. 

Since I had some batter and apples left, I mixed them together and poured it into a different shape mold. This time I sprinkled some almond slivers on top to give them a bit of crunch. 

I had just enough time to decorate my friandises. I used a mixture of lemon curd and whipped cream and piped a dot on the apple almond cake. Then I sprinkled some chopped pecan nuts on top and decorated it with some white chocolate.

The other apple almond cake already had some slivers of almond on top so all it needed was a bit of white chocolate to make it fancy.

For the apple and lemon pie the teacher suggested to put a thin piece of apple on top. I also added two dollops of lemon curd whipped cream to give it a bit of freshness. Also I think a sprinkle of powdered sugar would take it to the next level. Idea for next time.

I loved working on the lemon meringue pie. At first I wanted to pip the meringue all over the raspberry as well so you have a little surprise biting into one. But I think this looks pretty as well.

At the end I ended up with four friandises that were complimenting each other in looks and taste. It was a lot of stress and hard work, but totally worth it since my plate was picked by one of the teachers as one of two of her to got to plate!

Macarons and petit fours

Since I started with this baking course there are lots of things that I've been doing for the first time and it's been so much fun. 

Today we were making macarons and petit fours. We started with a macaron master class. After that we were on our own. 

First we had to make a batch of butter cream. Although I've made it several times at home I couldn't get it right in class. At home I use room temperature butter and in class the butter was still cold. So the timing should be spot on to get a smooth butter cream. I added the butter in a bit too late so my cream wasn't as smooth as it should be but the taste was good. Just to give it more flavor we added a dash or two orange liqueur. Also I used less sugar then the recipe called for since I don't like it that sweet. 

After making butter cream we each got a piece of cake for our petit fours. The petit fours were quite easy since the cake was pre-made and all we had to do was fill it with jam or butter cream, put a layer of almond paste on top and dip it in some fondant. It was a piece of cake. To bad we could't bake our own cake, but I guess there wasn't enough time for it. 

First we cut it in half so we could spread some jam in the middle. Instead of jam we used a mixture of butter cream and jam. Then the orange liqueur butter cream went on top and we topped it off with a thin layer of almond past. We needed to freeze the cake so we can cut them in squares later. After they were frozen we cut them in bite size pieces. Then it went back in the freezer since they have to be frozen for the fondant dip. Basically we heated up some fondant with some water so it was a bit runny and we dipped the top of the cakes in and place them in cupcake baking cups so we could decorate them later.

Then we made the batter for the macarons using:
- 100 gr powdered sugar                                               300 gr powdered sugar          
- 100 gr almond flour                                                     300 gr almond flour
- 40 gr egg white + 40 gr egg white                               120 gr egg white + 120 gr egg white
- 100 gr sugar                                                                300 gr sugar
- 40 gr water                                                                  120 gr water
- color paste (optional)
oven temperature 140C

We started with sifting the almond flour and threw out all the bigger pieces. Then we added more almond flour to the batch making it 100 grams. Then we mixed it together with the powdered sugar. This mixture is called "broyage" and it's just a mixture of 50% almond flour and 50% powdered sugar.

Then it was time to make the meringue. We cooked the sugar in some water till 121C. When the sugar syrup reaches about 115C it was time to mix 40 grams of egg white to soft peeks. Then we added the sugar syrup and mixed it till the bowl is no longer hot.

The other 40 grams of egg white was mixed with the broyage mixture and some food color. To this we added a bit of the meringue to loosen it up a bit and then we fold in the rest of the meringue. Now here comes the tricky part, when do you know if you fold everything in just right? If you mix it to much the macarons will be flat or crack. I guess this is something that needs a bit of practice to see when the mixtures is just right. 

We poured the macaron mixture in a piping bag and started to pipe little circles. As we piped the macarons too close we ended up with some twin, tripled and even quadruplet macarons. Next time we will make sure we give them enough space.

As the macarons have to dry out a bit we had time to work on our petit fours. The macarons were ready for the oven when the top has dried a bit so it doesn't stick on your fingers when touching them. We baked them for about 17-19 minutes. When they cooled we stuffed them with some butter cream and they were ready to be gobbled down. 

Next time I will try to make the macarons less sweet or make a slightly sour stuffing so it can balance each other out a bit. As for the petit fours, they were very tasty, but if I would make them again I would make them half the height and more square.

For about 120 macarons you need to triple the recipe. Every oven is different so you need to test it first. Better to have it on a lower then higher temperature and it's not a problem if you bake it too long.

Next class: Rodolph van Veen's Oscar cake: this is a chocolate mouse cake with hazelnuts which he made for the Oscars in 2005.

The start of a new adventure

This new blog marks the start of a new adventure. On this blog I will keep you (and me) updated on my progress and hopefully at the end if the ride I can proudly announce the start of something new.

I have started a patisserie course and last Monday was my first day. It's been forever since I last went to school. On a first day you never know what to expect, but I went in with an open mind and found about 40 others doing the same. There were all kinds of people with different ages and back grounds. But we're all here to learn and to get better at baking. No surprises that from 40 only 4 were male. With such a large group we had to be divided in 2 groups of 20 and each started with a different phase.

I decided to stay with the group who started from the beginning: making different kinds of dough.

Before baking anything we started piping butter. Butter is just perfect for practice since it has the right consistency. We had to practice piping different shapes and such and everything had to be an exact copy of the first. It was incredibly difficult because I haven't done it before. Practice makes perfect so there is a lot of practicing to do for me.

After lunch it was baking time. We got the recipe for "pensee taart". Unfortunately I don't have an English translation for it but "taart" is Dutch for pie. It was fairly simple to make and it looks like this:

All pies start with some kind of dough and this sweet dough recipe is so easy to remember. It can be used it for so many different pies and cookies. All I had to remember was 1-2-3 and 1 egg.

For the dough I used:
- 100 gr sugar
- 200 gr room temperature butter
- 300 gr flour
- 1 egg
- pinch of salt
- teaspoon lemon zest (optional)

I poured the flour on my kitchen counter and made a well in the middle. In this well I mixed the sugar, the butter, the egg, some lemon zest and a pinch of salt. After that I slowly incorporated the flour. When everything is mixed  I put it in some plastic foil and put it in the fridge so it can chill for a bit so it's easier to roll out.

After about 30 minutes I rolled the dough till about 3 mm or so and draped it in a baking pan, cutting off the dough hanging over the edges.

On the bottom of the pie I spread a thin layer of strawberry compote or jam, just to give it a bit of freshness.

The stuffing was the easy part. All I had to do was put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them together:
- 50 gram room temperature butter
- 250 gram almond paste (amandelspijs)
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon of lemon zest
oven temperature 175C

I have to say that the almond paste was way to sweet, so next time I would make it from scratch. This way I can control the sweetness. All I would need is almonds, sugar and eggs but a recipe will follow.

In class I used a piping bag to put the stuffing in the baking pan, but at home I would just pour it in the pan and level it with a spatula.

With the left over dough I made ribbons and put them on the op the pie. After a small layer of egg wash I used some slivered almonds to decorate the edges.

I baked the pie on 175C Celsius and although they didn't give me an exact baking time (since every oven is different) I think you should bake it for about 20 minutes and then have a look at it every 5 minutes till it is golden. To finish it off I could brush the pie with some apricot jam for a nice shine, but for me it was sweet enough as it is.

The left over dough can be frozen for next time or can be made into cookies. This dough recipe should be enough for 2 baking pans, of course depending on your size pan.

I love to make small one person pies so I had to adapt the recipe to make a smaller batch. Since I had 50 gram butter at home I adjusted the ingredients to make enough dough for 2 mini pies. I blind baked the pies on 175C for 10 minutes and after the crust has set a bit I put 2 tablespoons of home made lemon curt in it. I baked the pie for another 10 minutes till golden. After that I finished it off with some slices of ripe nectarine. It was a delicious summery treat.