Wednesday 1 July 2009

Feeling Tarty ;)

Amazing lesson today. We covered three apple tarts: Classic french apple tart, Normandy tart and Tarte Tatin. I haven't made one before. An apple pie, yes but not a tart. And not to mention that I always use ready made sweet short pastry. Heh yea if I was doing a course at LSE, I would make it from scratch heh. Kidding, G :)

So same techniques we learnt from shortbread the day before like Sablage (Rubbing butter into dry ingredients like flour and sugar). Okay so is the butter FIRM?? CHECK!

We learnt how to make a lip edge for the tart and used tweezers to make decorative markings. Apricot glaze is like magic btw. It gives it that nice shine on tarts that makes you want that tart to be tarty. haha.. Okay bad joke. But really take a look at this:

That was made by Chef C which is the Normandy Tart. Another jolly guy with a cute belly heh.

Classic French Apple Tart:


Normandy Tart with icing sugar on top:


Tarte Tatin ( My fav) :


This is my view from my seat. Check out the mirror at the top which gives us a bird's eye view.

Right. My turn. It's like having an exam after a class about the topic. So I started off great making my pastry and filling. I didn't prepare the garnishing until much later, worried that the apple will brown and it won't look too nice. That slowed me down alot since the whole class did it earlier. It was a horrible feeling, being the slowest but the best thing was that everyone was willing to help out, washing my equipment and getting melted butter for me. I got to know a few people better after that. And I manage to finish it off before our chocolate piping lesson.

Our supervising chef, Chef W was amazing. He gave everyone equal attention and told us on the spot if we were doing something wrong, then showed us how it's done. Learnt plenty from him today. He gave me good feedback about my tart saying that it's not bad but could use more apple slices on the top to give it that nice "step" shape.

Okay don't compare to the pictures above. This is what I made. First time okay....


Madeleines tomorrow! Wish me luck !

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