pate a choux, cheesecake, shortbread, and more egg foams

This week in Pastry Techniques, we worked on pâte à choux and puff pastry.  Pâte à choux is the paste used to make a lot of different pastries, namely eclairs, cream puffs, and many others.  For now we made the pastry part of a bunch of eclairs, cream puffs and a paris-brest, and later we will fill them.  We also made some swans that we filled and assembled with sweetened whipped cream. 

We also worked on puff pastry, which I have no pictures of yet.  We made the dough (detrempe), butter block (beurrage), and did all of our turns (tourage) but the dough is in the freezer until the next class, when we can roll it out and bake it to use for napoleons.  Same as croissants last semester, sooo much work to get to the finished product, but hopefully it will be as amazing as the croissants. 

The last thing we did in pastry techniques was make poured fondant.  This is not what most people think of when they hear fondant (the bright colored cake coverings on Ace of Cakes, etc), rather this is the white glaze that is on top of many pastries (example, on top of a Danish).  Between rolling puff pastry and trying to stir this sticky mess, my arms got their workout for the week.

the lovely Shea mixing our fondant

We also got to cut and sample the cheesecakes!  I have to admit I was counting the days all week for this.  My group made the chocolate chip, but my favorite was the strawberry white chocolate.

1. caramel
2. chocolate chip
3. chocolate peanut butter
4.  strawberry white chocolate
5. vanilla bean

Then in cookies class we made shortbread and wafer cookies.  The shortbreads came out fine (shortbread is one of my favorite things in the world, I get it from my mom.  Some people think it is plain and boring but I love it), but the wafer cookies were another story.  Three of the six batters didn't work at all, and it was sooo frustrating trying to shape the others.  You literally have about 7 seconds from when they come out of the oven to shape them before they harden and break.  So out of about 100 cookies we made, we ended up with a pile of abstract brandysnaps, and one tuile spoon and one tuile bowl.  I can't imagine how pastry chefs make hundreds of these for garnishes on desserts. 




1. butter pecan shortbread (my group's)
2. caramel cinnamon shortbread
3. tweed cakes
4. chocolate chip shortbread
5. chai shortbread
6.  double filled shortbread (my favorite)



I also completely forgot to take pictures in cakes class (whoops!) but we didn't assemble any cakes this week anyways.  We made a coconut japonaise, a roulade, and a jaconde.  All that vocab I had to learn is coming in handy now!  I don't know what we are going to use these for yet, but I will make sure to get pictures of those.

Well now I am off to enjoy this sunny, record-setting Florida weather (high of 87 today!) for my first Spring Break in several years.  Now I really feel like a college kid again!  But don't worry, I'll be hitting the Plant City Strawberry Festival instead of the clubs.