First Exam: Tarts & Cookies

This past Tuesday was my first exam in pastry school. Technically, I had already taken my sanitation exam (which I passed!), but this was the first actual exam testing my knowledge of baking. Not knowing what to expect, I was thoroughly freaked out and studied probably more than I ever had before. The exam had both a written and practical component. I felt confident about the practical (actual baking) part, and the written section was a lot less difficult than I thought it was going to be. Each of us was randomly assigned a set of 2 tarts and 1 cookie. They were all things we had previously made in class, and I got nut tart, chocolate ganache tartlettes, and bourbon pecan cookies.

Presentation tray of finished tarts & cookies

I'm happy with the way everything came out. I felt like I was organized, worked at a good pace, and produced a good end result. Chef Cynthia seemed to think everything went well, but I won't know for sure until I get my grades back on Tuesday. She did say my cookies were a little on the large side, but I'm pretty sure they tasted okay (I couldn't actually try two of my final products because of the pecans and hazelnuts).

Close up of my ganache tartlettes, decorated with white chocolate

Now that tarts & cookies is over, we've moved on to choux (cream puff) pastry. After each unit, we rotate partners and this unit I happen to be the odd man out (we have 17 students in my class). I think it will be okay as long as I can stay on top of dish washing!

Pastry School Week 3

I can't believe the first three weeks of pastry school are already over, and I can't believe how fast it's going. We're continuing with our tarts and cookies unit, and you would think I'd be sick of tarts by now, but there's so many (delicious) variations!

Sliced fig newtons

They all got crumbled when I put them in a bag

Last week we started out making fig newtons. My brother really liked the packaged kind growing up, but I was always wary of figs. In fact, this was the first time that I had even tried figs. We used dry figs because apparently figs are only in season at the end of summer. We cooked the figs in port wine, water, and sugar. It smelled really good, even though my figs took about four times as long as everyone else's to cook. I wasn't a huge fan of this cookie, but they came out pretty well.

Onion tart

Everything I've make at school during the week, I bring into work for my coworkers to eat. All of the tarts and cookies basically disappear as soon as I put them down on my desk. The onion tart was the exception to this. I was wrong in believing we'd only be making sweet pastries, and this onion tart was the first savory recipe to appear on the syllabus. The tart was made from carmelized onions, blue cheese (the amount of mold on that cheese really turned me off), walnuts and tomatoes. The whole thing smelled very strongly of cheese, and not in a good way. A few brave coworkers tried it, but there were no rave reviews. A lot of "it's....okay...."

I braved my nut allergy to try these spritskakor cookies. They have almond paste in them, and almonds aren't one of the nuts I tested as allergic to, but I sometimes have a reaction from eating them. All kinds of nuts are frequently processed in the same plants, so there's a lot of cross contamination. Fortunately I had no allergy symptoms, and they were just as great as my coworkers were reporting. They were a really great butter/almond cookie piped into a rosette with a spot of raspberry jam on top.

Clafoutis is a traditional French dessert that is a baked custard traditionally made with cherries. The original clafoutis is usually made in a bowl, not a tart shell. This one we made was made in a tart shell, with blueberries instead of cherries because cherries aren't in season. So this was kind of a departure from real clafoutis. It was still delicious though.

So there's two things that I'm really afraid of - burning myself and cutting myself. Being a pastry chef, both of these are bound to happen...more than once. This past Saturday I burned my thumb pretty badly trying to attach a KitchenAid bowl to the mixer I had previously had cooking on the stove. I should have realized that the bowl would be as hot as what was in it (135 degrees) or hotter, but I wasn't really thinking. I didn't cut myself this week, but during a lesson of candied lemon peel, we needed to julienne lemon peel, which means to cut it in thin strips. Our knives are REALLY sharp, and in order to do this, they had to be really close to your fingers. I think I need a lot more practice with knife skills before I feel more comfortable with them. The candied lemon peel came out really nice.


With the candied lemon peel and the meringue that burned my hand (well the bowl it was in at least), we made lemon tartlets. Using lemon curd we had previously made and refrigerated, we filled the mini tartlets and then piped a decorative design with the meringue. Then using a BLOW TORCH, we browned the meringue edges. The blow torch was also scary (see fear #1 compounded with my fear of things exploding). The candied lemon peel went into the center.

The last item on this week's menu was nut tart. Using our pate sucree (sweet dough), we lined our tart rings with it, spread a thin layer of raspberry jam, sprinkled over some toasted almonds, and then poured in the almond and hazelnut batter we had lightened with a French meringue. We were supposed to sprinkle powdered sugar over top in some sort of design. In the haste of the last minutes of class, I haphazardly overlapped two cardboard circles and powdered away. When I removed the circles, I immediately realized the design resembled cleavage. Oh well, lessons learned! Only one more week of tarts & cookies before our big exam on February 2!!

Pastry School Week 2: More Tarts & Cookies

Fresh Fruit Tart

My second week of classes at the French Culinary Institute were a lot less nerve-wracking. I had calmed down a lot since the start of class, allowing me to make some really great things in class. We're in the tarts and cookies unit of the course until February 2nd, and we continue to make more and more of these two pastries.

Tarte Bourdaloue

I hadn't ever really contemplated how many tarts one can possibly make. I had never made an actual tart on my own (only pies), and that has quickly changed over the past couple weeks. I am now on my way to becoming the Queen of Tarts.

Tarte Alsacienne

The class is extremely fast-paced and every class, in the matter of only five hours, we make between 3-5 completed pastries, depending on whether we have a sanitation lecture as well (that exam, my first at school, is this week!). Because we make all components from scratch - doughs, fillings, etc., it takes a bit of time to get to the finished product.

Pots de creme

The tarts we made this week were Tarte Bourdaloue (poached pairs and almonds), Fresh Fruit Tart, Apricot Tart, Tart Alsacienne (apple & custard), and mini fresh fruit tarts. In addition to this, we made gingersnap cookies, Vanilla Kipferls (vanilla hazelnut cookies), and Chocolate Heaven cookies, and pots de creme (kind of like chocolate custard).

Apricot Tart pre oven

Apricot tart after baking

The most exciting moment of the week was learning how to flambe. Being scared of both fire and knives, the choice of going to a culinary school may seem dubious, but I'm determined to overcome both in these next 9 months. I'm already making progress- I cut myself and lived and this week lit a pan on fire (on purpose).

Gingersnap Cookies

Vanilla Kipferl

Chocolate Heaven Cookies

For the Tarte Alsacienne, the apples were first sauteed and then using apple brandy, lit on fire. It was very cool! Seemingly unrelated, right after we were done flambeing, we saw a couple of firefighters walk by our classroom. They must have gotten word that there were beginner students playing with fire.

Fresh fruit mini tarts