Class 11/07/09 - Tarts

Today wasn't difficult, but it was kinda bleh for me. I wasn't in the best of moods and my group just made it worse. I made the best of it though.

The first tart I made was a lemon curd with Italian meringue. I'm not that happy with the outcome. When I was making the lemon curd, I thought it came out very well. It had a nice color and good consistency and was very smooth. However it never set very well when I chilled it. I'm not sure if I didn't cook it quite enough or what. I was unhappy with the Italian meringue also. Again, when I made it, it turned out quite nice. However since we had to chill the lemon curd, we had to let the meringue sit and so we chilled that as well. When we finally put it together, the meringue had lost it's volume and consistency and became what is seen in the picture. It's not that bad, it still has the taste, just not the volume.

The next tart was an orange milk chocolate tart with creme chantilly. First the chef gave us a quick demo on how to "supreme" a citrus fruit-in this case, a grapefruit. All it really means is sectioning the grapefruit by skinning it and then cutting down the membrane so you have just the flesh and none of the membrane. Of course he made it look easy. Mine weren't terrible, but not great. I blame the fact that my knife wasn't as sharp as it should have been.

In addition I made creme chantilly for the topping. It's just whipped cream that's sweetened. I just figured that it's worth noting since I did it by hand for the first time. It was helpful in learning how to get the feel for the consistency. It takes it time to get going but once it starts setting it can go from soft peaks to stiff peaks to overwhipped very fast. I got a perfect consistency for piping.

And then finally was actually making the tart. It was quite simple. All it took was boiling heavy cream and milk and then blending in butter, corn syrup, and a few drops of orange oil. We then poured it over chocolate which melted from the heat and after whipping it together, it thickened and became a ganache. It was then put in a tart shell, chilled, and once it was set, the grapefruits were placed on top and the creme was piped in. At least this one came out nicely.

Unfortunately I never got any pictures of the rye sourdough bread production. The chef took care of the breads himself, and even though we ran extremely late, the last of us leaving at like 11:45, the bread was still baking so I didn't get any pictures, or free bread.