Lesson 1: Tartes

Two weeks ago was my exam for basic pastry and today I'm starting my first practical class for intermediate class. In intermediate demo class, the Chef introduced us things about chocolate from ingredients to tempering chocolate. In this level, we'll be handling a lot of chocolate for decorations, it will be the most challenging part because in basic we learn easy decoration and we didn't have to temper chocolates.

Today is the first day of practical class. Finally, after 11 weeks of pain of using balloon whisk, and whisking everything by hand, we get to use mixer. Now that we get to use mixer, we have to move even faster. It's the first time to bake 2 tarts in 2h 30 mins.



We're making passion fruit-raspberry tart and blackcurrant-strawberry tart. Both of the tart shells are using pâte sablée. Pâte Sablée is fragile and easy to break. It is very similar to pâte sucrée. As you can notice on my strawberry tart, my tart shell is cracking because when I do my fonçage, the dough was too soft after I rolled it. The moment the dough turns soft, it has to be chilled.

For the passion-fruit tart we use passion fruit cream as the filling and raspberry coulis that's frozen and mixed with gelatin to get jelly consistency. As for the blackcurrant strawberry tart, we use blackcurrants, almond cream and pastry cream as the filling. Both tarts are garnished with fresh fruits.

My version strawberry tart & passionfruit tart




Chef's version of Strawberry Tart & Passionfruit Tart