Day Sixty-Seven

I may or may not have eaten too much puff pastry tonight.  My stomach hurts.  Why do I keep doing this to myself?

I’ve changed my mind about puff pastry being too much work; it’s definitely worth it.  It’s SO good!  It’s so much better than store-bought puff pastry.  I didn’t know this, but Tom pointed out to me that store bought puff pastry uses shortening instead of butter.

That’s enough for me to stop buying it.  The puff pastry was a lot of work, but it wasn’t that bad.  I’d like to have a tutorial on here someday about making it.  It builds arm muscles!

These are the finished pithiviers.  There’s frangipane in the middle. 




So pretty.  I wanted to decorate them with berries, but Chef said that wasn’t traditional.  I want to make a savory pithivier now.  Like a chicken pot pie pithivier. 

I made a chocolate almond streusel and molded it with two rings. This is going into a cake we’re assembling tomorrow.  The streusel was made with butter, turbinado sugar, pastry flour, melted chocolate and sea salt.  Turbinado sugar works better in streusels, so you better go get some, sugar bear.



I also made a caramel cremeux.  First you make a dry caramel, then add your cream, then you temper your egg yolks, then you cook and whisk everything until it thickens up.  And then, only then, do you add your gelatin. 

Here’s a tip: Strain your tempered eggs back into the remaining simmering cream instead of straining in the end of the cooking process.  You’ll save yourself time (especially with thick pastry creams), and if you’ve cooked the pastry cream properly you shouldn’t have any lumps.  Straining early removes the chalaza from the egg. 



We poured the caramel-cream into these fleximolds. 


I walked through another kitchen today where they’re holding a continuing education class.  The class is wedding cakes by Marina Sousa.  If you’ve ever watched any of the Food Network cake competitions, I guarantee you know who I’m talking about.  You should see all of the flowers and decorations they’ve constructed.  I could’ve taken more pictures but I didn’t want to creep.