Queen of tarts

After week two of pastry school and tart making, I feel like I'm starting to master the art of tarts. We made several more tarts this week but they were more intricate and detailed than the tarts we made previously. On this week's menu were 8 different tarts (lemon curd, lemon meringue, carmelized nut, orange, linzer, coffee, and two fruit tarts) plus an introduction to choux pastry. 

Lemon meringue and lemon curd tarts

A classic - fruit tart

I love the way our class is structured because even though we made tarts again this week, we learned several techniques that we will need throughout our course. There's nothing like taking granulated sugar and cream to make the most delicious caramel sauce you've ever tasted. Or learning that there are three different types of meringue with three different uses - who knew? The smell of a linzer torte straight from the oven is so delectable that you just want to immediately pick it up and bite into the cinnamon studded crust topped with almond cream and jam. I would have never thought to mix coffee infused whipped cream with gelatine and freeze it to get an ice cream like consistency that is the perfect contrast to coffee ganache, coffee soaked ladyfingers, and caramel/coffee glaze in a coffee tart. Needless to say, I spent the week tasting some of the best tarts I've ever had and this weekend walking them off. 

I also fell in love with choux pastry this week. It's a staple in French pastry, serving as a base for eclairs, religieuses, chouquettes, and gougeres. It's super simple to make (in my opinion) and the results are to die for. We mixed our choux pastry dough with Emmental cheese, salt, pepper and nutmeg, piped it, put it in the oven and out came the lightest and tastiest bite-sized rounds of puffed dough you've ever tasted. The next time I have a party, these will be on the menu so you'll definitely get to taste them. 

Chef and his choux pastry piping skills

Tasting - on of the best parts of being a pastry chef

We started French, wine, drawing, and pastry technology class this week. French class will be a breeze since it's a conversation class but I get kind of frustrated when I make stupid mistakes and get corrected. Just goes to show that there's always room for improvement. Wine class should be interesting especially since it's something I know nothing about. We'll be learning about the process, how to taste and we'll do tastings (how many schools let you drink wine in the middle of the day as part of the curriculum?) plus learning to pair our desserts with wine. 

Drawing class is the one I'm least excited about because drawing stick figures is a stretch for me. We're incredibly fortunate to have this class though because our teacher, Mr. Niau is a renowned chef and artist. My favorite part of the class had nothing to do with drawing (go figure) but with each of us talking about our future goals and what we did before we came to ESCF. It was interesting to see all the different professions people left to come here and learn about pastry (construction, real estate, banking, law, etc) and all the endeavors each of us are hoping to start in the future (a dessert house, restaurant, bakery chain, culinary art therapy, etc). 

Pastry technology class is where our chef teaches us about the science behind baking and the ingredients we used. We learned about density, sugar syrup, what it means to bake and why Madeleines have a hump in the middle of them before we got off topic...hilarious! 

My weekends have become a time of exploration, walking off delicious food I've eaten throughout the week and eating even more delicious food I discover throughout Paris. I've done a lot of research online and in books about different areas of Paris and above all, about all of the well known and well hidden places to eat and buy fabulous food. I have a huge list (imagine that, me making a list ;)) of places I want to visit in the next year so I headed out on Saturday to do some culinary investigating and tasting. 

My first stop was a place called Les Bonbons (6, rue Bréa) , a quaint old-fashioned candy store specializing in regional candies of France. The walls were lined with glass jars full of candy and shelves full of chocolate, caramels, jams, teas and so much more. In one word...heaven. I looked around for awhile, bought a few things and began chatting with the current owner. She was an incredibly sweet women and talked with me for about 20 minutes about owning a bakery and apprenticing; her and her husband used to own a bakery. She had to attend to a customer who walked in but managed a "See you next time" before I left...can't wait to go back and not just because the candy is phenomenal. 

Les Bonbons - cutest candy store

Gloria, a fellow pastry student, and I met on Saturday afternoon at Breizh Café (109 Rue Vieille du Temple) We'd both heard great things about this organic Breton créperie and were very pleased with our galettes (savory crepes) but a little disappointed with our salted caramel sauce - the burnt sugar taste was a little more than we expected. It's funny because we learned about this exact thing this week when we made different caramel sauces with varying degrees of the burnt sugar taste that makes caramel caramel. 

I explored a little bit more on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon before having a cleaning dance party on Sunday night. If you're going to clean, you mine as well make it more enjoyable by putting on some good music and dancing! Now, it's off to bed so I'll be ready for a busy week of classes.