Day 54 - Rugelach, Lemon Tartlets, Financiers

Today I made Rugelach with raspberry and pecan filling. It was very good and came out much better than the last time I made these.

I also made financiers, which are named so because they are so rich. They are a sponge cake, made in muffin pans, which are made with almond flour, cake flour, brown butter, sugar, vanilla extract (it should have been vanilla bean) and a lot of egg whites. It tasted very good.

I started making lemon tartlets, but they are not finished yet.

Day 22 - Tarts and Rugelach

The class today started out with the Chef demonstrating how to make Rugelach. This is a Jewish pastry. We were using apricot jam as a filling. Afterwards we started our production for the day.

I made Apple Tarts and Pecan Tarts. Then I made the Rugelach. The tarts came out OK but spent a little too much time in the oven. One minute I checked the tarts and they needed more time. Then next time I checked and they were over done. (See the picture below of the Apple Tart). It's very hard to cook something in an oven when 8 students are cooking in the same oven using half sheets. Very frustrating and challenging.

My Rugelach was a disaster. I cut two triangles out a 3" square of dough. The filling was apricot jam, raisins, walnuts, sugar, cinnamon and brown sugar. Then I rolled up the triangles like a crescent roll with my filling in it, but as it baked the dough unrolled. I think my triangles were too small. (See the picture below).

Day 19 - Dough Day

I didn't get a score on my practical test but I did get some feedback from the Chef. First he said I needed to be more consistent in the thickness of my Brysselkex cookies. Funny thing is he never showed the class anything about working with knives. But I'll take this criticism to heart. He also thought they were too golden, that maybe they needed to be cooked a little less. (Hmm! They looked just right to me). The critique of the Chocolate Chip cookies was that they were not spread out enough (meaning they were puffed up too high). The Chef said that four or five people did the same thing and that maybe someone was passing around a jar of baking powder instead of baking soda. Next time I'll make sure that I check what others are passing my way. Funny thing about it, these Chocolate Chip cookies tasted better this time than my batch before, even my family thought so. Oh well, it's a learning experience. I should find out my grade tomorrow.

Today we made four types of dough.

1) Flaky Pie Dough
2) Mealy Pie Dough
3) Pâte Sucrée (Sweet Pastry) - we'll use this to make tarts.
4) Rugelach (Jewish Pastry)

We just rolled each dough into a 2" diameter log. We'll use this another day.