Tarts tarts tarts galore!

It's amazing how much material and many recipes we cover each day! The start of this week has been pretty good, as we've had many lectures on sanitation (I can't look at ground beef the same ever again), rolled many tarts shells, and made lots of fun fillings.

This is a banana cream tart (tarte aux bananas et creme). The tart shell is a pate sucree (sweet tart dough), filled with creme legere (which is a mixture of pastry cream (creme patissiere), heavy whipping cream, and some rum for good fun) folded with some bananas. We piped some rosettes out of creme chantilly on top.

My chef said that my rosettes looked more like soft-serve swirls -_- (that's not a good thing).

Tarte aux fruits frais -- Fresh Fruit Tart

In all honesty, I think this has got to be one the yummiest fruit tarts I've ever tasted (and yummiest things I've ever made). Technically I'm not allowed to say "yummy" anymore because we are sophisticated chefs who should comment on the look, texture, flavor, smell, etc... But seriously guys, it's YUMMALICIOUS. This is a pate sucree shell blind-baked with some creme d'amande (almond cream, which is a mixture of almond paste, butter, eggs, etc), then spread with a layer of creme patissiere on top. We had more practice with knife skills, making orange supremes, cutting strawberries, kiwis, etc... I think my favorite part of this tart is eating the bite with the orange -- the slightly acidic orange complements the creamy almond cream REALLY well.

This is the Pear and Almond Tart, Bourdaloue Style (Tarte Bourdaloue). We poached the pears in a syrup made out of wine, sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla beans. We rolled out a flaky pate brisee (but I rolled mine too thin, so I had to use a traditional sweet cookie-like pate sucree instead), then baked it with almond cream and the fanned-out poached pears on top, sprinkled with some slivered almonds. Also super yum.

We also baked some gingersnap cookies (pictured bottom left corner) (but only got to keep 5...the school gives away the rest to customers at L'Ecole -- another reason to eat a meal there). The girl across from me didn't want to take her tart home, so I asked her if i could take it.... She willingly obliged and I happily packed it away into my tupperware! YAY. Hahahaha....So I came home with 2.75 tarts, 5 cookies, and 2 large bags under my eyes (as you can see in the picture.......)

Much, much more to come in the next few days.....