Qu'est-ce que c'est un petit four?
As most of you may know the petit four is a small confection eaten with a coffee or served as a dessert.
The name is from the Frencg term, meaning "small oven".
Petit Fours are divided into 2 categories:
Including Petit four secs (meaning dry) including desserts, such as baked meringues, macarons and puff pastries.
Petit four glacés (meaning iced) are iced or decorated, such as small cakes covered in fondant icing, 2 bite eclairs, and tartlets.
So lets get started....
Whats on the agenda for the first week of petit fours.....
1. Eclairs
2. Chouquettes
3. Salambos
4. Blueberry streusel tartlets
5. Macaron
6. Dacqouise
7. Madeleines
8. Financiers
9. Paris brest
10. Pear almond and apricot tarts
wow thats a mouthful...
That lovely pate a choux we made last week is definitely back to stay.
It will be the base for our eclairs, chouquettes, salambos and paris brest- which you will see photos of above. The yummy mixture as you see piped is dry once baked, hollow in the inside (ready for a burst of cream) and topped in some cases with sucre gran (large sugar granules and toasted almonda) or fondant glazes...oh or dry caramel!
Now onto the Dacqouise...a petit four or a dessert cake made up of layers of almond and hazelnut meringue. In the photo you will see our birds beek meringue ready for folding with the nut powders. The mixture is then scraped through a silicone stencil to get there shape. They bake and voila! We then made a filling with pastry cream, butter and walnuts.
My new favorite are the paris brest ( created in 1891 to commerate the Paris to Brest bicycle race.
This is a love I never even knew I had! Pate a choux pastry piped into a circular shape which is representative of a wheel then filled with a filling that is a combination of vanilla pastry cream, vanilla Italian meringue buttercream- and if that doesnt already get you then this will.....hazelnut paste. It is delicious...my fellow students were squeezing it into their mouths for how much we are all in love.
I am truly excited for this section in the course because I just love little pastries that are full of so much flavor. You dont have to choose anymore! You can have one of everything!....
well maybe not everything...not in one seating at least.
Thats it for tonight all...tomorrow is a new day. Come on back for some more...
I know you taste the sweetness.
-N
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