Hel's Kitchen: Winter Pastry

Winter Pastry ..... I had no idea what we would be cooking but I was sure it would be good!

Chef Jean-Francois Deguignet .... another lovely one with a good sense of humour. The lights weren't working properly in the kitchen and he was very apologetic. We didn't mind at all because we look better in the soft light!! Well, i do .... even better with the lights off!!

Our translator was Kasia, originally from Poland but now living in Paris, she is a sculptor.

On today's menu was a tart and a gateau ... excellent!! We were to make each one in stages, starting with the pastry for the tart.

Oh, and even better, the good looking chef from the crepe class dropped in. I made the mistake of greeting him in French and answering his first question, he then started to speak fluently and I was completely lost! He offered to give my my first "French Lesson", which was the traditional French greeting - a big kiss on both cheeks!! Of course I went red, the class had a laugh - which is what it's all about really! But at the end of the day, I still got two kisses from Le Spunk!!

Anyway, enough of the raving ....

Orange Tart (Tarte A L'orange)

Sweet Pastry Dough
200g flour
120g butter
40g egg
65g powdered sugar
2g fine salt
25g almonds
vanilla powder

Orange Filling

2 oranges = 10g orange rind finely grated 180ml orange juice
4 egg yolks (80g)
3 eggs
160g sugar
20g custard power (or cornflour)
1 gelatin leaf (2g)
150g butter cut into cubes

Decoration

Confit Orange Slices
neutral jelly glaze

For the pastry, place flour, sugar, salt, ground almonds and vanilla in a bowl, and butter and rub together .... but not too much, there should still be large pieces of combine butter/flour .... it should not resemble fine breadcrumbs.

Add egg, and mix quickly with spatula, turn out dough onto a board and knead by pushing mixture firmly away from you on the board, use your spatula to pull dough together and continue pushing away until it just comes together in a smooth consistency. I realise I have been working pastry way too much in the past!

Place a little flour on a piece of baking paper and press out dough, place on a tray and refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour.

Remove dough from fridge, working quickly great ring with butter, put some flour on a board and on the rolling pin and roll out dough. Make sure you move the dough each time and roll in each direction to get an even width and consistency, we rolled our dough to approx 3mm, it can be as thick or as thin as you like it.

Place ring on pastry and cut around with a reasonable overlap, then roll dough onto rolling pin and place onto ring. Lift ring slightly to allow you to gently ease pastry so that it sits at a right angle to the ring, leaving no gaps at the bottom.

Gently press pastry at the top to make an edge, roll pin across the top to remove excess pastry, then press pastry at the top flat again. Put pastry in the freezer for 30 minutes.

Remove pastry from the freezer, cover with cling film, leaving an excess on both sides, fill with beans (or rice or pastry beads), don't pack too tightly or it will be too difficult to remove as the cling film will be hot, loosely cover beans with excess cling film, place in 160°C oven and cook for approx 15 minutes (check to see if the bottom is set), remove cling film with beans, return to oven for a few more minutes, until golden brown and cooked through. We were not given a time, the chefs always say "until it is ready"!! This is due to variance with ovens, size of cakes etc.

Now, the custard. Place orange juice and rind in a pot. In a separate bowl, place the eggs and sugar and whisk together, then add the custard powder.

Place the pot on the heat until just boiling, then slowly pour the orange juice mixture into the bowl with eggs and sugar, whisking as you go, then return the mixture to the pot and put back on heat, whisk until it starts to boil and thicken. You can remove the pot from the heat if needed as you do not want the custard do burn or stick to the bottom. Remove from heat, whisk in the gelatine and then the butter, mix well.

Pour the custard into the tart shell, trying to get as smooth a surface as possible. Place tart in the fridge for custard to set.

To decorate place pieces of orange on top of the tart.

For confit oranges, you made a syrup of equal portions of sugar and water (enough to immerse the number of orange slices you have) and heat until sugar is dissolved, then add orange pieces and simmer until they are caramelised. Remove, drain and cool.

The citrus flavour in this custard was a little mild for me, I would like to try it with more orange rind and juice.

Chocolate and Cointreau Cake (St.Elois Au Chocolat)

Chocolate Genoise Sponge

4 eggs

125g sugar

100g flour

30g unsweetened cocoa powder

Syrup

200g sugar

150ml water

50ml cointreau

Ganache

250ml whipping cream

250g chocolate, chopped

50ml cointreau

Once you've made this cake, you will know what your arms are for!!!

Place eggs and sugar in a metal bowl, then place over a bain marie (which in Paris means over a pot or pan containing hot water, you can immerse the bowl in the water, or rest it on the top of the pot using the steam, which is what we did steam - a double boiler basically) and whisk very quickly until mixture reaches about 40°C, you don't want it to be any hotter and you must keep whisking as you do not want scrambled eggs. At this stage the mixture should be light and fluffy.

Once removed from heat you need to keep whisking until it cools (you can do this with a mixer, which I would do, however, we continued by hand ... I now know that I can whisk with my left hand as my right one had fallen off!!)

You cannot add the dry ingredients until the mixture has cooled, it will be very pale in colour and will have increased in volume, also, it is ready when you dribble some mixture on the top and it is visible or makes a line.

Then you can add cocoa and flour, in 3 stages, gently folding it in with a spatula (or scraper as well call it at home). Do not over mix.

We used a ring,which we did not need to grease, however, if you are using a mould or a tin you would need to.

The tin was 16cm in diameter and 6cm high. Pour mixture in and bake at 160°C "until cooked"! It is ready when you can press the cake with your finger and no dent is made.

You should also be able to hear it pop back when you press it .... but I didn't get that close to the cake.

When cooked, remove from oven and cool.

You then need to slice the cake into layers. We used pastry rulers (steel bars), which makes it so much easier. (I may have to go to Bunnings when I get home). You take off the top of the cake to make it flat, then turn upside down and put a ruler on each side of the cake to use as a guide.

We were not given directions for the syrup as it was already made up, but I imagine you would heat the water and sugar until sugar is dissolved and keep on a simmer until it reaches a syrup-like consistency, then add the cointreau.

For the ganache, simply place chopped chocolate in a bowl and cream in a saucepan on the heat until it just boils, then pour cream over chocolate, leave for about 3 minutes, or until chocolate is melted, then gently whisk until it is combined. Use a spatula to scrape the sides. Then add cointreau. The ganache will need to cool a little to thicken, it must still be runny enough to run into gaps etc, but not so thin that it will leak through any holes in the sponge.

To assemble, cut off any crust on the edges of the sponge, don't take too much! We actually used the cake ring to slice off the edges. Brush a piece of cake with the syrup, or you can dip it in! Be generous with the syrup, you want the cake to be nice and moist. Place cake in a ring with the syrup-side facing up, then pipe a layer of ganache, making sure it goes down the side of the ring. Then brush another piece of sponge with syrup and place syrup-side facing down, push down so that it sits into the layer of ganache beneath, then top with ganache again. You can repeat this process for as many layers as the height of your ring allows. The finishing layer needs to allow for a layer of ganache, that can be smoothed off with a palette knife. The cake is then placed in a fridge to set.

When set, remove the ring and voila!! We were provided with a piece of acetate inside the cake ring to allow us to take the cakes home in a box without them collapsing.

As there was some extra time, we covered the top of our cakes with a layer of very dark syrup ... it looks fantastic, but is very dark and quite bitter. These photos show the Chef placing syrup back into the bowl after cooling and his cake after the syrup had been added.