Puff Pastry

This past week we tackled one of the the classes that when I read the schedule thought was one of the most intimidating for me since I have never attempted to do, and has a reputation to be kind of tricky: puff pastry.

The chef in classes made it look not so difficult, but you could tell it was going to be one of those recipes where you need to work fast, and be very careful with details otherwise you could go wrong, and have something not very good.

The chef made in class 3 recipes, of which we would be doing 2 of them, since what really takes time is the making of the pastry, not really the form you end up using it for.

So here is what the chef made in class:

"Chaussons aux Pommes" or "Apple Turnovers" that puffed like nothing else I had eaten before.

He then made "Palmiers", "Palms" or like we call them in Mexico "Orejitas", as well as " Paille aux Framboises" or "Raspberry Strawmats"

And of course we get to do some "quality control testing" of the chefs work, hahaha, or as they like to call it "la degustation".

I love puff pastry, always have, and I specially love real good one like this one. I cannot pick which was my favorite, the three were good. The apple filling, was good, the raspberry filling was very good too, and the palmiers with all that good sugar, I love them.

Two days later we went to practical to work on this, and was still feeling a bit unsure about how making puff pastry will go, and I was class assistant for this week, so I was feeling a bit anxious. Got there real early, got everything out, and the chef even allowed us to start a bit early since this practical had a potential to go on overtime.
Thank God, everything ran smooth. Me and other two girls, thought for being our first time doing puff pastry we did good, and it wasn't as intimidating as it seemed, as long as you carefully follow every step exactly as it is supposed to be done. At the end us three ended up being the only ones with a real nice puff pastry that rose  perfectly, and some how the rest didn't do so good.

So here it is, my class creations:

     

Here is how my Chaussons aux Pommes looked, I was so happy, cause I was a bit nervous about weather my pastry was going to rise or note, and it did wonderfully:

 And now my "Palmiers":

These came out, soooo good. Since I like them to have lots of sugar in the outer crust, I made sure to put a lot of sugar, and they came out incredibly good.

As I always do, I only ate one of each, but these were hard to give away, I wanted to eat them, but since I am in fear of gaining weight, I was strong and gave them all out!!