Lets do Tarts again!!

For Basic I remember that one of our first demos was the apple tart, and from there we did a few more of different types. Well for Intermediate for our second "lesson" we have tarts again.
Since I had a very long break from when basic finished to when I am starting back in Intermediate, I really don't mind the "review" of techniques raising the bar a bit, so it is not as simple.
For the demo, we had Chef C, which as I mentioned before, I really like his demos, they even seem a bit short.
The Chef made two three different tarts on demo, even though he was just supposed to make two. The third tart was not really a whole different tart, but a combination of the left overs form the other two tarts.

The first tart the Chef made was the Tarte Passion-Framboise which is the one we are to do at practical. Is a sweet pastry dough with a raspberry coulis, and a passion fruit cream on top. It is very good

Then the Chef made the Tarte Legere au Citron, which is the same sweet pastry crust, but with a lemon-almond cream inside, and a light lemon cream on top. I really liked this tart. I think since I really like lemon, I prefer this tart over the one we made in practical although they were both good.

And the third type of tart the Chef made was with the passion fruit cream inside the tart, and the light lemon cream on top. He said this would probably be the best because of the paring of flavors, but I didn't really cared much for it. The all lemon one was still my favorite.

As always the most fun part of the class comes, with "la degustation" since we get to see what the cakes, or in this case tarts, look like when cut open, and of course try them out.

So going into practical, I was feeling pretty cautious with the dough, since it was very soft, and didn't want to make the mistake I did with the tartlets, and leave the crust too thick, so I putted on the fridge and was able to roll it, no a nice thickness, but then when it baked I don't know what happened that it shrinked a bit, and the edge looked really thick and ugly.
I managed to fixed it towards the end, shaving the edge into a nicer more even and thinner one.
We had some dead time while waiting for the tarts to set in the fridge before we could put the second layer on, so we had some time for practicing chocolate writing. For our technical part of our exam, we have to write Opera in chocolate and do a border, and contrary to what one may think is not as easy as it looks.

And as you can see, I definitively need lost more practice.
Anyhow, my tart looked ok. For the decoration I feel really uncomfortable doing things to elaborated, since you CAN put too much on a cake and ruin it, so I decided to keep it simple, but elegant, and was actually pretty happy with how it came out.

Can't wait to go back to school tomorrow and do my next cake.