Friday, November 14, 2014

Cooking with Us - e31 - Fruit Tarts

Woot Woot!

Hi Guys!

Today marks the two year anniversary of
my first blog post ever on KumoCafe.com!

So I busted my bum to make an update ready for today!  In the following video, Brigly and I tried our hands at fruit tarts, for the first time ever!

As you can see on the right, they weren't the most perfect, but they were still darn good.
- A valiant first effort, if we do say so ourselves!

Please watch the video in full screen, Hi-res, and of course - share, subscribe, and comment!




When you're taking on a job as big as a pastry
(you guys know I cannot bake!)
it's important to have the right helper.
As you can see, Brigly is making sure the butter is at room temperature.

First up!
The Pate Sucre
(or tart dough)


You need one cup of cake flour.


One and one third cups All-Purpose flour...


And one-third cup of sugar.


Then 'pulse' the mixture for ten minutes.
As you can see, I just used the whisk setting...
Because I really don't know what I'm doing!


Now you need half a pound of unsalted butter at room temperature.


Aka eight ounces, aka two sticks ;)


Don't forget to receive nose-kissies from your helper!
 

And chop your butter into smaller pieces.


It said to process until the texture resembled large crumbs.
I thought this did.
shrugs.


Now you need two egg yolks.


To which I added two tablespoons of heavy cream.



As you whisk this together, you might notice that
your canine helper has become very interested.
Just remember - he loves eggs.


I just added this and put in the dough attachment, and stirred it for a while.


As you can see.


Now you're supposed to form your dough into a disc.
I think this is disc-shaped enough!
You wanna fight?


No!
I wanna dance!
Over to the fridge where this will stay for an hour (or up to overnight).

Time for the Lemon Curd!


You need four tablespoons of unsalted butter.
(Basically half a stick.)


And only one tablespoon of lemon zest.


Once you've heated a pan to warm, remove it from the heat and add in your butter
one cube at a time, stirring as you go.


Then stir in your lemon zest and keep stirring until cool.


For the next part, you'll need one-third of a cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice.


Bring water to a simmer.


And in a bowl atop simmering water, add in three whole eggs...
 

Your lemon juice...


And three-quarters of a cup of sugar.


Mix this for a while, while making sure it doesn't get too hot.


It should thicken and the color should get lighter.
 

I then added the butter and lemon zest to this, and mixed it up, then put it in the fridge to cool.


My dough was pretty difficult, but I lined three pans with it...
and did it so beautifully ;)


Then you bake them at 350 till 'they are brown.'


After my first one crumbled, I was really happy with my other ones.
Even if they weren't perfect, they were solid!


So in went my lemon curd!
Which had great texture, by the way :)


And on top of that - my berries!


You're supposed to heat apple jelly to a liquid and brush it on.
To be honest, I may have been too lazy and let it re-solidify a bit, and poured on too much.


Next time - more patience.


They didn't really have enough time in the fridge because
my husband got home pretty fast and was starving, as usual.

But they are pretty kinda, right? :)


And Theron did make sure to take some artful pictures of them.


And, using his new scale, decided you should "Make it!"


Then of course we hugged and said our show-closing...


And talked about the croissants he made last weekend...
and that next time he should make the fruit tarts ;)


And then, everyone got kissies!


And I did a little dance for my two-years-on-the-blog anniversary post!! ^^


Finally, I want to point out Brigly took all of this very seriously.


Sometimes he even barked to get my butt in gear.


He was a real slave driver!


But without him, I would have just been pretty lost ;)

Here are some more tart photos, a link to the recipe, and the transcript!

Let me know if you guys make this, and any tips you have for me so I can do better next time!

XOXO
Happy KumoCafe Anniversary Day!
-Val!







Recipe:

This is the recipe we followed:)
http://farmflavor.com/fruit-tarts/

Transcript:
Hi guys,
and welcome to KumoCafe's Cooking with Us.

What I'm gonna try to make for you guys today are French fruit tarts.

It is the celebration of two years since I posted my first blog post.

You know, two years is a long time to have a blog going.... for me.

Right now me and the bear are waiting for this butter to come to room temperature.

So Brigly and I are gonna work together on these fruit tarts today.

We have to make lemon curd....
Pate sucre?

So that's clearly the dough part.

The... lemon curd is the filling part...
and then we top off with all the berries that we bought.

Sounds easy right?

Yes, it does sound easy!

But I don't think it's gonna be.

Ok, we're gonna start with the pate sucre, or basically the dough mixture.

Which inolves... Cake flour, which I'd never heard of before.
And sugar, and a food processor - I'm gonna use my husband's kitchen-aid.

One cup cake flour.

A cup, woo!

There we go.

One and one third cup All purpose - wait, really?!

Yep, one and one third cup all purpose flour.

One third cup sugar.
Just sugar? Ok.

Yep, third of a cup sugar.

Pulse the mixture for ten minutes.

Ten minutes?

Your unsalted butter is supposed to be at room temperature, for the pate sucre we need half a pound, or eight ounces. Ok?

But we need them to be chopped up into smaller pieces.

Brigly Bear!
Good boy.

Sometimes it's better not to know what's in the foods you like, like half a pound of butter.

Process only until texture resembles large crumbs.

That looks like crumbs, right?
Kinda, Some of - eh, good enough.

Now we need two egg yolks.

Bam.

With our egg yolks... two tablespoons of heavy cream.

Someone's getting really interested now!

This is heavy cream, buddy!

Not that exciting.

Uno.... dos.

Whisk together egg yolks with one tablespoon of cream... oops!

Add remaining cream if needed. Guess we needed it.

Ok.

Why am I supposed to form this into a disc anyways?

Smack my dough up.

Ok, dough.
You're basically a disc, aren't you?

Kind of?

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

Here's my, um, semi-disc of dough.
It's going into the refrigerator for an hour.

And then I will work on all this other crap that I have to do to make the filling.

If you thought I was scared of that part... and I was, I was - I was scared of that part...

I'm even a little bit more nervous about this part, because we're making the lemon curd filling...

Four tablespoons unsalted butter.

We only need one tablespoon of lemon zest.

That's all we need. Ok

On third fresh cup lemon juice.

Three quarter cups sugar, and three large eggs.

Ok we're gonna turn off the heat underneath this pan here.

It's been warm for a while now.

And we're gonna add our butter.

Maybe it's a little bit hotter than I thought.
That's not the way butter's supposed to look.

It's Ok! I have half a stick of butter left which is just exactly what we need so... let's try this again.

Oh my gosh, look how that looks, much better.

This is totally normal, to crouch down and mix butter like this, isn't it?

Add lemon zest and whisk until cool.
Alright.

So what'd you do today, hm? Did you have a good day?

Alright guys, here's where things are gonna get, in my opinion, a little bit strange.

So apparently we're sposta have some kind of bowl to go on top of the simmering water where we mix all our ingredients up in it.

What do you think, Brigly Bear?

He doesn't have much faith.

Think I'm gonna use a metal bowl, because it doesn't say not to.

Good idea, Mom.

We have a simmer, definitely. This is our bowl we're gonna mix stuff in.

Three eggs, lemon juice, and our sugar.

What was that for?  I don't know what I'm gonna use that for...

Well it's definitely thickened up a lot now, look at that!

So we just let this cool, then?

It doesn't say to let this cool afterwards, but I'm guessing you let it cool, since it doesn't freaking say.

And when does the lemon zest and stuff go in?

I'm putting this in here.... and if that's wrong, I'm sorry.

Alright, I'm gonna let this cool.

I'm gonna cut up some of the fruit for the fruit tarts right now.

Ok, uh, we bought these 'cause we don't have... uh, pastry, or tart, um, things... so we got chicken pot pie... things... And we'll.... we'll see how it goes.

Wow that got hard.

I hope that was supposed to get hard...

I have a feeling it wasn't.

One eighth of an inch thickness?

That's like nothing.

I think I'm gonna start with three...
'cause... yeah...

Bake till brown.

Ok gang, it looks and smells like my little guys are done so we're gonna take 'em out.

And just, I dunno, I feel like this is gonna break if I try and take it out of here...

But I'm sposta take them out so they can cool...

Oh my gosh it worked!!!

Ok! Oh!  No it didn't....

Did not work.

Maybe they're not done?

The last thing you're sposta do is heat up apple jelly till it's liquidy and sp- and spread it on top, cause it's supposed to make the glaze of the fruit tart.

My apple jelly is liquid.

Now I'm gonna brush it on; I don't actually have a pastry brush.
If nothing else this should be pretty on the top of this once it cools a bit.

Do I dare?

Ok these guys, guys have been cooling off for a little while now, um... I don't have a lot of faith but I'm gonna -
Ahhhh!

Oh wait, wait, it really did work that time!
Alright!

Ok....

Look, this is my first try here, guys,

I fall to pieces... literally...

Now for the coup detat.

Look guys, I kinda made it.

And in goes the lemon... curd stuff.

Not a lot of it, it said not a lot of it but I'm putting more in... 'cause this is also a lot thicker than it was supposed to be, too.

Some more strawberries on this one.

Raspberries...

These are my two fruit tarts that stayed together.

I'm gonna put them in the refrigerator for a second, my husband's almost home.

This is the way my first one turned out cause it crumbled when I took it out.

Is that for me?

Well, no I'm just showing you. 

That one's been in the fridgerator longer, so it's cold.

These ones didn't crumble.

Did you take pictures?

No.

So as usual, the moment of truth.

That... gel worked good, didn't it?
Yep.

Fruit tart, first bite.

Probably needs to be colder, huh?
Mhm..

Mmm. Imma eat it, yeah that's good.

You like it?

It's super sweet!

Yeah.

Make it.

Really?

Hey Brigly.

Woah... It's really sweet.

I think a lot of it's the apple stuff on the top.

I don't think we should use Smuckers, Smuckers is too sweet.

Woo!

That's too sweet.

Try this by itself.

Cause that's pretty sweet too but it's also really tart, but it's really sweet.

Mm.. but that's good.

It's Smu- It's the Smuckers...

Yeah.
It's the only other thing that's sweet.

So make it... without the Smuckers.

Still make it, but yeah.

Somebody's under-dressed.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of KumoCafe's Cooking with Us.

Theron says make the fruit tart...

Make it...

Thanks-
Or have someone else make it.

No, not not me though!  I'm never making one again.

Why?

It was difficult.

Harder than the croissants?

You made the croissants, so yeah!
I know!

Oh yeah.. guess so...

But you know it's like-
Maybe I should - Maybe I should make it.

Anyways, thanks guys, and have a great Thanksgiving if we don't see you before that!

I don't think we will...

You don't think so?

We're not gonna make another video before Thanksgiving?

They'll see us.

Oh.

Love you.

Love you.
Love you Mr. Bear.

Hongi?

Better give Mommy a kiss.

Brigly!

Thank you buddy.

Aww. Good boy.

Fruit tarts!!
Two years on the blog!!

We're just letting the tape run down right now.

Really?




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