Where does the time go! It's Thursday already. Time is flying by and I don't 'likey'. We will be entering May next week! I'm not ready for May!! It's my family's birthday celebration month! Don' think it's a bad thing. No, no, no... absolutely not! It means tons of get togethers and fun times, good food and crossing the fingers, BEACH days! :) Ahh, too much to process... :) Let's focus on puff pastries.
We made Palimer's and Napoleon's today. Lots of sugar to put on top of our Butter! Seriously!! Can we say love handles?!?!?
We again used the rest of our dough from Monday to create these. We first created the Palimers. This is super simple to make. We used premade dough, so everyone can go out and make these! You take the dough and brush melted butter on it. Follow that up with completely covering your buttered dough square with sugar:
Fold in both sides leaving about an inch open in the center. Brush butter on to each side and add more sugar, covering each side completely.
Fold them onto each other on each individual side, again, leaving the center open. Brush with butter a third time and put the sugar on top again. The sugar and the butter create the caramel that will melt and bring the dough together when baking.
At this point, you want to fold them together and then wrap it and place it in the cooler before baking.
Cut these up a quarter inch in size with a Chef's knife and place on your cookie sheet. Bake them in the oven at about 375 degree's. Half way through the baking process you will need to flip these to the other side and let them finish baking.
They should come out slightly darker than mine:
We were running a little low on time and these had to be taken out, but they still taste delicious and are extra crispy!
We then made the Napoleon's using the pastry cream we created yesterday. Each Napoleon requires 3 squares. Cut your dough into 2x4 squares and bake the squares off in the oven. You will flip these on to their other side in the oven as well. Let them cool down and then place fondant on top of one of the squares. Pipe out pastry cream onto the perimeter of the other two squares. You will top the two pastry cream squares on top of each other and then place the fondant covered square as your top, showcase piece.
I do not have pictures of the process because we were pressed for time at the end. :( But I took of picture of the finished product after the chef came by to check them out. He said my looked really good, I was happy because these take a little work, you can not overfill the center's and your fondant top has to be silky smooth with no flow over.
There you have it dolls. These laminated doughs are super fun to bake. I like them because they are time consuming. I know, that doesn't make sense to you but if you are in your own space, rolling out your dough, being precise with your cuts and fillings.. its soothing and relaxing! Put on your favorite music, have a glass of wine.. :) :) Fun times! Anyhow, ok!! Some of you may not share that excitement with me ;) no problemo!
Tomorrow we have our 2nd and last practical. He is going designate different shapes for us. 1/2 of the class will make Vol au Vants and the other half of the class will make Turnovers. We each have to make 6 and show him our results! Wish me luck. I don't think it will be that difficult. We just have to make them look near perfect ;).
I hope you guys have a fabu evening. My brother and his fiance are going to catch Usher in concert! Wooo Hooo.. sexy fun for an evening. I will be here with Milo, the ever so faithful CockerSpaniel that does not leave my side. :)
Good night lovies!
