Gluten Free Afternoon Tea

We're back 'home' in Shrewsbury permanently now having left the lights and sights of London behind us. As well as applying for jobs and getting the house and garden in some sort of order, I've been busy catching up with friends. Back in 2012 when Dave and I set off on our travels around Europe I left a job, and a team, I really loved. Thankfully we've kept in touch since then and last week I invited them over for afternoon tea.

One of the 'girls' is on a gluten free diet so I set myself the challenge of ensuring that nothing was 'out of bounds' for her. The savoury dishes included smoked salmon pinwheels, celery and cottage cheese boats, mozzarella and cherry tomato salad, quiche (made with gluten free pastry) and individual prawn cocktails. The mini desserts included meringue nests with strawberries, profiteroles,  lemon tart, chocolate cheesecake and macarons with salted caramel.

It might have been beginners luck but the two variations of gluten free pastry I made were a great success.  I had read horror stories of how difficult the pastry could be to work with and how wet/hard/inedible others had found the end result. The trick seemed to be to start with a slightly wet mixture, let it rest in the fridge and roll it out between two sheets of cling film. The recipe on the Doves Farm Gluten Free Flour packet varied slightly to that on their website so I aimed for somewhere in the middle! For the lemon tart pastry case I added a little sugar and egg yolk to the standard mix. I followed the Doves Farm Choux Pastry recipe to make the profiteroles and was very satisfied with the results. I would defy anyone to tell the difference once they are filled with cream and covered in chocolate!

Piped choux pastry panade

Macarons and meringues are already gluten free so no adaptations were required there. The chocolate cheesecake I made with crushed Asda GF chocolate cookies for the base and a standard cream cheese topping.

Good food, good friends, good times........all gluten free! 

 

Macaron Tower

Ta dah.....

The challenge for my last practical session at college was to produce a stunning centrepiece. Our lecturer suggested a creation in chocolate or sugar but I was keen to try and produce something impressive using macarons. Google images for 'Macaron Tower' and just marvel at the beautiful multi-coloured displays.

There are basically two main ways of presenting the tower - the first is to line up the macarons on their edges and display them on a tiered stand. The downside with this method is the cost of the stand and the vast number of macarons needed........way too expensive. The second method is to display them on a cone using cocktail sticks. After much searching I found the perfect polystyrene cone for about £4 in the fantastic  Watson & Thornton  haberdashery shop in Shrewsbury and I set about planning how many macarons and fondant roses I needed to make. I also found a cheap and cheerful pink glass cake stand in Tiger for the bargain price of £5.

If you read my earlier post on macarons you will realise that they are a bit of a faff to make and I decided that whilst I would make a few on the evening to prove I had the skills to produce the macarons, swiss meringue buttercream and fondant roses I would also have to pre-prepare a whole batch to take with me. The evening session at college is short enough without the fire drill they had arranged for Tuesday evening. Over the course of last weekend I prepared 75 tightly closed sugar roses and 120 macarons (about 3.5cm in diameter) as well as covering the cone and a small chocolate cake with fondant icing. I sandwiched the macarons together with swiss meringue buttercream ending up with 'around' 60 (allowing for a few breakages and taste-ages!).

 

On the assessment evening I made a few roses and a small batch of macarons but spent most of my time nervously assembling the tower. I inserted the cocktail sticks halfway into the cone then carefully positioned the macarons onto the point sticking out - trying not to squash the delicate shells. Half way through I panicked as it was looking a bit of a mess, time was ticking away, the fire drill was imminent and my lecturer was coming back to assess my work. I decided I had to pull them off and start again to get the pattern right. I really hate the sound and feel of polystyrene so did all this with gritted teeth!

I'm glad I did persevere as the finished article certainly had the WOW factor! My tutor was suitably impressed and insisted he take me and my tower on a tour of the college showing it to his chef colleagues and other catering students. It seemed a shame to dismantle it but Dave doesn't have a sweet tooth and although I would have made a valiant effort even I couldn't/shouldn't eat 60 macarons! I left a box at college to be shared out amongst the staff and took the other half into work the following day. They were light and tasty and went down very well. Some colleagues cheekily asked if I had bought them in a shop, with most macarons costing £1.50 to £2 each to buy, the box of 30 I took in would have cost me about £50 - my NHS salary doesn't stretch to gestures like that!!

Macarons on sale in France

So that's it - I have one more week at college to finish the remaining theory. Then my folder and photographic evidence will be assessed and hopefully I will get my NVQ certificate. In July we will leave London and return to Shropshire - I wonder if Shrewsbury is ready for me championing a macaron revolution!

Apple Rose Tarts

You eat with your eyes - so they say.....

Aren't these little apple rose tarts gorgeous to look at? They tasted good too! The tarts featured on a dessert menu I had to develop for one of the units of my Patisserie and Confectionery NVQ Course. The menu needed to have a floral theme and be designed for an establishment catering for visitors to the Chelsea Flower Show.

These tarts are actually relatively easy to make, if a little time consuming, and can be prepared in advance for a stunning dinner party dessert to impress friends. The sweet pastry cases, which do not need blind baking, have a couple of tablespoons of apple custard mixture placed into them and are topped with rolled up apple 'petals'. These are made by cutting red skinned apples into thin semi circular slices and simmering them in apple juice and sugar for about 15 minutes until soft and pliable. After cooling the petals are rolled up and carefully arranged into the tart cases. The pink tinged cooking syrup is further reduced and used to glaze the tart and dress the plate after the tarts have been cooked.

In my virtual restaurant the tarts would be served with a drizzle of syrup on a plain white plate and a small jug of homemade Creme Anglaise.

 

One other dessert on my 'menu' was a daisy shaped meringue shell with mango ice cream and mango fruit coulis. Presentation wise it needed a bit of refinement but it tasted good.

I also created some chocolate tulip shaped shells using small water balloons and tempered white and dark chocolate. Once the chocolate had set the balloons were carefully deflated, filled with chocolate mousse and served with raspberries and raspberry coulis.

Thankfully I have family and friends who don't mind being guineau pigs when it comes to testing my creations and they went down well too! 

  

Danish Pastries

A lazy start to the day with freshly ground coffee and warm danish pastries - sounds good doesn't it?

Problem is though they are quite time consuming to make so while the rest of the family slept soundly I was up at 7am - shaping and filling the danish pastries before proving them for another couple of hours. And that is on top of the three hours preparation the evening before and then resting the dough in the fridge overnight. You can't have a quick freshly made 'danish' fix!!

Danish pastries are made from laminated yeast-leavened dough. Layers of cold butter are introduced into an egg enriched dough by means of a number of folds and turns. I followed the instructions in Paul Hollywood's Bread Book - the photo above shows the recipe page from his book with perfect distinct layers - with my dough in front, with slightly less defined layers! Paul Hollywood has a great website  too with loads of scrummy recipies.

 

Good lamination!!

I made mini croissants, maple & pecan pinwheels, apricot & almond turnovers and raisin cinnamon swirls. The results were very tasty and instantly devoured once my lazy family surfaced! 

Easter treats

It certainly brings it home how cosmopolitan London is when on my course I am the only person whose first language is English. With his 'Equality and Diversity' (chefs) hat on our tutor chose his words carefully last week so as not to offend anyone with a different faith. We would be tempering chocolate and making Easter eggs or "any other moulded shape we liked". 

Tempering chocolate is a technique that hasn't come easily to me but the results are improving. A few weeks ago I went to Squires Kitchen cake decorating exhibition in Farnham and marvelled at the skills of chocolatier Mark Tilling. The demonstration table he stood behind was garden themed, totally edible and completely crafted from chocolate - vegetables, toadstools, flower pots, pebbles, soil and beautiful flowers.

I'm quite concerned my NVQ patisserie course is coming to an end and there are quite a few units we still need to evidence so I decided, as I would be tempering a batch of chocolate anyway, to make a few items showing different skills. In 3 hours I turned out a large hollow egg, some small solid eggs, toffee filled chocolates and decorative chocolate shapes using cocoa butter transfer sheets. Nowhere near as professional looking as Mark Tilling's creations but I'm getting there! Shine and a good snap is the sign of properly tempered chocolate.

Fired up with enthusiasm at home I tempered more chocolate and Lottie and I made pudding - a delicious raspberry mousse in a chocolate case. These are so simple to make and all you need are a few silicone cupcake cases, available in shops like Lakeland. Either brush or spoon the tempered chocolate into the mould and cover all surfaces liberally. Set aside to dry before carefully peeling away the silicone case. Then pipe or spoon in raspberry or chocolate mousse and tuck in. Low calorie they are not, gorgeous they are!!

Lottie and I also made some mini Simnel cakes yesterday, another traditional Easter treat. Earlier in the day Lottie made the almond paste which is used to decorate the top and also forms a layer in the middle of the cake. Together we made the lightly spiced fruit cakes, and decorated them with almond paste and mini eggs. It is traditionally decorated with 11 balls representing Christ's apostles, minus Judas who betrayed him. I never knew historically that there were different types of Simnel cake produced around the country. The one that became most popular was the Shrewsbury Simnel Cake. What a coincidence!  

Photo shoot beautifully set up by Lottie!