Pastry


 * Rich Tart Pastry - Pâte Brisée**

Pastry dough doesn't like me. It never has, but I thought that pastry was something that I should try at least once. So I dove in and got my hands dirty. First I rubbed the butter in with my fingers. Then I added an egg yolk and water. It sounds weird but I do love separating eggs with my hands. Next I tried fraisage, an interesting technique I had never heard of before. It involved rubbing the dough with the heel of my hand to ensure the butter was thoroughly incorporated.

After chilling the dough, I rolled it out between two sheets of wax paper. The pastry didn't stick to the wax paper too bad. But my trouble really started when I tried to bake my pastry before filling it. I lined my crust with aluminum foil weighed down with uncooked rice. Which turned out to be a big mistake; I think I should have used wax paper instead. Because the sides of the crust browned up nicely while the bottom stayed white and soggy. My crust had me scared for a while there. But then I took the foil out of the middle of the crust and wrapped it around the sides of the crust. This let the middle cook and eventually brown while the sides only got slightly browner.

So I had a gorgeous --- okay, only slightly burnt --- pâte brisée but it was empty. So I made a chocolate filling. Just chocolat chips and whipping cream. But I made too much. //That's okay// I thought //I'll just pour in all of the filling. The edges of the pie tin will hold the filling in until it sets up.// But it didn't work out like I thought. Apparently the crust shrunk more than I realized when I pre-baked it. So the extra filling spilled over the edge of the crust and down under the edges.

It was extremely messy, but I eventually got it cleaned up and presentable looking. But not presentable looking enough to give away. So I let my family eat it. It was okay. The crust was not crisco-flaky, but it was good in its own way. I thought the filling to crust ratio was a little off. But that's just the way the cookie ( or pâte brisée ) crumbles.


 * Chocolate Cream Puffs - Choux Pastry**

I found a type of pastry that isn't too hard! Not your typical "pie crust" pastry, the batter for choux pastry is cooked first over the stove, then in the oven. First I heated the water and real butter. I had to send my dad to the store to get real butter because Mom didn't think we needed real butter when we had margarine in the freezer. Next, I mixed in the flour and cooked the whole mixture for a few minutes. It kind of reminded me of cooking the roux for gravy. Then, I beat in the eggs. At first the eggs didn't want to mix in, which had me worried. But they eventually mixed in, and then the dough was really yellow. Then I used a ? to make perfect, round cream puffs.

When you bake the choux pastry in the oven, it puffs up beautifully. All tall and round but hollow inside. Then you can fill it. I filled mine with a thick chocolate pudding mixture. To make the filling, I didn't use the recipe in James Beard's cookbook. Instead, I used a recipe for filling eclairs that I found in Bon Appetit. First, I heated the cocoa powder and milk. Next, I mixed egg yolks with flour and sugar. Then I whisked the hot milk mixture into the egg yolk mixture. Which is the hardest part, I always get little, tiny, cooked egg lumps. I cooked the filling a little bit longer, then I mixed in chocolate chips. What a delicious pudding filling!

But since I wasn't taking the cream puffs to school until the next day (and I ended up forgetting them, so it was more like the two days later) and I didn't want them to get soggy, I didn't fill them right away. So Tuesday, I brought a box of empty cream puffs and a pastry bag of chocolate filling to school. I was worried I wouldn't have enough filling, but I had plenty. In fact I had leftover filling, which made a delicious lunch!