Easter 1973

Well, “My, my, my” and a few “I declares” as well.  It’s a sultry, sitting under the old Magnolia, sipping a mint julep and talking about long lost beaus with Blanch Devereaux kind of day.  The late April rains are producing the moist atmosphere that plants adore and the rest of us sit around waving our fans back and forth in front of our faces to keep the air moving and minimize perspiration stains on our cotillion gowns.  But if the plants are happy, I’m happy!

I wait with baited breath every year for this part of April to come around, the part where spring blooms are in full swing and the world looks as painted as the eggs we decorate for Easter.  Even in the city, I can’t walk down an avenue or side street without the greeting of flowers suspended on heavily drooping bows, laden with pink and white.  Washington Square Park is blazing in a glory of sunshine and hot pavement inspiring everyone to lie down on the shaded grass and sit a spell.  The leaves sprouting around the flowers are acid green, chartreuse, and the freshest lime imaginable, only to be seen for a few short weeks before maturing to a deeper pre-summer color. 

I openly admit to having a love affair with this time of year.  The world seems new and strange once more, a place washed clean by rain and decked out with flowers as far as the eye can see.  Everyone seems to be breathing again with the feeling that “we made it through another one”…winter that is.  Even those folks who don’t care to garden are purchasing cut flowers at the corner deli to put on their desks and gaze upon fondly with a smile.  Fire escapes are taking on mounded form and function with the addition of plastic pots with hyacinths and tulips, later giving way to a few pepper, tomato and herb plants when things really start to heat up.

This rite of passage, this survival of winter turned celebration never gets old to me.  I find if anything, my fondness for spring grows stronger each year along with the excessive number of plants I order, trying to squeeze into an already over-burdened garden.   Purchasing plants at gardening centers and online plant retailers is an addiction I can’t shake, and one that isn’t helped out by all the brightly colored growth happening around me.  I want more, more, more!!!  Luckily, plants aren’t that expensive and can easily fit somewhere into my grand scheme of a garden.  Come hell or high water I will find a place to nudge in the latest and greatest specimen to catch my eye from the lovely, glossy pages of gardening catalogues.  With plants, I feel like I’m purchasing art supplies. 

The metaphor of the garden as a canvas is an old one, but as someone who really enjoys working with color (whether it be in design, food or plants) going to the nursery gives me the sensation of standing in the art supply store looking at all the tubes of acrylic paint, swatches of the hidden hues casually swiped across the label.  There is a certain smell to those stores, one of clay and chalk and oils…a smell that inspires me to make something.  The possibilities for creation are endless (and at times overwhelming), but when you find that perfect shade of red or purple you had in your head, the magic begins, a plan takes shape and you know what you are going to do.  The same holds true for flowers and the fragrant smell of soil.  

                Mitzvah trucks on their Passover mission in NYC


All of these color choices appear in our Easter celebration as well.  It’s the first observed holiday to occur in tandem with the growth outside, and it’s no wonder we borrow so much from what we see outdoors and transfer it to the ovoid shape of the egg.  Every year I choose a different palette, somewhat restrained because I have a hard time looking at too many colors of eggs gathered together at once…purely my own ascetic.  I find it nice to stick to one or two colors at the most and achieve a range of monochromatic color through different dying techniques. 

This year, in honor of Siena’s green dress, I went with a green theme (with a couple of pink eggs thrown in simply because I couldn’t help myself).  I saw a dying technique used by Martha Stewart where the eggs are dyed once and allowed to dry, then dyed a second time in colors that have had olive oil added to them.  The oil adheres to the side of the eggshell and doesn’t allow the new color to seep in, leaving what appear to be watermarks of the first color all along the shell.  I thought it was quite pretty.  Siena was fascinated by the colors and watched on with her large brown eyes as I held her with one arm and continued to color eggs with the other.  She’s too young to remember the experience, but I’m not.

As I was dying the eggs I began to wonder (as I often do) why we color them in the first place…and where did the whole idea of an egg-laying bunny come into play?  The pagans generally get these things started with their worship of nature and the world around them (those darn, pesky pagans).  This time of year coincides with the Vernal (Spring) Equinox, formerly held as a New Year celebration in some cultures, getting us into a joyous frame of mind. The appearance of eggs at the party certainly relate to fertility. 

During this time of year all the animals have become twitter-pated, starting their new families while frolicking about the wood and glade.  Bunnies are no strangers to reproduction and have been closely associated with frequent sexual encounters due to their fertile abilities.   The idea of the Osterhas, or hare came to the United States with German settlers to the Pennsylvania Dutch area of our country. Akin to Christmas, the tradition holds that children would build brightly colored nests to be filled by Osterhas with toys and goodies for good boys and girls on what would become Easter morning.  But bunnies aren’t the only prolific reproducers out in the field.  Flowers are in abundance in every shade imaginable.  Taking nature as inspiration and ingredient, dyes can be made to color those abundant eggs and celebrate the palette found outside our windows.  It’s funny how things potentially evolve, isn’t it?

This is obviously only one take on things.  The Christian religion also has it’s own associations with the egg and color.  Jesus’ resurrection is linked to the egg, a living being hiding inside a shell (rising from the tomb) and many eggs used to be dyed red to represent his blood. Eggs were also in abundance at this time of year because they were forbidden foodstuffs during Lent in some forms of Christianity.  Whatever the real reason behind the Easter tradition (there are obviously many potential components to this story) it’s something fun to do with or for your kids and a good way to spend time together developing those hide and seek skills.  Just make sure you find all the eggs the same day you hid them otherwise your house or yard may start to get ripe awfully fast.

Collecting all this input I decided to go for an all out Easter extravaganza by way of coloring eggs, buying lots of chocolate and of course baking!  Since this was Siena’s first Easter celebration I wanted to make it a special one with an egg filled basket and a cake shaped like none other than the magical, egg laying Easter Bunny himself…is the Easter Bunny a boy???  I have mentioned the Cut-Up Cake Party Book a couple of times in the past with regard to a cake shaped like a daisy and more recently as basic inspiration for my Sunshine Shortbread.  What I love about the book is it’s simple instructions for creating very fun, kid themed cakes.  Anyone can make the cakes in this book.  No fancy equipment is needed (although I can’t live without my Kitchen Aid stand-mixer). The only requirement is patience and a few hours in which to create your masterpiece.

There are many, many ideas in this cookbook, all involving the use of coconut as a decoration.  For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why so much coconut was being used other than the copyright reads 1973 and maybe coconut was all the rage.  Then I realized finally that the company who makes the book is called Baker’s, the same people who to this day make the packages of chocolate and flaked coconut you find in the baking isle of the grocery store.  Ding!!  (That’s the sound of a light bulb going off in my head, or an oven timer if you prefer).  Now it makes sense, and I don’t have to assume ’73 was a free wheeling year of coconut love-ins.  It was 2 years before I was on the scene, so I don’t recall exactly what was going on at the time.

Of the many cute cakes in the book, there were two obvious choices to help celebrate Easter…both were bunnies.  One is listed as being easier than the other, the bust of a bunny versus doing a whole bunny with arms and legs.  I chose to do the head with the bowtie for time’s sake, and because it has a simpler, cleaner look than the full body.  The other thing to consider is the platter you have on hand.  Once you start cutting up these cakes and laying out the pieces they can become quite large.   A regular serving platter, one you might use to serve your turkey at Thanksgiving, will accommodate the simpler bunny head cake.

Another thing I like about this book is you can use whatever cake recipe you want.  They give several recipes for cakes, frosting and decorating techniques, but after looking at them you quickly see the basic building blocks, a springboard if you will, to take these fundamentals and use them in any manner of creative ways.  I have a favorite cake recipe out of Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook, a moist, sour cream and lemon cake I come back to time and again.  There is nothing fancy about this cake, just simple to make and delicious.  All the ingredients go into one mixing bowl without any additional steps such as separately whipping egg whites to incorporate at the end (a step often used to create a lighter cake).  This cake is moist, firm and perfect for use in any stacked or cut-up cake.  You will only need two 8-inch cakes to make the bunny, but the cake recipe makes enough for two 9-inch pans.  I was able to measure out the batter into two 8-inch pans and placed the extra batter in a 6-inch pan.  The 6-inch cake can be used for experimentation with cutting or decorating, or simply devouring.  The recipe is as follows:

Lemon Cake (from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook) 

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans

1 1/2 cups cake flour (not self-rising)

1-tablespoon baking powder

1/2-teaspoon salt

1-cup sour cream or crème fraiche

Finely grated zest of 2 lemons (about 2 tablespoons)

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 1/2 lemon)

2 cups sugar

4 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Butter two 9-by-2-inch round cake pans; line the bottoms with parchment paper.  Butter parchment, and dust with flour, tapping out excess; set aside.  Into a medium bowl, sift together the flours, baking powder, and salt; set aside.  In a small bowl, combine sour cream with lemon zest and juice; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 1 minute.  Add sugar, and continue beating until light and fluffy, 4 to 5 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition.

With the mixer on lowest speed, add the flour mixture in four parts, alternating with the sour cream mixture and beginning and ending with the flour mixture; beat until just combined, being careful not to overmix.

Divide batter between prepared pans, and smooth with an offset spatula.  Bake, rotating pans halfway through, until cakes are golden and pull away from the sides of pan, and a cake tester inserted in the centers comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes.  Transfer pans to a wire rack to cool 20 minutes.  Run a knife or thin metal spatula around edges of the pans.  Invert cakes onto the rack; peel off the parchment.  Reinvert cakes and let them cool completely, top sides up.

Baker’s company uses seven-minute frosting for all of its cakes.  I assume the coconut sticks quite nicely to the glossy white frosting.  Although it has great flavor I was in the mood for a different frosting, the most basic and primal frosting I know…the illustrious and sinful buttercream.  This particular recipe is the most basic, basic, basic of buttercreams using only butter, confectioner’s sugar and vanilla.  The coconut sticks to this frosting without any problems and you can even add food coloring to it if you are looking for a stronger color.   Most of the color on the cakes’ (from the Cut-Up book) is achieved through mixing water, food coloring and coconut together creating tinted coconut.  This is how the pink on the bunny ears was created and I thought it a nice, if not strange 70’s day-glow touch.

Several people mentioned to me how they had similar cakes to the coconut rabbit as children.  Even my mom mentioned having made such cakes when I was a kid.  The look is certainly of the time, more often than not cakes are now streamlined to within an inch of their life for the sake of modernity, but I love the rustic look of this.  The coconut is creepy in it’s resemblance to fur and the jelly beans and string licorice used to decorate the face and bowtie reminded me of items you would find in big glass jars behind the counter of a small town drugstore in the 1950’s. 

I recall my friend Andrea’s mother, Emily, made these cakes for her kids when they were growing up.  She is the one who turned me onto the Baker’s book in the first place, and I liked it so much I had to get a copy of my own.  Andrea must still be feeling the celebratory vibe found in animal shapes because she too made animals last week, in this case pig cupcakes for her son Finn’s first birthday party.  It seems as if we are on the same wavelength with our children and mammal pastry.   The pigs were adorable!

What is it about animals that naturally insert themselves into kid’s themes?  You name it, from clothes to room décor to desserts and everything in between, there isn’t an animal that doesn’t find it’s way into kid related items.  Undoubtedly, there is some animal-human empathy occurring on a primal level, which in turn finds exploitation in the commercial world (a marketing guy/gal is smiling devilishly somewhere), something along the line of kittens and monkeys tugging at our heartstrings because of their fragility not unlike a baby.  (Buy something) Plus, animals are quite often furry, cuddly and squeezable…also like a baby.  (Buy something) Easter bunnies and chicks notwithstanding, who doesn’t love the innocence of a fresh spring newborn with wonder in their eyes?  (BUY SOMETHING ALREADY!!!)

I don’t have the scientific answer to these questions, but I have a feeling I’m going to be making animal themed treats rather often in the near future…after Siena gets some teeth that is.  For now I’ll contentedly eat her Easter cake as she looks on in wonderment.  It’s just who I am.

Feel The Burn

It’s a beautiful day here at Fabulous Pastries, one of those accidentally 80 degree-days occurring in April; the wish for warmth has finally been granted and we are free to expose our skin once more.  Out in Washington Square Park the dogwoods and magnolias have started to bloom, bursting forth in pinks and whites, showy but still elegant, the Jazz band has started up with a little Coltrane…fantastic.  Impossibly thin NYU students (desperately in need of a slice of cake or two) are carefully posed out on the lawn, wearing very little, pretending it’s July and trying to jump from the pale skin of winter to a summer burn.  I’m not so different from them, minus the overtly thin part.  You can’t make pastries without having a little extra love on your handles.

The first week of April brings my birthday front and center.  As I get older I’m not so inclined to celebrate with loud vigor.  I’m opting for a more quiet, sedate observation of the passage of time.  36 isn’t old by any means, but for me it marks the crossing over from the 18-35 box on the surveys and has the tiniest amount of sting to it.  My birthday felt different this year, maybe because of the dad factor.  It feels as if I’m grown up in some fundamental way I couldn’t conceive before.  I suppose I was subject to Peter Pan syndrome like so many before me, but having the responsibility of taking care of a small person has shaken me up a bit and woken me from my reverie…and this isn’t such a bad thing.

The best birthday present I could have gotten was Siena.  Beyond that, everything else seems like a really great accessory or a fun distraction from her.  The smiles and laughs she has started giving are music to my ears.  I can be in the worst possible mood and all she has to do is flash that big, toothless grin and everything seems better again.  It’s like she is the perfect drug, and a healthy habit to form at that.  The most special gift she gave, of course, was a full diaper paired with a smile.

On the order of other fabulous gifts, Brian made me cupcakes!!!  It’s rare that anyone ever makes pastries for me, and I understand why.  I’ve become known as the guy that makes the desserts.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t like to have a special plateful of butter and sugar placed in front of my face by others.  In fact, it is something I absolutely adore and made getting cupcakes baked for me so special…not to mention they were darn good.

Brian was smart in his choice, going straight for a Martha Stewart recipe including my ultimate favorite, lemon curd.  Those tart and sweet morsels of curd, slathered on a cake or an old shoe send me straight to my happy place.  When I found out he was making them I was really, very excited.  I know he wanted to surprise me, but since we are alternating care of a three-month old and have one smallish kitchen, I was bound to find out what he was up to.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes are no small feat.  They seem simple, more simple sounding than cake, but in reality they are complex in a different way if you are trying to make something beautiful.  They are on par with cutting out lots of sugar cookies in my opinion.  The setup is straightforward, but you have to perform several repetitive tasks to complete them.  With a cake, you are only frosting one large piece, but decorating cookies and cupcakes generally requires decorating dozens.  The cupcake batter itself is easy, these cakes were particularly good because of all the lemon zest and buttermilk used, and the curd is to die for.  But what makes these cupcakes really standout is the piped seven-minute frosting that goes on top.

I don’t often pipe frostings.  It’s something I need to get better at.  I’ve seen piping done so many times on television and no one ever seems to have a nervous breakdown.  The key is knowing how to fill the bag without making a mess (fold the top portion of the bag over while filling), guiding with your dominant hand and squeezing out the frosting with your other hand.  Brian made all the components for these cupcakes, but let me pipe and “torch” the meringue frosting as a special treat.  He got me a butane torch as a gift and I couldn’t wait to try it out!

What is man’s fascination with fire?  The act of setting anything on fire, the power it inspires, the smells are all mesmerizing.  I don’t know how many times we’ve sat out in the backyard with the fire-pit blazing, endlessly staring, poking and prodding the fire as the hours whittled away.  Using a butane torch has this magical quality, but also has a similar effect to that of an airbrush.  Essentially you are painting with fire.   Because of the star tip used to pipe the frosting there were raised areas in the snowy mounds.  With a light touch of the flame, the sugary whites became a luscious caramel brown, leaving a white relief contrasting with the darker burn.  The burning sugar produces smoke, and flames up a bit if you’re not careful, leaving the kitchen smelling like fresh made caramels.

I could think of nothing better to get from Brian than a dessert made with love, and the opportunity to photograph said dessert.  Half the fun baking, for me, is taking the photos.  I like nothing more than to step out into the golden afternoon light, armed with a macro lense and set to work trying to capture the end product of a fun baking experience.  Photographing these towering meringues atop lemony goodness were no different for me than if I’d made them myself, and from time to time it’s nice to take a weekend off from being in the kitchen.

I’m lucky because we celebrated my birthday week instead of just the actual day.  When your birthday falls in the middle of the week it’s kind of a drag.  We started off Sunday by going to The Cookery with Izabella, Jonathan and Mia.  The Cookery is one of our favorite restaurants in Westchester, and we’ve never had a bad meal there.  The menu is rustic Italian, but with a gastro pub flair; lots of cured and smoked meats and cheeses, wood fired breads doused in the most delicious olive oil, pastas and meats are the specialty, but the “Slab-o-butter Pie was to die for.  It was the dessert special of the day and I’ve never had anything quite like it.  The “pie” for all intents and purposes seemed like a cross between a moist milk cake and the buttery, crunchy topping often found on a cobbler.  Every bite was sin, through and through and I would commit that sin over and over again if permitted, unashamed.

As we moved toward the actual day of my birth, Brian and Siena came into the city to celebrate with me for lunch and then come to the dessert party we had at my office.  My friend Sara certainly knows how to take care of me and had not only one cake, but four.  She had stopped by Sweet Melissa Patisserie in Brooklyn that morning and procured the most delicious strawberry-rhubarb pie, a bread pudding, a chocolate cake and a lemon meringue pie to gild the lily.  I think everyone is clearly aware of my baking passion and wasn’t surprised to see all the desserts.  My passion for lemon meringue/curd is legendary.

I think I like lemon so much because of my grandmother.  I remember, every other weekend when I would visit my dad as a kid, we would go to my grandparent’s house for lunch on Sunday.  Grandma Pansy (yes, that was her name) would go all out for these meals, generally Midwestern/Southern fare like brown beans and cornbread smothered in onions and mayonnaise, or kielbasa simmered in barbecue sauce with mashed potatoes.  There were always black olives on hand because apparently as a small child I loved to put them on the ends of my fingertips and proudly walk around the kitchen before devouring them.  The best, and point of this tangent was her lemon meringue pie.  It was simply amazing.  Unfortunately I don’t have her particular recipe for it, but it has definitely inspired in me many years (and many pounds added to my backside) of lemon curd happiness.

By the time my birthday was properly done you would think I would have had my fair share of sugar shock, but no, for me there is never enough.  I got some great books as presents, and two of them became the inspiration for this week’s dessert:  Grapefruit Brulee Tart.  I’ve been threatening to get back to basics with my pastry, get back to dealing with fundamentals and working on a solid base so that I’ll eventually be better able to develop recipes.  A book I’ve had on my wish list forever has been the Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts from the French Culinary Institute.  I took the amateur pastry course there in 2007 and have always wanted to go back and take the full pastry course.  Unfortunately this costs as much as a master’s degree and requires a full time, 6 month commitment, neither thing I am in a luxurious position to do at this time.  The next best thing, I’m hoping, is this book.

It starts off with the fundamentals of working in a professional kitchen, from uniform and sanitation habits to different methods for chopping, slicing and dicing.  The book gets into the nitty gritty scientific properties of ingredients describing how they function together to make the perfect French dessert.  These are very interesting things to me because I don’t know the hard facts behind baked goods as much as I know flavor profiles.  It’s these bare bones facts that will allow me to create original desserts instead of following someone else’s recipe. 

The book breaks things down in a similar fashion to the way my school course did, starting out with tarts. Three basic tart doughs are covered including the most common: pate brisee (literally translated as “broken” dough, describing it’s layered appearance).  I find I use this dough more than any other to achieve a buttery, flakey crust.  The other two are pate sucree (sugar dough) and pate sablee (shortbread dough).  A discussion ensues into the different elements comprising the dough, but good tart dough generally has flour, fat, liquid and salt.  Different combinations of butter, oil, water, sugars and flour types will produce different textures and shades of golden deliciousness in the final product.

In general a combination of all-purpose flour and cake flour will give the equivalent flour type to that found in France (this suits our purposes in reproducing the delicate French pastries).  Cake flour has less protein and therefore develops less gluten…the protein strands that hold the dough together, but can make it tough if over developed…this is why you never over-mix dough!!!!  It’s also important to let the dough rest and relax from an hour to twenty-four hours in the refrigerator…also helping to minimize gluten development.  Our goal is always a well-made tart shell both delicate and light.

I started out by creating pate sucree dough, the shell of this week’s tart. 

Pate Sucree

250 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature

125 grams confectioners’ sugar

3 large eggs, at room temperature

500 grams cake flour

1/2-teaspoon baking powder

Prepare your mise en place.  (Get all your ingredients ready)

Place the butter in the bowl of a standing electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.  Add the sugar and beat of low to just combine.  Raise the speed to medium-high and beat until the mixture is light and creamy.

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.  (Do not add them too quickly or the mixture will separate.  If separation occurs, continue mixing until the mixture comes back together.  If it does not homogenize after a period of mixing, add just a spoonful of flour to encourage the process.)

When the eggs are well incorporated, turn off the motor and add the cake flour and baking powder all at once.  Return the machine to slow speed and, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, beat until the flour is just incorporated.  Do not over-mix.

Using the spatula, scrape the dough from the bowl.  Gather the dough together and form it into a disk.  Wrap the disk in plastic film and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes or up to 1 week before rolling it into the shape required.  The dough may also be wrapped and frozen for up to 3 months.

Tips:

If all ingredients are at room temperature, the dough will come together quicker and easier.  This dough may be used for both tart shells and cookies.  Any dough scraps may be re-rolled, but the dough will be slightly tougher.

Evaluating your success:

The dough should be light yellow.  The ingredients should be completely homogenized.  The dough should roll out easily with no cracking.  The dough should be tender and crumbly when baked.

I was inspired by one of the other books I received for my birthday:  Martha Stewart’s Pies and Tarts.  The colorful photos are mouth watering and I immediately wanted to make everything I saw.  The problem is most of what I was seeing were tarts with elements not quite in season.  I’m so ready for May to get here so I can move on from my ongoing citrus theme (though truth be told I never get tired of citrus desserts) and into something fresh like strawberries and rhubarb.  But, I digress once more…

I found a Caramelized Lemon Tart that called for our old friend lemon curd, but I had to throw my hands up at that and cry, “enough!”  With my goal being continued recipe experimentation and learning I took a cue from last month’s shortbread exploration and went the route of grapefruit.  I couldn’t recall ever having had a grapefruit tart, let alone one that gets bruleed (burned with my new torch), so off I went to the store to pick up a few ingredients and get my dough made, refrigerated and ready to role out for the next day.

Marty's Grapefruit Tart (based on Martha Stewart’s Caramelized Lemon Tart)

All-purpose flour, for dusting

1/2 recipe Pate Sucree

6 large egg yolks

Finely grated zest of 2 pink grapefruit

1/2-cup fresh grapefruit juice (from one large grapefruit)

1-cup plus 2 to 3 tablespoons sugar

1/2-cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

One drop of red food coloring.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4 inch thick.  Press into bottom and up sides of a 9-inch fluted tart pan with removable bottom.  Pierce bottom of shell all over with a fork.  Trim excess dough flush with rim.  Refrigerate or freeze until firm, about 30 minutes.

Line shell with parchment, fill with pie weights or dried beans.  Bake shell until edges just turn golden, about 15 minutes.  Remove weights and parchment; bake until golden brown, 10 to 12 minutes more.  Let cool completely on a wire rack.

Whisk together yolks, zest, juice, and 1-cup sugar in a heavy saucepan.  Bring to a simmer, whisking constantly.  Cook until mixture is thickened, and bubbles appear around edges, 8 to 10 minutes.  Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl.  Whisk in butter, once piece at a time, until completely smooth and mix in the food coloring.  Pour filling into crust.  Refrigerate, uncovered, until set, about 2 hours.

Just before serving, sift remaining 3 tablespoons sugar evenly over top of filling.  Carefully caramelize sugar with a handheld kitchen torch (or under a broiler) until deep amber.  Tart is best eaten the day it is made, but can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 1 day.

Garnish with candied grapefruit slices.

I liked using the French Culinary book because everything is measured out in grams.  We learned to do that in school, using a digital scale it’s quite easy.  Everything is precise, no second-guessing about fluffing up the flour before measuring the scoop or going a little over or under on the liquid measurements by accident.  No guessing = no worrying.

The one thing I learned this week of import was the tip about incorporating eggs into your dough.  I’ve always mixed them in one at a time, letting them incorporate (or what I thought was incorporated) and scraping down the sides of the bowl, but sometimes I notice the batter separates a bit in terms of being able to see the liquids and solids (not homogenous) and looking a bit grainy.  I’ve always gone on my merry way with adding the other ingredients allowing everything to come together with the flour in the end.  This is incorrect.  It’s important to keep mixing the eggs until the dough comes back together and to add just a touch of flour to encourage binding if it doesn’t want to do so on it’s own.  This will result in a more smooth and harmonious dough leading to the texture you are after.  It all comes down technique and either the texture of your pastry is right, or it isn’t.  The taste might still be good, but the consistency will be wrong.  The French are sticklers for their rules. 

I have a tendency to like rules.  They bring order out of chaos in everything from work to baked goods and following a few basic steps mingled with understanding the “how’s” and “why’s” of pastry will help me to become a better cook.  Also, my ability to explain what I’m doing in a fashion similar to that of a Food Network host for Siena will help to reiterate my new found knowledge.  This week she helped me to work on the grapefruit portion of the tart learning about grapefruit themselves, the process of zesting and also the things to look for when buying fruit in the market…you know, things like how they should smell and to avoid blemishes.  She also learned how to separate eggs in the most efficient manner and her eyes seemed to light up at the glowing yellow balls of yolky sunshine in my hands…or maybe I’m fantasizing again.

The pate sucree recipe makes enough for two tarts, so I split the dough in two and saved one portion for another time.  I found when I rolled out the remaining half I still had a enough for both a nine inch tart and several small tartlets.  I didn’t have enough filling for the smaller tarts, but I did have a jar of strawberry preserves on hand.  I took the preserves and cooked them over medium heat for about 5 minutes, until thin enough to pour.  I put the liquid through a strainer then filled the baked tart shells with the strawberry preserves.  This will work for pretty much any jam or jar of preserves you might have on hand, and is a quick solution if you happen to have tart dough on hand but not enough time to make a filling.  You can go from dough to complete tart in under an hour.

This was definitely a week for curds and burning, both things I love.  The range of color you can achieve with a little fruit juice, some eggs and a drop of two of food coloring are dazzling, and pair that with a butane torch for caramelization and you are up and running for crunchy, sweet treats with complex flavor.  You can also use the torch to light the candles on your birthday cake or to safely melt them down to nothing, successfully preserving your age from prying friends, family and coworkers.  I’m proud of my age, so I would never do such a thing, but that doesn’t mean I have to act it.  I would prefer to act Siena’s age, 3 months, somehow I feel like I could get away with a lot more.  All I need to do is smile and giggle and bat my big eyelashes to get what I want…wait, I do that anyway.  It’s just who I am.