For this half block, we made pastries that were 2-3 the size of mignardise, but they were pretty similar to make, with the same attention to detail and delicacy for each.  Usually, though, these have more moisture, so they’ll only last 1-2 days, while mignardise can last up to a week.

Clockwise, White Chocolate Mousse Barquettes, Chocolate Meringues, French Tartlettes, Cashew Dacquoise.

I liked the White Chocolate Mousse Barquettes for their bold shape, which has an uncanny resemblance to a penguin for me, and they were as unwieldy to make as their shape suggests. A short dough is mold and baked in a small mold, and then filled with a white chocolate mousse to the top of the crust. Then, whipped cream is piled on top, and you run a small offset spatula at a severe angle on both sides to get that V-shape on top. Then, you’re supposed to dip one side into chocolate so that it doesn’t go on the crust at all. The neutral taste of this one doesn’t live up to the method, but one group made a passionfruit one that was great, and I think that this design has possibilities — I think that even just a fruit compote in the middle instead of the white choc mousse would be an improvement.

I used to love the way that meringue cookies sweetly dissolved on my tongue, but nowadays, straight up meringue is too hard and sweet for me. So the Chocolate Meringues — with two huge hard meringues — were a bit too much, and I think unwieldy to eat. If anything, they should be open-faced, the meringues should be partially baked so they’re creamy inside, or they should be the size of, say, mini-ritz crackers.

The French Tartlettes are very nice — they have a cooked, small dice dried fruit filling kicked up with brandy and lemon, and a streusel topping; they’d be perfect around the holidays. They only tricky thing is that they are fully baked in their metal molds, so it’s impossible to really know when the crust is really done on the bottom when they’re in the oven; they can be a bit dark on the sides and golden on top, but not necessarily golden on the bottom. We just used the suggested 18-19 minutes as our guide.

I like that the Cashew Dacquoise uses my favorite nut, but they were rolled in broken up hazelnuts at the end; if I’d had more time, I’d have toasted and ground up cashews to use instead. They have two cashew dacquoise discs surrounded by a coffee extract flavored whipped cream. The cream was at the edge of fine (whipping-wise) in the bowl, but once it was spread, it looked pretty curdled; the French tip used to pipe the rosette on top only made it worse. At least it still tastes fine. They are supposed to be dusted with cocoa through a polka dot mold, but that overall effect was too jester-style for me, so I just did did the more sedate half circle design, with a long ruler balanced over a line of pastries in the sheet pan as I sifted cocoa powder over.

A Caramelized Apple & Calvados Diplomat Cream Napoleon. This was great — creamy and crispy and fruity and and cinnamon-y. Diplomat Cream is made by incorporating gelatin and whipped cream into pastry cream (similarly, Bavarian Cream is made by incorporating gelatin and whipped cream into creme anglaise). Mine was nicely loose and luscious, and it was fun to eat this as it fell apart into something a delicious mess.

We made Quick Puff Pastry (aka Blitz Puff Pastry, aka Puff the Magic Pastry) for this, which has become something that seems convenient to just throw together. Unlike the traditional Puff Pastry method, in which a butterblock is rolled between dough, and then rolled out and folded numerous times over many hours, the Quick Puff is made at first more like a pie dough — butter is cubed and mixed with flour and salt before water is added to almost hold it together. Its raggedly self is then turned out onto a table, rolled to 1/2″, and then then folded into thirds twice about every 20 mins; by the end, it’s a smooth dough. Of course, at school, this is easy to do on the work tables; at home, perhaps more of a mess. But it tastes soooo much better than that frozen stuff they sell in supermarkets. And with Plugra butter, it’s even better.

Othello (left) and Coffee Bean (right). These are both filled with flavored with pastry cream and topped with flavored fondant. The dough is made with a separation foaming method (like ladyfingers) so it’s quite dry but very sweet from the topping and filling.

Chocolate Roulade with Vanilla Buttercream (top) and Lemon Roulade with Lemon Buttercream (bottom). What was cool about these was that they were glazed with melted buttercream; which is a lot faster and easier than spreading it with a spatula. We used Italian Meringue Buttercream for this, which is a bit too solid butter-y for me, but the lemon curd helped the brighten the flavor and loosen the buttercream a bit. Also, the chocolate roulade was made with a Flourless Chocolate Sponge, so it was gluten-free; it has egg whites, yolks, sugar, and cocoa powder. It’s very susceptible to over-mixing, though, so it could turn out chewy.

Chocolate Coconut Torte. We made the thin Jaconde Sponge the day before, which had ground blanched almonds in it and we used a thick chocolate tuile cookie batter for the design part. I just did random Jackson Pollock work, but one very cool one had stripes in the sponge and then the chocolate on top was piped into a spiral so that it sprung down when placed on the rosette. This was filled with chocolate mousse and then coconut mousse and then a coconut mirror glaze (just a gelatin coating flavored with Monin syrup); they were each assembled in a piece of PVC pipe and each component had to set before the next was added. And yes, we had to temper chocolate for the top garnish.

We also made regular Napoleons, which I’ll get to in my Practical post.

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