Friday we continued with the petits fours, but in tart form! We made Lemon Hazelnut Barquettes and Pistachio Mousseline tarts. We started by making a hazelnut short dough that we were using for both tarts. This was a very soft short dough so it was easy to fit in the tins. We made a lemon curd for the first tarts. All the ingredients went into a pot over a bain marie and were whisked like mad until thick. Meanwhile we made a Swiss meringue. You make this the same way you start a butter cream- whipping egg whites and adding boiling sugar-water. Once the tart shells had baked, we piped the lemon curd first, then topped the curd with the swiss meringue that we later torched (just like a lemon meringue pie)! The reason why this recipe is called a Barquette was because we were supposed to bake the shells in boat shaped tins called Barquettes. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough of these special tins for everyone. For the pistachio mousselines, we started by making a pastry cream, adding a little pistachio paste. Pistachio paste is very strange looking because it is very thick, and a dark forest green. It's weird and smells even weirder. When the pastry cream had cooled, we added a little of the Swiss meringue that we had made before. We painted the inside of the hazelnut tarts with a little chocolate and dipped the rims in ground pistachios. Then the mousseline went in and the tart was topped off with a crystallized pistachio that the instructor had made for us. I must say that both tarts looked impressive and although they were quite a bit of work, they looked and tasted good. My favourite was the lemon curd and meringue tart. I love lemon curd...
The bad news is that I brought these tarts home the same day I brought the petits fours cakes home and they also suffered during the car ride. It's not that I was driving like a crazy woman, it was that the boxes kept shifting whenever I would take a turn...Oops! Again!