Tarts and Tartlets

21June 2009

Hubby has attended cooking workshops "Pasta from Scratch" and "Steaks, Roasted Beef and Sauces" by Cuisine Studio. Hubby's interest is in cooking, whereas mine is in baking. So, he occupies the wet kitchen and I occupy the dry kitchen and we have different interests in different part of our kitchen.

I attended "Tarts and Tartlets" workshop two weeks ago and we learned to make chocolate, lemon and strawberry tarts, inclusive of making almond and chocolate shortcrust.

Chocolate tart in chocolate shortcrust

On Friday, Hubby said he wanted to taste the tarts that I learned and I tried making this yesterday. As I was rushing to serve this for tea for the professionals ie Architect, Interior Designer and Mechanical Engineer at home, the ganache had not set in and cocoa glazing was not fully chilled. The cocoa glazing flowed down from the tart. The presentation was not great but they liked the tart.

I chilled the balance of the tart and had it as after dinner dessert at my auntie house. It looked better and taste better too. I like the orange zest taste and smell which blended well with the chocolate.

Lemon tart on almond shortcrust and chocolate shortcrust

I had hands-on experience in the rolling techniques for this shortcrust. It was a great idea to use the rear of the baking tray to make this tartlets. It looked like a small sauce bowl.

Today, I used the balance of yesterday chocolate shortcrust to make this lemon tartlets. I did not have the tartlets tray and used small spoon as replacement instead.

We had our aunties from Kluang at home. My auntie complemented that the lemon tartlet was nicer than yesterday's chocolate tart and they were very presentable too. They liked the fresh and sourish taste of the lemon tartlets.

Strawberry tart in almond shortcrust

Another favourite with delicious garnishing.

I love the idea of having 3 different types of tart and tartlets using the same shortcrust, either almond or chocolate shortcrust. The best part is we can make the shortcrust pastry in advance, chill it and use it batch by batch. They were easy to make too.