Doing Things My Way - Passionfruit Orange Tartlet

The demonstration and practical class on Friday was all about sweet tart dough. The chef made a variety of tartlets in the demonstration. I love the four inch tart rings; they're adorable and we don't have to painstakingly shape and crimp the dough once it's in the ring.

From bottom up: orange tartlet, chocolate tartlet, lemon tartlet, Brittany apricot tartlet, pear almond tartlet, almond tartlet.

For the practical, we had to make orange tartlets and chocolate tartlets. With the petit four experience from the day before fresh in my head, I was skeptical if these dainty tartlets would be any good. The chocolate was, not surprisingly, boring. The chef had overcooked the tart crust with the soft chocolate cake layer, so the bottom of the tart was quite dry. The tartlet was saved by the creamy chocolate ganache layer on top, but I would have preferred if the ganache had a more pronounced chocolate flavor.

The orange tartlet was surprisingly delicious. The chef had brushed the blind-baked tart shells with eggwash and baked them a second time so they don't turn soggy against the lemon curd, and it really worked! The crisp dough was great against the soft, creamy orange curd within. The caramelized sugar trick on top was neat, although it didn't really add any flavor

The practical was a little bit of a disaster (well, maybe it was a good thing)
because we ran out of time towards the end. The tart shells for the orange tarts had to be pulled out of the oven while it was still under-baked. I didn't want to fill semi-raw tart shells with orange curd (you wouldn't be able to eat it), so I scraped my orange curd in a bowl and took home the shells and curd to cook it myself. Technically it was probably against the rules, but as everyone was scrambling to get out of the kitchen we weren't graded on our final products.

I was originally thinking of adding lime to the (rather bland) orange curd to make it more interesting, but then we stumbled upon passion fruit in the grocery store. I'm a bit obsessive about passion fruit now, but you have to believe me, orange lime passion fruit curd is one of the best things ever.

We served leftovers on soft white cheese for breakfast on Sunday (more on our crazy weekend adventures later). It was one of the most delicious things I've had, um, ever.