Culinary Agoge

Peach Golden Cake

All indicators today pointed a quiet Thursday night at home, but I wasn’t in the mood to be idle. Pâte à choux is next in my Cooking Through Ratio series, although the thought of making puff pastry with some sort of filling did not seem appealing to me.  After a long day, even the most inspired cook can dread the kitchen at times.

Today was the last day of my sister Ashley’s internship at the company where I work. I wanted to make something simple and yet nice for the occasion. My parents would be arriving to pick her up while also dropping off a new clothes dresser. The pressure was on.

We drove back to my apartment and as we walked up the stairs I had yet to come up with an idea. I checked the mail and to my surprise the first issue of my Gourmet Magazine subscription had arrived. Ashley and I climbed the stairs to my apartment while I eagerly unwrapped the magazine from its plastic cover. As I thumbed the pages, I came across a recipe for Nectarine Golden Cake. It called my name. This is what I would make…well sort of.

The recipe was simple and straightforward and thoroughly enjoyed by everyone.  One thing that I did note was that having the preparation time and elapsed time as part of the recipe made planning and execution easier, defining a key variable. I was less stressed knowing approximately how much time I had.

One of the things I enjoy about cooking and my new found confidence coupled with my increasing knowledge is improvisation. I now view recipes as guides instead of absolutes. To be clear I am referring to ingredients and not the ratio between them. For instance, the recipe calls for nectarines. I have peaches. It also calls for almond extract. Don’t have that. It calls for grated nutmeg. Mine is store bought powder.  You get the idea. The essence of this cake was still there and the result was delicious, pulled out of the oven just in time as my parents arrived.

Confidence and creativity in cooking and life breed success. A year ago my cake could have been store bought. Now with a quick read of a recipe I’m able to make modifications to suit my needs. Creating recipes, now that’s where I want to be.

As easy as 3-2-1; that’s how making pie dough goes when you forget about how difficult everyone says making it is and you focus on the ratio and method. I had one remaining disc from yesterday’s pie dough making to use and today seemed like a great day to use it. I have a work activity tomorrow that my team is sponsoring so in addition to using my remaining disc I also decided to create another batch, but this time of pâte sucrée or dough with the addition of sugar to make both a French Apple Tart and French Peach Tart.

Using the first disc, I created chocolate tarts which consisted of molded dough and chocolate ganache I made by using 2 parts chocolate and 1 part heavy cream (Ruhlman’s book has a ratio for this in the coming chapters so it will be interesting to compare my results). These proved to be harder to make than I anticipated. To create the “cups” for the chocolate, I rolled out the disc and then cut it into squares. Each square was then pinched together with corners touching and molded into a cup. In order to get this done, I split the disc into three equal sections and stored each “batch” in the refrigerator as I worked on the next.

Each time I pulled the tray out for the new cups, I noticed that the previous ones had hardened up in their cup form and were cool to the touch. A good sign.

Pie Dough: Tart Cups

My one mistake with these was to not firm up the last batch of cups in the fridge before I put them into the preheated oven at 325 degrees F. When I took them out after 15 minutes, the ones that were not cooled had flattened out, losing the desired cup shape. Others puffed up with steam, perhaps as a result of me not docking the bakes with a fork. This did not deter me as the final taste would not be affected.

As the cups were baking, I worked on the ganache, bringing 4 ounces of heavy cream to a simmer and then pouring it over a measured 8 ounces of bittersweet chocolate pieces. After the warm cream had melted most of the chocolate, I used the mixer to combine the too into what can be described as pure chocolate decadence.

Using a spoon, the ganache was placed into the successful and not-so-successful cups alike and allowed to cool.

Pie Dough: Chocolate Ganache Tarts

I clearly had made too much of the chocolate ganache which can hardly be viewed as a bad thing unless one is considering diet. Thoughts like this make me wonder how the average amount of weight gained at culinary school can only be 10 pounds as indicated by Chef Roberta during the info session at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. My pants waistlines will have to be my mindful helpers in my desire not to gain weight as I learn the culinary arts.

With one batch of pie dough under my belt, the second batch of dough was a breeze to make in the stand mixer. I poured my ingredients in and in no time had my dough ready to rest and cool in the refrigerator.

Pie Dough: Mixing in my KitchenAid

As the dough cooled, I cut 3 apples and 3 peaches into slices and set them aside. I then rolled out the dough into two rectangles, a task not easy to do when the dough is cold. The peach and apple slices were placed on top as well as a half cup of sugar on top of each and squares of butter and set to bake for 30 minutes. This dough seemed to cook much faster than previous doughs I have made before and actually burned a bit to my disappointment. I wasn’t about to through everything out after all the time I had spent, especially with the rolling and shaping of the dough, and hoped that people wouldn’t mind tomorrow. As the tarts baked, I heated up a cup and a half of apricot jelly with 2tbs of spiced rum and poured this over the tarts as soon as they were pulled out of the oven and left everything to cool.

Pie Dough: Apple Tart

Pie Dough: Peach Tart

With any luck, everything will taste as amazing as it looks. I’ll have to admit, I did taste the chocolate tarts to ensure that they were suitable for consumption. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.