Apple & cinnamon tartlets (tartelettes)

Its great to be working from home.  I've been doing that the past week as the office is closed for renovations and its been fantastic!  I can enjoy my morning coffee and breakfast without having to rush out of the house to catch the bus.  I make conference calls, check emails and work on materials in between a little bit of bloomberg tv time (keeping in touch with market news) and kitchen time (making myself lunch & snacks).  

The only downside is my meal times gets a little mixed up.  Lunch time is bascially "whenever I feel hungry" instead of the usual 12.30pm at the office.  And one evening when Herr Scherrer had a night out with the guys while I stayed in, on a strange whim I had apple & cinnamon tartelettes for dinner. =P

Given it was an impromptu decision I was glad to have some leftover pâte brisée in the fridge which was just nice for a couple of tartelettes.  I sliced up some apples while resting the rolled out dough in mini tart pans in the fridge for 30 minutes.  Tossed the apples in some lemon juice, sprinkled over sugar and cinnamon and it was good to go!

Recipe below makes 4 tartelettes

For the pâte brisée:

250g cake flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

125g cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

65ml cold water

For the filling:

4 small to medium size apples

sugar & ground cinnamon (to taste)

2 tsp lemon juice

Sift flour, salt and sugar together into large bowl.  Add butter to sifted flour mixture and cut it into the flour with a pastry scraper, until pieces of butter are the size of peas.  Form a well in the center of the butter & flour mixture and pour water into it.  Quickly incorporate the water into the butter & flour mixture until the dough holds together, adding additional water if required.  Gather dough into a disc / ball and wrap it in plastic and refridgerate for at least 30 minutes.

Roll out dough on floured surface until about 3mm thick.  Cut out 4 circles 2 inches wider in diameter than the tartlet pans.  Lift circles into the tartlet pans, gently pushing the dough into the bottom and against the edges, cut off any excess around the edges to neaten. Chill in refridgerator for at least 30 minutes.

Slice apples thinly, toss in  lemon juice, sugar and ground cinnamon.  Arrange apples neatly on top of rested dough.  Sprinkle additional sugar and cinnamon to your taste.

Bake in preheated 190C oven for 30 to 40 minutes.

Climbing mont blanc while in the kitchen

I'm always nervous when I need to pipe something on my desserts, mainly due to the fact that the damage is usually irreversible and somehow I simply lack the skill to do it beautifully like its meant to be. This weekend I set myself up for a challenge by working on a chestnut piece involving plenty of piping - a dessert commonly known as "mont blanc".

There are 3 parts to this dessert: the sable breton base, a center filling made with dark chocolate mousse (or any flavored mousse that goes well with chestnut) and last but not least the signature chestnut cream "noodles" on the top.

The sable breton base and dark chocolate mousse filling were manageable, though I had to improvise slightly the method for rolling and shaping the sable breton base due to the warm weekend we had (is summer finally here to stay??). I made the base first and since the dough needed 1 to 2 hours rest in the fridge before baking, made use of the waiting time to complete the dark chocolate mousse which had set nicely for removal from mold by the time the sable breton base was baked and cooled. Putting together the chestnut cream was also relatively easy - the recipe actually called for dark rum but I didn't have any at home so used cointreau instead which also goes well with chestnut. I also used lemon zest instead of orange zest (as specified in the recipe) for the sable breton.

The most tricky bit came when I had to complete the ensemble by piping the chestnut cream on top of the tart in a manner that should ideally look more like an organized ball (or half a ball) of yarn, yet mine was more inclined to look like a pile of messily tossed permed brown wheat soba (yes, that's not a typo - it looked permed)... sigh... so guess what I did? I trashed the first batch and tried again, with the stubborn belief that I can't be that bad at piping!!

So, the pictures you see here are that of my second attempt (I was too distraught to take photos of my first attempt). As you can see, I still need to work on my piping skills... Thankfully, no matter how it was piped, the chestnut cream tasted lovely together with the sable breton and dark chocolate mousse. Much thanks to Aran for the original recipe!