Last week I took a pastry class all on petit fours at the Professional Culinary Institute in Campbell, California. (Update: as of 2011 it is the West Coast branch of the French Culinary Institute). It was really different working in a culinary classroom. It was stocked like how I’d imagine a restaurant kitchen would be. The best part was the giant oven. You can fit 8 or so large sheet pans in there and they rotate like a rotisserie. Our instructor, Chef Alex Trouan was a pastry chef in France and currently owns L’Artisan Macarons in San Francisco.
Chef Alex’s finished petit fours from his demo
Piping chantilly cream (whip cream) into cream puff bases
Piping more cream on top of the almond cake bases.
Cream puff swans assembled in front of that.
Finely slicing a granny smith apple to garnish the almond creams.
The lime green contrast looks great against the red raspberries.
Straying from the petit fours, he showed us how to do put together an individual-portion French macaron.
Back to the start of the class to see how it was all done…
I made pate a choux dough which is the base for eclairs, doughnuts, gougeres and for this class, cream puffs.
The dough is beaten in a stand mixer to cool down. Eggs are incorporated till it reaches an elastic, ribbon-like consistency. This required 8 eggs, which was A LOT but it was a very large batch, definitely larger than any recipe for home proportions.
I piped the bodies for the swans
Swan necks and heads in front and the bodies on the tray in the back.
A completed swan. I was so excited after all that work piping those things.
I just had to make a swan couple.
The almond cake batter is piped into a silicone mold to give it shape.
They look like berets.
French macarons sandwiched with chantilly cream. I wish we had time to make a buttercream filling. The cream was a little too bland, after 4 hours of baking I couldn’t think of adding another recipe.
Another way of presenting the macarons, open-faced with the chantilly cream, raspberrie and green apples.
Lastly, fruit tarts. It was a bit time consuming pressing them into the molds but they were worth the effort. After baking the shells developed a beautiful caramel color.
Fresh berry mini fruit tarts
It seems like a lot of work to do miniature versions of desserts but a lot of the bases you could prep a day in advance or even put in the freezer. Petit fours are so great especially for people like me who need my desserts pre-portioned. You also get to sample a little of everything.
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