Tea Time Theme

We are now onto the Tea Time Theme, which involves baking bite size items for afternoon tea. After last week's bite size Swiss rolls & Sponge cake, we proceeded on with making Macarons and mini Bakewell 
Tarts.

Bakewell Tarts topped with Cream Cheese

We started the lesson with making the sweet dough for the tarts. It was pretty straight forward as we made this before. Chef Ivan showed us a different method of shaping our dough into the tart tins; however, we chose to do it the rustic way. 

Bakewell Tarts

We decorated the Bakewell tarts with 3 different toppings: Chocolate Ganache, Pastry Cream and Cream Cheese. I especially loved the cream cheese, it was creamy and added just the right amount of tangy-ness to the sweet Frangipane. The chocolate ones were not bad too! but alittle too sweet for my liking.

BT topped with Cream Cheese

BT with Cream Cheese Topping

BT topped with Pastry Cream and Fondant

BT with Chocolate Ganache

Creative BT done by classmates

While the Bakewell tarts were in the oven, we prepared the meringue for Macarons. I didn't realise there was a difference between macaroons and macarons, not until Khim pointed out to me. Both of them are meringue based desserts and involves mixing ground almonds into whipped egg whites & sugar. I reckon the Le Macaron was a french spin-off from the English Macaroons. According to Wiki, there are Spanish, Ireland, Turkish and even Indian spin-offs!

I never liked Macarons. I could still remember my first time biting into those colourful looking nano-burgers... Jie bought a box of them home and treated me to the green one (my favourite colour!). One bite into the crumbly cookie... YIKES! Super duper sweet!!! It was so overpoweringly sweet that I threw the remaining away. Jie then rebuked me, "OI! why you throw away!? you know how expensive it is or not? $2 one leh!" What?! 2 bucks!! and the rest was history. From that moment, I knew how expensive and laborious Macarons were. I never dared to make macarons so I was really excited when we were gonna dabble with them.

Macarons done by all of us

The Macarons were ultra sweet!! but I liked how mine was kinda chewy. Chef Ivan did say the perfect Macaron should be crispy on the outside and soft & chewy int he inside. Mine was kinda too chewy and my bro commented it wasn't as crumbly as Bakerzin's. In any case I was proud I actually made them! Actually, it aint that laborious after all...can be done and will be done if I had time and nothing better to bake.

My banana and rose flavoured Macarons

Macarons in the making

Check out my new cake tin!! Khim bought this for me! She's always buying me things without accepting m money, I'm one hell of a lucky partner!

The cake tin Khim bought for me