Transcripts
1. Introduction to the Course: Making puff pastry from scratch at home is a truly fascinating process. Watching beautiful butter layers rise in the oven is what makes us feel amazing as bakers. Welcome to this class. My name is Shubranshu. I'm a professionally trained baker and chef from Le Cordon Bleu. I've worked in really amazing restaurants and bakeries, and I want to share all my knowledge and experience with you in this class. We start this class by learning how to make a puff pastry dough from scratch and also understand in detail the lamination process, enclosing the butter block, and also giving the dough single folds and book folds. After understanding the basics, we move on to the next step of making a beautiful heirloom tomato tart. The tart consists of a layer of puff pastry with cream cheese garnished with smoked cheddar, heirloom cherry tomatoes, and fresh thyme. The next recipe, we make one of the most classic French pastries, an apple tarte Tatin; learning how to make a dry caramel from scratch, and then making beautifully caramelized apples. We then arrange these apples and layer them with a sheet of puff pastry to make an amazing flower shaped apple pastry. Our next recipe is the famous French coffee shop pastry called mille-feuille. We will learn how to make a silky Creme Diplomat cream, and then learn how to assemble and garnish a classic mille-feuille. Our final recipe will make a house smell like an amazing bakery because we will learn how to make fruit Danishes. The class will cover different shaping techniques as well as different ways of assembling and garnishing these Danishes. The class also comes with a detailed recipe book so you can master all the recipes easily at home. Puff pastry can seem really intimidating to make at home, but this lesson will cover all the steps and processes so you get a pastry with very beautiful layers.
2. Class Outline and Project: In this lesson, I'm going to be discussing the outline for this class, as well as the project for this class. The class is divided into two sections. The first section, we actually learn how to make puff pastry from scratch, learning techniques of lamination, as well as how to enclose the butter properly, and how to give tones to the dough to develop beautiful layers. The second section, we apply these techniques and actually make beautiful pastries with the puff pastry, such as mail, tomato tart, and also some beautiful Danishes. After you make these recipes, what I want you to do for the class project is to share pictures of any one recipe in the class so that I can give you some tips and also assess your work. Let's begin with our first recipe and learn how to make a really beautiful and tasty tomato tart.
3. Making the Puff Pastry Dough: In this lesson, we're going to be learning how to make the puff pastry dough. Before we start making the dough, let's briefly understand what each ingredient does in the recipe. The first ingredient is all-purpose flour. The reason I'm using all-purpose flour is because it has about 9-10 percent of protein and I find that it's really good to make puff pastry with all-purpose flour. Some people use bread flour to make puff pastry, but I've found that the texture is not as tender as much as you get from the all-purpose. If you can get your hands on this, that would be really nice. The second one is salt. Just use some plain kosher salt or any salt you can get. Just make sure that the crystals are small so it dissolves easily in the dough and the reason we use salt in the dough is firstly to flavor it, and secondly to preserve the dough so it doesn't get oxidized and it lasts longer. The third one is softened butter. This butter is basically in addition to the butter we'll be using for lamination. In some recipes I've made, there is actually no butter in the dough we just use the butter lamination. But through experiments I've found that if you put a little bit of butter in the dough, it tends to get a bit more softer texture. The texture is more flakier and it's more tender when you eat it. That's why I'm putting it. Make sure that the butter is soft because it will combine more easily in the dough. Next ingredient is water. Just use really cold water. The main difference between a croissant and a puff pastry is that there is no yeast in the dough. That is why we don't really need warm water and also we want to keep the dough as cold as possible because we're going to put butter in it and also we're going to laminate it. Just so that the butter doesn't melt in the dough use really cold water. The next one is optional, but I would highly recommend using it, is some vinegar. What vinegar actually does is that if you're storing the pastry in the fridge or even in the freezer, if you don't use vinegar, what happens is that the dough gets oxidized. It gets a really this black layer on top and it doesn't look nice and it doesn't taste nice as well. Just adding a little bit of vinegar prevents that oxidation process and also preserves the dough. Now, since we know what ingredients we're using, let's actually learn how to make the dough. Making the puff pastry dough is actually quite easy. You just need to put everything together and make a really rough dough. In puff pastry, unlike croissant, we don't want to develop full gluten content because we are going to be sheeting and rolling and basically folding the dough. That actually develops a lot of gluten. It's completely fine if the dough is slightly undeveloped right now. Just add the salt and add the butter as well. Just roughly mix this together. Perfect. Now I'm going to add water and the puff pastry dough, make sure that it's not too wet. Because if it's too wet, it tends to stick to the surface. This recipe actually keeps the dough in a slightly drier side and that will help you get really nice layers as well. I'll show you when I finish making the dough what's the texture. Just keep mixing it until you get a really smooth ball and if you're using a stand mixer, you can basically knead it for like 45 minutes until you get a nice and hydrated dough. When the dough is half mixed, what I'm going to do is basically just pour in the vinegar so that it can combine well and you can mix the vinegar with the water as well. That's what we do in bakeries. We actually just mix the vinegar with water. When we see that there is no flour left in the bowl, what we do is we'll just take the dough to the workbench and we start kneading it to develop gluten in the dough. I'm going to knead it for maybe about 3-4 minutes, just so that I get a slightly smooth dough. When you knead it, basically you just push it and you pull it back. This basically stretches the gluten strands and develops the dough. We've been kneading the dough for four minutes and you can already see that the dough feels more smoother now and doesn't feel as rough but it's not completely developed and what I'm going to do is basically just shape it into a ball and rest it on the workbench for about half an hour. The reason I do this is for the dough to actually absorb all the liquids and also while sitting on the workbench, it will actually develop gluten on its own, it will get a lot more structure. You'll actually be surprised to see how much gluten it develops if you rest it for 30 minutes. What I'm going to do now is just put a bowl on top of it and you can even put a wet cloth on top. This is just so that it doesn't get any dry spots on the dough and make sure you cover it. Let's check it after half an hour. Our dough has been resting for 30 minutes now and let's see how it looks like. As you can already feel, it feels more smoother because it's basically absorbed all the water. What I'm going to do is just give it like one fold. Let's just fold it like that and I'm going to divide this into two parts because I want to show you two methods of lamination. That's why I'm going to do it in two parts and I would advise that when you're just starting off laminating, it's always good to get as much practice as you can. When I was in pastry school, we did it the same way. We always divided the dough into half and we practiced it twice because when we enclose the butter in the dough, that's quite tricky and the more you practice that, the better you'll get at it. Just take a dough scraper and cut it into half and what I'm going to do is basically stretch it slightly with the rolling pin because it will be easier to laminate this tomorrow. That's perfect. The next one as well and you can see that the dough actually doesn't stick to the rolling pin even though I haven't used flour and that is a really good dough. It shouldn't stick to your rolling pin. If you add more water to the dough, just make sure to reduce it if it's sticking to the rolling pin. That's fine. Let's rest the dough overnight in the fridge and we'd work on it tomorrow. I'm just going to wrap it in a plastic wrap then take a sheet of plastic and put the dough in the center and just cover it really nicely. You don't want any dry spots on the dough, so make sure that it's covered very nicely. We're going to rest this overnight in the fridge so that the dough relaxes really nicely as well as it develops flavor. To laminate the dough, it has to be really nicely relaxed. Let's learn lamination tomorrow.
4. Making the Butter Block: After we've finished making the dough, the next step is to make a butter block. What a butter block is, is basically an even layer of butter, which we use to laminate to make the puff pastry. The reason we make this is so that the result you get is very professional and also trying to replicate a professional pastry environment, because in pastry kitchens we use a butter block. This is a 15 centimeter and a 15 centimeter square. Just take a scale and just draw a square. I'm not even getting like, when you actually start using this method, you'll see that the layers you get and the result you get will be really nice. That is perfect. When you've basically made the lines, make sure you actually flip the paper so that the marker ink doesn't actually touch the butter. That's perfect. Before we put the butter here, what I like to do is fold along the lines, so that it's really easy to fold it when you put the butter here. Otherwise what happens is that, if you try to fold it and the butter is there, it might actually just stick and it's not very neat. Just take the edge and just fold it as neatly as you can. Perfect. I've got about 160 grams of unsalted butter here, and I've really lovely cut it up. Cutting it up makes it easier for it to spread. I'm just going to put this here, and as evenly as you can. Perfect. Just fold it. Now to spread the butter evenly, I'll just take a rolling pin and just press it down like that, so it spreads. Now you can just roll it like that. If it goes slightly beyond that, that's completely fine, don't worry about it. The reason I keep doing it, it's because I want the layer to be really even. As you can see the butter blocks have already even. It's slightly gone beyond the line, but that's completely fine. Don't worry about it, we can adjust that later. Just make sure that it's really even, because that would really help us to get even layers. What I'm going to do is I'm going to make another butter block like this. I'm going to put this in the fridge. When I take the dough out tomorrow, I'll laminate it. Just having this ready helps a lot in the process.
5. Enclosing Butter Block and 1st Turn: So this is the dough from yesterday. It's really nicely rested. So I'm just going to shape this out to about 30 centimeters in length and about 15 centimeters in width, which is twice as much as the butter block. Put a tiny bit of flour, not a lot, because we don't want a lot of flour on the dough. Take a rolling pin and roll it out. You'll feel that the dough will spread really easily because you rested it overnight, and the gluten is really relaxed. I like to keep turning the dough so that you get even pressure throughout. If you have any thin spots, what you can do is just stretch it with your hand like that, so that it becomes even. Let's measure the scale and check the width. It's about 30 centimeters, that's good. This is a little bit about 17 centimeters. So I'm just going to make it a little bit smaller, just like that. If it's slightly more, don't worry about it. Because when we fold it, we can adjust that. I put the butter out about 15 minutes back, and you want to take the butter out before you start stretching the dough. Because if the butter is really hot, when you laminate it, it will crack in the dough. This also depends on your temperature. So if it's really hot, you might need to put it out for five minutes. But because it's winter is now here, that's why I left it out for about 15 minutes. So let me show you the texture of the butter. So if I move it, you see that it's bending, and you want it to bend. Because if it's too hard, it will crack, and if it's too soft, it will just leak out. This is really good texture. So let's put it in the center of the dough. So take your sheet like that, and just press it down then stretch it and fold it to the center. The same thing, you just stretch it slightly, and fold it to the center. So you see how it's nicely sealed here. So now you want to seal it on the edges. Just stretch the dough here as well and just press it down so that the butter gets nicely sealed and doesn't leak. The same thing here as well. I'm just stretching this here, and stretching this as well. So you just seal it just like that. Perfect. So this is a really nice butter block. I don't have excess dough. So now what I'll do is I'll just put a tiny bit of flour. You want to use as less as possible to get really nice layers, and a little bit of flour on your rolling pen as well. What I'm going to do is press it really gently so that the butter spreads. This is a really important step because you want the butter to spread really nicely. Then what I'll do is I'll turn the dough and spread to the sides. What I realized is that if you don't do this step, sometimes the butter doesn't spread as well, and you get too much butter in the center. So now what I'll do is I'll start rolling it, really even and gentle pressure from the center to the outside. From the center, we go outside. We want to stretch this to about 50 centimeters. I'll just use a scale and check. So it may be about 6 more centimeters. What I can see is that I can see a little bit of thickness here, so let's make this side a little bit more thinner. Just take the dough and just stretch it like that. So it relaxes it slightly. Perfect. So now we're going to give this a single fold. Before we do that, and a really important step, take a pastry brush and brush off all the flour. Because the flour will prevent the layers from rising really well. So just fold it to the center, just brush the flour again, and fold this to the center as well, and just stretch it to the ends. So that's our first fold. You can see the dough is really nice and even. That's really good lamination because I can't see any spots of cracked butter, it's nicely laminated. So what I'd like to do, this is a really bigger thing. We just put a thumb like that, just to know that there's one lamination which has been done because we need to do three more. I'm going to rest this in the fridge for about 30 minutes so that the gluten relaxes as well as the butter sets slightly. Otherwise, the butter will start to leak out. We will learn the second lamination after 30 minutes.
6. Lamination Process : Just put a little bit of flour. You're going to roll this again to about 50 centimeters in length, roughly about 20 centimeters in breadth. Just from the center, you put pressure outwards. When we roll this pastry dough, make sure that you never go beyond this point. Because what that does is it destroys that layers in the corner. Just always keep it till here. Always from the center to the sides. I always keep basically lifting it so it doesn't stick to the surface. Let's check the length now. It's about 40 centimeters, so let's make it a little bit longer. If at any point the dough feels too soft, you can stop and just put it in the fridge, just that forms up slightly. Perfect. I've got the dough to 50 centimeters, and what I'm going to do before I fold it is just going to brush off all the excess flour. Because that's really important to get really nice layers. When we give a book fold, will take one side to about half the length and the other side as well. Just take it to about half and the other one as well, and make sure to brush off this side. Now what I'll do is just take it from this side and flip it over. Perfect. You can see, it looks like a book and this will give it a lot of layers actually. I'm going to rest it for another 30 minutes and then we'll give it another round of single fold and a book fold. It's time to get the third done to our dough and this time we're going to give it a single turn. Just even, a little bit pressure on the dough. Again, stretch it to about 50 centimeters. Doing this basically helps to relax the dough and also make it even, because sometimes the sides can get really thick and you don't want any thick sides basically. Just brush off the flour and give it a single turn. It's just in the center and this also goes in the center. Perfect. This is really even and I can also see that the layers are very even as well. Perfect. I'm going to rest this for another 30 minutes and then we'll give it the last done. It time to get the final done and this time we're going to be giving book fold. Again, we want to stretch it to 50 centimeters and the dough feels really nice now because we've given it so many turns. Perfect. Just brush off the excess flour and fold book turn, we'll take this about half the way through, and similarly the other side as well. Make sure to fit all of the gaps. Just brush off the excess flour and just fold it like that. Just flatten it out slightly. Perfect. Our dough is finally ready. It's got about four turns and now we're just going to wrap it up and rest that for 30 minutes at least, before we make a pastry out of it. So that the dough is nicely relaxed and the bottom is nicely set. This dough can be stored in the fridge for about one week. If you want to freeze it as well, you can freeze it for up to three months and you can make so many things out of it. After you've mastered this, you're going to move on to the next section of the class, where we're going to learn how to make different recipes out of this puff pastry dough.
7. Tomato Tart - Rolling the Pastry and Prep The Tomatoes: In this lesson, we're going to cover the first recipe in this class, which is a tomato dough. I'm going to use heirloom tomatoes to make this dough, but you could use any tomatoes and the techniques I've covered in this class can be applied to other savory dough as well. In case if you want to make a mushroom dough or spinach dough, you could use the same techniques and the same dimensions and shaping method and you can make the dough. When you make the tomato dough, I think the only thing you need to be careful about is that you salt the tomatoes when you cut it. Now, this is really important because you want to draw all the moisture out from the tomatoes. Similarly, if you're using mushrooms or spinach, we cop that spinach or mushrooms down just to remove the water. The water can actually make the pastry quite soggy. This is the only step we need to consider. Now, let's begin the recipe. The first step in making the tomato dough is to divide the puff pastry into half. Let's stretch this out to roughly about 20 centimeter in a 20 centimeter square. Put a little bit of flour. Let's measure the pastry now. Perfect. That's about 20 centimeter in a 20 centimeters. What we'll do is when we shape it, we'll just cut the ends to make it neater, but for now, just brush off all the excess flour and put it on a tray, because the pastry needs to chill a little bit before we cut it, because it feels quite soft right now. Just gently put it on a tray with baking paper. Perfect. Just cover with a plastic sheet so it doesn't form any dry spots. I'm going to rest this in the fridge for 30 minutes so the butter in the pastry sets really nicely and then I can cut it and trim it. In meanwhile, I'm going to start preparing the rest of my ingredients for the tomato dough. After we've rolled the pastry, what we will do is we'll prepare the tomatoes. I have some beautiful heirloom tomatoes here. You can use any tomatoes actually you can use cherry tomatoes. You can even use foil tomato as well, but just slice them. The most important thing when we use tomatoes is that we need to draw out the moisture from them. Because what happens is that if I cut it in half and I bake it in a pastry, it's going to lose a lot of water and it's going to make our pastry really soggy. What I'm going to do is cut this in half and then salt it for roughly about 10,15 minutes so it draws out some of the moisture and then we can use it in making our pastry. Just cut the tomatoes in half. They looked so beautiful. I really like using heirloom tomatoes because they have a really sweet flavor and they have different colors and it also tastes really nice. If you can get your hands on this, that would be really nice. After you finish cutting the tomatoes, just place them skin side down so the seeds basically face up because we want to draw out the moisture. We're going to just season them with salt. Take some sea salt and just gently thread on all of them. We don't want to put too much salt, but at the same time we have to season them well. I like using sea salt here because it's healthy and it's more tastier and it's not as sharp as normal table salt. Perfect. I'm also going to season it with little bit of black pepper. Just set this aside for about 15 minutes and then just let it release all its moisture. While our tomatoes are resting, I'm going to discuss all the ingredients and some of the ideas when you assemble the dough. I like putting some cream cheese on the bottom of the dough because it gives a really nice flavor and it really compliments the tomatoes and when you bite into the dough, it gives a really nice creaminess. You could also use feta, you could use ricotta, you could also use blue cheese. Whatever cheese you like and whatever flavor profile you like, you could use that. When I put the cream cheese, I'm going to season it with some salt and pepper. I'll just do that now. Just put a tiny bit of salt in it and a little bit of pepper and just mix it through. Make sure that the cream cheese is really soft because it makes it easier to spread on the dough. Perfect. That is ready. The next ingredient we're going to be using is some mustard. I'm using some Dijon honey mustard. You could use any mustard, you can get your hands on, but I like this because it's got a more milder flavor. Also, the mustard really compliments the tomatoes because it cuts through the fat in the dough and it's got a really acidic flavor, but make sure that you don't use a lot of it because the flavor is really strong, but use a little bit if you like. The next one is [inaudible]. This is one of my favorite cheeses. You could use Parmesan as well and any hard cheese will do. The purpose of using a hard cheese is to put it on the base so it absorbs all the moisture when the tomatoes are baking. That is why I really like using a hard cheese. The next ingredient is thyme. I'm using some fresh thyme which I got from my garden. You could use rosemary as well, totally up to you which flavor you like. The reason I'm using fresh herb is because when you bake the tomatoes with the fresh herb, it basically infuses the tomatoes with the flavor. If you can't get it, it's completely fine, you can make it without that as well, but I just really like the additional layer of flavor. When I'm assembling the dough, I'll just show you in which order I use these ingredients.
8. Tomato Tart- Assembling and Baking the Tart: After 30 minutes of resting, let's finally trim the pastry from the sides, and let's prepare it for assembling the tart. Just take the pastry from here, really gently, and what we want to do is just make all the sides really even. Just cut the side as well. What this does is it gives you more neater presentation when you bake the pastry. You could totally bake the pastry like this, but what I like doing is, I just like cutting the sides just about two centimeters in length and just sticking it here. So it forms a really nice border, and the pastry looks really beautiful when it's baked. Just take a scale and just make a mark at about two centimeters and similarly here as well. You can just use the scale to guide you, and similarly here as well. You have these two strips. I'm just going to put a little bit of cream here, you can even put water just to stick this nicely. Just put some cream here, and this really helps it to stick, so it just rises really evenly. Just stick it on the side here, and just transfer it back to your baking tray, very gently. The last thing we'll do is just poke some holes with our folk. The reason we do this is because we don't want this part to rise too much and it just bakes more evenly as well. Not too many, but just so that it's really even. Those are really good. Now our pastry is nicely topped. After you've topped your pastry, you're going to put it in the freezer over 20 minutes. Standard set really nicely and it'll be easier to put the toppings on it, if it nicely set. Also, I'm going to put the oven to pre-heat at 200 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes until the pastry is ready. It's been 20 minutes, and now let's learn how to finally assemble the tart for baking. Our oven is nicely pre-heated. The first thing I do is I put a little bit of mustard in the bottom, just a really thin layer, and using a palette knife really helps to spread it. That should be good, just make it even. The next one, I'm going to put the cheese in the bottom so it forms a nice layer to absorb all the moisture. Want to use a micro plane, you can even use a cheese grater. The next one is going to be our cream cheese, and to put the cream cheese, I'm just going to use a piping bag and just put a dollop everywhere. Don't worry if it's too thick because we can spread it with the palette knife. Just the corners as well. Just even it out with a palette knife. This makes sure that it's a even layer and it spread throughout. If your cream cheese is too thick, what you can do is you can put a little bit of cream in it about a tablespoon at a time so when you press it, it just spread really nicely. I'm going to put the layer of tomatoes on top of this. Just put it really randomly, but make sure that they're different colors everywhere so there is nice color contrast. When I put it, I just gently press it down slightly so that when it bakes, it's nice and even. I just put some thyme to finish it, Just sprinkle it on up. Just to give it a nice finish, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to cross the sides. Just take a knife and just make crosses like this; so when it bakes it'll give a really nice finish. Before putting it in the oven, just put a little bit of olive oil and a little bit of salt and pepper. See how beautiful that looks. I'm going to bake this for roughly about 30-40 minutes. At 30-minute mark, I'm just going to check if the tomatoes are nicely caramelized, and then probably I'll push it for another 10 minutes. This is our final tomato tart. I baked this for about 35 minutes. The tomatoes are nicely caramelized and I've got a really nice color on the pastry as well. I'm going to cool this down for about one hour just so that the pastry cooks through and dries out nicely. When we cool it down, what I like doing is, I like taking it from the tray and putting it on my cooling rack. All the moisture basically evaporates and you don't get a soggy crust when you do this. Let's check after one hour then we'll finish the pastry. Our pastry has been cooling for one hour now. What I like doing is just trimming the edges because I can see that there's slight bone on the edges and just make it a neater. Just use a bread knife and just gently trim the edges. It looks more neater now, you don't have any boned edges. Now it's totally up to you how many portions you want to make this in. I would say this would roughly make about five portions, but if you cut it a little bit more smaller like into half, then maybe it would make about 10 portions. To finish it, I'm going to put some finely chopped parsley. You can also put some basal in there, you can also put thyme, any herbs you have, just sprinkle it on top. This is the final tomato tart. It look so beautiful. I'm going to take a bite and see how it taste like. The cream cheese taste so nice with the tomatoes, and the pastry also gives a really nice and crunchy and savory element with the tart. I really like this tart. I really hope you enjoyed this recipe as well.
9. Apple Tarte Tatin- Preparing the Pastry and Apples: Welcome to the second lesson in this class. In this lesson we're going to learn how to make Tarte Tatin. Tarte Tatin was actually historically made by accident when someone made a Tarte the other way around. They actually put the pastry on top instead of the bottom, so actually when they flipped it, this found that the apples were so nicely caramelized, so they actually started serving that. In this recipe, the only things you need to be careful about is that you caramelize the apples really bad because the color of the apples actually defines the pastry and also the taste of the pastry. That's the only thing you need to be careful about. Let's begin with the recipe. The first step when you make the apple Tarte Tatin is to actually roll the puff pastry. I'm going to be using half the puff pastry because I'm using a small pan. If you're using a bigger pan, you'll have to use the full batch of pastry. Next, what I'll do is, I'll just measure the size of the pan. It's about 22 centimeters and same in the diameter. What I'll do is, I'll shape the pastry out to roughly about 24 centimeters square. It's slightly bigger than the size of the pan, so when we put it down, we can cover it entirely. If you're using a cake pan, I would do the same step. I would measure the cake pan unroll the pastry out slightly bigger than the size of the cake pan. Just divide the pastry into half. I'm going to put this in the fridge. Put a little bit of flour on your workbench. Start rolling it. You want to get this to about 3-4 millimeters in thickness. Let's check the length. This is about 24 centimeters, that's good. I may need to stretch this out a little bit more. Perfect. What I'm going to do is, either you can just use it like that or you can cut a circle so it's even more even. For now, I'm going to just put it on a tray and put it in the fridge so that it cools down slightly so when I cut it, it actually doesn't destroy the layers of the pastry. Just brush off all the excess flour you have in there and just put it in a plastic wrap. Gently put it on a baking tray and then I'm going to cover it with plastic. This goes on the fridge until we're ready with our apples and the caramelized sugar. Before we begin with our recipe, let's try to understand the ingredients we'll be using. The most important ingredient in this recipe is apples. I prefer using Pink Lady apples because they bake really well, and they have a really nice texture when you bake them. The next one one sugar. I'm using castor sugar here because it melts quite easily when you make the caramel. But you can also use brown sugar if you like. Some softened butter. The butter we'll put in the caramel once the sugar has caramelized. The reason we put the butter is so that the caramel gets a little bit liquidy because we don't want the caramel to set, and also it gives really good flavor. The next one is vanilla paste. I'm going to put a little bit of vanilla paste after the caramel has formed, just to give it a really nice flavor and it really goes well with the apples as well. I'm also going to put a little bit of lemon juice in the apples to prevent it from oxidizing and also in the caramel because what the lemon juice will do to the caramel is, it will stop it from crystallizing and the caramel will stay really creamy and nice. Let's begin with the next step of preparing our apples. The first thing I do when I'm preparing the apples is get a bowl of really cold water and put just a tiny bit of lemon juice in it so that the apples don't oxidize when we cut it. When we cut the apples, we just put it in the water and start peeling the apples now. After you've peel the apple, what I like do is just core it. Just take the top off and the bottom off as well. Next, you just cut it from the center. There are a few ways to do this, either you can get a scoop and you can core it or the easy way is to just cut it in the center and just basically do it like this. Just get to rid of the seed. The same thing here as well, you can just do it like this. You get this nice shape and this will get really nicely caramelized. After you've cut it, you're just going to put it in the lemon water so that it doesn't get oxidized. This is a really important step because when the apple gets oxidized, it develops this really brown color and it also affects the taste, so you want to preserve it. Let's do it to the other apples as well. Similarly for this one, just cut it from the center and then one more in the center and just core it like that. Similarly for this one, just core it like that. Our apples are finally ready. Now I'm going to set this aside and start working on my caramel.
10. Apple Tarte Tatin- Caramelising the Apples: To make the caramel, I'm going to put the gas at medium heat and put my pan on top of it. This is the same pan I'm going to be baking the tarte tatin in. Put the sugar and I'm just going to let this sit for maybe about a minute so that it starts melting and then I'll stir it slightly. It's been a minute now and I can see that the pan is starting to get a little bit hot, so just stir it like that. This is a dry caramel that is why we can stir it because if you put water in the sugar, then you can't stir it because it'll get crystallized. But because there is no water here, you can actually stir it. But with this caramel as well, you have to be careful because it can burn quite quickly, so you have to watch it all the way. I can see that the bottom layer has started to melt slowly. Also, I like using a silicone spatula when I make this caramel because this has a really high heat tolerance and doesn't melt and it's really easy to take it off and wash it as well. Now you can see the sides have started to melt, just get them in the center. We don't want any side of the caramel to burn that's why it's important to mix it. You can see it started to develop a beautiful color but I want all the sugar to get dissolved before I add the butter. At this point, you can lower the heat slightly so that you have more control on the caramel. This looks like it's almost there. You can see that the color is getting nice. You don't want to get it too dark as well. Perfect. I can see that the sugar is completely dissolved, that's got a really nice golden color. At this point, I'm going to add the butter and when you add the butter, just stay a little bit far away from the pan just to be safe. You have to stir really vigorously. You see how that crops up like that. The butter basically stops the cooking, and it also emulsifies, creating a really beautiful sauce. Just keep mixing it until the butter is completely emulsified. If you can see if it splits slightly, you can also use a whisk and just really vigorously stir it. I'm just going to get my whisk and just mix it really well. See how smooth that is, that is really nice. Now what I'm going to do is add a little bit of lemon juice in it, so it stops it from crystallizing. Now I'm also going to start adding my apples in. Perfect. I'm also going to start adding my apples in now so that they start cooking and also get a really nice coating effect. Just put your apples here like that. As the apples cook they're going to release their water and the caramel will start getting a little bit more liquidy, which is a really good thing. You can see it started to bubble on the sides because the apples are cooking and the sugar is basically drawing out the water from the apples. They'll basically absorb all the sugar and taste really nice. This process should take roughly about 4-5 minutes. You want the apples to be slightly tender. If you have bigger apples, it might even take about 10 minutes. Just judge based on the size of the apples and also the type of apples you're using. After five minutes, our apples are so beautifully done guys. It should be completely coated with the caramel and the level of doneness I like is not completely cooked, which is slightly soft because we are going to bake this as well in the oven so they're going to cook then. To check, what I like to do is just press it slightly and if it breaks apart like that, but has slightly this one, that means it's good texture. What I'm going to do at this point is I'm going to add a little bit of vanilla, a little bit of sea salt and just set it aside from the gas to cool down. Just a pinch of salt so that we just get a nice and complementary flavor with that and a touch of vanilla. We have the paste here. I'm just using vanilla paste. You can also use a vanilla bean if you have one and just mix it through. You have two options here. First one is that you can just set the pan aside with the apples in it and let it cool down. Second one is you can basically pull off the apples on a plate with a sheet of baking paper and then arrange it individually when it cools down. In this case, I'm going to do the second one and I'm going to arrange it individually once it cools down. Just take your pan of apples and just put it on the baking paper. This is only if you want to arrange it really nicely, but if you don't, you can completely set it aside in the pan itself, you don't need to do this. Perfect. I'm just going to let this cool down for roughly about 20 minutes and then we'll assemble the final tarte tatin. When this is cooling down I'm going to set the oven to preheat at about 200 degrees Celsius for about nine minutes. The oven is nicely preheated, then you want to bake the tarte tatin.
11. Apple Tarte Tatin- Assembling and Baking the Tarte Tatin: While the apples are cooling down, I'm just going to cut the pastry. The size of the pastry should be slightly bigger than the size of the pan. I'm going to use a ring to cut it. You can also use a knife. It's totally up to you how you want to cut it. But just make sure that it's bigger than the size of the pan. Perfect. I've got a rough circle here. I'm just going to put this in the freezer and then I'm assembling it so it sets nicely. It's time to finally assemble the apples. What I like doing is taking the bigger apples and putting it on the side and the smaller ones in the center. Just when you assemble it make sure that this side which is the outside of the apple, actually goes down. That will form a really nice outside layer. This is our outer layer and now the smaller ones go inside. You don't have to be super precise with it, just so that it looks nice and wherever you see little gaps, I'm just going to try to fill them with the apples I have remaining. Next, what I'm going to do is I'm going to just press it down slightly so it becomes an even layer. Whatever caramel I have left in my baking sheet, I'm just going to pour it on top. Because you want all the apples to get really nicely glazed. See how nicely glazed that is, and you want exactly that. The next step, we're going to put the puff pastry on top of this. After arranging the apples, I'm going to take the pastry out of the freezer and just dock it slightly. This is really important step because when we bake the apples, it's going to release a lot of steam and you don't want the liquid from the apple to pour out. You want a certain space for them, for the steam to come out. This is quite important to do. After you've done this, I'm just going to cover the apples with this and then bake it. Our dough feels slightly more firmer now that's why I froze it for about 10 minutes. What I'm going to do is put it on top of that and then this is really important step, what you need to do is tuck it in so that when the apple bakes, the liquid doesn't leak on top. Let's see how to do that, we're going to just gently put it down like that so it covers the apples, you lift it and then put it down, lift it and put it down. Then we basically bake this, the apples will stick to the pastry really well. Perfect. I'm going to bake this at about 200 degrees Celsius, for roughly about 30 minutes and then check if the pastry is cooked through. That's our final tarte tatin it looks so beautiful, pastry is nicely caramelized on top. We have to remove this when it's still hot, otherwise the caramel will stick to the bottom and it won't come out. What we're going to do is take a plate, and just put it on top like that and just flip it. Just be careful it should already feel like it's sliding down and just lift it really gently. You see all the caramel is basically dripped down and it's become so beautiful. I really like eating this hot but, I would let it rest for about 10 minutes or 15 minutes actually, so that the pastry just cooks out a little bit more when it's cooling down. Then we'll cut it and I like eating this with vanilla ice cream or you can even eat it with some whipped cream with little bit of sugar and vanilla in it. When I finish this today, I'm going to put some vanilla whipped cream on top. Our tarte has been cooling down for about 15 minutes, let's cut a slice now. You can see the apple are so soft and the pastry so crunchy. You see how beautiful that looks? You've got a really nice layer of pastry and the apples are so nicely cooked. I'm going to finish this with some whipped cream. I've got a beautiful [inaudible]. Let's finally taste this, put a little bit of cream on top. That is so delicious. The apples are so nicely caramelized and compliments the pastry so well. I hope you make this at home and you really like the recipe.
12. Mille Feuille- Rolling and Baking the Pastry: Welcome to the third lesson in this class. You're going to be learning how to make a mille feuille. Now, this is such a classical French pastry. You can find this in any French coffee shop in France and it's super fun to make as well. In this lesson, we are going to be learning some techniques of assembling the mille feuille and also how to make a really silky pastry cream. Let's begin with the recipe. The first step when we make the mille feuille is you stretch out a pastry dough. What I'm going to do is stretch this out to roughly about 35 centimeters and about 20 centimeters and wrap. After I've stretched this out, I'm going to put it in the freezer just to rest and then I'm going to prepare my pastry cream. Just put a little bit of flour. You don't want to put too much because you don't want to dry out the pastry and just put a little bit of pressure. Because the pastry is still quite cold so we need to get it to temperature just gently. Now it feels more malleable. The pastry is sticking to your rolling pan. Just feel a tiny bit of flour. Let's measure the pastry. Yeah, so it's roughly that. We need to stretch this out a little bit more. Just a tiny bit more. If it's slightly uneven on the sides, don't worry about it because we will trim it. Perfect. I'm going to put this in the freezer for about 30 minutes and then I'm going to trim it and bake it. While you're freezing this set your oven to preheat at 200 degrees Celsius so that the oven is nicely preheated and hot when we are going to bake this. Just brush off all the excess flour. The other side as well. I'm going to put this on a baking paper and just put a plastic here on top and then put it in the freezer. After 30 minutes our pastry is very rested and it's quite cold now. What we'll do is we'll just trim the edges to make it neat and then we'll take a fork and basically make holes on the pastry. Don't throw away this. You can actually just stretch it out and put some cheese on it and bake it. This is really good dough actually. Next, what I'm going to do is take a fork and just dock the pastry. The reason I do this is because it bakes more evenly and also it doesn't rise as much. Because with this pastry, we don't want it to rise a lot. Once you've finished docking the pastry, we're going to shift it to a baking tray and then I'll show you how we bake this. Spread a sheet of baking paper and press it down nicely. Then just put a tray on top of it. This will basically help it to bake evenly and not dry it unevenly on any spot. I'm going to bake this for 30 minutes and then we're going to check the color and texture of the pastry. It's been 30 minutes and what I'm going to do now is just gently press the tray against the pastry to deflate it slightly. In fact, that looks great. What I'm going to do is bake this for roughly about 20 minutes more so it gets really nice color on top.
13. Mille Feuille- Cutting and Trimming the Pastry: This is our final pastry and it looks very nice. If you want a surely flat pastry, what you can do is when you put a tray on top, you can put a bowl with some rice or chickpeas just to put some pivot. But I actually quite like the rustic look and it's slightly uneven. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to flip it, so that will be my flat side. The first step we do is we just trim the sides just to get it nice and even side. Always use a bread knife because it makes it really easy and you get really clean edges. After cutting the edges, you can see it's quite neat and even. Cutting the edges is optional. If you don't want to do it, you can totally skip it. I like doing it because it looks much neater. Just make a mark at the four-inch level, just like that. It's always good to make a mark and then you can cut it rather than just cutting it straightaway. Similarly here as well. Perfect. When we cut it, basically just drag it down just like that and don't put a lot of pressure because you don't want to crash the layers. This is our first layer. After getting three equal parts, what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you two ways of doing it. The first one is basically you assemble it individually and the second one is you basically overlap it on top of each other. The second way is sort commercial way of doing it but if you're doing it at home, I would do it the first way because it looks more neater. To do that, what I'm going to do is basically just cut five centimeters from here, just like that. Just add the five-centimeter mark, we're just going to make a line and just drag it. Perfect. I'm going to arrange this individually, I'm going to pipe it and then put it on top of each other. When I assemble these ones, I'm just going to pipe it like that and put it on top of each other, then pipe again and put that on top of each other and then cut it. You can do either way, whichever you like.
14. Mille Feuille- Vanilla Pastry Cream and Creme Diplomat: Mainly pastry cream is actually one of the most fundamental topics you have to learn if you want to master French pastry because we use this so often. Making it isn't that hard, but there are a few steps you need to take care of to get a really smooth pastry cream. I've separated six egg yolks. The egg yolks actually form the base of the pastry cream because of the fat in them. Make sure to use egg yolks. If you get a little bit of egg whites, just try to remove it. But if you get a little bit, don't worry about it. The next one is caster sugar. What caster sugar does is basically it gives flavor to the pastry cream as well as it basically prevents it from cuddling, because the sugar basically coats the egg yolks and increases the temperature to which it can be cooked towards. The third one is plain flour. You could use corn flour as well if you want to make a gluten free pastry cream, but I'm going to use the plain flour today. Flour is basically a starch and acts as a thickening agent and gives the pastry cream really good structure and helps it stay together and a really nice pastry cream. The next ingredient is butter. We add butter at the end when we make the pastry cream. It gives a really nice texture and it makes the pastry cream really smooth and really silky. It's definitely like a flavoring agent and also a thickening agent. It also gives a really creamy texture. Definitely add this in the pastry cream. The next ingredient is milk. I'm using some full-fat milk here, but if you want to make a dairy free version, you can also use soya milk. Milk actually forms the base of the recipe. Milk is really rich in proteins and also fats, and it's the liquid in this recipe, which gives the custard a lot of structure and a lot of depth and also a lot of flavor. To flavor the custard, we'll be using some vanilla bean paste. You could use a full vanilla bean as well if you can get it, or you can use vanilla essence as well. Vanilla actually gives a really good flavor to the custard, and it's a very classic flavoring. But this custard can be flavored with a lot of different things as well. You can make a coffee custard, you could also make a cinnamon custard. There're so many things you can flavor the custard with. But for this recipe, we're going to make a classic vanilla bean custard. The process of making this custard is actually quite simple. What we do is we just whisk the sugar in the egg yolks and then add the flour and whisk that together as well. You get the milk to a simmer, damper the eggs, and cook the custard until it thickens then we add the butter and the vanilla paste. Let's begin with the process of making the custard. Just take a whisk and whisk in the sugars. We're going to whisk this for about 30 seconds until the sugar is combined. Perfect. The sugar is combined. I'm going to add the flour in it. Now, I'm going to whisk it until it looks really creamy. This should all take about 15-20 seconds. See how creamy that is? That is really good. Now what we'll do is we'll get the milk to a simmer and then damper the eggs. Just pour in the milk. I'm going to put this on medium flame and get it to a really light simmer. When you start seeing bubbles on the side, that's really good. I take it off the gas now and damper the eggs. Pour it really slowly and keep whisking continuously because we don't want the eggs to get cuddled. Perfect. After you've whisked in really well, we're going to pour it back in the pot and cook it until it comes to a boil. Put the gas in medium heat. What we'll do is, initially we'll use a whisk and then we'll use a spatula. Just keep whisking continuously because you don't want the mixture to cuddle. This should take about one minute or so. You'll start seeing it getting more thicker, and then it'll start boiling. When it starts to come to a boil, we'll take it off the gas. It's been 30 seconds and I can only feel the custard is becoming more thicker. Can you see our custard's come to a boil now? Now, we'll just take it off the gas. Just quickly add the cold butter and whisk in really well, and just about half a tea spoon of vanilla paste. I want to just whisk it so well that it emulsifies really nicely. Perfect. If I see the texture, it's almost like mayonnaise. It's really smooth custard. That is a really nice and smooth pastry cream. To store the pastry cream, we always put a layer of plastic sheet on top of the surface because we don't want any spots to form a skin, because that gives a really unpleasant flavor. Just take a plastic wrap and just put it on top like that, and then just drift it down so it covers the skin. Perfect. Our pastry cream has been cooling down to about three hours now. When you actually see the pastry cream, it could have basically set really nicely. If you want, you can actually just whip this and use it to pipe it in the [inaudible]. But what I like doing is just lightning it slightly with some whipped cream. This is just 100 grams of whipped cream and about 20 grams of sugar. I'm going to whip this to soft peaks. You see how that is. That is perfect, that's softly whipped cream. What I'm going to do is I'm going to gently fold it in the pastry cream now. Before I fold it in the pastry cream, I'm just going to whip the pastry cream slightly just to lighten that up. Perfect. That's good. It's become quite smooth now. Let's gently fold in the whipped cream. You use a spatula. You'll see progressively the cream will become more lighter. In French pastry, this is called cream diplomat. It's just lightened pastry cream. Let's add the rest. We're going to mix this until we can't see any white cream, and it's completely combined. That looks really good, it's completely combined. I'm going to put this in a piping bag, so it's easier for me to assemble them [inaudible]. When you're filling the piping bag, it's easier to use a glass. You can just cover it like that and fill it and then tie it together. Today when I'm filling it, I'm going to use a piping tape. You can use any piping tape you like depending on what design you want to make. Just take a scissor and just drag it like that. It's actually come off nicely. That's done. Then you press it inside and then we fill the piping bag. Don't fill a lot because it's easier to pipe if you have less filling in the piping bag. Now when I take it out, what I'm going to do is I'm going to use a bread scraper and just push it through. Just take a dough scraper and just push it through and get rid of all the air bubbles by just doing like this. Perfect. Then take your glass so just there's any excess cream which comes out and just tie it like that. You just take a clip and just attach it at the end. That's sealed and that's ready for piping.
15. Mille Feuille- Assembling the Pastry with the Cream: Let's learn how to assemble the first one. The first step is to put a tiny bit of pastry cream in the bottom so it sticks. What you want to do is you want to keep the most even one at the top. I'm going to put this because this is the most uneven one. I'm going to just put dollops here just like that. I'm going to press it and then pull it up. Press it and pull it up. Just put another layer of pastry on top of this so it stays quite evenly on top. If you see from this side, you can see those layers of the dollops, which looks really nice. I'm going to put another layer of pastry cream, and then put the layer of puff pastry on top. Just make this more even, and just basically put the last layer of pastry on top of this. Just in the center, and that look so beautiful. Just keep it as much high as possible, that's when it looks really nice. I'm going to finish it with some icing sugar, and then we're going to cut it and see how it tastes like. Let's finally taste it. It's a little bit messy to eat it, but it's so tasty. Pick all the pastry cream. That is so delicious. Pastry cream is so nice and light. Let's learn how to assemble it the second way. Before I assemble it, I'll make it slightly more even. You can see that it's a little bit uneven here. Just take your knife and just cut it slightly, so it's more even now. Before we assemble it, I've got a tray with a baking paper, so I'm going to put the pastry on this. Because I need to freeze the pastry after I pipe it, it's always good to have a tray with a baking paper prepared. I've the pastry cream. I'm just going to make lines like that. Just the leap off corner so it doesn't spread. Just like that, because when you put the other pastry on top, the pastry cream will spread to the corners. Just a little bit on the side here as well. Put the pastry on top and actually it spread. Similarly, we're going to put the same cream on top of here as well and just spread it completely. Just cover it with the last pastry we have. Just press it slightly. This is our final pastry. I'm going to put this in the freezer so that it sets for about 2, 3 hours and then we're going to portion it. This is also another way of doing it when you have large sheets of pastry, we make it like this; if you're making it in bulk, but if you're making at home, you can make it the previous method. Before putting in the freezer, if you have pastry cream coming outside here, just use a palette knife and just make it really even so it fills all the gaps. Just like that. Now it's ready to be frozen. While mille feuille is in the freezer, I'm going to make icing sugar glaze to put on top of the pastry. When you make the glaze, just add the milk one tablespoon at a time because you want this to be quite thick. Just mix it together. Just a little bit more. You can see how thick that is. You want it to be that thick because you the glaze to be stuck on the pastry. You don't want to start drip down too much. See the consistency? It is very thick; that's exactly what you want. Just remove the plastic sheet. Always keep the baking paper so you can get all the drippings from the glaze on the baking paper. Just put the glaze on top. I'm going to use a palette knife just to spread it. After it has become really even, I'm just going to put some some melted chocolate on top, just then drip it, and then I make a nice design on top of it. Just take the chocolate and just make a line like that. If you can see any gaps, just fill that up. Just take a palette knife and just do it like this. This is how it looks like. It looks so nice. I'm going to put this in the freezer for about 30 minutes so that the top sets nicely. Then I'm going to portion it. It's been 30 minutes, as time to finally portion the mille feuille. What I'm doing is taking a bread knife and also a cloth so I can deep piping it. I'm going to be dividing this into three equal parts: 1, 2, and 3. Let me cut it. Just drag the knife gently, and just let it go inside. Just like that. You see all the beautiful layers. It looks so nice. Similarly, this one as well. Just cut it from the center. Do you see that beautiful layers? Thefinal mille feuille, and you can see all the layers really well so that the lamination is really good and the layers of pastry cream are also very nice. Let's finally bite into it. Let me get a few layers. That is so delicious. The pastry is so light. You can see the layer of pastry cream is really nice as well. I really hope you enjoyed this recipe.
16. Fruit Danishes- Rolling and Trimming the Pastry: Welcome to the final lesson in this class. In this lesson, we're going to bring all the theory and techniques we've learned and make beautiful Danishes. I'm going to be explaining some different Danishes with different techniques, such as cream cheese, pastry cream, different fruits, and also how to assemble and bake them. Let's begin with the recipe and learn how to make amazing Danishes. The first step when you make Danish pastry. What we do is we just sheet out a puff pastry dough and we basically cut it. What that does is it gives time for the pastry to rest as well as it gives us time to prepare what we're going to put on top of the Danish. What I'm going to do with this is I'm going to sheet it out to about 45 centimeters and about 20 centimeters in breadth. Put a tiny bit of flour on top. If it's sticking to the surface, just put more flour. Because we've rested this overnight, it should be quite easy to spread out. Always keep taking it off the surface so it doesn't stick. That's perfect. Just a little bit more in the length. Perfect. What I'm going to do is I'm going to trim the sides and the ends and then I'm going to portion the pastry. Just cut the ends here. What this will do is it will give you a clean edge when you make the pastry. Perfect. Similarly here as well. Each pastry is about 10 centimeters into 10 centimeters. Just make a mark at 10, 20, 30, and that's 40. What I'll do is I'll just cut it like that. If you want, you can even use the scale to cut it like that. When we cut it, we just go like that, we don't drag it because we want to maintain the layers. Perfect. Now, what we'll do is we'll cut it from the center. Take about 10 centimeters here and just make a mark. Then you can use a scale as well. Just try to be as even as possible. It's okay if it's a little bit less and more here, but as long as it's as exact as possible, that's good. That's eight eight pieces. What I'm going to do is I'm going to put this on a tray and then I'm going to put it in the fridge so that the butter layer is set properly and then we learn how to shape it. You see the size. It's about 3-4 millimeters in your thickness. If you want to make smaller ones, you can also make eight-centimeter squares or nine-centimeter squares. I like to make slightly bigger ones. Let's just arrange them on a tray. What I'm going to do is I'm going to cover this with plastic wrap so you don't get any dry spots. The puff pastry offcuts, we never throw this away. I'll show you a recipe where you can reuse it. Just wrap it in plastic. What I also do is sometimes I just put it in the freezer and when I have enough of this, I'll just roll it into a galette or into just some cheese curls. This is really good butter and dough so don't throw this away.
17. Fruit Danishes- Making the Cream Cheese Filling: In this lesson, let's learn how to make the cream cheese filling for our danishes. It is super easy. All you need is some soft and cream cheese, caster sugar, and some vanilla paste. Make sure that this is really soft because if you add the sugar and it's not soft, it will form these lumps. When I take this, see how soft that is. That is perfect. You just keep this out, maybe one or two hours, and it will become soft. I'm just going to add the sugar to this and just mix it with a spatula. Don't use a whisk to make this because in the whisk, it just gets stuck and it's not a pleasant experience. You notice how I'm making like a small batch because I'm going to be showing you, with the pastry cream as well. If you're just making with this cream cheese filling, you can double the recipe. See how smooth that has become. Just at the end, I'm just going to maybe half a teaspoon of vanilla paste. This adds a very nice flavor, and just mix that through as well. Perfect. You have two options. If you want, you can put this in a piping bag or you can just take a spoon and just draw a bit on danishes as well.
18. Fruit Danishes - Shaping and Baking Danishes - Part 1: Upper pastry has been resting for 45 minutes now. Let's learn how to find shape the Danishes. Let's begin with the first shape. This is one of my favorite ones. It's called the pinwheel. What you do is you cut just off-center, the side, and make sure not to cut the whole thing. It shouldn't be like this, it should be just a little bit far away. You have a little bit of gap here. Perfect. Then to stick it, some people put jam here, some people put cream here as well. But what I'm going to do is I'm just going to stick it and I'm going to put it on top of that. Just take one end and press it in the center. Similarly, you take this end and press it in the center. Then this end goes in the center as well, and then the far end. Then this is your pinwheel. This is one of the easiest ones and it looks so beautiful. I'm going to set this aside and my cream cheese filling, I'll put it in the center. Let's learn this one again, so you watch closely. In the center. You see how my knife is close to the center but not exactly touching it. Because if it touches it, it will just fall apart. Perfect. This time what I'll do is I'll just put a little bit of orange jam in the center just so that it'll give a different texture. Just about half a teaspoon. Then you just stick it just like the last time. Then I'll pipe my cream cheese filling in the center here. This is a different texture, you can try this one as well. Just put it on your baking tray very gently so it doesn't break. Let's learn the second shaping method. We take our square and we just fold it equally. Don't touch it, just gently fold it like that. Then what we do is we basically take it roughly half-inch from here. Just like that through and the same thing there as well. Perfect. What this will do is it'll make this really nice and beautiful shape like that. Then the same thing there as well. In the gap, we'll be putting some pastry cream. This is one of my favorite shapes actually. Once it bakes, it looks really beautiful. Let's learn how to do this again. It's basically folded in half. Then you take a thin strip here and try to keep it even here as well. Perfect. Just fold it out, hold it gently and try to keep it on the side, just like that, on the side here. You get this really nice shape. I've got four fine Danishes here on a tray and the rest of them, I've put it back in the fridge. I'm going to show you different combinations of how you can finish these Danishes. Let me show you my [inaudible] class for that. Let's have a look at the prep I have for finishing these Danishes. I have some blueberries and strawberry, cream cheese frosting, my pasting cream, and some orange jam. Just having this ready and you have the Danishes shaped will really help you get a really good flow when you're working. Let's finish them and bake them. The first one here, I'm going to put some cream cheese in the center. Also going to put some blueberries on top of it, let's put about four of them. When the blueberry bakes, it will become really jammy and really tasty. That's the first one. The second one here, I'm going to put the cream cheese, add strawberries here which I have cut into half. Just arrange them really nicely. Perfect. Third one with the jam, I'm going to put a little bit more jam in there. Perfect. You've got two layers of and this is going to be just jam Danish. The fourth one, I'm going to pipe pastry cream. Perfect. I'm also going to put a combination of blueberries and strawberries. You can use other berries here as well. You can use raspberries, you can use apples, it's completely up to you. Just perfect. These are Danishes which are ready to bake. I'm going to bake this for 30 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius, then I'm going to show you how they look like. This is our final puff pastry and it looks so beautiful. I bake this for about 30 minutes. I really like this color which is golden, it's not too light but not too dark as well. I really like this one. What I'm going to do now is just glaze this with some apricot jam so that it looks really shiny. I just heated some apricot jam and just glaze the sides. You have to do this when the pastry is hot because the heat of the pastry will make it melt and stick to the gaze. The reason we glaze the pastry is to preserve it and also to give it a nice shine. After glazing the pastry, I'm going to put it on a cooling rack so that it can dry out really nicely. You can see the layers really well. I'm going to cool this down for at least 30 minutes and then we're going to cut it and see how it looks like.
19. Fruit Danishes - Shaping and Baking Danishes -Part 2: While we're waiting for our first batch to cool down, let's learn a few more shapes. For this one, I've taken a three-inch ring. What I'm going to do is, I'm just going to cut a semicircle like that. Just put pressure there, and just twist it like that. Then what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to fold it like that on the corners. What will happen is, this will lift really well and it will look really nice. The next shape we're going to be making is, I would say the most easiest one. What we do is we just fold all the corners like that. This one here in the center, and this one like that. Super easy, looks really nice as well. We just put a little bit of cream here and put some fruits. For the last one, what we'll do is we'll just cut the corners, not all the way through, about 70 percent of the way through. This will form a border. Something like that, and the same thing in the corner as well. Perfect. Then what we'll do is we'll apply the cream here and we leave the corners to rise. To finish this one, I'm just going to put a little bit of the cream cheese filling we made, despite that its cover isn't really well. Perfect. I put some blueberries. The next one, I'm going to put some pastry cream with some blueberries and strawberries on this one. This one, I'm just going to put a little bit of jam in the center, so that it looks really nice when it bakes. The last one what I'll do is I'll just take a fork and slightly make these incisions here because I don't want it to rise too much from the center. If I don't do this, it'll rise too much from here. Then I put a little bit of pastry cream there. I'm not going to put a fruit here. I'm going to put a fruit just at the end. I'm going to bake this for 30 minutes at 180, just like we did the previous batch, and then I'll show you how it looks like. This is what a Danish looks like after 30 minutes of baking and smear it to the last one, I'm just going place some jam. They look so beautiful. I'm going to cool them down as well for about 30 minutes. Our Danishes had been cooling down by 30 minutes now and they look so stunning. Let's learn how you can actually finish these Danishes.
20. Fruit Danishes- Assembling and Finishing the Danishes: To finish this Danish, I'm going to put some fresh pastry cream, and some strawberries, blueberries, and some kiwi. You can put any fruit you want, honestly, anything will taste nice with this Danish. Let's begin. You can do it a few ways, I'm just going to show you the most easiest one. Just pipe some pastry cream like that. Perfect. Just arrange it as randomly as possible so it looks very natural. Put some berries. Also, when you put the pastry cream, you need to consume it within 2-3 hours because the pastry cream will make it a little bit soggy, so do this right before you're serving. Put some kiwi. Whatever gaps I have, just put a few blueberries in here. Just make it look as natural as possible. Perfect. It looks amazing. That actually looks better than a pastry shop, so you can definitely make this at home. To finish it, and this is really optional, I'm just going to put some flower petals which I got from my garden. You can put any edible flower, you can even put mint. This is the final product, this is our final Danish. It looks so beautiful. I'm going to take a bite and see how it taste like. The pasty is slightly savory, but the fruits are slightly tangy, and the pastry cream is sweet, so it just compliments everything so well. Let's learn how to finish this pastry. You could eat this just as is, it's just a simple jam Danish. I'm going to put some pastry cream on top, just to give a different texture. Just in the center, and then I'm going to put some strawberries in the center. These are just strawberries that I cut in third. I'll just arrange them. You see how it gets a little bit more height when I arrange them? It's really nice. To finish it, you can put a little bit of icing sugar on top. That's our final Danish, and the icing sugar makes it really nice as well. So that's another way you can finish it. A blueberry Danish, I'm going to put some pastry cream and finish it with fruits. I've got the kiwis like this, just to give them some height. Just arrange it so it's upwards, and put a couple of blueberries on the side, just for different color, and finish it with some strawberries so that it just gets nice color contrast there. Also give it height so it looks really good. You can see beautiful layers here, [inaudible] so well. These are final Danishes, and they look so nice. I hope you could learn a lot from this class, and I've showed you different methods of finishing it. When you make it at home, try to experiment with different fruits and different flavors.
21. Bonus Lesson- Advanced Methods of Lamination : Let's learn our second method of lamination. In this case as well, we'll spread the dough to 30 centimeter and 15 centimeter in breadth. Put a little bit of flour on the surface. The difference in this lamination is that we actually cut the dough from this side. What that does is that it spreads the butter more evenly, but at the same time it's a little bit more challenging to do this lamination. When you feel more comfortable with the first method, we can start using this method. Let's check the length of the dough, it's almost 30 centimeters and about 16 centimeters in breadth. Let's make it a little bit shorter and stretch it a little bit more. In this method, what we do is instead of putting it in the center, we put it on the side and then fold it like this. What this does is that it spreads a little bit more evenly, but at the same time it's a little bit more trickier to this. Just take your butter block and put it on the side. What I'm going to do is just stretch it from this side so it covers completely and there are no gaps. Then I'm going to fold it over itself, and the corner, I'm just going to cut it with a knife. This method is actually a bit more advanced because the butter will spread more evenly. When you're starting off, you can use the first method, but if you get more comfortable with the first method, you can start using this one. Again, similar to the last one, I'm going to put gentle pressure so it spreads. Similarly on the side. You can already see that the butter has come to the sides here. Just really nice. You want to stretch this about 50 centimeters. Let's check. Stretch a bit more, perfect, just brush off all the excess flour. In this method what we do is that just to get it rolled even, we just cut the corners like that. Similarly on this side as well. Perfect. Now I'm going to give this a single fold. Just here, brush off the excess flour. The part which you've cut, you can just place it here so that we don't have any wastage. I do this because I want the dough to be really even and not have any tick corners, just going to make this even , perfect. Before I put it in the fridge, what I'm going to do is cut this side here. Just wrap it up and rest it in the fridge for 30 minutes. The reason I cut this side is because when you roll it for the second turn, the butter will spread more evenly. It's been 30 minutes and it's time to get the second done. The dough should be nicely pliable, put a little bit of flour on top. Because we've cut this from the side, you'll see that the butter will start to spread more evenly in this case. It also might start coming out from the side, but don't worry about it. Always from the center, go outside. Now we're just going to get done the dough and stretch it this way. Try to keep as even pressure as possible. That looks good. Just going to stretch it little bit more to get it to 50 centimeters. Let's check. Perfect. In this case we're going to give a book fold. Just make it even. This goes in the center. On the edges, you can see the butter. I just quite good, that means it's spread really nicely, and then the spine is up. If there's any gap here, you want to fill that up, just stretch the dough slightly to fill that gap, and the same here as well. Just brush away the flour, and then you take one side and cover it like that. It forms a book here. Just like last time, what we'll do is we will cut this side with a knife. Perfect. You can see, something like that. I'm going to rest this for 30 minutes more, and then we'll give it two more sets of turns. It's been 30 minutes, and you're going to give the dough the third turn. This one is going to be a single turn. Spread a little bit of flour, and just from the center, spread it outwards. Take one off in the center and the other half over it. Then again, what we do is we cut it from the side here and just spread it a little bit more so that it's easy to spread the next turn. Perfect. I'm going to rest this for 30 minutes and then we give the last turn. Let's work on the final turn for this puff pastry. This time we're going to give it a book fold. Just to the center. Perfect. That is our final dough. I'm just going to flatten it slightly, so it's easier to use. Perfect. Our dough is finally ready. Let's move on to the next section of the class in which we learn what beautiful pastries we can make from this dough.
22. Thank you: We finally reached the end of this lesson and I really hope you enjoyed the class and you could learn a lot from it. I can't wait to see pictures of your creations of puff pastry, of garnishes, of anything you make with puff pastry. If you have any questions, feel free to message me and I'll definitely get back to you. If you could drop a small review, that would help me reach other students as well. If you want to keep in touch, please feel free to follow me on Instagram and also follow my YouTube channel as well. Thank you. I hope to see you in my other classes.
Shubranshu Bhandoh, Baker/Pastry Chef - Le Cordon Bleu
