Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Disaster Kitchen Week: #1 Cherry Tart

I recently posted about some delicious cherry tarts I wanted to try. Well, I tried them, and I FAILED completely. Before I go on I just want to say it has nothing to do with the recipes, they are perfect. The problem is my baking skills. I haven't had much experience with pastry and that was my downfall, and the fact that I was trying to make two different cherry tarts in one morning didn’t help either! My aim is to try them both again very soon but before I do, I have set myself a pastry improvement challenge which I will blog about soon (once I’ve figured out all the details).

I'm not going to post all my photos because really, what’s the point? But if you visit my Facebook page, I have posted more photos so you can see how it went from YAY to NAY!

Here are some tips for me to follow next time:

Annie's Eats Roasted Cherry Tarts
  • Don't rush!
  • Convert the butter from tablespoons to grams - I don't think my batter had enough butter in it so it didn't stick together like it should of. I kind of make a guestimate at 8 tablespoons
  • When you think have enough cherries, add a few more, you can never have enough in the tarts and they taste divine. If I wasn’t rushing I would have visited Diana’s Dessert Conversion table here and discovered I needed about 113grams of butter
  • Save the cherry sugar syrup – I poured as much as I could over my tarts because it was sugary sweet goodness
  • Don’t overcook your pastry – it is such a fine pastry that it can easily overcook (check out my burnt pastry photo)
Loose dough that didn't stick together
Burnt pastry

Roasted Cherries - see the syrupy goodness there

My finished tarts

Mowielicious No Bake Oreo Chocolate Cherry Tarts
  • Crush the Oreos really fine, or even better, use a food processor – I thought just pounding mine in a plastic bag would suffice and then wondered why I couldn’t get it to stay on the sides of my tart tins later on
  • Don't overfill the tart tins with chocolate ganache - when you push the cherries into the ganache filling, the filling will rise and if you fill it to the top it will overflow

Not very well crushed Oreos

Impossible to coat the sides of the tins

The finished tart - I love the simplicity of it here
Like I said before, I’ve decided I need to perfect pastry making. I’ve not really made a lot of pastry items before because I’ve been more into cakes, but as I’m starting to broaden my culinary horizons, I need to start up-skilling myself. So watch out over the next few weeks as I attempt different pastry cups. I’ll document my journey and maybe we’ll all be able to learn something from my pastry nightmares.

Do you have a cooking nightmare? I’d love to hear from you…

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2 comments:

  1. Awwww...i am sorry to hear about your disastrous experience but even then, your end result looks beautiful! :)

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  2. Thanks Cakewhiz. In spite of those disasters, both tarts tasted lovely so I can only image when they are done properly, they will be a lot better

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