day 14

tarte citron
Meringue and creme citron in a sucree shell. Simple and delicious mainly because of that heavenly creme citron or lemon curd. I have the recipe for it in my hot little hands and I can't wait to try it out once I get home to the States. It's so good because of all the butter they put into it. At the bakery, they use butter with 82% butterfat, which is actually one percent less butterfat than in the butter commonly used in restaurants and in my old school in NYC. Butter sold in the grocery store usually has 80% butterfat, which makes a big difference in the taste of baked goods, in my opinion. More butterfat equals less water and more taste. At home, I usually buy Plugra, a European style butter with 82% butterfat which is available in Wegmans and on Freshdirect.com. I haven't seen it in Whole Foods, unfortunately.

brioche a tete
A small brioche roll with a head, literally. I am very familiar with these because they were on my final exam for school. I like the bakery's brioche very much and will have to look about for the recipe. At school we were taught to scale out two separate pieces for the roll, a larger one for the body and a smaller one for the head. We formed both pieces into balls, then poked a hole through the center of the body to form a doughnut shape. We then rolled out the head into a teardrop shape and nestled it into the hole in the body. Viola---a tete.

...and in other news
David didn't come in today. I guess he just didn't feel like it and that's just fine with me. It was a short day. We prepped eight sheet pans with succes cake and praline feuillantine on top in order to make l'andalou and royals tomorrow. Natalie also made more creme citron for l'andalou and for individual lemon tarts like the one above. She overcooked the creme, as usual and Alexi gave her a long, heated lecture, most of which I didn't understand. Afterwards, she took two whisks in her hands, clashed them together and said sometimes she just wants to beat Alexi's head in like so. We also made chestnut barquettes today, which I hadn't seen before. I think they're kind of ugly (at least the way Alexi messily assembled them) and I didn't think they tasted that great, so I won't be posting any pictures of them.