Pâte Sucrée & Crème Pâtissière
Pâte Sucrée is the paste we use for making tarts. Tarts are usually made in shallow and straight sided pans, we also will cook our blind bake all the way as the fillings are typically done when we add it to the tart. For example, we bake the empty tart to completeness and then add the also ready pastry cream (crème pâtissière). This means that after baking we have to take really good care of the tart and using gloves to handle becomes very important.
The tarts on the picture are filled with vanilla pastry cream, so when making the pastry cream one thing to be careful with is Tempering your egg mixture. After bringing your milk and sugar mixture to a boil you slowly pour (use a ladle for this) the hot mix into the egg bowl. The reason for this is to not bake the eggs, you don't want the cream to taste like eggs and you slowly bring them up. Only after the eggs are fully up to temperature that you mix them back into the milk to finish. If you are more into cooking savory than baking, think of it as a sweet Hollandaise.
Above in picture 3 you can see our blind baked tart. It is ready and will not go into the oven anymore, so treat it as ready-to-eat. In picture 2 we are cutting fruits to cover the tart. Consistent cutting makes the pie look perfect, so practice, practice, practice.
Also, notice for pies that the crusts can have many different approaches. You can have no crust (like the one on the pecan pie), a lattice pattern crust (like the apple pie in picture 1) or the traditional full cover you see on the apple pie on the last picture. What do you like the best? Send us a message and let us know.