Tiny Tarts

An important aspect of making individual pastries is that every pastry should look identical; therefore we spent a lot of time on these tiny tarts. Pictured below is a Tarte au Citron, which is French for Lemon Tart. My partner and I dressed them up to look like lemon meringue pie. We piped the meringue on top, and used a propane torch to cook the meringue. The tarts are approximately 3 inches across (to give a reference), which is enough for 2-3 bites. They even garnered a compliment from our instructor…Another item we made, pictured below, was barquettes. Barquettes are miniature pastry boats. These barquettes are filled with white chocolate mousse, and topped with whipped cream. The whipped cream is shaped to form a peak. The barquette is then dipped in chocolate on one side.
The final tart of the day was a French Tartlet. A French tartlet has a dried fruit filling topped with a streusel crumb topping. One important aspect of the French tartlet is to have an even coating of streusel topping on the tart. If the streusel is not even, the filling can show through, and the tart is not as appealing as it could be.
We displayed these tarts on strips of glass or wood instead of a plate to highlight them.