Delectable Fruit Tarts

Our Professional Program in Pastry Arts recently studied the art of tarts! Here, we provide a sweet fruit tart recipe that is sure to bring applause to your table. Enjoy.

Crust:

10 tbsp hard boiled egg yolks
3 cups unsalted margarine
3 tbps powdered sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 and 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp almond or hazelnut flour
3 and 1/4 cups pastry flour

Press the egg yolks through a strainer or potato ricer and set aside. Cream the margarine and sugar. Add remaining ingredients except for the pastry flour. Add all of the pastry flour at the same time and mix only until combined. Do not overmix.
Chill the dough for 2 hours or overnight.
When you are ready to roll it out, the dough will be crumbly, but press it into the tart pans and chill again before baking if you have handled it a lot. Bake at 350 degrees until slightly browned.

Filling:

4 tbsp pastry flour
1 and a half cups granulated sugar
4 cups almond milk
12 egg yolks
1 vanilla bean, split (or 1 tsp pure vanilla extract)
4 tbsp unsalted margarine

Sift the flour and the sugar together, and set aside.
Whisk 2 cups of milk into the raw egg yolks. Heat the remaining milk with the vanilla bean or vanilla extract. When the milk comes to a boil, whisk 1/3 of it into the flour and egg mixture and blend completely (the avoids scrambling the egg yolks). Then, pour the egg mixture into the saucepan with the remaining milk, and stir vigorously. It will go through a stage of lumpiness but it should thicken and smooth out right before it comes to a boil. Allow the mixture to boil for one minute, but keep stirring.
Remove from the heat, and pour into a bowl and fold in the margarine. Do not overmix. Chill and then pour into the baked and cooled tart. Do not bake.

Glaze for fruit tarts:

combined 1 cup powdered sugar with 1/3 cup unsalted melted margarine and several tablespoons of apricot jam and 1/2 tsp lemon or orange extract and add more or less of each until thin enough to pour. Drizzle over the fruit that has been arranged on the tart, and chill.

Fruit Tarts

The Kosher Scene Blog Give CKCA Baking an Enthusiastic Thumbs Up

Chaim Szmidt of the Kosher Scene blog recently visited the CKCA Pro Baking&Pastry course and spent the morning learning at the feet of Chef Mark Hellermann. His review and some lovely photos are visible here. He seemed to have especially enjoyed his lunch of several delicious Bavarians, prepared lovingly for him by members of the Pro program.

Congrats to Jenny Shidler, Our CKCA Contest Winner

After lots of excitement in December, Jenny Shidler (pictured above) was named the grand prize winner of the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts' Winter Scholarship contest.

Colorado native Jenny Shidler, who was able to use her scholarship to begin the Pro Program in Baking & Pastry Arts, is a past graduate of the Pro Program in Culinary Arts. She took that course in the summer of 2009.

"I think it is wonderful that our scholarship winner is a graduate of our Pro Culinary program," said Jesse Blonder, director of the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts. "This scholarship opportunity allows our students to continue their studies and will give them more training and skills to be able to face a very competitive pastry work force."

CKCA is the only culinary school in the United States that teaches classic French culinary techniques in a glatt kosher environment. The goal of the pro program in Baking&Pastry is to orient the student to the professional kosher food service environment and teach him or her to operate within that environment in a safe, efficient, & skillful manner. The 150-hour program seeks to provide the student with a solid theoretical and practical foundation in professional baking practices, and facilitate the student’s transition in to the working world by providing both career counseling and opportunities for apprenticeship. This is the second semester that the Baking&Pastry course has been offered. The professional course in Culinary Arts has been offered numerous times; Both a part time and a full time program have been offered concurrently for almost two years.

The winter scholarship contest was offered to anyone associated with CKCA through our Newsletter or Facebook group. Anyone interested in winning the scholarship was asked to have friends or associates nominate them to receive the scholarship. The purpose of the contest was to spread the word about the culinary school and its programs. The persons who received the most nominations were offered the scholarship.

The grand prize winner of a $2,000 scholarship to attend the Baking&Pastry pro program beginning in January is Denver, Colorado-based Jenny Shidler. The total cost of one semester's training in Baking&Pastry is $4,250.00.

Center for Kosher Culinary Arts: What Makes Ingredients Kosher

Enjoy this recent lecture to our Pro-Baking&Pastry Course, by Rabbi Zushe Blech, author of the landmark book, Kosher Food Production. He explains our our future bakers and pastry chefs how ingredients are determined kosher or non-kosher.