Day 19: Apps

A few weeks ago we were introduced to Inverted Puff Pastry.  This puff pastry is similar to the regular puff pastry we've made in the past, but it is a little less temperamental.  It can be made with regular butter instead of dry butter and it can sometimes turn out better than regular puff pastry when made in a very hot climate.  The idea is that you create a regular dough and a butter dough and you wrap the regular dough inside of the regular dough.  You still fold and turn and roll out the dough a million times, but when you're done you have many layers of fluffy, puffy pastry.  We used this puff pastry dough to make savory petits-fours.  In other words we made appetizers!  

We made five different kinds of appetizers.  We made chorizo stuffed puff pastry, cocktail sausages in puff pastry, cheese straws, pate filled pastries, and something called devils on horseback which were tasty, but didn't use any pastry at all.  The devils on horseback were prunes wrapped in bacon and stuck with a toothpick and then baked.  The cheese straws were interesting because instead of rolling out the pastry using flour to avoid the dough from sticking to the work surface we used shredded cheese.  The cheese assured that the dough did not stick and got incorporated into the mix making a very cheesy dough after it was baked.

My Pigs in a Blanket.  A few with poppy seeds.

My veal pate filled puffs

My Devils on Horseback prunes in bacon

My golden cheese straws

Chorizo pastry puffs

My assortment of savory pastries!

Each of us had so many petits-fours when we were finished that we brought our bins of snacks to the local bar to give all of our hard work away.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!