It’s confession time. After I finished making scones I read ahead to the next chapter’s first recipe, took a look at the list of ingredients and skipped to the next recipe. It was the Chocolate, Praline, and Cocoa Nib Tart where I would need to spend almost $130 to make. I just couldn’t see buying all of those ingredients, spending that money just to test myself. Instead, I decided to make the Caramel Nut Tart. I’ll buy those ingredients slowly over time and come back to that some other time. I’ll still try my hand at Pâte Sucrée, a delicious dough, and learn how to make caramel. The new recipe will still stretch my wings.

So, how’d it go? The Pâte Sucrée was delish, and pretty simple to make. The dough was sweet, made with a combination of flour, powdered sugar, butter, and almond flour. AND I get to pommade butter again! I love this pommade technique. For those of you who may be reading my baking journey for the first time if you slightly warm the butter in your mixing bowl over an open flame and then whip the butter it turns into this really creamy mayonnaise consistency. Pretty cool!

In addition to the pommade technique above, I’ve learned that you sift EVERYthing when following a Bouchon Bakery recipe. So, I sifted, cracked and egg, mixed, etc. I got this really yummy dough. I did notice my almond flour was slightly different than what must’ve been used by Bouchon Bakery because my dough was a little nuttier looking with these brown specks. Tastes great though, so no worries! I’m going with the flow. Now, Bouchon wants me to use a Fraiser technique to mix the dough, so I wash off the countertop and drop my dough straight onto the counter, no flour and by hand push my hand into the dough to blend the dough into these little waves.

Once it was blended I wrapped it in cellophane and stuck it into the fridge to chill out for a couple of hours. Onto the caramel jam! Don’t let that word jam fool you, it’s just a fancy way of saying sauce. Maybe sauce is too plebian? Not sure, but from here on out I will be saying caramel jam. Doesn’t it make me sound smarter? I think so!

For my first purchase (outside the normal flour, sugar, etc.) I had to research and purchase glucose. Now, I know that glucose is sugar, but I wasn’t sure until I got the jar, why I couldn’t just brown some sugar as I’ve done in the past. Actually, I’m still not really sure. The glucose was really super thick and I think must be used in order to make the sauce thicker? It’s just a guess because after I prepared everything, it turned out the same as any other caramel “jam” I’ve ever made, although it was a lot silkier.

Luckily, I had my candy thermometer from some other project and was able to put it to good use in getting my jam to the correct temp of 350º.

Two hours have since gone by and I can remove my dough from the refrigerator. For the first time, as instructed, I’m going to try rolling out my dough between sheets of waxed paper, without any flour. Apparently adding flour during the rolling process messes with the flour to butter ratio or something and makes for too dry a dough. Surprisingly, or not, really, because all of these techniques I’ve learned and used so far are really working. I easily rolled out my dough using the waxed paper, measured it to 11″ across and what looked to be about the right depth and laid it into my fluted tart pan (that I had to purchase for this recipe).

Doesn’t that look nice? Admittedly, I think the dough ended up being a little too thick, but lesson learned! LOL. There was a bit of a lengthy cooking process for this dough, so if you’re going to prepare this one yourself, put aside about 60 minutes of turning the pan around so all sides cook evenly.

Once the crust is cooked, you fill the tart with nuts, cover it with caramel and voilá! You have your Caramel Nut tart. Confession time #2. Reading the instructions is super important, and if you have a bad memory like me? Read them again as you are doing everything. I was supposed to pour “most” of the caramel jam onto the nuts so it looked as if they were layered into a nutty caramel and you could still see the nuts clearly. I did not do this. I poured all of the caramel jam into the tart so you couldn’t actually see any nuts at all. So, while it didn’t look great, it actually tasted devine. Although a bit sweet. I added vanilla ice cream to my piece to counter that overabundance of caramel. It was quite nice!

Would I make this one again? For the first time, I’m going to say no. Glucose is kind of a weird ingredient and nuts are not really my thing. The crust though was fabulous and I’d definitely make that one again. In fact, I have the other half of this dough in my freezer and will use it again sooner rather than later!

Cost of tart pan $14.99 and cost of Glucose $13.99. A lot cheaper than the $130 the chocolate tart would’ve cost but I think I’d have liked to eat chocolate more than the Caramel Nut tart I did bake.

What did I enjoy? Pommading again! Man, I love that technique and the outcome is light and wonderful, even after mixing in all of the sugars and flours. I also enjoyed learning to roll out the dough between the waxed paper sheets. It’s really easy to turn and make a round dough!

What didn’t I enjoy? Caramel overload after eating the tart. That’s totally my fault though, and truthfully? It still tasted good and the family enjoyed this bake.

Until next time! Happy reading and baking.

Deb

To purchase this book, please click on this link! Bouchon Bakery (The Thomas Keller Library)