Tartiflette!

So, time for a savoury French dish: Tartiflette.

Before going in the oven:

After:

Tarte Tatin

A new day, a new French desert to make for the first time. This time, a Tarte Tatin, made using Raymond Blanc's Simple French Cookery. 

I didn't make my own pastry this time:

Caramel, with butter added:

8 apples, peeled, halved and cored, placed on top of the caramel:

Brushed with butter and sprinkled with sugar, then into the oven at 190° for 35 minutes:

Pastry cut to size in the meantime, after being chilled:

Apples partially cooked; time for the pastry:

30 minutes later:

Left to cool and turned out:

Crème Brûlée

Continuing with the French deserts, and to use up the egg yolks left over from making macaroons, I tried my hand at making crème brûlée. I used this recipe, with two-thirds of the ingredients. 

Heating the cream

Beating the sugar and eggs

Adding the cream to the eggs and sugar 

Into the ramekins

And then the oven 

 45 minutes later

Time for caramelising under the grill

And they're ready to eat :D

 Not bad if I do say so myself!

Macaroons, nearly

This nice Friday morning in France I decided to challenge myself and attempt to make macaroons. I followed this recipe, and here are the pictures:

Ground almonds and icing sugar into the blender

Separate the egg whites and yolks

Whisking the egg whites

After adding the sugar

Sifting in the ground almonds and icing sugar

Piping onto a baking sheet

Into the oven

And they're cooked

Making the chocolate ganache

And the finished macaroons

Unfortunately, the macaroons were somewhat hollow :( but they still taste good :)

I'm intending to try again while we're still house-sitting and so we'll see how they go!

Crème Renversée au Caramel

Making good use of the oven while we're housesitting, I decided to make a crème caramel. Here's the process:

Making the caramel

Putting the caramel in the ramekins

Boiling the milk and sugar with a vanilla pod

Adding the custard mix (after adding eggs) to the caramel in the ramekins

And into the oven

55 minutes later at 160°C and they're done!

Then just to let them cool and then refrigerate. So, tonight we'll see how successful my journey into making crème caramel has been.