Category: Pastry

How old is Tarte Tropézienne?

Not very, reader Sue, which is why we can say definitively who invented it: one Alexandre Micka. Micka was born in Poland, though his family emigrated to the Lorraine region in extreme northeastern France when he was but a lad, about 1915. It was there that Micka worked as an apprentice pastry maker. For exactly how long is unknown, or at least it is unknown to me.

What’s clear is that in time Micka relocated to St.-Tropez, probably about the year 1950, and opened his own pastry shop. He created Tarte Tropézienne soon after and sold it with only modest success. That is, up until the 1960’s when St.-Tropez caught on as a tourist destination and visitors began enjoying what they thought was an indigenous delicacy. Tarte Tropézienne has been famous ever since.

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When the beaches were REALLY hot.

St.-Tropez was big stuff when I was a kid back in the 70’s. That was the decade of the “savage tan” and sun tan lotions that bore the name of St.-Tropez were everywhere. I wasn’t a beach kid then. Being shy, pale and soft in the middle I gravitated more toward books and plastic models, especially of the military sort. My mental image of St.-Tropez wasn’t a sun-soaked playground for the rich and famous but rather a war zone, a city at the geographical center of the second largest sea invasion of the Second War War: Operation Dragoon.

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Tarte Tropézienne Recipe

A tarte Tropézienne is basically a big cream bun…not a tart at all. But who knows how these things get their names? A tarte Tropézienne is almost always made with brioche, but the fillings can vary. Supposedly the creator of this pastry was very secretive about his filling recipe, so pastry makers have used just […]

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This Week: Tarte Tropézienne

Reader Mary James had an excellent idea for this week. Since it’s getting so hot, why not strike out for the beach? The French Riviera, specifically. Of course I’m way too poor and ugly to do that in person, but there’s nothing that says I can’t get a (literal) taste of it by making tarte […]

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The Adam Method?

Reader Adam submits this ingenious tip for rolling pastry in hot weather:

I’d like to share a tip I just discovered myself while making puff pastry. I’m living in Israel and now its the beginning of summer and starting to get pretty hot. This kind of weather makes it a bit difficult to roll out puff pastry as the butter soften very quickly. So in order to make it easier what I did was to pull out one of my fridge shelves and use it as a rolling surface. The shelf is made of tempered glass and since it’s cold – out of the fridge, it keeps the dough chill throughout the lamination process. It also feels pretty comfortable to work on a glass surface and since I have a tiny kitchen it gives me freedom to move the surface around or rotate it to the most comfortable position for rolling. When I finish a lamination session I just put the shelf back in the fridge with the flour and all. And at the end of the process I clean it and put it back in the fridge. I find this method very useful also for pie crust.

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Making Ice Cream Cones

Ice cream cones are essentially tuiles…thin, sugar-rich cookies that can be molded into different shapes when they’re hot. I say this a lot, but they’re simple to make and they taste great. Oh, and did I mention that they take about twenty minutes from start to finish? Start by preheating your oven to 350. Combine your egg whites, sugar and vanilla in a bowl.

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Ice Cream Cone Recipe

I said I had a recipe, I didn’t say it was my own. This one is from the king of ice cream, pastry chef David Lebovitz. His book The Perfect Scoop became an instant classic when it was published four years ago. Aside from all the luscious, easy-to-prepare ice cream recipes, there are naturally several for vessels. This is one of them.

2 large egg whites
3 ounces (scant half cup) sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
3.25 ounces (2/3 cup) flour
1 ounce (2 tablespoons melted butter)

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When the Waffle Met the Cream

There’s a great, if hotly disputed, legend about the ice cream cone. It dates back to the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, the famous Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Several fair food classics are said to have been invented there, among them the hot dog, cotton candy, the hamburger and of course the ice cream cone. […]

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