TART HOMECLASS on 31st OCTOBER 2010

Welcome to another NORBAINI CAKES blogpost!

Now not many of you may know this but Chef Baini did not start out her working life as a chef; she started out as a secretary in a private firm. That was quite some years ago and like most people, Chef Baini has never forgotten from whence she started. Many times, Chef Baini had her hands full with work assigned to her by her bosses and at some of those times, Chef Baini didn't feel like going out for lunch. Luckily, the firm was flexible enough to allow their staff to have their lunches at their desks, provided of course, they cleaned up immediately afterwards. Like so:

Typical of Chef Baini to have a light lunch!

Once lunchtime is over, its back to work and slowly but surely the clock ticks down the minutes to hours and eventually it gets to 4pm....which as everyone knows, is teatime!

By now, the girls in the office start getting peckish because believe it or not, secretarial and clerical work burns up a lot of calories! Especially when you only had a cheese sandwich, salad and an apple for lunch! So it is during this hour that the girls take a short break to munch on banana fritters or some kind of  savoury treat or pastry. Sometimes the girls will have tarts to be washed down with freshly brewed tea or coffee and that, dear friends, brings us to today's topic which is TARTS! 

They taste terrific and are great at teatime or at whatever time you feel like having them! 

And so it is thus that today, Chef Baini had 6 students over at her home to learn about tarts. Have a look at how today's students went about it:

You may notice that today's bunch smile a lot...well, tart making is another form of stress relief. So instead of splashing your money on a spa, why not relax and make tarts?
Hey! Now that's a capital idea! Nobody thought of making a bake-a-cake spa; so after making tarts, what say we follow up with a lovely massage! Great idea, huh? And no, we will use proper massage oils, not cake shortening, Ha-ha!

You just need to mix the batter, knead the dough, let it rest, mould it into shape, put the filling in and pop it in the oven. Here's a picture of the resting the dough part.

Not close enough? Well then. lets zoom in.....

Its a good idea to let the filling rest a few minutes too...let it settle down....

But maybe Chef Baini should be a little more fastidious in describing the process; well, at least pictorially!
Making the batter and rolling out the pastry to be shaped into the molds....

It always warms the heart to see something you made rise up in the oven!....Kinda get that warm, fuzzy feeling all over.....

 

Honestly, it doesn't take that long, but can you imagine making a thousand of these? For that purpose, how many ovens would you need? That's why Chef Baini recommends that when you make tarts, involve some of your friends or members of your family say, your children or husband perhaps. While your hands are at work, you can chat the time away! Think of it as another form of quality time that you can spend with your loved ones!

Here is the bounty from today's harvest! Piping hot and ready to be eaten!

With the leftover dough and just for fun we made some cookies! In case we get a tart overdose!

Its up to you to have whatever beverage that you prefer to wash down the tarts. However lately, Chef Baini discovered that, much to her pleasant surprise, tarts go down really well with a steaming cup of cappuccino! Chef Baini knows that nowadays, lots of offices have one such machine in the larder. Or is that pantry!

See you soon! Take care,

P.S.>

Now that Chef Baini's blog looks more and more like a cartoon show, Chef Baini thought she might share with you a cartoon picture of herself. It's Chef Baini's avatar. Do you like it? Future blogposts may feature this instead of Chef Baini's pics!