Making (French) tarts

I returned to Le Petit Paris to make Thanksgiving tarts (apple pie, pecan pie) but in a much more French than American style – which mostly means the amount of sugar is massively reduced (the results are really not sweet enough for me!) …

There was a lot of work to do to create two pies in the allotted three hours (in fact we overran to four hours) so Stefan did quite a lot of the work while we watched and learned … the pastry dough was pre-made and we rolled it out an in to the provided cases; Stefan made the various fillings (with ground pecans and almonds for the pecan pie, and chopped apples for the apple pie) and we loaded them into our pies … it was a lot of fun and some good learning too!

Here’s my photos from the day; this first set shows the provided dough going in to the pie cases, then Stefan making the pecan pie filling (a not-sweet soft caramel base with ground pecan and almonds) which we then spread into one pie – both pies then were cooked …

The second batch of photos shows the apple pie filling being made (more caramel style mixed with chopped apples):

And here’s the final pies (in the four pie picture, my creations are in front with Stefan’s behind – I tweaked mine a little!):

(reminder about my previous visit, making sourdough bread)

Killer Carnival

Twice over the last two weekends I’ve walked up the road to nearby Makers Hollow to experience their Killer Carnival event – in parts a bit more scary than I want (I skipped one section!) but it’s nice to have a local event … here’s photos from both visits:

The last group of photos are from a magic show that was in some parts quite baffling – the last few photos in particular had a card appearing on its own from a drawing of a pack!

I’m hoping there will be more events at Makers Hollow, that I can attend …

UPDATE: Someone (Jim O’Rear) has put up a video: