- Hey bakers, John Kanell from Preppy Kitchen here.
Today we're gonna be making this crazy striped tart.
It is my attempt at a fancy French pastry
and I have to tell you, I think it looks pretty cool.
You're gonna love watching this.
It's so much easier than you think.
It might inspire you to break out that rolling pin
and make some magic happen.
Let's get started.
First off, we'll be making two batches of pastry dough.
One vanilla, one chocolate, both have to be chilled.
There's a lot of chilling in this recipe,
so I'm just gonna warn you ahead of time.
You can totally stage it out and do like one thing one day,
come back to it and like keep working.
Don't try and do it all at once. It's a lot of work.
Okay.
1/2 a cup of cold butter into the bowl,
all of it dated with a paddle attachment
and now I'm adding in 80 grams of confectioner sugar.
Take a little bit less than a cup I think.
1/2 a teaspoon of salt
and 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla.
There we go.
We're gonna mix it up into a paste.
It'll take a minute cause the butter's cold,
but it's supposed to be cold, so don't worry.
Walk away.
Clean some dishes.
(upbeat music)
(mixing machine roaring)
Once it's all mixed up after about two minutes,
scrape the bowl down
and we're gonna add three egg yolks in,
one at a time while it's mixing.
One,
(mixing machine roaring)
two, that one's broken
and three.
(mixing machine roaring)
Mix it up so it's nice and cohesive.
(mixing machine roaring)
Scrape that bowl down again
and now it's time to add in our flour.
Am adding 1/2 a pound or 226 grams of an all- purpose flour.
You're gonna mix it until it comes together.
And like a normal pastry dough,
you don't wanna overwork it.
It'll kind of come together when it's resting in the fridge.
It'll be a bit crumbly.
(mixing machine roaring)
Mix it on low, mix it on medium.
Right, that's not ready yet,
but I do wanna do some scraping.
Starting to come together.
There we go.
So now you can see it's a nice kind of
plain laid consistency
and this stuff is delicious.
I'm sprinkling some parchment paper with just the barest,
touch a flour and then move it around,
dump it out onto another sheet of parchment paper
he just wanna like touch it with flour.
You don't want a lot.
Now we'll move our pastry dough here.
You just press it down with your hands
and now take another sheet of barely,
barely floured parchment paper.
We're gonna roll it out to three millimeters exactly,
which is an eighth of an inch.
Very precise, very small.
Let me show you how I'm gonna do that.
This looks so cheesy, but it comes in really handy.
It's a rolling pin and it has little bumpers on the side.
I'm gonna use the eighth of an inch bumper.
I got this on Amazon
and I'll include a link in the pro, in the little,
Downstairs Text Area.
That's the official name.
Roll it on.
We're gonna roll this out.
Turn the paper around.
If you get wrinkles in it,
lift the paper back up and place it back down.
These bumpers come in so handy, I can't even tell you.
If your pastry comes out too far just cut it off
and place it somewhere where it would be more useful.
If you were actually like in a fancy,
a fancy restaurant or a big bakery,
they have machines that laminate the dough,
but I don't have that, 'cause I'm baking at home.
This thing is getting like a full Swedish massage.
Right, I'm gonna cut this last little bit off,
have it for snacking and later,
I will eat that raw pastry dough.
This is gonna go into the refrigerator on a baking sheet
for like half an hour or so
before it's cool enough for you to start working it.
It does soften up and you want to be nice and firm
for those stripes.
They need to have precision.
Okay, into the fridge.
Now we're making a chocolate version of the same dough.
Everything is the same.
I did take out like a tablespoon or so of flour,
so it's like 215 grams now,
along with three tablespoons
of a nice cocoa powder,
you can use more of it.
There we go.
Use more cocoa powder if it's a cheap cocoa powder.
This stuff is really powerful.
It's a Valrhona.
Sifted up.
Cocoa powder has a lot of lumps.
Whisk it up and set it aside.
Ready to do the same things all over again.
Starting with one stick of cold butter
cubed into your stand mixer.
80 grams of confectioner sugar,
1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla,
1/2 a teaspoon of salt
and cream it up.
Once it's all creamy,
add in three egg yolks one at a time.
Scrape the bowl down if needed.
Add your flour mixture in mix until just combined.
Dump that chocolate mixture out onto your prepared paper.
Press it down to get it started.
Now I'll add our second sheet of parchment paper on.
Roll it out to three millimeters again.
Once our chocolate batch is rolled out
to three millimeters,
we can add it right on top of that vanilla batch.
Goes back into the fridge.
Let it chill out for half an hour.
You can even do this a day ahead of time that no problem.
I would just cover this up completely.
Our next step is to make a beautiful, dreamy,
Swiss meringue buttercream,
but I'm not gonna subject you to that.
I wanna get to this humming part first.
So click up over here
for my full How To Video,
has all my tips and tricks on
dreamy Swiss meringue buttercream.
It's one of my favorites and it's so versatile.
The next step we have is our chocolate base.
I'm just gonna melt about a cup of dark chocolate.
You can add a little bit of cream to thin it out.
You can make it as creamy or as stiff as you want.
It's totally up to you.
You can even temper it.
Not going to get into that though.
And now it's time for the assembly.
Take one batch of dough out.
You can start with vanilla
and we're gonna cut it into quarter inch thick strips
using a ruler.
(upbeat music)
Once your dough is all cut,
put it back in the fridge
and do the same with the chocolate batch.
Onto a new sheet of parchment paper
you're gonna add in alternating strips
of chocolate and vanilla.
Put them right up next to each other.
And then when you have a big sheet of that,
it's time to roll it out between parchment paper,
just like we did before.
This will laminate the dough together.
It's really fun.
You can do any color you want to.
I make cookies this way as well.
That laminated dough is gonna go back into the fridge now.
It needs to be nice and firm,
so much fridge time.
I know it's crazy.
Once your striped dough is all chilled,
it's time to cut things out.
I'm using a few specialized tools that I wanted to show you
because they make a huge difference.
You don't have to use them. You can use regular tart shells,
et cetera, et cetera,
but to get that perfect cylinder,
you're gonna use a perforated tart ring.
It bakes things very evenly.
I'll have a link to buy them if you choose so
in the description of this video.
The second thing you can use
but totally don't have to is a silpat,
but it's a perforated silpat.
Can you hear me?
There's air holes all throughout this.
And they let things bake up
just perfectly on the bottom too.
I couldn't find this for a while,
so I actually would just take regular parchment paper
and punch a lot of holes in it with a knife
and it worked like almost exactly the same.
So, if you're gonna splurge, get the rings.
I'm using my three inch rings
to cut into the chilled dough and don't remove the ring.
Just pick the whole thing up
and you're gonna build with the ring.
The ring goes into the oven.
This is like a one huge piece
that you're gonna put together.
After you've your bases done
it's time for the sides.
This is the tricky part.
I'm warning you if you're gonna do this with me,
this is the part where stuff gets a little dicey.
You're gonna cut strips out
and I cut them on a 45 degree angle
so that we had a nice diagonal stripe
and you're gonna be very,
very careful when you lift it.
Gingerly, transfer that strip into your tart ring,
unroll it,
and then where the overlapping pieces are meeting,
you're going to just kind of like take off stripes
one at a time until you get the right amount
and press them together.
Now press the corner in with your fingers.
You don't need to use any glue at all,
all kind of glue together when it bakes.
And then use a knife to just trim the top off
so it's flush with the ring.
These little guys can go into the freezer
until they are perfectly frozen, frozen.
So leave him in there.
You can do this the night before.
If you want to stage things out,
that's totally fine or have them in the freezer
for at least half an hour.
When you're almost ready to bake them
preheat your oven to 320 degrees Fahrenheit,
pop them in, hopefully on that perforated silicon sheet,
and then you're going to bake them
for about 15 minutes or so.
If you didn't press hard enough into the tart ring,
they might droop down.
That's totally okay.
Just take them out of the oven after a couple of minutes,
press it back in, it'll be totally fine.
Once the tart shells are done,
they're just starting to turn golden,
you can take them out, let them cool completely,
and then take the rings off after they've set.
We're take that melted chocolate,
drizzle it down into your tart shell
so you have a nice layer.
It could be as thick as you want or as thin as you want.
It's totally up to you.
Once you have your batch of Swiss meringue buttercream,
you're gonna divide it so that you have like two thirds,
that's will be plain vanilla
and one third that'll be chocolate.
All you have to do is melt chocolate
and then cool it until it's room temperature.
Drizzle it in, mix it up,
and you get a creamy
chocolate Swiss buttercream masterpiece.
It basically tastes like chocolate Swiss meringue to me
and I love it.
I snip the tip off of a piping bag
and I'm piping in that delicious
creamy chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream.
You can use a small spatula to even it out
so it's nice and flushed
and then transferred into the fridge just to hang out.
They could be at room temperature too,
but why not enjoy some nice cool air.
This ridged top is really fun to make.
Here's what you're gonna do.
Take a sheet of parchment paper and tape it onto a surface
that's very important it doesn't slip around.
Transfer that vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream
into a piping bag fitted with a 127 tip
or any medium pedal tip.
You're gonna pipe vertical ridges onto that parchment paper,
so the pointy side of your piping tip is facing straight up
perpendicular to the paper.
Now you're gonna pipe in alternating layers,
going back and forth,
back and forth to create this mesmerizing
but very easy effect.
Once you have like about a four by four inch square of that,
you can take that parchment paper off of your surface,
transfer it to the freezer on a small plate.
And you're gonna make as many of these squares
as you have tarts.
Once you have all of those done,
it's time to dust them with cocoa powder.
Take your chilled section of ridges
and lift it until it's almost vertical,
so perpendicular to the floor.
Dust it with cocoa powder
and then carefully place it back down.
Now you're gonna use a circle cutter
that's just smaller than the inside of your tart shell.
I have this set of graduated circle cutters,
they come in so handy, I love them.
I'll add a Link in to the description as well.
Cut your circles out and remove very carefully.
I used to toothpick to like just plop it out, but,
you can jimmy it however you'd like
and then place those into the freezer and hangout.
After you've cut them all out,
it's time to assemble your fancy tarts.
Take little spatula,
add the top onto your filled tart and you're done.
That's it.
Wasn't that easy?
It only took a few seconds.
I have to tell you this came out so different
than I expected.
I actually was gonna make this crazy sugar cage for it
and then top it with these little finials.
I actually made all of these things,
but I decided not to use them,
so I did not include them in the video.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you like this video,
why not watch my ultimate cake decorating compilation?
It has all my favorite cakes.
Just the decoration.
No baking, no jam, just cakes.
Check it out.
Alright.
Hit that like button and subscribe and I'll see you soon.