Pithiviers

Just checking up the the name, this Pithivier, Three Kings cake, seems not to be a very popular recipe. We never saw one sold in bakery here. Anyway, sometimes school picked recipes that are totally outdated (they said ‘traditional’!) and nobody likes to have a piece after we finished ours.

As I was already in the class and I have never make any of those recipes, I am still happy to try those tradition pieces. Sometime a recipe is contain of different technique like meringue piping, sponge cake, short crust pastry… so practice make perfect.

surprisingly, found this cake in a tour guide, which is original from a town call Pithiviers;

This Pithiviers is obviously a good practice of making puff pastry. It’s fun to work puff pastry in a well equipped kitchen(cool, constant temp, good dry butter and real marble) and under some professional guidance. I could handle better this time and as the chef said in the demo, it’s actually a lot of ways of folding. It’s not rigid like if u fold one time more or less, you cannot form the layers.

It’s a boring cake in french patisserie. Doesn’t have beautiful shell, light sweet filling and long lasting aftertaste. Frankly, it’s just filled with almond paste and like a big ‘coconut tart’ we have in Hong Kong. The most important thing is to roll the dough lightly but even.
another use of puff pastry

At last we were back to the pithiviers and it turned out not too bad. As I search it in google, it’s also possible to put dried fruit inside, or even make salty meat pie.

For the next day we were instructed by a green chef who made the Saturday lesson more fun and easy. Mine three kings cake puff in a reasonable height and taste not too bad oh.

But I’m more interested in side dish, the Sacristain, almond twist. We used the leftover pastry dough to make these but it indeed take delicate hand to stretch for every piece.
It seems easy but actually tricky to make the twist spiral light and pretty. At last I got mine a bit chunky but taste still good~~