Welcome back to The Not-So-Great Defector Bake Off, where Kelsey and Chris attempt to complete the technical challenges from the newest season of The Great British Bake Off in their own home kitchens, with the same time parameters as the professional-grade bakers competing on the show.
Whenever I tell people about this column, they are always surprised that we abide by the time requirements. “But that’s so hard!” they say, as if we do not know this already. The arbitrary time requirements given by the dreaded Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith, however, are the heart and soul of the technical challenge. Sure, it’s hard to bake anyway, and it’s particularly hard to bake when the instructions are pared down or (like cake week) non-existent. But what actually makes these bakes hell (in addition to our constantly malfunctioning ovens and lack of correct equipment) is that ticking clock. The pressure of time slipping through your fingers like sand through an hourglass is never more apparent, never more urgent, never more terrifying.
This week, the bake time was long. We were given a generous three hours, a time that always now sends a shiver down my spine. On The Great British Bake-Off, you are never given a three hour time block because of generosity. There is no hope that the large amount of time will allow your rest and ease. No. If there are three hours, those hours will be filled with pain and suffering and more dishes than you can possibly imagine. Every second you waste moving your laundry or checking your slack notifications, or (god forbid) eating a little snack, will haunt you when the timer goes off. Every moment is equally valuable, if you use them correctly.
This week, the name of the game was caramel: sticky, sweet, evil. Caramel is nothing but warm sugar, but its heart is full of hate. Look away for one precious second too long and it burns. Add something that is a slightly different temperature, and it seizes up. Try to pour it into another bowl? You absolute buffoon! Now your caramel is a rock. The caramel is made by you to destroy you—or at least, that’s what happened to us.
The challenge this week was to make Prue Leith’s Pear Tarte Tatin with Walnut Praline Ice Cream. But, you might be saying, I thought this was caramel week! Well, baby, so did we!! This is the vehicle for the dreaded caramel: a praline that goes into an ice cream, and a caramel that goes on top of a tarte. How hard could this be? Let’s find out.
Chris Thompson: Well well well! The most harrowing task of all: to make caramel without destroying one’s kitchen.
Kelsey McKinney: Chris, let me tell you, I feel that I am in a completely different place than I was yesterday morning. Sure, I am physically in a hotel, but as a person, I feel changed and mangled by the task of making caramel. How are you feeling?
CT: Thanks for asking, Kelsey. I feel worn out! Would you like to lay out for our readers how this challenge was different from most others? Like, for example, why it is that we are both in hotel rooms right now? Hint: We did not burn our homes down.
KM: Oh sure! Defector is having our in-person meetings this week in the dreaded Atlantic City. We are here to discuss the future and maybe also the past. It is unclear to me.
CT: I feel that we are mostly here to facilitate the mild gambling addictions of several of our colleagues.
KM: No! No!! Boo! Hiss! What this means, practically, is that Chris and I both needed to cook in the morning yesterday, clean our kitchens, pack up all our stuff, and then in the dejected state of post-bake exhaustion we found ourselves in, haul ourselves into our cars and drive to what I will now refer to as our Opulent Lodgings.
CT: Love to do an extremely demanding three-hour bake, then clean a kitchen that has had caramel flung everywhere, then immediately get into my car and drive for four hours in traffic to a place that is almost literally Hell Itself. I didn’t even get to taste the damn finished product! Disgusting.
KM: I have to admit something. We ran into each other in the lobby while trying to check in, and I wanted to immediately begin yelling about the bake, but instead I shoved down that emotion in favor of pretending it didn’t happen.
CT: I think that was wise. The other people in the lobby did not deserve to see our emotional and nervous breakdowns.
KM: That’s so true. One other thing this meant, was that we had to start our bakes at different times! This is the first time this season that we have entered Chaos Mode at different times, and I did not like it one bit! I felt much more alone during my bake, because I was!
CT: Yes. It’s heartening to have another baker struggling alongside you. I really like knowing that we are progressing through a bake in almost exactly the same sequence of stages. This was definitely a lonely bake.
How did you feel about this challenge from Prue, to make a tarte tatin and also ice cream and just a little bit of caramel.
KM: I felt that it was obscene and cruel and also a little bit rude. But I was excited to use pears, because I like pears, and yet again I got some in my CSA box that I needed to use. I will say, I ended up making so much caramel. But that wasn’t really intentional. How did you feel about this challenge?
CT: It does bother me a little bit when the theme is caramel and they give us a technical bake that is mostly about making ice cream in three hours, and whether we remember how to do rough puff pastry. Not that I wanted to make a ton of caramel but ice cream isn’t even baking at all, for crying out loud. It’s the opposite of baking.
KM: Yes! It’s especially frustrating after Bread Week, when we were given the task of … uh … making bread. I kind of expected the rational and reasonable theme to continue. Yet, here we are! Blogging about fucking ice cream!
CT: I will say, this was some damn good ice cream.
KM: It was honestly incredible. She was just showing off her ice cream! This, I guess, I will grudgingly respect.
Ingredients and Shopping
CT: How’d you do on your shopping this time? What pears did you use?
KM: I had brown pears in my box; I do not know their name. They were nice and beautiful and not too soft, so I did not need to shop for this! What kind of pears did you have?
CT: I used Anjou pears. My store had lots of pears but the Anjous were the best. I was hoping to find Taylor Gold pears, because those are my favorite, but I haven’t seen them around in a while. Possibly since the pandemic?
KM: Ooooh. Beautiful name. Wow, I wonder if the weird rain situation this year upset them! That’s sad! Did you have the rest of the ingredients?
CT: Yes. I did make one swap, opting for pecans instead of walnuts, for the praline, which goes into the ice cream. This was entirely because I already had an unopened bag of pecans in my pantry. We are gearing up for Thanksgiving over here and pecan pie is on the menu.
KM: I love pecans. That was such a good idea. I am also beginning my Thanksgiving testing this week, and should have discussed this. As it was, for me, I had to buy more walnuts because I used most of mine making that terrible marzipan that I threw in the trash the minute my photos were done.
CT: God, the marzipan. I’m gonna be discussing that in therapy one day.
KM: Otherwise, I did pretty good on the ingredients. I didn’t have vanilla bean because the vanilla bean at the store was SEVENTEEN DOLLARS and I am not a millionaire. So I just used almond extract, which I have an infinite amount of currently. This worked fine!
CT: Mamma mia! Yeah, that seems fine. I do love the smell of a freshly opened vanilla bean, but in this economy?
KM: Me too! But not for 17 dollars! Where I really struggled, to be honest Chris, was with the equipment. Prue called for a silicone mat, an ice cream machine, and a 25 cm heavy-based oven-proof frying pan or tart tatin dish. And guess what, Chris? I don’t own any of those things.
CT: Yeah, this was an equipment challenge, as much as anything. She also wanted us to have a digital instant-read thermometer, which I guess we both do have but the point is that she was very specific, equipment-wise, for this challenge.
KM: I also have that, but I did not use it at all.
CT: I can see making it work without a silicone mat or a specific dish, but making ice cream without an ice cream machine is brutal, especially within a strict time limit. What was your plan for countering this deficit?
KM: The thing is, at one point, I had an ice cream maker that was attached to the KitchenAid. I used it to make ice cream once during the pandemic, and it didn’t go well, so when I moved, I decided to get rid of it. This is extremely rare for me, since I never get rid of anything, and now I absolutely will never get rid of anything ever again. I decided that I would just figure it out. You told me I didn’t have to make the ice cream, but unfortunately, I have to do whatever the challenge says.
CT: I was really worried when you indicated that you were going to forge ahead, but I think I’m glad you did, because presumably when you get home later this week you will have some quantity of praline ice cream in your freezer! And that will be a lovely treat.
KM: Yeah! It will be a lovely treat! I love praline!
Stage One: Making Crème Anglaise
CT: Three hours for this bake! Our longest bake of the season so far. What was your first maneuver upon starting the timer?
KM: I started the timer, and immediately began separating eggs. I wanted to whip my sugar and golden egg yolks in the stand mixer while my milk got hot to make the crème anglaise. So I did this. Then, what I vaguely remember from the last time we made crème anglaise is that you trickle the hot milk into the stand mixer once the egg/sugar can make the ribbon on the top.
Then you put the whole thing back on the stove until it is thick enough (vibes I guess), and then it cools. What did you start with?
CT: Oooooh, I forgot all about the ribbon! That’s a neat trick. I wish I’d remembered that.
I started by gutting a vanilla bean, and then I put milk and cream into a saucepan and added the vanilla guts. I wanted to get this simmering.
Then I started on the egg yolks. I made the decision that I would use the stand mixer for the whisking of eggs and sugar, where I’m sure a more precise line of attack would’ve involved doing it manually. But like I was kind of in Death March Mode, where because I had to get in my car and drive to Atlantic City at the end of the bake, I really just wanted to get everything done and have a clean kitchen, even if nothing came out right.
KM: Yeah, I was surprised by how complicating of a factor wanting to leave a clean kitchen was. I did not want to leave my kitchen with 15 pans all coated in caramel and also a whole splattering of milk everywhere, so I was going very fast early on. Too fast, one might say, because at one point, I looked away from the milk on the stove to grab the butter out of the freezer, and my crème curdled. This was so bad.
CT: Oh no! A nightmare!
KM: This was particularly awful because I am in a weird egg phase where I cannot eat eggs and do not like the look or idea of scrambled eggs. (This egg phase is in its third year.) And when the crème anglaise curdled, it became kind of scrambled egg–like and then I was very unhappy.
CT: Ew ew ew. Even a scrambled egg enjoyer would be revolted by this development.
KM: I threw all that down the sink, obviously. Disgusting!!! And then I only had nine eggs left, so I was like, well, I guess I better do it right this time. By the end of 45 minutes, all I had done was make crème anglaise and my rough puff.
CT: That’s not bad, in retrospect, although obviously very stressful.
KM: It was so bad. I felt terrible! How did it go for you?
CT: I didn’t have any curdling issues with my crème anglaise, thank God. But I definitely was doing a very rough version of this task, which normally calls for very careful temperature management. I got my yolks and sugar thoroughly mixed, and then I took the simmering dairy with the vanilla and I just started ladling it directly into the mixer. I’m pretty sure it was too hot at the beginning, but I turned the mixer up to a higher setting and continued on. This wound up producing a very foamy crème anglaise, but I truly did not care. I just wanted to move to the next step.
Also, while I was doing this, I chopped pecans and put them on a small baking sheet and got them into a hot oven. I also began to measure together the ingredients for the puff pastry.
KM: My first anglaise (rip) also became very very foamy! I have no idea why!
CT: Maybe it’s supposed to be foamy?
KM: I also toasted the nuts, but not until after my stuff was cooling. I was stunned not to have burned them, something I’ve never managed to do.
CT: I burned the shit out of my first batch of pecans, but I refused to feel a way about this, because I knew that I had more pecans and lots of time. I simply did a second batch.
KM: Yeah, that seems normal to me! We are frantic! It’s fine to burn a nut!
CT: I assume you ice-bathed your crème anglaise. How’d that go?
KM: Yes, I put her in an ice bath, which went fine.
She was over there while I stared at the objects in the kitchen trying to decide how I could turn it into ice cream. I decided that if I could freeze the crème anglaise, then it would at least be cold enough to be ice cream. I was literally thinking about Cold Stone Creamery and decided at this point to put tin foil on a baking sheet and freeze this sheet. Then once my crème anglaise was cooled off, I poured the it onto the cold sheet and put her in the freezer.
CT: Genius! To me it’s very cool to improvise your way to a solution where all the other bakers are using dedicated machinery. Bonus points!
KM: Cool? Stupid? Who is to say!
Stage Two: Making Rough Puff Pastry, Making Praline
CT: There was some overlap, here, lots of tasks happening at once. How’d you approach the rough puff pastry?
KM: Everything was happening everywhere and all at once! I made the rough puff basically in a fugue state while my second crème anglaise was becoming warm enough to pour into the mixer.
CT: Oh wow, that was bold. I considered trying to do both at once—I even got as far as putting cubes of butter into my dry ingredients—but then I decided this was too ambitious and so I put that bowl in the fridge and waited until the crème anglaise was in the ice bath and the second batch of pecans was NOT burnt.
KM: I had to, Chris! I ended up putting the butter in the flour with my hands, and then adding cold water (from the ice bath) to make it stick. Then I let it cool for 10 minutes because it was a little unmanageable, and when it came back out, I rolled it out, grated half the frozen butter on the bottom third, did the letter fold, turned the dough, and repeated. I was kind of impressed with myself that I was able to do this so fast. Is this what you did?
CT: Yes, more or less. I had an advantage, here: I made apple turnovers for my wife’s birthday breakfast-in-bed last week, so I had successfully made rough puff pastry from a recipe very recently. It was very fresh in my mind. I rubbed in the cold butter, then added ice water one tablespoon at a time, until I had a very loose dough blob.
Then I immediately rolled it out and did the first and second rounds of butter grating, before putting it in the fridge.
KM: Oh! You didn’t let it rest at all!
CT: No rest! If I’m not resting, the dough sure as shit is not resting.
I figured since there’s no proofing or any rising or whatever, so it would be fine to proceed without chilling, so long as I was working very fast and using very cold ingredients. And my flour and butter had been in the fridge due to cowardice, so I felt very confident that it would be OK.
KM: Wow! I should have done that! I mostly did it because I needed my hands to make the walnut praline, to be honest. But I thought I was doing the right thing.
CT: It’s totally possible that you were doing the right thing. I know when you do full puff pastry, you are basically constantly returning that sucker to the fridge, or even the freezer. But here, again, I was so much more focused on just getting the bake over with than I was on doing The Best Version Of Everything. I even convinced myself that I could shave significant time off of the bake and finish with lots of time to spare.
KM: I was also, I want to admit, so sweaty at this point. I was darting back and forth. I needed to make the praline. It was so hot. I was so hot. My kitchen is notoriously cold, but it didn’t matter. I was running around too too much!
CT: How’d the praline go, for you? I was nervous about this part, since the ingredients were just sugar, nuts, and salt.
KM: The praline went so well that I immediately became cocky. I have made praline before, and I like to eat it! I made my caramel, and this went fine, and then I added my walnuts, and the caramel kind of seized up and became very sticky, but by that point, it didn’t really matter, and then I dumped it out onto a sheet of baking paper and tried to flatten it out with my little hands. What did you do?
CT: I put sugar into a pan and turned on the heat, and then I started doing other things—probably cleaning—and when I turned around a large part of the sugar was melted and brown. I yelped and ran over there and started whisking, and everything went very quickly from there.
KM: Wow. Should I have been whisking? I was using a rubber spatula.
CT: That’s a good question. I used a whisk but possibly because that was just a thing that was within reach at a moment of panic. It worked OK, except that after it was over the whisk had a lot of rock-hard caramel all over it.
I did not add my pecans to the caramel in the pan. I just poured the caramel onto my silicone mat, and then sprinkled the pecans and the salt over the top. My reasoning here was I didn’t want the caramel in the pan too long or I was sure I would burn it, and I didn’t have any faith that I could spread it or flatten it with nuts in it. Plus I knew it was all being crumbled up in the ice cream anyway. To me this was fine.
KM: You were right, I think! There was no reason for me to put the walnut pieces into the pan! It just caused me to have a heart attack because the caramel seized. I think you did it the right way.
CT: I should say here that my “praline” did not have the look of praline that you get in, say, Georgia. It was much more like toffee, with clear, rock-hard caramel, that broke into shards after cooling. Again, I don’t think this matters to the experience of eating the ice cream, but I think maybe I did not get it exactly right.
Back to the pastry real quick: How many folds did you wind up doing with your pastry? I allowed myself to become slightly ambitious here and did five total laminating folds, which felt like at least one more than necessary.
KM: I did two when I first folded in the butter, and then I ended up doing three folds. I had wanted to do four when we began, but because of the anglaise situation, I did not have time. I would have loved to do five! I like doing the folds!
CT: I think maybe the risk with doing lots of folds is that you will overwork the dough? But since I knew that I would not even be around to eat the stupid tarte, I guess I didn’t care so much.
Stage Three: Making Caramel, Sautéing Pears, Assembling Tarte Tatin
CT: So at this point we’ve got crème anglaise in an ice bath, and we’ve got puff pastry in the fridge.
KM: Well my crème anglaise at this point is in the freezer on a baking sheet! But otherwise, yes!
CT: Right, you were doing this on the Hard Mode setting. The next part of the challenge was to simmer cored and peeled and halved pears in buttered caramel. I had a lot of trouble with this part. You?
KM: God, this was miserable for me. I cored my pears fine. They were looking really lovely. I even mapped out where they should go in the pan to look the best. But the only even kind-of correct pan I had for this section was a cast iron skillet that was too big, so I was also trying to observe caramel in a black skillet, where you cannot see jack shit!!!
CT: Oh Jesus, that’s terrible. I also considered using my cast iron skillet for this part, but it turns out I do have a 25cm Pyrex tart dish, which I have really only ever used as like an extra receptacle when doing other cooking projects.
KM: I didn’t consider that when I chose the skillet, and it was a huge mistake! You were right to choose anything else.
CT: I felt OK about how this was going in the sense that I had already melted sugar to caramel in a pan once for this challenge, so obviously I could do it a second time. And then I added the butter, and everything went swirling into hell.
KM: I had a sense of doom because you did this an hour before me, and you warned of terrors. What kind of hell did your caramel enter?
CT: As soon as the butter started melting, the caramel started seizing up around it.
KM: Did you put all your butter in at once?
CT: I did. Was I not supposed to? I did add it in cubes, but to me this was just so that I could spread the cubes around the pan.
KM: Ah-ha! So I did not have this seizing problem, and I put mine in one cube at a time. I put the new cube into the corner closest to me and waited for it to become hot until mixing it into the caramel. I only did this because I knew you had had a hellish time with your butter adding, and I figured it must be a temperature disparity problem!
CT: Well shit. My only move was to just start whisking like crazy, hoping that it would incorporate through sheer force. And it sort of did, although it was far too sticky for the next phase. I think I must’ve overheated the sugar. This is one of those times when it would’ve really helped to have known some cooking science.
KM: Wow! I also overheated the sugar, and the minute I put the pears in on top of it, it began to burn. There was smoke in the kitchen, my stupid talking smoke alarm told me, which I knew because I was frantically trying to turn on the fan and also remove the heavy cast iron from the pan!!
CT: Oh my God! I never had any burning!
KM: It was a disaster!! I had to clean the cast iron of the caramel. But when I turned on the faucet, it was cold, so then the caramel hardened. And I had to make the water really hot to melt it again so I could get it off, and then I had to start the whole part over again. The cast iron was really a mistake, but at that point, I thought it was fine still, so I started again.
CT: Yeah, you were locked in. Mine did not burn, but it did fully harden once the pears were in there. I made the decision to just leave the pears in there until they were cooked, and then deal with the fallout afterwards.
KM: In the instructions it said to “spoon caramel over the pears.” I want to be clear that at no point was any of the caramel I made spoonable.
CT: Ha, yes, and in fact I tried this “spooning” maneuver and it was as hilarious as it sounds.
KM: I also tried it and just a lot of caramel got stuck to my spoon. I ended up putting a lid on the pears and caramel the second go so that I could keep the heat lower and make the pears softer.
CT: I had to do the same frantic cleaning of my pan, because I could not allow myself to make a huge hysterical mess in my kitchen. So I was using a bench scraper and just furiously hacking away at the caramel, under a steady stream of scaling hot water. This was a low moment.
KM: I don’t understand how this is always happening to us.
CT: I cheated a little bit, on my end.
KM: Oooh! How did you cheat!
CT: So I started off the same, using a spatula this time to move sugar around in a pan until it started to melt. Then I took the caramel off the heat and added the butter, and just was frantically whisking right from the start, to make sure it incorporated. And then I added a total of like three tablespoons of heavy cream, one at a time, to keep it loose. I reasoned that I’ve made crème caramel before, successfully, and that the heavy cream would ensure that even after cooling the caramel would be a liquid, and not a damn boulder.
I sincerely have no idea how Prue’s recipe is supposed to work, like I do not understand the science of it at all.
KM: Okay, I like taking it off the heat to start. That seems smart to me, and I love heavy cream, so I think this was a good solution. I also have no idea how any of this caramel was supposed to work. All I know is that it never really did for me.
CT: How did your second run at the caramel go?
KM: It went better, but it was still not swirlable or spoonable. However, I needed to get moving because I only had 50 minutes left at this point, and I assumed that the tart would need at least 30 to bake, so I just poured that into another pan. This turned out to also be a mistake because upon hitting contact with the cold pan, it became hard, and then when I melted it back down, it burned. So I ended up making the caramel again in that pot.
CT: Oof. This was such a miserable trial. And at least in my case it came after I’d had a lot of success with the other elements of the bake. All those minutes I thought I’d been banking just went right out the window. I felt ruined.
KM: Yeah, I felt terrible. I had caramel in my hair somehow. My kitchen was a little smoky. It was bad vibes for me! At this point, my partner came downstairs to say goodbye, and said “Oh no,” before he even asked how it was going, because I think the look in my eyes said that it was going very, very badly.
CT: You hate to get an “Oh no” from a concerned loved one.
Stage Four: Baking Tarte Tatin, Finishing Ice Cream
KM: At what point did you put your tarte tatin into the oven, and how did you feel?
CT: This was another stage where I felt like a lot was happening at once. I did a little mapping of my pears on my dish to work out a decorative arrangement, and I poured the second batch of caramel into a ramekin, and I pulled the puff pastry out of the fridge. I wasn’t sure how I’d get a circle of dough of the right dimensions, and then it occurred to me that I didn’t need to. I could just lay the rolled-out dough over the dish and then cut it more-or-less to shape. So that’s what I did.
KM: Luckily for me, I had been using a lid that fit on top of the cast iron, so I traced this onto the dough. I wish I hadn’t done this, though, because then I had some scraps of dough that I wish had been attached. On one side of my tarte in particular, the dough was not long enough. I didn’t read Prue’s instruction to “tuck in the edge” until it was too late, so my tarte went in the oven in my cast iron pan with the rough puff more or less flopped on top of it.
CT: I felt like I was able to do some tucking, although I didn’t really understand the point of it. I also wasn’t sure at all how long this thing would need to bake. I put it into the oven with a little less than 44 minutes left on the timer, but I felt good about this because I thought, if anything, it would be too much time, and I would have lots of time for it to cool on the counter. How much time did you give your tarte to bake?
KM: I also ended up going in with a little under 45 minutes left. My oven was at 425 degrees because that was what I had toasted the nuts at, and I forgot to change it. That turned out to be fine! Did you bake it at that high a temperature?
CT: I was also at 425, and once again I was using the convection setting on my oven, because it worked so well last week. Once my tarte tatin was in the oven, I ran downstairs to grab the bowl of my ice cream maker, then started the crème anglaise in there. I then had a nice long time to clean my kitchen. I made that sucker immaculate.
KM: Wow! At this point, I removed my tray of ice cream from the freezer. I felt pretty good about it to be honest because it was frozen, but was still soft in texture like ice cream. I put all my chunks of frozen ice cream into the Vitamix blender that I use to make smoothies because I felt like the mixing part of ice cream was really missing from my process.
Then I chopped up the walnut praline and threw it in there.
CT: This is amazing! Maybe this is how they made ice cream during ye olden times.
KM: The ancient method of using Vitamix! Once everything was all blended, it tasted great, and it looked like melting ice cream, which seemed really promising. At this point, I should have just put it back on the sheet and put it in the freezer, but I thought it would get too cold, so I put it instead into a loaf pan in the freezer. This worked, but not fast enough, so (spoilers) when the timer went off, my ice cream ended up not being quite firm enough.
CT: Still, considering you had to invent a method of making ice cream, I’d say you did incredibly well.
KM: What happened with your ice cream maker?
CT: I mean, it went just as smoothly as you’d hope. I was able to ignore it for a solid 20 minutes. Then I grabbed up the sides of the silicone mat and crushed up the praline, and dumped it directly into the machine.
I sincerely did no work for this part, just some glorious cleaning. When it was mostly frozen, I scooped it into a little paper ice cream tub, socked it into the freezer, and was finished with it.
KM: Wow. I wish that had been me!
CT: I did start to notice, however, that my tarte tatin was not browning up as quickly as I’d hoped. I still believe that the convection mode on my oven is a Game Changer, but I have to admit that I’ve grown accustomed to things browning—and blackening—a whole lot faster than this.
KM: This also happened to me. The rough puff, for whatever reason, took its sweet time to puff and brown. I ended up leaving my tarte in for 40 minutes, which was very stressful because then there was not very much time to take it out and let it cool and flip it onto the plate!
CT: I pulled mine from the oven with about one minute to spare, not because it was finished but because I had run out of time. I do think it was basically baked, but if there’d been no timer I probably would’ve given it another two or three minutes. Also, at one point in there I did bump up the heat, hoping to give it that final flush of color. To no avail, it turned out.
KM: Same. I think mine could have done well with another five minutes in there, but such is life! I pulled it.
I put a plate on the cast iron and flipped it out, and then I poured the brand new caramel I made to replace the two other burnt ones onto the pears. I did not feel satisfied or proud of myself at all. I felt tired and sweaty and mad.
CT: That’s a shame. It took my tarte tatin a surprisingly long time to dislodge from my dish, but I had a nice view of the process because it’s a clear Pyrex deal, so I could see each pear slowly peeling away. I also could see that I’d had some burning of the caramel smear along the bottom of the dish, but I did not allow myself to worry about this. I used a spoon to drizzle caramel all over. Too much, in fact, but it’s fine.
The Finished Product
KM: Show tarte tatin and praline ice cream?
CT: Well, I don’t have ice cream to show, because I never took it out of the freezer before bolting up to damned New Jersey. But I’m sure it’s so good. I got one bite of it in the transfer from the machine to the tub and it was glorious.
KM: Ha! I will imagine it in my mind’s eye, and it is beautiful. I love pecans.
CT: Here is my tarte tatin, with caramel running out of it:
It’s got a little bit of burnt caramel along one stretch of the rim, but otherwise it’s not too bad!
KM: I think you should be very proud of this! It looks gorgeous, and the pears look delicious!
CT: How’s your tarte tatin? Show tarte?
KM: Here is my tarte tatin with caramel:
And here is my ice cream, not quite solid:
CT: To me your caramel does not look burnt? Then again, what do I know.
I am so impressed that you completed this challenge on time despite not having a whole-ass machine that all the other bakers had to make one of the challenge’s two finished elements.
KM: I would have been happier if my tarte tatin was better. Something about how kind of droopy it looked made me really unhappy, even though objectively it looks fine!
CT: Yeah, I think any other home baker would be THRILLED to produce such a beautiful confection, from scratch.
Were you able to try your stuff before skedaddling out of town? Or is your partner at home now scarfing it all up?
KM: I did not get to try my tarte tatin! I left it at home because the idea of trying to transport such a sticky thing that I hate seemed really not worth it. Unfortunately for me, the tarte was tried and I was informed that it tasted like burnt caramel, which is not really surprising, but is upsetting.
CT: No! OK, that is upsetting. We need a recount.
We briefly considered bringing our tarte tatins to Atlantic damn City to share with our colleagues, but in my case I realized this would mean ripping it out from under the nose of my own child, which is the kind of thing that winds up being discussed in an emancipation hearing.
KM: In my case, I did not want to think about my tarte tatin ever again, so I could not bear to bring it with me. And also it was so so so sticky.
CT: Do you expect there to be any left when you return?
KM: I do think I will get to try it. I’ve been told the ice cream is delicious so I’m less hopeful that it will survive my absence. Do you think there will be any left for you?
CT: I’m hopeful, let’s say. But my child has learned the dreaded art of counter surfing, so the odds are difficult.
KM: Wow. I’m so proud of her. Very brave AND very athletic!
CT: Yeah when you think about it this is actually brilliant and precocious.
Kelsey, have you discovered the theme of next week’s bake?
KM: Uh-oh. I have not. What is it? Should I be scared?
CT: There is at least one website that says it will be Pastry Week!
KM: PASTRY WEEK!
CT: Isn’t this early for Pastry Week? Anyway I am PUMPED. Whatever this challenge is, we are going to prevail.
KM: No, I think time just flies when you’re having fun/being terrorized! God I cannot wait to make a stupid little pastry! I hope it’s a croissant! I’m sure whatever it is, you’re right! We are gonna crush this!