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| Mini Pear Pies : Picture from BBC Food |
First Baker: Megan
My Thoughts: My baking routine for these technical challenges has been to bake them on Sunday and have The Greatest Showman soundtrack blaring in the kitchen to motivate me through each bake. Well during this bake as the song Never Enough began to play, I started to sing as loudly as possible "Never agaaaaain! Never! Never! Never again, will I make these!" That's how I felt pretty much through this whole bake. Never again did I want to fold and turn and chill and fold and turn and chill a billion times to make my own rough puff. Never again did I want to poach pears for years just for them to turn out bland and taste well, like pears. Never again did I want to use a ruler while I was baking because bringing reminders of school home, is just the worst (even though as a teacher I have to do it all the time). Never again did I want to wrap very poorly cut strips of dough around a slippery pear that just didn't want to be mummified that day. Never again did I want to have to watch all my hard work be demolished by a tipsy pear in the oven that clearly had absorbed too much poaching wine and decided standing up was just too bloody hard.
Result:
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| Ingredients, cutting those rough strips, pears before the oven, my makeshift rolling pin, and that drunken pear taking out the others in the oven. |
Result:
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| I'm a little mad just looking at this picture and thinking of all of that wasted time. Did I mention how much I already loathed fruit desserts before this because well, you know, a lack of chocolate. |
Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: There were definitely some mixed feelings on these amongst my judges but I think they're just a little too nice to say these were disgusting. One judge thought that the pear tasted nice while another thought that something went terribly wrong with them. One of them thought that the appearance with that little baked leaf was perfect (she did receive the best looking one) while the other thought that there is no way pastry would ever adhere to a soggy pear so theirs was a mess. Finally one judge thought that adding whipped cream helped make these edible.
Average Taste Score: 5
Average Appearance Score: 7
Second Baker: Stephanie
My Thoughts: Mini pear pies, sounds so cute! If you could have been in our group text this week it didn't sound as delightful. There were talks of "literal hell" of cutting pastry in 1/8 in strips, and of pears going down and taking others as casualties with them. It's a war zone this baking thing! To be honest I wasn't expecting a ton from this bake because making rough puff pastry sounded daunting, and for once I was in agreeance with Megs where this dessert didn't seem to be worth the calories, but maybe Paul would surprise me.
The bake wasn't difficult, but it was involved. There were many turns, rolls,and chills of the pastry, and the pears had to be peeled, poached, cored, cooled, wrapped, bathed, baked, and drizzled before they could be consumed.
Going into the oven I was pretty impressed with myself! The leaves were adorable, the pastry, although stretched, was in perfect mummy fashion...things are looking up! Then...they went into the oven, and some sorcery of pear temperature and pastry temperature happened and everything started to fall apart! No matter how long I baked them I couldn't get them to brown nicely, and one pear even decided to defect from the mummy-pear army and tip over. Oh boy.
The bake wasn't difficult, but it was involved. There were many turns, rolls,and chills of the pastry, and the pears had to be peeled, poached, cored, cooled, wrapped, bathed, baked, and drizzled before they could be consumed.
Going into the oven I was pretty impressed with myself! The leaves were adorable, the pastry, although stretched, was in perfect mummy fashion...things are looking up! Then...they went into the oven, and some sorcery of pear temperature and pastry temperature happened and everything started to fall apart! No matter how long I baked them I couldn't get them to brown nicely, and one pear even decided to defect from the mummy-pear army and tip over. Oh boy.
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| Ingredients, pastry measuring, adorable leaves! |
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| The pear army ready to be baked, and the beginning of the end of this losing battle in the oven |
Result:
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| My attempts at plating well to distract the judges from the disaster on the back lines. |
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| Sad little tattered pear army |
Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: In the end they didn't turn out as catastrophic as I thought. We all agreed they were a bit on the bland side for a dessert, but the remarks were that the flavors were great, the pastry was actually nice, but the pears could have been a bit softer.
Average Taste Score: 8
Average Appearance Score: 6
Third Baker: Devin
My Thoughts: I had no desire to do this technical. I'm in love with puff pastry and I love fruity desserts, but there's no pizazz found in this dish. I put it off for as long as I could, I may have literally run to get away from doing it. Once I started the bake everything felt okay and not daunting at all. I just want to say on the record, this was my first time rolling out dough..and I was not a complete failure! The poaching on the other hand reminded me too much of candying the peel from the Florentine technical. I had to take some therapeutic sips from the white wine used. I felt pretty good about this going in and it was the first of the bakes that I could taste.
Result: Why did I just put this in my belly? I never thought I could like something less than the snicker doodle cookie. The British can keep this dessert and I'm giving them the silent treatment until they redeem themselves.
Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: The puff pastry could have have been crispier. The pear was cooked to perfection, but does not hold any flavor from it's poaching.
Average Taste Score: 4
Average Appearance Score: 9
And the Star Baker is...
And the Star Baker is...
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