Palmiers, Tartlets, and Meringues, Oh My! or, Have Love, Will Travel

I had today off from work to get prepared for the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York's winter conference in Saratoga.  But, I had the good fortune of picking up a contract and spent the day baking up some treats for the teacher's social at the Creekside tomorrow.  They requested enough for 30 people and gave me a budget, leaving the choice of product up to me. 

So, I made some puff pastry - buying it in the frozen section at the supermarket is serious a cop-out, it's pretty simple, not as time consuming as rumored, and obviously rewarding -  and made it into palmiers, or if you'd rather, for the sake of defying brevity, call them elephant ears, palms leaves, butterfly pastries, among countless other names.

I also made some chocolate ganache tartlets topped with pecans, sea salt, and a few plain for those lacking a sense of mild adventure.  I rounded out the order with a few meringues for the gluten-free folks out there.  I opted to fold in a little walnut, pecan, cinnamon, and vanilla bean infused sugar mixture to liven them up a bit. 

At the last minute, with the seconds before scheduled delivery literally tick-tocking away, I decided to take some of the plain tartlets and top them with the vanilla bean infused meringue cookies.  I decided to call them Deconstructed Cupcakes, with their shortbread-like base, bittersweet ganache middle, and hat of meringue, I expect them to steal the show tomorrow.

If the children are the future, and the teachers spend more time with the children then the parents, we gotta keep them in quality baked goods, right?
A brief side note:  For those of you having difficulty coming to grips with the Black Keys sudden pop-super stardom,  load up The Moan EP, Thickfreakness, The Big Come Up, or Rubber Factory, and listen to your disillusionment trickle through the hourglass like Ziggy Stardust slipping into a sequined jumpsuit. I mean come on, All Hands Against His Own, Stack Shot Billy, I'll Be Your Man, Have Love Will Travel, these will restore your faith in no time.  I put the entire discography on shuffle this morning and it drove my baking through the roof.

And now, the pictures. 

drizzling the ganache into the tartlet shells

scraping the seeds from the vanilla bean

mixing then shaking the vanilla seeds into my sugar jar

some tartlets

deconstructed cupcakes

cinnamon and pecan meringue cookies

palmiers close-up

palmiers not that close-up

the frantic foursome (nickname admittedly needs work)

the francophile four-tet?