Bake & Take: Pies & Tarts!

Join Chef Melissa Walnock, a classically trained pastry chef from the CIA Apple Pie Bakery Café, in the Watergrasshill kitchen studio to discover the art of pie and tart making. This class demonstrates the best ingredients to make perfect pies and tarts. Learn how to professionally make delicious crusts and fillings and decorate/assemble pies and tarts so that they have a personal touch and look like they were created by a professional pastry chef.

We will start the class learning how to make a classic fool-proof pie crust that is perfect for sweet or savory pies! Then we will begin mixing two different pie fillings including pumpkin and apple and practice rolling out the dough. While the pies bake in the oven we will move on to the tarts! Chef Walnock will demonstrate a Rocher Tart which consists of a chocolate hazelnut tart dough, filling, nutella caramel and a chocolate ganache. Then the class will individually make their own sucre tart dough which will be assembled into a Hummingbird Tart with sweetened cream cheese frosting. We'll end the class by enjoying the fruits of our labor.

Each participant will go home with their packet of recipes, an apple pie that is ready to be baked and enjoyed or frozen for the holidays as well as a hummingbird tart that can be shown off and enjoyed immediately by your friends/family.

Menu:

Pumpkin Pie

Apple Pie with Strusel Topping

Hummingbird Tart with Sweetened Cream Cheese

Rocher Tart with Nutella Caramel and Chocolate Ganache

Melissa Walnock is A Certified Hospitality Educator of baking and pastry arts at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA). Chef Walnock serves as pastry chef and instructor in the college’s Apple Pie Bakery Café. Before joining the CIA faculty, Chef Walnock worked at some of the finest restaurants in the United States including The French Laundry in Yountville, CA, Jean-Georges V Steakhouse, Union Square Café in New York City and The Breakers in Palm Beach, FL.