Fruit Lasagna: 5th week

31/3/2011: Today we enter the 5th and final week of experimentation so, we have to go all out. Using the same recipes as last week but making two different designs to see which is better.

Task implementation
Before the task
Prepare the same ingredients and mise en place as last week.

Filling
3 mangoes, finely diced
A large bowl of pineapple wedges, finely diced/chopped
Sugar to taste

Sweet dough pastry

500g general/all purpose flour (sifted)

220g icing sugar (sifted)

150g butter

2 eggs



Custard cream

1cup custard powder

1cup sugar

7cups milk

Other

Popiah skin (as much as needed)

Last week's grape sauce

Lemon/lime juice

Green apple skins

During the task

1. Mix the flour, icing sugar and butter in a large porcelain bowl until the mixture turns into crumbles. Add the eggs and keep mixing until the dough that forms no longer sticks to the bowl. Cover the dough in a wet towel and let it rest there for half an hour.

2. While allowing the dough to rest, peel and dice/chop the mangoes and pineapples finely and place them in seperate bowls

3. Cook the pineapples with sugar but leave the mangoes in the chiller

4. To make the custard, heat the milk in a pot or saucepan but be careful not to let it boil (in other words, simmer). Add in the custard powder and sugar and stir. Keep stirring until it has reached proper thickness and then remove from heat but keep stirring until the custard cools.

5. Mix last week's grape sauce with some lemon/lime juice and the apple skins. While we're at it, boil the popiah skins

6. Once the dough has done it's resting, roll it flat with a rolling pin

7. Mix some of the fruits with some of the custard

8. This is where we start making the two different designs:

  i. The dough is cut in small round shapes, some of them are left to bake until slightly brown-ish and then taken out of the oven.

Afterwards, the fruits and custard mixture is added on top and then the tops are covered with uncooked dough rounds.

Bake them in the oven again until the tops turn brown-ish. Add another layer of fruits and custard mix and add another layer of uncooked dough. Then brush the tops with egg and then cook them in the oven until they turn the proper golden brown color

  ii. The dough is cut into various shapes but make sure each shape has a pair (we only used two shapes)

All of the dough shapes are baked together

After they are done baking, add the fruit and custard mix on one shape while adding the popiah skin on it's corresponding shape. and then the two shapes are sandwiched together with the fruits and custard mix and popiah skin staying between the dough shapes

After the task

After we were done making and decorating the two designs, we presented the chef with them to decide on which one to use during the presentation day

After thinking long and hard, the chef decided that we should use this design

Recommendations

1. The presentation day is going to be hectic. It's best to prepare the ingredients beforehand to save time

2. There's no more time for any new designs. Stick with what we have and KICK. SOME. A**...

Conclusion

We've finally reached the fifth week with a desirable fruit combo and design. We hope that during the presentation day, our product still retains it's good taste or tastes better for the testers