Tag Archives: desserts

baking, recipes

I finally faced my fear of pastry

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The monthly baking challenge at The Daring Kitchen is always announced on the first of the month. The date for participants to post about the challenge is always the 27th of the month, which gives you plenty of time to make the recipe. Or, if you are me, it gives you plenty of time to think about the recipe, be intimidated and decide to put it off until later about four times, until finally it’s the 26th and you realize that you must make the recipe right now or miss doing this month’s challenge all together. And you’ve aways wanted to make cream puffs, so it would be a shame to miss it all together.

Because the August challenge? It’s a filled pate a choux, and that is precisely what a cream puff is.

I’m so glad I didn’t let this challenge entirely intimidate me, because I discovered that pate a choux really isn’t very hard to make. It takes some time and attention and a lot of work from your mixing arm, but it comes together pretty easily. And it’s well worth the trouble.

The recipe we were given included instructions for turning your vanilla creme and pate a choux into adorable little swans. That required a pair of sheet pans, though, and one of my sheet pans appears to have run away. I’d imagine it’s lounging somewhere on a beach in the Keys by now, or it might be trying to get a job on an Alaskan fishing boat. Wherever it is, it left me in a little bit of a lurch yesterday, as I now seem to be down to one sheet pan. So I had to choose between making swan heads or swan bodies. I don’t think swan heads hold much cream filling, so I opted just to make the bodies. Which, without the heads, are really just cream puffs. That’s a scientific fact.

But there is nothing at all wrong with just cream puffs. A cream puff is a beautiful thing.

Vanilla Creme
1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin
1⁄2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 large egg yolks, well beaten
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup heavy whipping cream

In a medium saucepan combine gelatin, flour and sugar. Mix very well.

Add milk and egg yolks and turn heat to medium-low. Stir almost constantly until mixture is thick enough to cover the back of your spatula or spoon. This should take about 10 minutes. Once thick, immediately dump into a bowl, staring the mixture if you are concerned about lumps of cooked egg.

Add the vanilla, and mix in well. Cover the surface to prevent a skin from forming and chill for about 45 minutes. You do not want the mixture to set, just to continue thickening.

(Now is a good time to begin your choux paste.)

In a large bowl, beat cream until light peaks form. Carefully fold the vanilla mixture into the whipped cream until the mixture is well-blended and fairly smooth.

Refrigerate mixture if not using immediately.

The vanilla creme recipe makes considerably more filling than I needed for the cream puffs. I piped it directly into the puffs, though. You might use more of it if you cut them in half, plopped on some filling and gave it a top-o-the-puff chapeau.

Pate a choux
1⁄2 cup butter
1 cup water
1⁄4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

Line a baking sheets with a silicone mat or parchment paper, or grease pans well. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a small saucepot, combine butter, water and salt. Heat over until butter melts, then remove from stove. Add flour all at once and beat, beat, beat the mixture until the dough pulls away from the sides of the pot. Add one egg, and beat until well combined. Add remaining eggs individually, beating vigorously after each addition. Resulting mixture should be somewhat glossy, very smooth, and somewhat thick.

Using a 1⁄4-inch tip on a pastry bag, pipe out about 12 puffs. Bake about 30 minutes, until golden and puffy. Remove the pastries to a cooling rack, and let cool completely before filling.

For more information about how to make pate a choux and what to do with it once you’ve made it, check out these thoroughly excellent sources:

Kat of The Bobwhites was our August 2012 Daring Baker hostess who inspired us to have fun in creating pate a choux shapes, filled with crème patisserie or Chantilly cream. We were encouraged to create swans or any shape we wanted and to go crazy with filling flavors allowing our creativity to go wild!

baking, recipes

Dessert in my favorite shade of blue

On Saturday we stopped by Rockford’s grandmother’s house to pick some blueberries. His grandfather, Pop, had the greenest of green thumbs, and the blueberry bushes he planted when they moved into their “new” house some 12 years ago have been magnificently productive. Pete puts at least as many blueberries in his mouth as he does in his bucket; Poppy, not surprisingly, doesn’t eat a single berry from her harvest.

“I don’t like eating them,” she says. “I just like the festivity of picking them.”

Rockford and the kids picked probably 2 quarts of blueberries, and last night we turned some of them into a Blueberry Upside-Down Cake.

Blueberry Upside-Down Cake

adapted from “The Best Recipe“

Topping
4 tablespoons butter, plus more for cake pan
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 1/2 cups blueberries

Cake
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs, separated
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup milk

For the topping: Butter bottom and sides of 9×3-inch round cake pan. Melt 4 tablespoons butter in medium saucepan over medium heat; add brown sugar and cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture is foamy and pale, 3 to 4 minutes. Pour mixture into prepared cake pan; swirl pan to distribute evenly. Distribute blueberries evenly over topping; set aside.

For the cake: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk flour, baking powder, cornmeal and salt together in medium bowl; set aside. Cream butter and sugar in large bowl. Gradually add 1 cup sugar; continue beating until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in yolks and vanilla. Reduce heat to low and add dry mixture and milk, alternating in three or four batches, until batter is just smooth.

Beat egg whites in a large bowl at low speed until frothy. Increase speed to medium-high and beat to soft peaks. Add cream of tartar and continue to beat to stiff peaks. Fold a quarter of the beaten egg whites into the batter with a large rubber spatula. Fold in remaining whites until no white streaks remain. Gently pour batter into pan and spread over blueberries. Bake until top is golden and toothpick inserted into cake center comes out clean, 65 to 70 minutes.

Rest cake on rack for 2 minutes. Slide a paring knife around the edge of the cake to loosen it from the pan. Place a serving platter over the pan and hold tightly, then invert the cake onto the platter. Carefully remove the cake pan.

A note about the order of things

I only have a stand mixer, and I only have one bowl for it. This means I have to be a little creative about the batter and the egg whites. I get everything I need for the batter lined up, then I beat the egg whites, put them in another bowl and wipe the bowl down so I can use it to mix up the rest of the batter.

I am considering getting a second bowl for the stand mixer.

Pop gave us a few sticks (or sproutlings or cuttings or whatever you call them) from his blueberry bushes after we bought the house, and I so want them to thrive. I do not have the greenest of green thumbs, though, not by a long shot. So for now we will continue enjoying the bounty of Mom & Pop’s blueberry bushes, and I will keep coddling the sproutlings for as long as they need to be coddled.

Eating, recipes

S-a-tur-day. Night.

We invited some people over for a Halloween party this evening. Only a pirate and a ninja showed up. It could have been awkward, but they set aside their differences and we had a very nice evening.

Oh, and people whose “moms were in town” or “had to work late” or “contracted Hantavirus“? You missed these:

CARAMEL-DIPPED APPLES
Making the caramel requires the use of a clip-on candy thermometer, which should be tested for accuracy before starting. Attach it to the side of a medium saucepan of water, and boil the water for three minutes. The thermometer should register 212 degrees if it doesn’t, take the difference into account when reading the temperature. 1 1-pound box dark brown sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
2/3 cup dark corn syrup
1/3 cup pure maple syrup

1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon robust-flavored (dark) molasses
1/4 teaspoon salt
12 chopsticks
12 medium Granny Smith apples
Assorted decorations (such as chopped nuts, dried apricots and dried cranberries, toffee bits, mini M&M’s and candy sprinkles)
Melted dark, milk and/or white chocolates
Whipping cream (if necessary)

Combine first 8 ingredients in heavy 2 1/2-quart saucepan (about 3 inches deep). Stir with wooden spatula or spoon over medium-low heat until sugar dissolves (no crystals are felt when caramel is rubbed between fingers), occasionally brushing down sides of pan with wet pastry brush, about 15 minutes.

Attach clip-on candy thermometer to side of pan. Increase heat to medium-high; cook caramel at rolling boil until thermometer registers 236 degrees, stirring constantly but slowly with clean wooden spatula and occasionally brushing down sides of pan with wet pastry brush, about 12 minutes. Pour caramel into metal bowl (do not scrape pan). Submerge thermometer bulb in caramel; cool, without stirring, to 200 degrees, about 20 minutes.

While caramel cools, line 2 baking sheets with foil; butter foil. Push 1 chopstick into stem end of each apple. Set up decorations and melted chocolates.

Holding chopstick, dip 1 apple into 200 degrees caramel, submerging all but very top of apple. Lift apple out, allowing excess caramel to drip back into bowl. Turn apple caramel side up and hold for several seconds to help set caramel around apple. Place coated apple on prepared foil. Repeat with remaining apples and caramel, spacing apples apart (caramel will pool on foil). If caramel becomes too thick to dip into, add 1 to 2 tablespoons whipping cream and briefly whisk caramel in bowl over low heat to thin.

Chill apples on sheets until caramel is partially set, about 15 minutes. Lift 1 apple from foil. Using hand, press pooled caramel around apple; return to foil. Repeat with remaining apples.

Firmly press decorations into caramel; return each apple to foil. Or dip caramel-coated apples into melted chocolate, allowing excess to drip off, then roll in nuts or candy. Or drizzle melted chocolate over caramel-coated apples and sprinkle with decorations.

Chill until decorations are set, about 1 hour. Cover; chill up to 1 week.

Bon Appetit, October 1999