Coffee Profiteroles with a dash of baileys

4pm: Time for a cup of coffee and cake!

Well, what if you can have your caffeine in the cake and eat it all in a bite! Not bad! I’m talking about cute little choux puffs filled with a decadent, deep, rich coffee cream. I love coffee and puffs and this dessert ticks all the right boxes for me.

They are so petite that they can be served at dinner parties or afternoon tea and everyone would love them. For the coffee pastry cream, I have used a combination of instant coffee as well as roasted ground coffee beans. It’s the arome and flavor the ground coffee gives to the pastry cream that lifts the entire dessert. To top it up, I have incorporated Baileys Irish cream into the fondant icing for that extra oomph!

When you put one in your mouth, you get the sublime fusion of the crunchy texture from the crumble of the choux, the rich coffee flavor from the silky cream and the sweet baileys to finish it off!

Ingredients:

Pate a choux:

For the ingredients and recipe please check my post on Choux Pastry

Crumble:
Butter 40g, softened
Brown Sugar 50g
Flour 50g

Coffee pastry Cream:
Milk 500g
Egg yolk 100g (4-5)
Sugar 120g
Ground Coffee 60g
Instant Coffee 5g
Cornflour 25g
Flour 25g

Coffee Fondant
Water 125g
Sugar 320g
Glucose 50g
Instant Coffee 5g
Baileys Irish Cream 5g

Intructions:

Crumble:
1.Mix all the ingredients like a dough. Roll it out between 2 silicon sheets or baking paper.
Freeze it.
2.Cut into round shapes and place over piped choux just before baking.
3.Bake at 180C like the regular choux.

Coffee pastry Cream:

Roast the coffee beans and grind them. This might seem like a lot of coffee, however it really balances the sweetness well. Or, you may want to cut down on the sugar in the recipe and decrease the coffee content as well.
1.Infuse half of the milk with the ground coffee and instant coffee, Heat until it boils.
2.Strain it over rest of the milk.
1.Boil the milk with half the sugar. Keep whisking continuously so that it does not burn.
2. In a bowl whisk the yolks and the remaining sugar. Add the cornflour and flour, whisk together.
3. As soon as the milk boils, pour one-third of it over the eggs mixture and whisk quickly.
4.Put it back into rest of the milk and heat until it comes to a boil. It is important to keep whisking continuously and quickly the cream so that it does not burn.
5. Once the cream comes to a boil, cook for 3 minutes and remove immediately from heat.
6. Cool in the refrigerator.

Coffee Fondant:
1. Heat the water and sugar until it comes to a boil.
2. Add the glucose and heat until it comes to a boil.
3. Cook the syrup till it reaches 118C. Keep whisking all the time.
4. Let it cool for 5 minutes.
5. In a stand mixer, whisk it until it forms a white icing texture.
6. Add the coffee dissolved in a bit of water and the irish cream. Mix.

Assembly:
Pipe the choux with pastry cream by making a hole on the bottom.

To glaze the choux:
1.The temperature of the fondant is very important. Make sure it is no more than 37C.
2.Dip the choux into the fondant and remove the excess with the help of your fingers creating a fine edge
3.Once the icing has dried dust some edible gold glitter for a nice finish.

Taking these over to Angie’s Fiesta Party!

PS: The fondant can be left out if one doesn’t have a huge sweet tooth. 😉

Bon Apetit!

Coconut-Mango Tartelettes

It seems like ages have past since i have been here. Though, i was out of action for a few months, it felt like eternity. I have missed following the action of all my favorite bloggers and their ever so ingenious posts.
I have completed my course and am back from Paris, the internship was one crazy ride which has taught me a lot.Updates on this will be followed up in another post.

Today, I would like to share with you a recipe for coconut mango tartelettes. The fun part is that there is a lot of coconut used up here, right from the base to the cream to the garnishing. Every coconut lover’s dream.

Makes 8 tartlettes 6cm.
Ingredients:

Sweet shortcrust pastry:
Icing Sugar 45g
Almond Powder 15g
Coconut Flour 20g
Salt 1g
Butter, softened 65g
Egg 1/2
All purpose flour 100g
Cocoa Powder 10g

Coconut Mousse
Gelatin powder 5g
Water 30g
Coconut Cream 140g
Heavy cream 150g
Sugar 40g

Mango Gel
Gelatin powder 1g
Water 7g
Sugar 10g
Mango Puree 105g

Garnishing:
Sweet desiccated coconut

Instructions:

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry:
1. Sift the icing sugar, almond powder, coconut flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Add the softened butter and mix with a spatula.
2. Add half of an egg and mix till you obtain a homogeneous mixture.
3. Sift the flour and cocoa powder over the mixture and knead into a dough.
4. Chill for 2 hours.
5. Line the tart rings with the pastry and bake at 170C for 15 minutes.
Please refer to the post on lining tart rings.

Coconut Cream Mousse:
1. Mix the gelatin with water and give it a stir.
2. Pour half of the coconut cream with all the sugar in a pan and heat it till it simmers.
3. Remove from heat and add the gelatin and whisk till it is dissolved. Add this to the remaining coconut cream and whisk.
4. Whip the heavy cream and add it to the coconut cream mixture ensuring there are no lumps.
5. chill for at least 2 hours.

Mango Gel:
1. Mix the gelatin with water and give it a stir.
2. Add the mango puree, sugar and gelatin in a pan and heat till it comes to a simmer.
3. Turn off the heat and pour the mixture in molds.
4. Chill for at least 2 hours.

Coco-Mango Tartelette

Assembly:

1. Sprinkle some desiccated coconut over the tart base.
2. Fill with the coconut cream mousse.
3. Place a mango jelly on the top.
4. Garnish with the desiccated coconut.

Bon Apetit!

Happy New Year!

I’d like to begin by wishing you all a very happy, prosperous and safe new year! Hope everyone had a great time over the holidays. 😀

2014 was a special year for me. I started to blog and met some amazing people along the way! The journey at school has been challenging and inspiring for me nonetheless. It would have been difficult without your encouragement to say the least!

I’ve made some things I would not have dared to try otherwise. I made the traditional French wedding cake, “The Croquembouche”. Apparently the name means, crunch in mouth. That’s it!
The first step in making the croquembouche is to make the chouquettes, the petit choux.
Next, making the nougatine shapes, to hold the choux tower. Working with nougatine can be quite tricky and one must be careful so as to not burn one’s fingers!

Shaping the nougatine :

Building the tower without a cone:

Ta Da…..

The Christmas special buche:

Buche Coffee: Sponge with coffee butter cream

The traditional Xmas Buche

Buche Maracaibo :
Chocolate sponge with a vanilla cream, chocolate parfait and salted shorbread covered with a chocolate glaze!

Buche Alaska:
Dacquois biscuit, with praline, lemon curd, red fruit jelly covered in milk chocolate mousse and glazed with white chocolate!

Taking these over to Angie’s Fiesta Friday!
Bon Apetit!

Raspberry Religieuse

Religieuse, which typically means a nun represented by two choux buns, one the head and the other the body.

The Religieuse, presented here reminds me more of a bride than a nun. I am sure you would agree. 🙂
They taste as delicious as they look pretty. I also prefer to use the crumble on top of the choux as it evens out any edges and the choux puffs up uniformly.

The choux buns are filed with a smooth, creamy, delicious pastry cream. They can be decorated as per one’s own preference. Here they have been decorated with pieces of tempered chocolate and buttercream.

 

Ingredients:

Raspberry Pastry Cream:

Raspberry Puree or any fruit puree of your choice 1000 g
Eggs 90 g (2)
Egg yolks 100 g (3)
Sugar 150 g
All purpose flour 50g
Corn Starch/Custard Powder 50g
Vanilla Bean 1
Butter 100g, softened

Instructions:
1. Boil the raspberry puree with half the sugar and the scraped vanilla bean. Keep whisking continuously so that it does not burn.
2. In a bowl whisk the eggs, yolks and the remaining sugar. Add the custard powder and flour, whisk together.
3. As soon as the puree boils, pour one-third of it over the eggs mixture and whisk quickly.
4.Put it back into rest of the puree and heat until it comes to a boil. It is important to keep whisking continuously and quickly the cream so that it does not burn.
5. Once the cream comes to a boil, cook for 1 minute ONLY and remove immediately from heat.
6. Add sofetened butter gradually to the cream and whisk continuously until smooth.
6. Remove in a bowl, wrap with plastic onto the surface of the cream and chill.

Choux Pastry:

Recipe, click Here. Pipe small and larger choux for the top and base respectively. Egg wash the choux.

Crumble for the choux topping:

Butter 80g, softened
Brown Sugar 100g
Flour 100g
Food coloring

Mix all the ingredients like a dough. Roll it out between 2 silicon sheets or baking paper.
Freeze it.

Cut into round shapes and place over piped choux just before baking. Bake at 180C like the regular choux.

Assembly:

Pipe the choux with pastry cream by making a hole on the bottom.

Place the smaller choux onto the larger one and decorate with chocolate discs.

Taking these over to Angie’s fiesta friday! 🙂

Eclairs, Chouquettes & Religeusse

Choux Pastry.

Well, it’s said that this is the basic pastry every chef must have in his or her repertoire. More or less, it is the type of pastry that can be mastered with practice. It is neither easy nor difficult to make a good choux.

Recipe for Pate a Choux:

Ingredients:

Water 250g
Salt 5g
Sugar 5g
Butter 125g
Flour 150g
Eggs 220g (4-5)

Instructions:
1. Heat the water, salt, sugar and butter in a saucepan and bring to a boil.
2. Remove from the flame, add the sifted flour.
3. Mix well with a spatula and put it back on the flame for 20 seconds until the mass moves in the saucepan just by moving the pan.
4. Add the eggs little by little and keep mixing with a spatula until the dough is smooth and shiny.

How do you know that the pate a choux is perfect ?

Make an indentation with your finger, the dough should not fall back.

The method i prefer to use is the hook method. Take some dough on your finger, if it curves into a hook it is ready. 🙂

To pipe the choux use piping bag and pipe the choux onto a lightly buttered baking tray.

For the choux to bake evenly, eggwash or brush with melted, clarified butter with a brush and push down the point of the choux without deflating the piped choux. Bake at 180C with the door open slightly.

NOTES:
1. Water can be replaced by milk in a 50:50 proportion.
2. If the eggs are not enough, the baked product will be soft.
3. It is important to leave the door of the oven slightly open so that the steam created can escape. Else, the steam once rises will fall on the choux and it will collapse.

CHOUQUETTES :

Pipe the pate a choux in a round shape and sprinkle with sugar grains and bake immediately.

CHOCOLATE AND COFFEE ECLAIRS:

Pipe the pate a choux into eclairs and bake at 180C.
Pierce the underside of each éclair 3 times with the tip of a pointed nozzle, and gently pipe pastry cream into the éclair as you do so.

For the recipe of pastry cream, click here.

Glaze with chocolate and coffee fondant.

RELIGIEUSES :

Pipe smaller and big rounds on a baking tray.

Once baked, glaze with the fondant and top the smaller ones on the bigger choux. Decorate with coffee buttercream.

There are so many things you can do with choux pastry. So many flavors to play with. I want to share with you all the things I saw and tasted at some of the top patisseries in Paris.
It’s always tricky to get a regular shaped choux and I have noticed that all the famous patisseries in Paris use a crumble topping on the choux to give it an even and uniform look. Also, checkout eclairs and religuesses at the famous patisseries in Paris :

Pierre Herme’s famous ispahan :

Rose flavored pastry cream with litchi

From top Left to Right: patisserie de l’eglise , Laduree, Carl Marletti, Carette

Eclairs covered with marzipan and neutral glaze by Arnaud Larher

Last, but not the least Philippe Conticini’s La Patisserie Des Reves take on chocolate eclair:

Chocolate eclair enclosed in chocolate

Next post, I will be sharing the recipe for Raspberry Religuesse!

Mille-Feuille

Mille-Feuille which means a thousand leaves. The traditional mille-feuille is a classic pastry with three layers of puff pastry and two of crème pâtissière (pastry cream). Having said that, there are different flavors that can be used to make this pastry. We made mille-feuille chocolate praline, mille-feuille with raspberries and pistachio mille-feuille.

Before I begin with the details of the above pastries, I would love to share the full-proof way to make pastry cream at home that is creamy, smooth and luscious, full of flavor.

The recipe we use in class is given below. It makes about 1.5 litres of pastry cream.

Milk 1000 g
Eggs 100 g (2-3)
Egg yolks 60 g (2)
Sugar 250 g
All purpose flour 50g
Corn Starch/Custard Powder 50g
Vanilla Bean 1
Butter 100g, softened (optional)

1. Boil the milk with half the sugar and the scraped vanilla bean. Keep whisking continuously so that it does not burn.
2. In a bowl whisk the eggs, yolks and the remaining sugar. Add the custard powder and flour, whisk together.
3. As soon as the milk boils, pour one-third of the milk over the eggs mixture and whisk quickly.
4.Put it back into the milk and heat until it comes to a boil. It is important to keep whisking continuously and quickly the cream so that it does not burn.
5. Once the cream comes to a boil, cook for 1 minute ONLYand remove immediately from heat.
6. If using butter, make sure it is softened, then add gradually to the cream and whisk continuously until smooth.
6. Remove in a bowl, wrap with plastic onto the surface of the cream and chill.

For making different flavors, the flavoring can be added once the cream has been cooked or along with the milk when it is being boiled.

Mille-Feuille Traditionel :

MilleFeuille Traditional

Makes 6 portions :

Puff Pastry dough 400g
Pastry cream 600g
Rum 20g
Icing sugar, for decorating

Bake the Puff Pastry dough in one thin layer. Cover  with icing sugar and caramelize in oven at 250C.

Flavor the pastry cream with rum before using.

Assembling:
Cut the puff pastry in 3 rectangles. Reserve one rectangle with the caramelized side for the top.
Place one layer of puff pastry on a cake board. Cover with a layer of pastry cream, spread it evenly. Place a layer of puff pastry over it. Cover with another layer of pastry cream and spread evenly. Place the caramelized layer on top and decorate with icing sugar. Cut into 6 portions.

Mille-Feuille aux framboises et l’anis (raspberries and anis) :

Raspberry Mille-Feuille

6 portions :

Puff Pastry dough 400g
Pastry cream 400g
Heavy cream 100g
Anise liquor 25 g, optional
Gelatin sheet 2g
Raspberry 250g
Icing sugar, for decorating

Bake the Puff Pastry dough in one thin layer. Cover with icing sugar and caramelize in oven at 250C.

Meuille-Feuille Cream:
Soak the gelatin in cold water for 10 minutes and drain. Beat the whipped cream to stiff peak.
Remove the chilled pastry cream in a mixing bowl and add the gelatin and the anise liquor to it and beat at high speed. Fold in the whipped cream.

Assembling:
Cut the puff pastry in 3 rectangles. Reserve one rectangle with the caramelized side for the top.
Place one layer of puff pastry on a cake board. Cover with a layer of mille-feuille cream, spread it evenly. Arrange raspberries at the edge on all sides. Place a layer of puff pastry over it. Cover with another layer of cream and spread evenly. Repeat with raspberries. Place the caramelized layer on top and decorate with icing sugar and raspberries.

Mille-Feuille Chocolate Praline :

The Meuille-Feuille Chocolate Praline has a lot of elements but it is totally worth the effort.

Makes 1 band 35cm long:

Ingredients:

Chocolate Puff Pastry Dough 450g
Feuilletine praline
Milk chocolate 75g
Hazelnut Paste 47g
Praline 47g
Feuilletine 57g

Chocolate Parfait
Sugar 30g
Water 30g
Egg yolks 30g
Dark chocolate 64% 100g
Whipped cream 200g

Mousseline Praline Cream:
Pastry Cream 250g
Butter 100g
Praline 100g

Instructions:

Bake the Puff Pastry dough in one thin layer.

Feuilletine praline:
Melt the chocolate at 45C. Add the rest of the ingredients and keep aside.

Chocolate Parfait:
Mix the sugar, water and yolks to 85C. Whisk with a beater till the bowl feels cool to the touch.
Melt chocolate at 55C.
Whisk the cream to soft peaks.
Add the chocolate to the yolk mixture.
Add a little whipped cream to the chocolate mixture and mix with a whisk.
Pour it into the remaining cream and mix well. Pour into a piping bag.

Mousseline Praline Cream:
Beat the chilled pastry cream till it reaches the ribbon stage.
If the praline is too thick, beat with the softened butter until smooth.
Add the pastry cream to the praline butter mixture and mix until smooth.
Pour into a piping bag.

Assembling:
Cut the puff pastry in 3 rectangles.
Place one layer of puff pastry on a cake board. Cover with a layer of Feuilletine praline, spread it evenly.
Pipe small rounds of Mousseline Praline Cream in a straight line to cover the pastry.
Place a layer of puff pastry over it. Cover with another layer of Feuilletine praline and spread evenly.
Pipe small rounds of Chocolate Parfait in a straight line to cover the puff pastry.
Place the third layer on top and decorate.

Bon Apetit!

I am taking these over to Angie’s fun Fiesta Friday for the weekend celebrations! 🙂

2 weeks of Puff Pastry

Puff Pastry..a.k.a FEUILLETAGE in French. What makes a puff pastry flaky, crispy, crunchy, buttery and full of flavor?
Read on to find out the secret to making a really good puff pastry.

There are two parts to making a puff pastry: detempre which is the dough made up of flour, a small portion of butter,salt and water. The dough is not kneaded too much just until it comes together and rested for 30 minutes.
The second part is the rolling out of butter itself. The butter must be slightly softened and rolled into a rectangle with the help of a little bit of flour to be enveloped into the detempre. This is called as beurre manie.

The next step is Beurrage, enveloping the butter into the dough, called the Paton. And then Tourrage, which means giving turns. The process for giving turns is same as described in my Khari post. After 6 turns it has 1459 layers!

The exact opposite of this technique involves enveloping the detempre into the butter called as FEUILLETAGE INVERSE.
We also made feuilletage au chocolat and feuilletage pistache where we added cocoa powder and pistachio paste to the Beurre Manie respectively.

The first picture explains how to roll out a dough into a uniform rectangle

What makes puff pastry so crispy, crunchy, flaky, delicious. The Butter, ofcourse! When I used to see pictures of perfectly rolled out butter in recipe books, I often wondered how was it possible? Loh and behold….. I got my answer in the lab!  The professional boulangeries & patisseries  use a different kind of butter with a higher content of butterfat that is more elastic and hence easier to roll without the butter actually melting. Also one must keep in mind the fact that the temperatures in pastry lab is on the lower side.

I think I’d prefer to make the inverse feuilletage over the regular one for various reasons. Firstly, the rest time between turns can be reduced for inverse. It shrinks less after baking and it puffs up uniformly as compared to the regular one. Above all, it is definitely more flaky and tasty than the regular one. 🙂

I’ve had a lot of savory things made out of puff pastry and the classic mille-feuille. However, in class we made a variety of sweet things with puff pastry and all were delicious.

We made a pastry called as “Conversation“, which was created at the end of the 18th century. The name comes from a popular book “Les conversations d’Emilie de Madame d’Epinay”. I am totally clueless as to why would you want to name a pastry as Conversation.

It’s a puff pastry dough filled with almond cream and covered with another layer of puff pastry. Cover the top with royal icing and decorate with stripes of puff pastry.

Conversation

Another pastry which goes by the name “Pain Complet” also has almond cream enclosed in puff pastry sheets. Make 2 sheets of 2mm thickness. Spread a layer of almond cream, dome shaped. Leave an edge and egg wash it. Cover and seal with the other sheet. Flip it upside down on a baking tray. COver the surface with raw almond paste (almond powder with egg whites), dust with icing sugar and make 6-8 incisions on the top. Bake at 180C.

I guess it gets its name from Pain Complet(whole wheat bread) as it has a striking resemblance to the latter.

Another one with almond cream was Dartois aux Amandes.

It is supposed to be super straight, by the way!

We also did a few fruit tarts and the best one was figs as they were in season and we just couldn’t get enough of figs!

Fruit and Puff pastry Tart Bands

We made turnovers, french as well as italian style.

Apple turnovers a.k.a Chaussons aux pommes were made by rolling out dough into fluted rounds of 12 cm diameter. Pipe apple compote and cover the pastry. Flip and place on a baking sheet. Egg wash and score the pastry with different designs.

For the Chaussons Italiens, the same process is followed, except for the fact that the filling is a mix of pastry cream and choux dough. It sounded wierd at first but it was not bad at all.

Chaussons au pommes and Pithiviers

Pithiviers is again an almond cream filled pastry decorated as an antique galette.
roll out 2 sheets of around 3mm thickness. Place one sheet on a baking tray. Spread in dome shape the almomd cream and cover with the second sheet. Cut small semi circles at the edge of the dough with a cookie cutter. Egg wash and score the top from the centre with a knife. Bake at 220C and then reduce the temperature to 180C.

My favorite were the oh so famous Palmiers.

The puff pastry dough is rolled out by using sugar instead of flour. It is rolled into a rectangle 70 cm by 12 cm, then give 2 double folds. Cut into pieces and place on a baking tray. Bake at 210 for 15-20 mins and flip the sides halfway for the nice caramel color.

Crispy, crunchy, buttery, flaky sweet palmiers

Next Post : The classic Mille-Feuille and how to make the perfect Crème pâtissière or custard.

EGGS BENEDICT…WITH LOVE FROM MEXICO by Radhika @ My Tryst with Baking (a guest post)

My humble attempt at a guest post for our dear Jhuls 🙂

thenotsocreativecook

If there’s one thing I could eat everyday, that should be EGGS. I remember one day, I have eaten four eggs – 2 sunny side up eggs and 2 scrambled eggs. I think that was the time I ran out of recipes to try… or maybe lazy to cook something. So when that day comes, eggs are the answer to an instant meal. And ohhh… soft boiled eggs on a salad? I would kill for it. 😀

So when Radhika asked me to choose among those recipes she’s love to bring to my blog as a guest blogger, I chose eggs. EGGS FOR THE WIN!! Wohooo!! 😀

Apart from Radhika shares amazing recipes, I also love her plating skills. ❤

Thank you for some of you who thinks I am a creative cook, but there are some things (relating to food presentation) that I am not creative at. One of…

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