crepes.

Bear with me, because this is yet another France-inspired post. 

I had crepes, with an asian twist, for breakfast! That green stuff you see in the picture is called kaya, basically a rich coconut-egg jam made with tons of egg yolks, coconut milk, pandan and sugar. It's best paired with salted butter, which was exactly what I did. After folding the pale yellow pancake into quarters, I blobbed on some, and watched it melt away into a golden puddle. 

I remembered when I was in Paris, where crepe stands dot every corner of the street, unsurprisingly, I had a butter-sugar crepe which was oh so divine. Just moments after the first flip, the crepe maker unwrapped an entire pack of butter and literally mopped it on the crepe while still on the pan, generously sprinkled the surface with sugar and folded butter-sugar bomb into an eighth of its original size. Then, she carefully slotted it into a paper bag and passed the precious package to me, hands outstretched and drooling. 

I took my time, nibbling as I took in the sights, and when I got to the end of the crepe, there was this pool of...of...what should I call it?...butter sauce, from the melted butter and sugar. Better yet, there was more in the bag! I stopped in my tracks and shamelessly slurped up the contents right there on the street, even tearing it open to reach the very depths of the bag.

Crepes

makes 8, recipe adapted from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vegetable oil (Butter is better!)
• *I added 2 tablespoons of sugar

Directions

1. In a blender combine eggs, milk, flour, salt and oil. Process until smooth. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour.
2. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat and brush with oil. Pour 1/4 cup of crepe batter into pan, tilting to completely coat the surface of the pan. Cook 2 to 5 minutes, turning once, until golden. Repeat with remaining batter.

the entremet wannabe.

Warning: This is not an alien. This is, believe it or not, a cake.

It was supposed to be an entremet, but it's just so... so... hideously ugly I cannot bestow it the honor of calling it one. Furthermore, I think pastry chefs all around the world would come after me with a chopper. 

Well, to be fair to myself, this is my first ever multi-component cake. What went wrong wasn't the individual components but rather the unmolding of the cake domes. You see, I didn't follow a specific recipe, the idiot I am. I somehow conjured up this creation from the depths of my imagination. So obviously, something went horribly wrong. 

I couldn't unmold the cake.

Hazelnut praline feuilette, creme patisserie au chocolat, genoise, gelee de framboise, truffes au beurre d'arachide, creme patisserie au chocolat, glacage au chocolat noir

*Snort* Duh, I didn't use any gelatin at all in my pastry cream even though I knew I should have. No wonder it didn't unmold! Thank goodness for the chocolate glaze because... you don't want to see what's beneath it. Trust me, you don't. 

Hazelnut praline sheet, milk chocolate pastry cream, genoise sponge, raspberry jelly, peanut butter truffle, milk chocolate pastry cream, dark chocolate glaze

Surprisingly though, it was quite good! The layering is terrible but you can roughly make out which is which, I hope. Peanut butter- chocolate- raspberry is a classic combo. Delish! I think what really makes it is the crunchy hazelnut layer below. The best thing- there's a shortcut to making it. Instead of caramelizing and grinding up the hazelnuts blah blah blah... I used Nutella and called it a day. I just had to melt chocolate, nutella and butter before stirring it crushed cornflakes and voila! 

This monstrosity has spurred me on to attempt other entremets, with proper recipes of course. I've learnt my lesson already. I'm thinking something non-chocolate- I've depleted a sizeable amount of chocolate today. I'm thinking this recipe.

macarons take #2.

Hey hey hey~ Take a look at these babies! I think I've made some improvements! They look so much better than my first attempt that's for sure. These are breakfast-tea macarons with a breakfast-tea-infused bittersweet ganache.

This time, the shells had feet, not frills. I discovered the reason behind that was not letting the piped batter sit out long enough. And, there were no cracks on the tops! Well, at least some of them didn't...

The Uglies

I have been researching on the possible reasons behind the cracks. I might have over-mixed the batter since I couldn't have under-mixed it because some turned out perfectly fine. I'm also contemplating too high an oven temperature. In my batch, those shells that didn't crack were those in the middle of the tray, away from the oven's hotspot. I might have also positioned the tray too far from the bottom. I used the middle rack but in my two tries, the tops of the shells always dries out before the bottoms finish cooking- some parts of the shells stick to the parchment paper.

The recipe I used was the same basic recipe which I cut down to a third but with the addition of 1 teaspoon of tea leaves (for a third of the recipe).

Breakfast-Tea Macarons
makes 14 macarons, 28 shells
recipe adapted from Tartelette


1 egg white
10 gr granulated sugar
67 gr powdered sugar
37 gr almonds

For the whites: the day before (24hrs), separate your eggs and store the whites at room temperature in a covered container. If you want to use 48hrs (or more) egg whites, you can store them in the fridge.
In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the egg whites to a foam, gradually add the sugar until you obtain a glossy meringue. Do not overbeat your meringue or it will be too dry. Combine the almonds and powdered sugar in a food processor and give them a good pulse until the nuts are finely ground. Add them to the meringue, give it a quick fold to break some of the air and then fold the mass carefully until you obtain a batter that flows like lava or a thick ribbon. Give quick strokes at first to break the mass and slow down. The whole process should not take more than 50 strokes. Test a small amount on a plate: if the tops flattens on its own you are good to go. If there is a small peak, give the batter a couple of turns.
Fill a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip (Ateco #807 or #809) with the batter and pipe small rounds (1.5 inches in diameter) onto parchment paper or silicone mats lined baking sheets. Sprinkle with the crushed sugar or violet petals. Preheat the oven to 280F. Let the macarons sit out for 30 minutes to an hour to harden their shells a bit and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on their size. Let cool. If you have trouble removing the shells, pour a couple of drops of water under the parchment paper while the sheet is still a bit warm and the macarons will lift up more easily do to the moisture. Don't let them sit there in it too long or they will become soggy. Once baked and if you are not using them right away, store them in an airtight container out of the fridge for a couple of days or in the freezer. 


Breakfast-Tea Infused Bittersweet Ganache
recipe adapted from Chocci's


250g double cream
250g Greenbecks chocolate 66% cocoa (dark chocolate) chopped roughly
50g unsalted cold butter
4 tablespoons earl grey tea leaves


Place the chocolate in a metal bowl which is large enough to sit comfortably over a saucepan of simmering water without the base touching the water. Slowly melt the chocolate, stirring steadily.


In another saucepan (preferably at the same time) heat up the double cream with the Earl Grey tea leaves over medium heat.

Let the tea leaves infuse into the cream until the cream is a lovely milky tea colour. The cream will taste quite bitter but it will be balanced by the chocolate and the macaroon.

Strain the double cream and slowly mix into the melted chocolate. Stir until the cream has been mixed into the chocolate.
Add in the butter and stir, you can either use a hand blender or mix by hand. Apparently using a hand blender you end up with a more glossy ganache!

Pop it into the fridge to cool until it firms up a little so that it is easier to pipe into your macaroons.

The battle's not over yet...

chocolate pastry cream.

Well, I still had some unfilled cream puffs from my previous batch which I'd frozen so I figured why not make a small batch of pastry cream for the puffs and use the egg white for another macaron experiment?


And so I did.

This time, I made Pierre Herme's chocolate pastry cream which was so thick and creamy, when I passed it through the sieve, it didn't fall into the bowl below but instead clung onto the sieve in an amusing spiky formation. I couldn't be bothered to melt the chocolate separately so instead of following the step where you have to stir the melted chocolate into the finished pastry cream, I simply threw the chocolate chunks into the pot, allowing the residual heat to melt the chocolate for me. I left it alone for 5 minutes, then came back to stir it all together. Voila!

I noticed that he didn't include a step to sieve the pastry cream but I always do that as I find it makes the final product so much silkier. And since you've gone this far, why not do the extra step to make it even better? Although I didn't add it, I thought the recipe could use some vanilla to mask that eggy smell. But I did sprinkle in a pinch of salt.

Chocolate Pastry Cream
Recipe from Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé

2 cups (500g) whole milk
4 large egg yolks

6 tbsp (75g) sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch, sifted
7 oz (200g) bittersweet chocolate, preferably Velrhona Guanaja, melted 2½ tbsp (1¼ oz: 40g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1) In a small saucepan, bring the milk to a boil. In the meantime, combine the yolks, sugar and cornstarch together and whisk in a heavy‐bottomed saucepan.

2) Once the milk has reached a boil, temper the yolks by whisking a couple spoonfuls of the hot milk into the yolk mixture.Continue whisking and slowly pour the rest of the milk into the tempered yolk mixture.

3) Strain the mixture back into the saucepan to remove any egg that may have scrambled. Place the pan over medium heat and whisk vigorously (without stop) until the mixture returns to a boil. Keep whisking vigorously for 1 to 2 more minutes (still over medium heat).Stir in the melted chocolate and then remove the pan from the heat.

4) Scrape the pastry cream into a small bowl and set it in an ice‐water bath to stop the cooking process. Make sure to continue stirring the mixture at this point so that it remains smooth.

5) Once the cream has reached a temperature of 140 F remove from the ice‐water bath and stir in the butter in three or four installments. Return the cream to the ice‐water bath to continue cooling, stirring occasionally, until it has completely cooled. The cream is now ready to use or store in the fridge.

no-knead bread.

So here I am, still on my search for a good baguette. I came across a recipe from The New York Times  which has been replicated on many other blogs so I decided to give it a try. Although the recipe didn't say baguette, but I figured it could just be shaped into one later.

The good thing about no-knead bread recipes? It's just waiting and waiting and waiting. This particular one requires the dough to develop from 12 hours up to 18 hours initially. Here's what you get at first.

And this is what I got at the end of 17 hours.

The dough was extremely wet. So wet, it was almost soupy. I couldn't even pick it up! I though to myself, That can't be right. So I added extra flour until it at least had some kind of structure. I had no idea how in the world can it even be shaped, let alone into a baguette. In the end, I dumped it, or rather scraped it, into my loaf pan quite unceremoniously and left it to rise, hoping for the best.

After 2 hours of rising and 30 minutes of baking, I had my loaf.

The top had a crisp crust but the sides did not even have a crust. This made slicing quite the chore! The texture- spongy and moist. Not surprising since the dough was so wet. But flavour-wise, it did not impress me enough. Sure, it was better than my previous attempt, but its still far from the best. Still, I encourage first-time bread bakers to give this a try.

No-Knead Bread
recipe adapted from JIM LAHEY, SULLIVAN STREET BAKERY
time: about 1 1/2 hours plus 14 to 20 hours' rising

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.
1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

And my search continues...