Crepes with Quatre Epice Pastry Cream and Honey Ginger Apriums

Mornings spent with my husband are few and (too) far between. This morning I was so happy to wake up and see him there; I shot out of bed and started making us a celebratory breakfast. Knowing I had apriums to use; I immediately thought crepes. I reached for my copy of Lenotre's Desserts and Pastries for inspiration. There I found a recipe for poached whole apricots with honey and candied ginger, crepes Suzette and pastry cream; with those recipes as I starting point I began to tinker.

I halved the apriums and cooked them in 1 cup of water, 1/4 cup plus 1 T sugar, 1/4 cups honey and 1 T of chopped candied ginger.


Once they were cooked; I separated the liquid from the fruit and cooked the liquid down to a syrupy consistency then strained it.



I followed Lenotre's recipe for pastry cream except I added 1/4 tsp of quatre epice and about 1 T of butter.

I based my crepe batter on Lenotre's crepes Susette. Here it is:

40 g of unstalted butter
125g flour
40g oil
30g sugar
3 eggs
1 cup milk

Method:
Brown the butter. Mix flour, sugar, oil, eggs and 1/2 cup of milk till smooth in a bowl. Add the rest of the milk whisking well making sure there are no lumps. Let rest one hour. Cook the crepes for about 1 minute on each side.



To plate spread a little (or a lot) pastry cream on half a crepe, fold over then fold over again. Put 4 filled crepes on a plate. Top with poached apriums and the reduced sauce.

TWD Parisian Apple Tartlettes

Jessica of My Baking Heart picked Parisian Apple Tartlettes as this week's TWD "recipe". It's hard to call it a recipe because you're supposed to buy puff pastry, cut it into a 4" round, and top it with half an apple and a bit of butter and sugar and bake. For a Dorie Greenspan recipe, this is as "semi-homemade" as she gets.

Instead of buying puff pastry, I decided to make a dough that acts like a quick puff pastry. Essentially mix equal parts butter, cream cheese, flour and a pinch of salt in a mixer till a dough forms. Chill then roll and use in place of puff pastry. I like making this dough because it's so easy, gets nice layering and I usually have all the ingredients on hand to make it. The dough works best with an overnight rest, but due to time constraints I had to make mine an hour and a half before baking. Even so, I was a little nervous that it would grow out of control, so I docked each tart shell and then topped with the apples.

Once they came out of the oven, I realized that docking them was a bit overzealous. They didn't rise as much as I expected them to, but the dough was still lovely.

The resulting tartelettes were okay. I baked them for an extra 5 minutes because the apples were still leaning towards raw, but that still wasn't enough time. Technically there was no way I could have baked the apples through and not overcooked the dough. Due to its simplicity, I think this recipe has a lot of potential. However, the apples should be sliced thinner, or the chunks should be par cooked before baking. This was so easy to make though, I'll definitely play around with it again.

TWD French Yogurt Cake with Brown Sugar Yogurt Mousse and Quince Marmalade

This recipe has been on my radar for some time. Finally two great reasons to make it; I had friends to bake for at a ski house in Vermont this past weekend and it's this week's TWD recipe. Thanks to Liliana of My Cookbook Addiction for picking such a fun recipe to play with.

I decided to bake the cake in a round rather than loaf pan since I wanted a classier presentation. The cake was so fast to make, I kept rechecking my ingredients because I felt like something was missing. Once I realized it was actually THAT easy; I baked it for 38 minutes.



Once out, I let it cool completely and then I started playing around. At Sofra we make a quince marmalade that is to-die-for. The smell of it is so intoxicating; I could almost be happy just breathing in its aroma. Our marmalade isn't as thick as store bought brands though, so I decided to cook it down some more. I cooked it for about 15 minutes on a pretty steady simmer until the liquid reduced to a thick syrup; stirring it frequently. Quince marmalade has a wonderfully floral fruity taste to it, but none of the bite of a "normal" marmalade. To get a bit of "bite" back into this recipe, I made a yogurt mouse with just a bit of brown sugar. Essentially what I did was I whipped some cream, and then added some labne (very thick yogurt) and a tiny bit of brown sugar. Labne has a great tang to it, so it balanced the sweetness of the cake and the quince marmalade.

Overall, I loved this cake. I especially loved the presentation because it looked très French. I hope everyone liked this cake as much as I did. I will certainly make it again.

 

TWD French Pear Tart

Dorie Greenspan picked this week's TWD recipe. For those of you who don't know; Dorie wrote the book Baking: From my home to yours and has written several other great cookbooks both on her own and with the likes of Pierre Hermé and Julia Child.

The recipe for the French pear tart was very simple. Dorie actually okayed using canned pears (gasp!) in this recipe. I chose the alternate option which was poaching pears. No offense to the canned pear industry, but as a pastry chef I prefer to poach my own. My Bartlett pears took about 25 minutes to poach.



For the base I made the sweet tart dough with pistachios. I decided to cut back on a tablespoon of butter because I thought the fat in the pistachios would make up for it. The rusting dough was a little crumbly. it wasn’t too difficult to deal with though because I have a lot of experience putting nut doughs in tart shells from my time at Bouchon. I simply took the dough and pressed it into the pan.



My time was limited, so I didn’t freeze the dough as Dorie suggests. Luckily it didn’t shrink while it was blind baking, and it came out lovely.



I bought a food processor for myself as a Christmas gift in December, and I’m so happy I did. Making the almond cream was so easy (as was the tart dough). Instead of grinding my own almonds, I used the almond meal you can buy at Trader Joe’s. It’s a nice time saver, and it has worked well in everything I’ve used it in so far.

The tart was easy to assemble. My pears were a bit on the huge size, so I had to use less of them. Even cutting back on the amount of pear, their width was so big I had to squeeze them in into the tart shell.



Luckily, after baking the tight fit wasn’t noticeable. The almond cream neatly puffed up around the pears.




This tart is certainly a crowd pleaser. It looks beautiful, and many people love the almond cream/pear combination. It’s très French. Joe loved this tart, however I found it to be way too sweet for my liking. While eating it, I realized I would like it much more if I had a strong cup of tea to counteract the sweetness. Since Joe liked this tart so much, I’m sure I’ll be making it again. Next time, I’ll be sure to try my piece earlier in the day with a strong cup of black tea.

TWD Summer Fruit Galette

Galette's are one of the pastries that inspired me to be a pastry chef. Don't get me wrong, I've had lots of inspiration from my mom, some aunts and my memere; but the first time I made a galette (Jacques Pepin's recipe) was an eye opener. Jacques recipe is very simple, the dough is a pate brisee, and you top the rolled out dough with apples, a tiny bit of sugar and a little butter (of course!). After you bake it, you glaze the crust with an apricot cognac mixture. The result is the most beautiful, simple dessert ever. The first time I made it; I really understood what a great pastry was, and from there I was inspired to try different recipes, fruits, techniques, etc.

Michelle from Michelle in Colorado Springs selected Dorie’s Summer Fruit Galette as this weeks TWD recipe. I was excited to make it because I’ve never made a galette with custard in it, and as I mentioned above I love galettes. First I made the dough which was quite simple. Surprisingly, I had shortening in the house (Joe bought it to season our cast iron pans); so I followed the ingredient list. The only change I made was after processing the butter and flour, I transferred the mixture to a bowl and added the ice water; mixing by hand. I did this because I didn’t want my butter pieces to get any smaller, and I almost always finish my doughs by hand. Here’s the resulting dough, pretty nice huh?





While the dough was chilling I went to the grocery store, and I picked up some yellow and white peaches, strawberries and blueberries.

Joe was in Napa last week on a business trip, and he came home with two preserves from LouLou’s Garden. He picked up Rangpur Lime Marmalade and Strawberry Rhubarb Jam. I’m also fortunate to have received some rose petal jam from the bakery I will be working at soon called Sofra. I also had a little bit of peach preserves left over that I made last summer. As you can tell by the number of preserves at my fingertips, I was about to have a lot of fun.

I decided to make four small square shaped galettes. At Sofra we will be making some square shaped baked goods (like English muffins, cakes, etc), so I thought I may as well “get my square on” now. The flavors I decided on were white peach with rose petal jam, strawberry, blueberry and yellow peach with rose petal jam, strawberry with strawberry rhubarb jam and finally yellow peach with peach preserves.

I didn’t have graham crackers in the house, so I ground up some oats and added a bit of cinnamon and brown sugar to it; to act as the absorbing agent.



The galettes came together quickly. After 20 or so minutes in the oven, I took them out and added the very simple custard to the galettes. I ended up adding about 2 teaspoons to each galette. After 14 minutes in the oven the custard was set and they were ready to come out.



Once they cooled, we took them to Mike and LT’s for a very special dinner party. Last week Mike purchased an Ostrich egg, so we had an Ostrich egg party last night.



Check out my next post for more on that. That was a lot of egg (about 2 dozen).

The galettes were delicious.



The two favorites were the strawberry and strawberry, blueberry, peach.






The peach galettes were great as well.






The strawberries I purchased were so amazingly good that those galettes tipped the scale towards extraordinarily delicious.

Jacque’s recipe will always be my favorite, but I loved this galette recipe was well. I guess Dorie’s recipe will truly be my summer galette recipe, and I’ll save Jacque’s for the other seasons.

Gougères from Tartine

It was a beautiful fall day last year, when Joe and I decided to drive to San Francisco to get treats from Tartine. At the counter we ordered a plethora of items; quiche, croissant, lemon meringue cake, chocolate cookies and gougères. With our bounty in hand, we walked over to the park for a nice picnic. While sitting there, enjoying the sun; Joe said (holding a half eaten gougères in his hand) "Can you make this?" I replied "Yeah, it's just pate a choux with cheese and herbs." The look on Joe's face was of astonishment (at how easy I made it sound), and then hurt "why haven't you made these yet?"

9 months later (after moving from Napa to Boston), I picked up the Tartine Cookbook at my library. As soon as I saw the Gougère recipe, I knew I had to make it for Joe. Joe was like a kid in a candy store once I told him I was making them to go with our dinner that evening. The first thing he did was he ran to our local wine store and picked up a bottle of Domaine Roger Perrin Cuvée Prestige Veielles Vignes Côtes Du Rhône 2005 (long name, perfect pairing). For dinner that night we had grilled pork chops (thick cut) with a mustard-thyme sauce, a salad and the gougères. The wine, chops and gougères paired perfectly together.

The cheese I used:



Close up of the fresh thyme:



Here I am mixing the dough on the stovetop:

The dough after adding the eggs, cheese and fresh thyme:



The gougère before baking. I also made little greyere crisps to put on the salad (in case you're wondering what the little piles of cheese are all about):



Close-up:



Close up of some small ones that I froze:



The final, glorious product: