Pate a Choux is a cafe downtown

Eclairs and cream puffs aren't doughnuts! Who knew? They're pate a choux, a pastry dough that is piped out and baked until dry and hollow.


This cream puff (profiterole) is filled with cinnamon pastry cream and drizzled with a flat icing. Which is better? Cinnamon cream puff or cinnamon bun? I can't decide. I know that they are both amazing.


The eclair is filled with vanilla pastry cream and glazed with chocolate.


And this is a paris brest, a pate a choux ring cut in half and filled with almond cream. It should have been baked with sliced almonds on top, but we didn't know.....

The next day we made more of the same, plus swans with chocolate pastry cream and whipped cream.

People who live in biscotti houses shouldn't throw coffee

I hate biscotti. It's hard and goes with coffee, and I don't drink coffee. But we made it anyway.


Since biscotti are pretty much little bricks, we decided to present them as a log cabin. Chef wasn't amussed.


We also made palmiers, a cookie made by buttering puff pastry, pouring sugar on it, folding and repeating.


When baked, the puff pastry puffs and they look like palm leafs.


And this is a breakfast cake called . . . uhhh . . . potica. Had to go all the way out to the car to "remember" that one!


Potica is a dough rolled with walnut filling, then shoved in a bundt pan. You should probably avoid the bulging growth that this one has, though.

But look at that inner beauty!

Custard Overlap

There has been some overlap between my Intro to Baking and Intro to Pastry classes lately. It seems like one is the opposite of the other. We made custards at the beginning of Intro to Pastry, but here we are making them at the end of Intro to Baking. I actually thought I had learnt what the difference between baking and pastry was, but no. We are making pastry in my baking class. And you'll see in a future post that we are baking cakes in my pastry class.

Whatever. It all tastes good.

Creme brulee without the brulee.

We also made an awesome banana bread pudding with rum sauce.

And a cheese cake.

Glutton free

So now that I'm home during the day, I watch Martha Stewart. She's kind of a bitch. But she has guests that make food I want to make. One day she had on Erin McKenna, the owner of Babycakes gluten free bakery, and they made these gluten free chocolate chip cookies.


The fat in the recipe is coconut oil, which to me makes this a healthy cookie. I justify anything to mean healthy, but this might actually be. Erin writes in the book that coconut gets stored in the body as energy, not fat. It just looks like shortening.


It also uses evaporated sugar cane instead of processed sugar. It gives a molasses flavor to the cookie, which is interesting.


Erin was insistent on the show that she only uses a spatula to mix the dough. But the coconut oil stayed in lumps, so I had to use a mixer to break those up.


It's really a good cookie. They're a little pricey, but I need to stop shopping at Kroger. I bought some of the ingredients like the gluten free flour at Kroger, and it was much more expensive than I found at Good Earth today. I'd rather shop at the local stores anyway. "It's part of my advocacy."

Best Week Ever with Mr. Hutchinson

Please don't blame me this time for making you hungry. This makes me hungry. The thought of these delicious pastries makes me want to punch the wall they are so good. I'm mad at myself for eating every single one, that I can't go into the kitchen an grab one. They were so huge, one literally crawled out of the sheet tray while baking.

Cinnamon Rolls!

Sticky Buns!

And an obligatory shot of the cinnamon rolls.

Sorbet

We had made bases for sorbets, one passion fruit syrup and one blackberry syrup. The next week we focused on garnishes while the sorbets churned. My team played with spun sugar. It's a really hot syrup that you throw to make threads of sugar. You can use a mold to make cages like this.


Or, dip almonds in the syrup and make little almond jousting sticks.


It's amazing to see the sorbet churning in the ice cream machine, going from a liquid to a creamy solid.



Chef suggested a black sesame seed brittle that would compliment the passion fruit sorbet. It can be shaped when warm and hardens. It looked like shingles.


We didn't have luck with the original spirals we created, so at the last minute I cut these triangles and put them in the sorbet. But then another group member made spirals and threw those on there, too.


And we had both the jousting almonds and the sugar cages, so my thought was "cage match!"


But Chef thought it was too much. It was a blow to my inner architect. I know it was too much, but in the minutes before presentation, there are 4 opinions being thrown out there. Plus, it's not important. It's ok that Chef doesn't like it. We're learning.

Intro to Baking Midterm Practical Exam

We had to make recipes from earlier in the quarter without asking questions.


Chocolate chip cookies, without the chips. Toffee chips make it just as good.


Lemon meringue pie, this time with an awesome crust made with vodka.


The oatmeal bars, also with toffee chips instead of chocolate chips.