make life sweeter!

The end of the month means another Daring Bakers challenge. This month's challenge is Pierre Hermé's chocolate éclairs, éclairs filled with chocolate pastry cream and topped with a chocolate glaze.
Even though I've made éclairs before (filled with lavender white chocolate mousse) I was still looking forward to making them again. I don't own Dorie Greenspan's Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé but I do own her Desserts by Pierre Hermé and the recipe for the chocolate glaze is in that one too. It has been on my to-do list to try out. Usually I make a simpler chocolate glaze but this particular one is said to retain its shine...sounded interesting :) Haven't made it up till now because it's more time consuming than the more regular chocolate glazes.
At first I wanted to play around with the flavours, make a raspberry pastry cream, stick with Hermé's glaze and top with a raspberry. I even made the pastry cream last week but I was not satisfied with the colour and look of the pastry cream. I added raspberry puree for taste but also for colour but instead of pink it turned into a sort of brownish pink colour....not pretty. I didn't want to use artificial colours to masquerade it either. Besides the ugly colour there were tiny bits of egg yolk visible. I guess I should have used the finemeshed sieve. The taste was very good though but I decided not to use it for the éclairs. It was the first component I made so the rest was put on hold until yesterday. By that time I felt like staying true to the recipe and only needed some kind of pretty decoration. Gilded marzipan balls sounded good, only I wasn't able to gild the balls completely so the orange marzipan that was left over from Rein's birthday was showing through. I felt I needed to somehow match that to the éclair and ended up adding some orange essentail oil to the chocolate glaze (I added ¼ ts). That way the orange colour was more part of a whole.
The glaze was easy to make though a bit time consuming with making a chocolate sauce first. At first I wasn't sure the sauce was going to work because the chocolate didn't melt completely. But after heating and stirring for 15 minutes it turned out beautifully. And although I didn't use the same chocolate Hermée using I thought the sauce tasted delicious. For the final glaze we had to make a ganache first. After adding all the chocolate the ganache had difficulties staying emulgated (emulsified?) and looked sort of curdled. This problem was solved after adding the butter and chocolate sauce and I ended up with a beautiful glaze. I chilled it to use today.
Making the chocolate pastry cream went smoothly if you don't count the fact that at the last moment before taking it out of its ice bath some of the ice water got into it. I was able to pour most of it out and had to blend in the little bit that was left. I'm not a fan of chocolate custard but was hoping that maybe this pastry cream with egg yolks, butter and good chocolate instead of cocoa powder would change this. Unfortunately not :( not that I dislike it, I mean, it's sweet and tastes like chocolate but it's still not my favourite.
I wanted to bake the puff dough yesterday evening as well but I discovered that I was out of flour! Well not out of spelt flour, whole wheat flour, self raising flour and quinoa flour but out of the flour I actually needed for this challenge. I didn't feel like going to the supermarket so I postponed making them until today. And today being a busy day I was glad that I managed to make them. I baked about half of the dough, the rest I put in the fridge. Most of the 13 éclairs weren't very pretty, only a about 3 looked good enough to feature in the photograph.
Assembling the chocolate éclairs didn't go smoothly unfortunately. The first thing I ran into was the fact that I didn't have enough pastry cream to fill all of the éclairs. Ok, so I halved the recipe, still I should have had enough to fill 12. I could only fill 7. I used a cookie dough press that also had a nozzle to fill stuff with and never realised how fast it was empty. I started with the ugly ones and never got to fill the pretty ones. So the éclair in the picture only has the chocolate glaze and no filling he he!
When I heated my glaze to the designated temperature it started to separate a little bit :( I hoped it wouldn't be that visible but when I dipped the éclairs it just looked ugly. I didn't cry but it didn't make me happy either. I was pressed for time so that didn't help either. I tried whisking it but that didn't help enough. Than I remember a tip Astrid of La Cerise gave me to save a separated ganache: add a little hot cream and stir. The glaze was sort of ganache-y so I gave it a try: it worked! I was so relieved...at least the glaze would be ok. I didn't have time to photograph the éclairs until after our picknick in the park and after the youngest was in bed. By that time daylight wasn't all that much anymore. The éclair you see in the picture was the only one of the three ok looking ones that also had ok looking glaze. The only problem was that didn't dip it on the top so it tilted when I put it down. I had to insert a toothpick to stabilize it. So maybe it the picture it looks like an ok éclair, in reality it was an empty éclair that needed a toothpick to stay upright ;) Oh well, another challenge done, and in time too...just in time that is ;)
Oh yes, how did it taste? It tasted delicious if you actually like chocolate pastry cream so to me it was just ok. I did like the taste of the glaze, you could really taste the orange taste. I still have some left-over glaze....it might have a second life as truffles, that is if I don't just spoon it out of the bowl :)



You can find the recipe at What's For Lunch Honey? and Tony Tahhan who host this month's challenge.

To see how all the other Daring Bakers did, check out this link.

I mentioned that I made tehina shortbread rounds in my last post. Making tehina shortbread has been on my to-do list for a long time now but I never really got round doing it. And I didn't want to make it last week but it ended up being tehina shortbread anyway. What I really wanted to do was make regular shortbread and use a plastic cookie mould I bought in Jordan 4 years ago. The friend I wanted to make them for (the same one I made the strawberry tartlet for) bought the exact same mould but as far as I know he hasn't been able to produce pretty cookies either. I say either because I had the same problem, I tried out the mould soon after I bought it but I couldn't get the dough out of the mould. So after 4 years I thought I'd give it another go....didn't work :( again the dough stuck even though I floured the mould. So I was stuck with shortbread dough.... I thought regular unflavoured shortbread dough was was a bit boring so I just added ¼ cup of tehina and mixed it in. I chilled the dough for about 20 minutes and rolled it out in order to make tehina cookies.
The cookies have a pleasant slightly bitter tehina taste. Definitely not your regular shortbread cookies. There's not much sugar in this recipe so the cookies weren't very sweet. You have to love tehina to love these cookies though because they really do taste of tehina. N texted me that he thought the cookies were a bit too tehina-y for his taste. But when I talked to him a couple of days later he told me that he liked them better the next day (or he got used to the taste ;)
I have some more of the dough in the fridge and I'm still thinking about using it is some kind of dessert....not completely sure how and what though.



Tehina shortbread rounds (adapted from The Ultimate Cookie Book by Catherine Atkinson)

200 g (6 oz / ¾ cup) flour
25 g (1 oz / 2 ½ tbs) cornflour
50 g (2 oz / ¼ cup) caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
115 g (4 oz / ½ cup) butter, diced
¼ cup tehina

Preheat the oven to 160°C (325°F).
Sift the flour and cornflour into a bowl. Add the sugar and mix it in. Rub in the butter. Add the tehina and knead into a dough. Form a disk shape and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to chill for about 20 minutes.Roll out the dough between two sheets of baking paper until about 1 cm (½ in) thickness. Cut out the cookies and transfer to a baking sheet lined with baking paper.
Bake the cookies for about 30 minutes or until just pale golden. Sprinkle with caster sugar and allow to cool on the baking sheets.

I think this is actually only the second time I used strawberries in dessert. The only other strawberry thing on my blog is strawberry mint soup with cantaloupe sorbet. I serve plain strawberries as dessert often but somehow never really use them in desserts. For Food in Colours, hosted by Sunshinemum of Tongueticklers I needed something red to match this month's colour. So strawberries were perfect.
I used a cream cheese crust for this tartlet. Needed to try out the recipe because it sounded so easy. And easy it was. The results were good but not that good that I will be replacing my favourite crust: Donna Hay's sweet shortcrust pastry. In the Netherlands we're not used to crusts without sugar for sweet things and I guess I'm more Dutch than I thought ;) I've tried the crust with several fillings and every time I would think: it's ok but it would have been better with Donna's crust.
I haven't tasted the complete tartlet by the way but did taste the combination of strawberry and filling which I thought was very good. Had a cheese cake kind of taste.
I gave the tartlet to a friend of mine whom I wanted to please because I needed a bit of his help while working on some Mesopotamian pottery sherds. He would have helped me anyway but a pretty tartlet always helps ;) The feedback about the tartlet was that he liked it but it was a bit on the heavy side. Probably because he ate the whole thing by himself ;) I also made him some tehina shortbread rounds but I will post about these in the future.
I used citric acid (lemon salt) dissolved in water instead of lemon juice because I didn't want to water the cream cheese down too much and still have a tart filling. You could use lemon juice as well (I think about 2 ts) but maybe you have to add more icing sugar to make a firmer filling. The filling will be a little too much for 1 tartlet so expect to have about ¼ left-over.



Strawberry and lemon cream cheese tartlet

¼ ts citric acid
1 ts water
200 g (7 oz) cream cheese
4 tbs icing sugar
½ lemon peel
about 5 medium strawberries, sliced
1 tbs red preserves (I used home-made redcurrant preserves)
about ½ ts water
an 11 cm (4 ½ in) pre-baked tart crust

Dissolve the citric acid in the teaspoon of water. Add one teaspoon of the mixture to the cream cheese. Add the icing sugar and lemon peel as well. Mix until combined and smooth.
Fill the tartlet with the cream cheese. Smooth the top with a wet spoon. Arrange the strawberries on top.
Mix the water with the preserves and heat until boiling. Brush the preserves on top of the strawberries.
Serve the same day.

Cream cheese crust (from Essentials of Baking by Williams-Sonoma)

makes four 11 cm (4 ½ in) tartlets

125 g (4 oz / ½ cup) butter, room temperature
90 g (3 oz) cream cheese, room temperature
155 (5 oz / 1 cup) flour, sifted

Mix the butter and cream cheese with hand mixer on low speed until smooth and combined. Add flour and mix until a smooth dough forms. Divide the dough in four. Press the dough into the tartlet pans. Freeze the tartlets for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F).
Line the tartlets with aluminium foil. Fill with uncooked beans, rice or pie weights. Bake for about 15 minutes or until the aluminium foil can be removed without it sticking to the crust. Lower the temperature to 180°C (350°F) and bake for another 10 minutes or until golden brown. Transfer the crusts to a wire rack to cool completely.

A few weeks ago Dorothy of Dessert Obsessed tagged me for the Six Random Things About Me meme. This reminded me of the other two meme's I was tagged for earlier this year. Why haven't I read any meme's you might wonder.... well I'm not very good with the meme thing because it doesn't involve any baking, only thinking ;) But I do love the concept of meme's because they give you a bit of insight in a blogger.
After getting this third meme I thought I'd indulge you (or not) and do all three meme's in this one post and get it over with.

Yes, that's is me in the picture (age 3 or 4 I think) and I think I'm holding a tin of Quality Street Chocolates. Not that there were any chocolates in there, my parents tried to raise my brother and myself without candy and sweets, no soda's, only cake for birthdays, and only chocolate for Easter....I know poor us ;) but we survived and I can tell you that I more than made up for the lack of sugar in my childhood ha ha!



Ok, ready for the meme marathon?
I'll start with the one I was tagged for ages ago in March by Mari of Mevrouw Cupcake.

What were you cooking 5 years ago?
I was living in Tel Aviv at that time so my cooking was influenced by the Middle East. Lots of tomato and cucumber salad, pita bread, hummus, baba ganoush etc. Also I started baking more, from once or twice a year to a couple of times a month. I think I got inspired by the wonderful desserts you can order at Tel Aviv's restaurant (much better than the desserts in the Netherlands).

What were you cooking 10 years ago?
Practically no sweet stuff, just savoury. I really was a savoury girl back then. Nearly no meat because I wanted it to be free range and that was not readily available close to my home at that time. My cooking was mostly Mediterranean influenced with some Asian (mostly Indonesian) dishes in between.

Five snacks you enjoy:
Potato chips/crips
Milk chocolate with whole hazelnuts and raisins
Good cheese and baguette
Dulce de Leche
Nutella

Five recipes you know by heart:
(I rarely use recipes when I'm cooking, only when I make sweet stuff I use them.)
2 different recipes for zandkoekjes (basic Dutch cookie recipe)
Griesmeelpudding (Dutch semolina pudding)
Jam
Pound cake
Ganache

Five foods you love to cook:
Cookies
Cakes
Tarts
Puddings
Jam

Five things you cannot/will not eat:
Offal
Raw egg straight up or a soft boiled egg
Black pudding
Bell pepers
Belgian endive (I dislike bitter a lot, grapefruit juice is about as much as I can handle)

Five favourite culinary toys:
Baking pans
Rolling pin
Food processor
Parmezan grater (mostly because it looks so good ;)
Digital thermometer



Ok, onto the meme of six random things that Dorothy of Dessert Obsessed tagged me for:

1. I'm a very messy cook/baker. My kitchen always looks like a bomb exploded when the meal or cake or whatever is ready or in the oven. I'm always amazed that anybody can have their kitchen in order WHILE they're cooking or baking. Every once in a while I will try but I think it just isn't in my genes ;)

2. I'm a very bad egg separator, the other day I needed 6 separated eggs and I had to crack 10 to get 6! Probably a case of Murphy's law ;)

3. long time readers may know this but I studied to be a dietician. Never worked as one though, and never intended too ;) I liked food so much that I wanted to study something that I actually liked and Food & Dietetics was the least scientific of food oriented studies in my area of the Netherlands at that time.

4. I don't like milk, the thought of drinking milk...yuk! Maybe for a 1000 euro's I would take a sip but I scares me to do it though. I do love milk based dessert though.

5. I'm not married to the father of my sons though we've been together for 9 years. In the Netherlands this is something very regular, but when I read eg US blogs, everybody seems to be married when they have children. Cultural differences...

6. For years I pretty much only wore black clothes, but not to fit in with a certain group though. None of my friends wore black. I think it was what I was used to because my mum wore and still wears mostly black. It's still one of my favourite colours in clothing but I wear different colours too.

And finally the most difficult meme (imo) that Susan of Foodblogga tagged me for in April: the Six Words Memoir (sum your life up in 6 words)....yeah I know, how on earth can one do that? I kept thinking about it but nothing really good came out of it, the best I could do was: 'enjoying my life as it happens'.

So there they are, the three meme's I was tagged for. Finally that burden is gone and I can enjoy life again ;)

btw I'm a obsessive-compulsive chain letter breaker. And meme's I feel are closely related to them so I hope you'll excuse me that I don't tag anybody else for these meme's ;) But feel free to do any of them anyway!

Dhanggit of Dhanggit's Kitchen is looking for Perfect Party Dishes to make for her daughters first birthday. I have the perfect dish for her. It's the baklava that I made for my own birthday party. The good thing about is that you can keep the prepared unbaked dish in the fridge for a couple of days before you baked it. And once baked you can keep it for several days as well. Imo it's even better after a couple of days because the sugar syrup softens the filo dough. It's very easy to make but it is a bit time consuming to brush every layer of filo dough with melted butter.
I'm not sure filo dough has the same measurements everywhere, I think mine were rather on the small side. I had to use 1 ½ sheet to cover my baking tray of 27 x 35 cm (11 x 14 in). It's easiest to use a dish that will work with your filo dough measurements.
I liked this baklava a lot but I have to admit that I like the store bought ones maybe even better even though (in the Netherlands at least) it's usually made with inferior ingredients (meaning no butter and no pistachio's). I loved the taste of mine better but I prefer the sweet, sticky and softness from the store bought ones :)

Syrup (from the Dutch version of Claudia Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food)

500 g (1 lb) sugar
300 ml (1 ¼ cup) water
2 tbs lemon juice
2 tbs orange flower water

Put the sugar, water and lemon juice in a sauce pan on low heat until the sugar dissolves. Increase the temperature and allow to cook until thick enough to cover the back of a spoon. Add the orange flower water and allow to cook for another minute or so. Allow to cool down to room temperature and chill until use. You can keep the syrup in the fridge for at least a week.

Baklava with pistachio's (from the Dutch version of Claudia Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food)

24 leafs of filo dough (about 500 g / 2 lb)
200 g (7 oz) butter, melted
375 g (13 oz) pistachio's, finely chopped

Preheat a oven to 160°C (325°F). Make sure you have a damp kitchen towel handy to cover the filo dough once you've opened the package, this will prevent it from drying out. Butter a large baking tray. Put in the first leaf of filo dough. Butter the layer of filo. Add the second layer and butter. Repeat this until you have 12 layers in total. Spread out the pistachio's. Started layering with filo and buttering again until you have another 12 layers. Make sure to butter the top layer as well. Pre-cut the baklava with a sharp knife, diamonds are more traditional but squares, rectangles or triangles work too.
Bake for 45 minutes. Increase the temperature to 220°C (425°F) and bake for another 10-15 minutes or until lightly golden brown. Take the baking tray out of the oven and immediately pour the cold syrup over the hot baklava.
Allow to cool. Cut the baklava along the pre-cut lines and serve.