whoo! I'm back!
ok, it's been a while. been traveling and stuff so no time for the blog. i will post up some pictures of the stuff we ate but will have to get them from little rachel.
one thing that the trip reinforced for me was that I just don't like beer.
We were in Germany, nothing made me say "now I see what people go on about". Even in the Czech Rep, where pilsner was created. nothing did it for me. the only beer i came close to liking was Budvar.
Anyway, here's a picture for you beer afficianados. taken in prague. or as the hipsters like me say "praha".
ok, down to what i came here for.
Let's talk about some profiteroles. the basis of which is choux paste. or pate a choux. i think choux is french for cabbage. so cabbage paste. yeah, those crazy frogs.
let's make the filling first so it can chill.
milk 24 oz
heavy cream 8 oz
sugar 2 oz
egg yolks 12
sugar 5 oz
cornstarch 2 oz
butter (room temp) 2 oz
one of two vanilla beans (or 1.5 tblsp extract)
bring the milk, cream and first sugar to a boil
while that boils, whisk together the yolks and second sugar. then add the cornstarch. make sure it's all mixed in and no lumps remain.
once the milk mixture boils, add about a quarter of it to the yolks. now the trick is to do this while whisking the yolks. if you don't, you will end up with some awesomely sweet scrambled eggs.
start whisking the yolks and then add a little bit of the hot liquid. this is just to warm up the yolks so they don't curdle.
add the now warm yolks back to the hot liquid while whisking and back onto low heat. keep stirring until the mixture gets thick.
pull it off the heat and into a bowl to cool. once it reaches ~120, add the butter and stir it in. cover that and throw it in to the fridge.
now make the ganache. we have covered this before.
Cream 1 pint
Corn syrup 3 oz
Chocolate (chips or chopped up) 1.5#
Butter 1.5 oz
Bring cream and corn syrup to a boil. Meanwhile, place chocolate and butter in a bowl.
Pour cream over chocolate in 4 or 5 steps, stirring in between. If you stir in too much air it won't look as nice and glossy. So go slow and do not use a whisk.
it will look all kinds of nasty before it pulls together. stay the course.
Choux paste
this recipe makes a fair amount. so try doing half.
oven at 400
milk 17 oz
water 17 oz
sugar 1 oz
salt .5 oz
butter, cubed 17 oz
flour (bread) 10 oz
cake flour 9 oz
eggs 18-20
wooo doggy, that is a lot of eggs. like i said, try half.
bring the water, milk, sugar, salt, and butter to a boil in a large pan.
once it boils, remove from the heat and add all the flour
the eagle eyed among you will notice those are two different pans. when i went to add the flour, i realized that the first pan was not going to be big enough (durrrr).
back to the recipe.
put the pan back on the heat and stir like a mofo.
you will know it's done when you see the dough (dough/paste, whatever) start to try and form a ball. if you look close in the picture you will see the edges are just starting to round out.
throw all this into a mixer bowl and start adding the eggs.
it's best to have them cracked already. i reserve the lest few. you never know how many you will really need.
so add the eggs with the paddle attachement on a medium-ish setting
they will incorporate fairly quickly at first. as you near the end, it will take a little more effort to get them mixed in. at this stage, stop the mixer and grab a spatula. put the spat in the dough and pull up a big chunk. if it takes more than a 5 count for it to slide off the spat, add the other eggs. you'll get the hang of it after you do it a few times.
so now you are done with the choux. for profiteroles, i pipe them out onto a silpat
notice there are little peaks. those will burn. so use a wet spoon or fingertip to smoothe them down
now take a good look at the next picture. they are a tad under done. my issue is that i failed to rotate the top and bottom pans. so the bottoms got a bit too dark...on the bottom. i pulled them a little early. ideally, they will be a bit darker than this.
let them cool. add the pastry cream to a piping bag, cut a slit or two into the bottom of each profiterole and pipe the cream into the bottom. go slow so you don't have a blow out. mmmmm sweet, sweet blowout.
once they are all filled, dip them in ganache.
and the final product.
