Crème Brulée à la Citrouille (Pumpkin Crème Brulée)

I know that it has been several months, but I decided to make crème brulée for some foodie friends who are coming for dinner.  Being that it is November and I have an entire case of canned pumpkin, I scoured the internet to find the perfect Pumpkin Crème Brulée recipe.  The one I chose is from Food Network star, Emeril LaGasse.  Find the recipe here. 

Soufflés

I am sure that most of you have had a soufflé before.  Light and airy yet rish in flavor, these egg-based desserts are like a slice of heaven.  Although chocolate is by far the most popular soufflé flavor worldwide, there are several options when it comes to which kind of soufflé to make.  Like crepes, soufflés can be either savory or sweet, the latter being the more common of the two types.

In honor of some special dinner guests, I attempted a Soufflé au café (Coffee soufflé) accompanied by a dark chocolate sauce. I had a brilliant idea to bake them in individual serving dishes using coffee mugs.  It would have been pretty cute as the puffed up soufflé would ressemble a foamy latte.  HOWEVER, I grossly miscalculated the baking time adjustment (the recipe was to bake in a 6 serving soufflé dish) and took them out of the overn very prematurely.  The soufflés immediately deflated to ressemble a pancake and were slightly undercooked.  Needless to say, they were not edible!

So, I started over. Yes, right there while our guests chatted with us! I was bound and determined to have a WOW factor to the evening.  This time around, I used my 6 serving soufflé dish and it came out quite beautiful. The dark chocolate sauce was sinfully delicious and rich as a backdrop to the light magic of the coffee soufflé.

The coffee soufflé recipe can be found in Julia Child's Mastering the Artof French Cooking. As for the chocolate sauce, I used Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate chips and heavy whipping cream and simply melted them together and added 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla.

French baguettes

I have read many articles that speak of the impossibility of replicating authentic French bread in America, let alone in a home kitchen, but I was feeling daring and I went ahead and tried it!  :) I used this recipe from my favorite cooking site, www.allrecipes.com and it had several positive reviews from people who'd traveled to or lived in France. 

Since I was making the baguettes for my Petite Parisienne party, I wanted them too to be miniature so my baguettes more closely resembled breadsticks.  I must say that the most challenging part for me was getting the dough to rise enough because it is supposed to rise somewhere very warm (80-85 degrees) and I baked on a cold winter day. My solution (took me a failed attempt to figure it out) was to use my space heater in our laundry room (the smallest, unused space in our home). It seemed to yield better results.

Here is a shot of the finished product:

Macarons

Macarons (mah-kah-ROH) are a great little French treat.  For all of you trying to be both dairy and gluten-free, this is perfect for you.  They are made of almond flour, eggs and powdered sugar. The ganache, however, does have heavy cream in it. Tartelette is a well-renowned French pastry chef who lives and works here in the US.  Click here to check out a blog post about learning how to make Macarons with Tartelette.

I set out to make these little guys about a month ago and the technique was too tricky for this amateur!  However, I finally found this recipe which claims to be fool proof and I tried again.

I made French chocolate macarons with chocolate ganache filling for the first batch (doubled the recipe). Upon achieving success, I just had to make another flavor (and use up some of the leftover chocolate ganache) so I made Martha Stewart's recipe  here  for French vanilla macarons (used food coloring to make them pink) and then added high quality raspberry preserves to the ganache to get a raspberry-chocolate ganache filling.  I sampled the final result and they were très bien!

Overall assessment: Very simple to make once you get the technique down. You truly do have to use the extra large plain pastry tip to get the right shape.  Also, you don't need to let them sit out for a while after piping them onto parchment paper.  Simply wrap the cookie sheets onto the countertop a few times and you will get the same effect.  Oh yeah, you do need to use egg whites at room temperature.

If at first you don't succeed, dust yourself off and try again?

The task: Mini sugar pastry crusts.
The challenge: Getting them to retain their shape while cooking, as they are extremely delicate.

Well, it would seem that Julia Child only gives recipes for a regular sized fruit tart, which also means a regular pastry crust.  In her recipe, she recommends either placing a piece of buttered foil with uncooked beans or another pie tin over the top of the pie tin in order to set the shape of the shell. I thought that since I have two muffin pans that bake 12 muffis each I could simply use one to cook the crusts in ans the other to lightly set on the top.  This idea may have even worked had I not made my crusts too think to where the bottoms were thick and bubbly and my overlay pan didn't flatten them enough. Also, it seems that I didn't grease the overlay pan enough because when I went to remove it, the entire pastry shells came with.

Much to my dismay, only 2 of the 10 survived in tact, and even they look a little funky if you look at the bottoms, which are about 1/3 inch think and warped looking.

Here's a picture of the best ones:

And here are the rest of them:

So, what does that mean for my poor American guests who truly need to experience the amazing goodness of une tarte française?  It means I had better dust the flour off and try again.  This time I will try a different strategy and double the recipe so that I can make 20-24 in one batch. Wish me luck as I am losing my energy to tackle such a feat.

Bouchons "Chocolate Corks"

Thomas Keller is a "world renowned" French pastry chef who has made these all the rage in the upper foodie circles here in the US with his bakeries in Napa and NYC.  Evidently, his are just to die for.  The photo above are his Bouchons. 

I went ahead and shelled out the $29.95 to buy a silicone bouchon mold from Williams & Sonoma (pictured below). It was ever so cute and promised to make amazing chocolate treats.  

I followed the recipe on the back of the mold box and my bouchons turned out super fluffy and not at all dense, which is one of their primary characteristics. They were quite delicious, but nearly impossible to release from the silicone pan. Now, I will go ahead and admit guilt where it is due here: I may have over mixed it a bit and I have no previous experience with silicone baking pans.  

And thus. my search for delicious amazing and totally reproducible French pastries and baked goods continues. If I endeavor to make Bouchons again, I will purchase different molds (often referred to as Baba molds or Timbale molds) as I plan to return this one tomorrow.

Thanks for following me in this wacky journey. 

Pains au chocolat

If you have ever been to France you know that pains au chocolat (sometimes referred to as chocolate croissants here in the US) are amazing.  They may just be my favorite French snack of all time. That having been said, there are some pretty decent ones available to your local grocery store here in the U.S. since it's pretty much just melted chocolate pieces in croissant dough. The key is the quality of the croissant and of the chocolate as well as the use of plenty of butter! 

I had originally intended to whip up a batch the authentic French way...until I read all about the process required to make croissants.  It would seem that there are several (8 or so) rounds of rolling out dough, spreading with butter, folding over and then allowing it to sit and rise for an hour. YIKES.  The more I read about the processes of French food, the more convinced I am that even the steepest of prices is worth paying. But then I look at my modest party budget and reconsider.

  

So what do I do when pains au chocolat are a must at a French bakery party and yet they are such a pain in the rear to make?  I could do the total short cut and just through some chocolate chips in ready made croissants from Sam's Club. Or I could use the recipe that I found here which uses ready made puff pastry dough, chocolate pieces and an egg wash.  

Since I am trying to think of activities for kids that are theme-related, I think I may do the latter and have the kids help make them. I could cover the kids tables with wax paper and give each kid a small piece of rolled puff pastry dough and some chocolate pieces.  I could show the kids how to fold the dough over to enclose the chocolate and then give them each a little Dixie cup full of egg wash and a pastry brush (?) to coat the outside before they cut them into smaller pieces and put them on a baking tray.  It's fairly simple so I think with a little parental guidance, most kids could do it. How cute would it be to have personalized disposable chef hats and/or aprons for each kid? 

Clafoutis

This photo is from Joy of Baking.

Cherry clafouti is a classic.  It's a light and airy baked custard with dark cherries inside. Like most French desserts, it is not super sweet but definitely not bitter. Every time I needed an afternoon snack between grad classes (while studying in Paris) I'd stroll to the corner boulangerie (bakery) and study the Clafoutis assortment with curiosity and excitement. There was the plain kind which they called Flan (perhaps a distant cousin to the Spanish dessert bearing the same name), cherry, blueberry, pear, etc. 

Unlike most French desserts, this recipe doesn't require any butter or egg separation or beating the eggs and sugar "until a ribbon forms." It's simple. Through the-ingredients-in-a-blender-and-then-pour-into-a-dish-and-bake-it kind of simple.  It does, however, have to bake for a good hour or so. A word to the wise: if you are using canned cherries as I did, be sure to thoroughly drain and dry off the cherries before putting them in.  Otherwise, your consistency may be a little too runny and your custard won't set as well.

Here's my final product. Not bad, eh?

The Menu

I want the focal point to be the petite boulangerie (little French bakery) so the majority of my decorating and cooking energy is going into the bakery area. Here's what the menu is looking like for the bakery buffet table:

• Petits éclairs
• Petites religieuses (cream puffs)
• Petits pains au chocolat
• Madeleines
• Petites tartes aux fruits
• Macarons
• Clafoutis
• Babas au rhum (Rum soaked sweet rolls)

As for the "café" area, I am thinking that I will do café beverages (individual bottles of Coke, Orangina, mineral water and French limonade) and coffee with cream.  I'll also do some mini "hot-dogs" (French style with baguette bread, dijon mustard and sausage links), a cheese and fruit tray and ham & butter baguette sandwiches (it's a French thing).

   

In the beginning...

I am not too sure as to how it all began, but I do know that I was inspired to cook more authentic French food after having watched the film Julie & Julia late last fall. I got Julia Child's cookbook and set out to try one new recipe a week, which was both fun and challenging.

Meanwhile, I've developed a bit of an obsession over party planning.  I subscribe to several party planning blogs in my Google Reader so I read the feeds daily.  One day, while perusing the latest party ideas, I came across a French bakery birthday party for a one year old little girl.
Check out this amazing party on pen n' paper flowers blog. My heart skipped a beat as my daughter Claire's first birthday was fast approaching. I decided right then and there that I wanted to copy that party and personalize the concept to call it my own. 

So the vision for the party is this: Vintage Paris with feminine flair. Black & white photos of Paris interspersed with black & white photos of Claire throughout her first year.  White vintage-looking serving dishes and hot pink splashes here and there. As for patterns, I plan to use damask or toile to help create the classic look.