Chocolate Eclair Hearts for Valentines Day

To all my readers, I'd like to wish you all a Happy Valentine's Day.

Hubby and I don't really celebrate Valentine's Day anymore.  When we first met, we used to go out for a lovely dinner.  Nowadays, I prefer to cook something at home for him and our children.  After all, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.  And as you can tell, I love cooking and baking.  This year I decided to make my family, chocolate eclair hearts.

I've made choux pastry once before when I made my Hot Dog Cakes.  I used to be scared of making choux pastry but I'm glad that I have overcome that fear.  My piping technique, however, needs more work.  I drew heart shapes on the baking paper to use as a guide but some of my choux pastry hearts still didn't look like hearts. That's OK, it just makes my eclairs look rustic.  Anyway, the important thing is the taste.  And according to Hubby, it tastes great. 

Makes 12 (depending on size)

Choux Pastry 

40g butter

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup plain flour

2 eggs

1.  Preheat oven to 220degC (200 Fan forced).  Prepare an oven tray by drawing heart shapes onto the baking paper.  (I used a heart shape cookie cutter as a guide)

2.  Combine butter with the water in a saucepan and bring to the boil.  Add flour and beat with a wooden spoon over the heat until the mixture comes away from the sides of pan and forms a ball.  Transfer to a small bowl and the beat in the egg with a electric mixer until it becomes glossy.

3.  Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with 1cm plain tube.  Pipe the mixture onto the heart shapes on the baking paper on the trays.  Bake for 7 mins.  Reduce the temperature to 180degC (160 fan forced) and bake another 10 mins or until they are browned lightly and crisp.  Carefully cut them in half and remove any soft center.  Bake for another 5 mins or until eclairs are dried out.  Leave to cool.

Pastry Creme Recipe
1 cup milk
1/2 vanilla bean, split or 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup caster sugar
2 tablespoons cornflour

1. Bring milk & vanilla bean to the boil in small saucepan.
2. Discard vanilla if using the bean.
3. Meanwhile, beat egg yolks, sugar & cornflour in small bowl with electric mixer until thick.
4. With motor operating, gradually bet in hot milk mixture.
5. Return custard mixture to saucepan; stir over heat until mixture boils & thickens

To assemble, pipe the pastry cream into the bottom half of the choux pastry shells.  Place the other half on top.  Carefully spoon melted chocolate on top of the eclair.  Leave to set.

This post is also for Sweets for a Saturday for Lisa's Blog




















Happy Valentine's Day.
Cherrie

Hot Dog Cakes. An International Incident.

So this is our first International Incident Party for 2011 and I'm pretty excited.  This month's theme is Hot dog. Penny from Jeroxie Blog, is again hosting this great monthly event.  If you would like to join, please visit our forum.

I've had this vision to create a cake that looks like a hot dog after making my hamburger cupcakes.  I thought that this was the perfect opportunity.  This also ticks off another challenge I set myself that I will conquer all dishes that have intimidated me.  I have always been afraid of making choux pastries.  I love to eat it, Yes.  But to make it, I have been too afraid to just think about it.  I don't know why I was so afraid of it.  I was quite easy, actually.

Devil's Food Cake
(I only used one of the cakes.  I froze the other one for use another time)
185g softened butter
1 3/4 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups self raising flour, sifted
1/2 cup plain flour, sifted
1/2 tsp bicarb of soda
2/3 cup cocoa powder
3 tsp instant coffee granules
1/2 tsp red food colouring
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk

1.  Preheat oven to 180degC (160 fan forced).  Grease and line two deep 18cm round cake pans.
2.  Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in eggs, one at a time.  Fold in sifted flours, soda, cocoa and coffee.  Combine the colouring, water and milk and pour into dry ingredients.
3. Bake about 25-30mins.  Turn cakes out onto racks to cool completely.

Cream Cheese Frosting

45g cream cheese

45g butter, softened

1/2 cup icing sugar

Beat the cream cheese and butter in a small bowl until as white as possible.  Gradually beat in sifted icing sugar.

To make the sausages, crumb one of the cakes and add the cream cheese frosting.  Mix thorough till well combined.  Take about 1 heaped tablespoon and shape like a sausage.  Let it sit in refrigerator for an hour to set.

Choux Pastry Buns
80g butter
1 cup water
1 cup plain flour
3 eggs

1.  Preheat oven to 220degC (200 Fan forced).  Prepare two oven trays.
2.  Combine butter with the water in a saucepan and bring to the boil.  Add flour and beat with a wooden spoon over the heat until the mixture comes away from the sides of pan and forms a ball.  Transfer to a small bowl and the beat in the egg with a electric mixer until it becomes glossy.
3.  Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with 1cm plain tube.  Pipe 10cm lengths of the mixture 3cm apart on to the trays.  Bake for 12 mins.  Reduce the temperature to 180degC (160 fan forced) and bake another 10 mins or until they are browned lightly and crisp.  Carefully cut the "buns" in half and remove any soft center.  Bake for another 5 mins or until eclairs are dried out.  Leave to cool.

Pastry Creme Recipe
2 cup milk
1 vanilla bean, split
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup caster sugar
4 tablespoons cornflour

1. Bring milk & vanilla bean to the boil in small saucepan.
2. Discard vanilla.
3. Meanwhile, beat egg yolks, sugar & cornflour in small bowl with electric mixer until thick.
4. With motor operating, gradually bet in hot milk mixture.
5. Return custard mixture to saucepan; stir over heat until mixture boils & thickens.

 To assemble the hot dog, pipe the pastry cream into both halves of the choux pastry.  Take the sausage and sandwich in between the choux pastry buns.  For the ketchup and mustard, I used red and yellow writing gel.

Bon Appetite,
Cherrie

Please check out what everyone else brought to the Hot dog party

New Year's Resolution 2011

Photo courtesy of @mredwardpuzon 

To my dear readers, Happy New Year to you and your family.  2010 has been a great year for me and my family.  It was a good year for eating, cooking and baking.  So many yummy experiences.  I'm looking forward to more good eats and I wish that upon to all of you too.

So... my New Year's Resolution.  To be honest, I was not planning on having one this year. All my previous resolutions did not see through the whole year so I thought it wasn't worth thinking about it this year.  That is until, I was deciding on what sweet to make for our New Year's Eve celebration at my parent's house.  I wanted to make something that I haven't made before.  It also had to be round.  We like to have round dishes on our "media noche" or "Midnight meal" table for good luck in the new year.  It was then I decided to make macarons.  I've made it a couple of times before but the whole process always intimidates me.  It's precise baking.  But I did it and I'm quite happy with the way it turned out.

Because of that, I have decided that my New Year's Resolution 2011 is to cook or bake dishes and recipes that have intimidated me in the past.  

A while back I came across "macarons" by Berengere Abraham  The book has great step by step detailed instructions and it's easy to follow. I used the recipe to make the lemon macaron shell but I used AWW recipe for the filling.

I doubled the recipe to make 25-30 macarons depending on how accurate you size them.

Macaron shell:

4 large egg whites

120g ground almonds

220g icing sugar

40g fine caster sugar

yellow food colouring

2 tbl lemon juice

Filling:

80ml pouring cream

180g white chocolate chopped coarsely

6-8 tbl lemon juice (depending on how lemony you like it)

To make the shells

1.  Preheat oven to 150degC.  Finely grind the almonds and icing sugar in a blender or food processor.  Strain the mixture over a baking tin lined with baking papar and cook for 5-7 minutes.  Let cool.

2.  In a mixing bowl, beat the egg whites till soft peaks using an electric mixer.  When it starts to stiffen, gradually add the caster sugar, beating constantly.  Add a few drops of food colouring and the lemon juice.  Mix to combine.  Strain the almond-sugar mixture over the egg white and fold carefully.

3.  Fill a piping bag using a round piping nozzle.  Pipe out 4.5cm circles onto a baking tray lined with baking paper.  Let it stand for about 1 hour until a crust forms on the surface.  Bake for 8-10 minutes.  Let the shells cool, then remove using a small palette knife.

To make the filling

1.  Bring the cream to the boil in a small pot then remove from the heat.  Add the chocolate and stir until smooth.  Now add the lemon juice.

2.  Let stand at room temperature until spreadable.  I found I needed to whip it a little and I also refrigerated it for a while.

When the shells and filling is both cool, spread the filling over half of the shells, then top them with the remaining shells.  Chill for 1 hour before serving.

Is your New Year's Resolution food related?

Bon Appetitie,
Cherrie

Macarons