Daring Bakers: Vols-au-Vent

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

Well this is my first Daring Bakers challenge and I am really excited to be a part of this group although I wasn't thrilled making my own puff pastry especially not with the insane hot weather going on here. But I tried anyway and was actually quite disappointed, I'm not sure what went wrong I just know that my little puff pastry cups rose very uneven while baking them and didn't get enough hollow room to fill them.

But I kept on going and made a whipped white chocolate ganache with crushed coffee beans and an espresso sauce, those were really good!

Why didn't you guys rise evenly?....

Even though I docked the little caps they really puffed up!

Whipped White Chocolate Ganache:

500 ml heavy cream (two times 250 ml)

250 gr white chocolate

about 20 chocolate covered coffee beans, crushed

Espresso Sauce:

1 ½ cups espresso

¾ cup sugar

Ganache-

In a small saucepan heat up the first amount (250 ml) of heavy cream, don't let it come to a boil, when it starts bubbling up take it off the heat and pour it straight over the white chocolate, wait a few seconds and then start stirring until you get a smooth cream. Cover it and let it get completely cold (cool for atleast 4 hours, preferably overnight.)

After the mixture is cool, place it in a bowl of an electric mixer add the second amount of heavy cream (250 ml) and mix on high speed (like you would make whipped cream), it should be pretty stiff but be careful not to over mix it! Especially when using an electric stand mixer- it can turn very quickly into butter.

After ganache is ready fold in crushed coffee beans.

Sauce-

In a small saucepan heat up sugar and coffee and cook until all the sugar has melted and acts like a runny caramel, set a side to cool.

For the complete recipe of Michel Richard’s Puff Pastry Dough and how to shape the Vols-au-Vent go to The Daring Kitchen filed under recipe archive.

Back soon!

Hi there everybody, I wanted to thank all of you who have been commenting on my blog.

I'm letting you know that I will be posting the Daring Bakers challenge on the 27th and after that I can't really say how much I will be able to bake and post about it, I'm moving to another country, back to Germany where I was born. Yup it's a HUGE step after living in Israel for the last 10 years, studying, living, celebrating and falling in love.

Only time will tell how this will affect my life, but I positively hope it's for the best.

So with all my cookbooks, baking utensils and kitchenaid packed up I won't be baking a lot, I promise I'll be back latest in one and a half month when all my baking stuff will arrive in Germany. Of course commenting on your blogs will be put on hold for a while as well but I promise to make it all up to you!

Gala.

Soft Chocolate Rolls

These are so soft and delicious. They look like little croissants but they are actually rolled yeast dough. They are good sweet and savory, you can fill them or leave them plain and they go well with every meal as dinner rolls or for breakfast. Of course perfect right out of the oven with the filling still warm. I would not change the amount of sugar even if using a savory filling, the sweetness is very subtle.

I filled them with Nutella, some I left plain and wrapped in prosciutto.

Smooth dough before and after rising

That's how you shape those little soft rolls

Before and after baking

Soft Chocolate Rolls:

500 gr (3 ½ cups) flour

25 gr fresh yeast (10 gr dry yeast)

½ cup lukewarm milk

¼ cup sugar

2 eggs

100 gr melted butter

¼ cup canola oil

½ tsp salt

1 egg+ 1 tbsp water for egg wash

In a bowl of an electric mixer (with dough hook attachment) place flour and yeast. Add milk, sugar, eggs, butter, oil and salt and knead for 5 minutes to a smooth elastic dough. Cover and let rise until double in size, about an hour.

Remove dough from bowl on to floured surface and divide into 3 equal pieces, roll each piece to a circle about ½ cm thick and cut into 8 triangles like a pizza (see picture).

Now place filling of your choice (or leave plain) at the wide bottom of each triangle and roll it up so it looks like a croissant. Let croissants rise for another 30-45 minutes, brush with egg wash and bake in a 190°c preheated oven for 15 minutes until golden.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

That's right, a chocolate chip cookie recipe! Anybody got a problem with that?

Alright I know It's boring and probably every single person reading this post has his own favorite recipe for this world famous cookie. But! This is my blog and I do what I want!

So here is MY recipe for chocolate chip cookies:

Chocolate Chip Cookies:

1 cup (225 gr) butter

1 ½ brown sugar

2 eggs

2 ½ cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

100 gr bitter sweet chocolate

Preheat oven to 180°c.

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time.

I another bowl whisk flour, baking soda and salt. Mix that into the butter mixture, stir in chopped chocolate.

Drop tablespoons on parchment paper and bake for 10-12 minutes.

Cassis White Chocolate Muffins

So this is the last picnic post! So far we had Dulce De Leche Muffins and Spelt Cheese Straws, and now: Cassis Mini cakes (or muffins).

Cassis is actually french for black currant, which is the less famous sister of the more popular red currant. Both are quite tangy and go perfectly with white chocolate.

You could pretty much use any kind of berry but I like this combo the most, and they always please a crowd- always.

Defrosted and floured so they won't sink to the bottom of the cake

Ooops... they sunk

Cassis White Chocolate Muffins:

(make 18 regular)

2 ½+ 1 tbsp flour

1 cup sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

75 gr butter

1 1/3 cups milk

3 eggs

1 tbsp vanilla extract

200 gr black currant (cassis)

100 gr chopped white chocolate

Streusel:

2 tbsp sugar

50 gr butter

3 tbsp flour

Preheat oven to 180°c. Line muffins pan with paper liners or butter/oil the pan.

Beat sugar and butter shortly, add eggs and vanilla mix to combine.

In another bowl mix flour and baking powder, add 1 tbsp of flour to the black currant and stir so all are coated in flour. Add the dry mixture and milk alternately to the wet mixture. After batter is smooth add the chocolate and berries.

Mix all the streusel ingredients to get a crumbly consistency. Pour batter into cups and top with a little bit of the streusel mixture.

Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Spelt Cheese Straws

So here's round 2 (out of 3) from the picnic goodies!

These are cheddar cheese straw from spelt flour with thyme, they may look a bit weird but they are delicious! I've had an eye on for a while now but didn't really have an occasion to make them (don't you hate that?) so finally the picnic came up and I had a chance to try my luck with these wood-stick-branch-crackers (that by the way were kinda funny eating when surrounded by branches and sticks in the park).

The original recipe calls for buckwheat flour, which I went to buy especially for these straws. For some reason when I started making the cheese straws I noticed how the flour was quite light in color and remembered buckwheat to be darker and also gray-ish, I pick up the box and it says "Organic Spelt Flour"- WWWHAT ?!?!?? Boy did I want to kick myself! (don't you HATE when that happens?), Time was running out (and that's why I don't have any pictures of the process) so I just made these with the spelt flour.

This recipe is easily doubled, I also doubled the amount of salt and made my straws much shorter to make transportation easier. It may sound a bit complicated but it's really not, for some more pictures and measurements in inches go here.

Spelt Cheese Straws

1/2 cup buckwheat flour (I used spelt)

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1 teaspoon fine grain sea salt

1 teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped

115 gr (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cold, cut into cubes

3/4 cup (70 gr) white cheddar, shredded on a box grater

1/2 cup ice cold water

Combine the flours, salt and thyme in a bowl of a food processor. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles little pebbles in a beach of sandy flour (about 20 quick pulses). Alternately, you can cut the butter in using a knife and fork. Transfer to a mixing bowl and toss in the cheese. Sprinkle with ice water and use your hands or a spoon to stir it through and bring everything together into a ball of dough. Flatten the ball into a thick square patty, wrap well in plastic, and place in the freezer for thirty minutes.

In the meantime, preheat your oven to 200° degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat, and place a rack in the middle of the oven.

I find it easiest to work with one half of the dough at a time. Remove the dough from the freezer, cut in half, re-wrap the half you won't be using immediately, and place it back in the freezer. If the dough gets too warm it is difficult to work with. On a well-floured surface roll out the remaining dough into a rectangle roughly 15x30 cm and ½ cm thick. Use a knife to cut 1 cm wide strips, each about 15 cm. Now take a strip of dough and gently pinch it all along its length so that it is easier to roll out into a straw shape roughly 30 inches long. If the dough is giving you trouble, consider chilling it a bit longer. Place each straw on the prepared baking sheet, and repeat with the remaining strips, leaving at least 1 cm between each straw.

Bake the straws one pan at a time for about 8-10 minutes, or until the straws look set, and the cheese is golden where it is touching the pan. Flip each straw and bake for another 2-3 minutes on the other side. Keep in mind if your straws are on the thin side, they'll bake in a flash, if they are slightly thicker they will need to go longer. Remove from oven and let cool, they will crisp more as they cool.

Original from: 101 cookbooks

Dulce De Leche Muffins

You really can't go wrong with Dulce De Leche, I could slap that on pretty much anything.

I made these for a birthday picnic, so of course no frostings and creams were allowed and muffins were the perfect solution. I made another kind of muffins and some cheese sticks so wait for those to come soon.

I bought cute little liners to make them look festive, I guess you could maybe get one or two more muffins if using regular liners. I don't think doubling the recipe should be a problem but I would not use double the amount of dulce de leche maybe one and a half the amount. I used less sugar than written in the original recipe because it just sounded too sweet, and even after using less they were very sweet, delicious, but very sweet so if you are more on the subtle side you could probably use even less sugar.

I was very pleased with the result and the pecans worked perfectly here, you could add chocolate chips too but like I said the muffins are very sweet so nuts were great here.

Dulce De Leche Muffins:

(makes 10)

2 large eggs

1 cup sugar (I used ¾)

250 ml heavy cream

1 ½ cups flour (200 gr)

1 tsp baking powder

200 gr (4 very heaped tbsp) dulce de leche

100 gr chopped pecans or dark chocolate

Preheat oven to 180°c. Line muffin pan with paper liners or oil the pan.

Beat eggs and sugar until pale and sugar is fully incorporated, add half of the heavy cream and the full amount of dulce de leche and mix until even in color.

In another bowl mix flour and baking powder add that slowly to the wet mixture or mix in by hand then pour in the remaining cream. (be careful not to over mix)

Fill the liners half way full then sprinkle on some chopped pecans, cover with another tablespoon of batter and sprinkle the top with some more chopped pecans.

Bake for 25-30 minutes (I did 27), cool and serve warm or at room temp.

Pita Bread With Herbs

Pitaaa! My plan was to make plain simple Pita bread for lunch but then at the last minute I threw in some herbs and that is the kind of Pita you won't get anywhere. I was really struggling with the fact that good and cheap Pita bread is so easy to get here in Israel so why go through the trouble of making it at home...? But I'm happy I did, they turned out really good, and the addition of herbs made them a bit more special.

Of course feel free to use any kind of herbs you like or have at hand, my combo was fresh thyme and dry oregano, they don't make a huge difference in flavor but they add a nice touch.

The first batch I made came out flat which is not the end of the world- it's just not Pita bread. Then I tried the second batch and -POW- they puffed up like crazy! So learn your (my) lesson and let the oven get to the wanted heat. Take this thing easy, the worst thing that can happen is flat Pita bread- and it's delicious!

Rolled out Pita dough

Pita Bread:

Step 1:

1 cup flour

1 tbsp dry yeast

1 tbsp sugar

1 cup lukewarm water

Step 2:

2 cups flour

3 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp dry/fresh herbs (I used thyme and oregano)

Mix ingredients of step 1 and let sit for 10 minutes. Add step 2 ingredients and knead shortly until a slightly sticky dough form, brush lightly with olive oil and let rise for 45 minutes.

Divide dough into 8 equal pieces, roll out each piece to about 4 mm thick, don't worry too much about the thickness, just don't roll them out too thin, think of the diameter of a pita and go with that.

Place on baking tray with parchment (use two baking trays, bake in two batches) cover with damp cloth and let pitas rise on trays for another 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 220°c.

Make sure the oven has reached the wanted heat or otherwise the Pitas won't puff up.

Bake each tray for 7-10 minutes.