Archive for the ‘Sweet Stuff’ Category
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011
Feels a bit odd writing about cake when there’s all this shit going down in London, so to that end I’m going to do what I promised in my last post. Be brief.
So another week, another cake mountain. The cakes last week were definitely more technical than the week before. We compared and contrasted the differences between fat based and egg based sponges, including Génoise and Chiffon, as well as making a bunch of different fillings and icings.
Here are a few highlights:
The Fraisier – a light vanilla sponge sandwiching fresh strawberries and mouselline, all topped off with a marzipan disc. Summer in cake form.
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Tags: Black Forest Gateaux, Cake, Concorde, Egg, Fat, Fraisier, Opera Cake, Sachertorte, San Francisco, SFBI, Sponge, Wedding Cakes
Posted in Opinion, Reviews, Sweet Stuff, Travel | No Comments »
Thursday, July 28th, 2011
Last week started where the previous week finished, with a bevvy of tarts. For any newcomers, don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a tale of my sordid weekends in San Francisco’s brothels, but rather the pastry variety. And what a way to start.
Using the left over Pâte à Foncer and the vanilla Sucree, as well as a chocolate version made for us by our instructor, Juliette, we made a trio of tasty treats. The first was a Pear Bourdaloue. A rectangular tart filled with frangipane, jam and topped with artfully sliced pears. Right up my ‘rue’. Next, using the chocolate sucree, a salted caramel tart. Quite a lengthy process this one, as it involved making a salted caramel with which we lined the base, a chocolate ganache which formed the bulk of the filling, all topped off with ‘black glaze’, which contrary to it’s name isn’t a new tone from Dulux, but a silky chocolate flavoured glaze which gives the finished tart a shop ready sheen.
The final tart of the trio was a creamy passion fruit tart, which had a tasty curd like filling similar to a tarte au citron, topped (slightly un-necessarily in my opinion) with blow-torched Swiss meringue, to give a nicely burnished effect. Or at least that’s the theory. For most of us, this was the first time we had used a piping bag to finish a desert, and there were some mixed results. My effort (not pictured) wasn’t too bad, but lets just say Pierre Hermé hasn’t been knocking down my door to offer me a job.
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Tags: Blow Torch, Caramel, Chantilly, Choux, Cookies, Cream, Creamy, Eclairs, Frangipane, Gateaux Saint Honoré, meringue, Muffins, Paris Brest, passion Fruit, Pastry, Peanut Butter, Pear Bourdaloue, Praline, Salted Caramel, Tart
Posted in Opinion, Reviews, Sweet Stuff, Travel | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011
For the un-initiated, Ray Mears is a legend. He’s a quietly authoritative survival and bush-craft expert, who’s brilliant TV shows have been running in the UK for years. He basically gets to live out every schoolboy’s fantasy of surviving in the great outdoors, whittling wood, foraging, and using a few of the hundred or so ways he knows how to start a fire in the wild.
Anyways, I remember seeing an episode of one of his shows a while ago (I think it was the one where he met up with another survival legend, Les Hiddins aka The Bush Tucker Man) where he cooked foil wrapped bananas with cocoa powder in the dieing embers of his camp fire.
Hardly haute cuisine I think you’ll agree, but they looked tasty, so the next time I had a barbie I thought I’d give it a go, and they’ve been a fixture ever since. So I figured if some guy from New Orleans called Foster can have a banana dish named after him, why can’t our Ray?
These ones are a posher remix of Ray’s iron rations, using dark chocolate and a bit of booze, but I’d like to think the man himself would approve.
Ingredients (per person)
1 ripe banana
2 squares of dark chocolate
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Tags: Banana, Barbecue, Bush Tucker, Bushcraft, Chocolate, Double Cream, Ray Mears, Survival, Vanilla Ice Cream, Whiskey
Posted in Dinner, Recipes, Snack, Sweet Stuff | No Comments »
Thursday, June 30th, 2011
A couple of weeks ago it was East 17, and now blam! I’m hitting you with an Ultravox reference. High brow shizzle I think you’ll agree. And why did up this 80s relic? Because last week we started the Viennoiserie section of our course.
Viennoiserie is the name given to all kinds of yeasted, enriched doughs. From croissants, to Danish pastries, sticky buns to brioche, we’re talking about doughs enriched with sugar, eggs, milk and butter. Lots of butter. I’ve never seen so much of the stuff than in the past week.
We’re going to be getting in to lamination next week, the technique for making croissants amongst other things, but the breads we made last week were mixed in a similar way to what we’ve become familiar with, even if the formulas were in some cases a lot more complicated.
We started off the week slowly, making a range of products based around brioche and sweet roll doughs. With most of these we had to adjust our mixing to incorporate the sugar and butter after the dough had developed in strength in the mixer. The reason for this is that both inhibit the development of gluten, and if added at the beginning you end up mixing for bloody ages and your dough comes off the mixer too warm, which in turn effects fermentation. Best avoided in other words.
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Tags: Bakewell tart, Bostock, Brioche, Buns, Butter, Columba Di Pasqua, Croissants, Danish, Dough, Enriched, Gibassier, Hot Cross Buns, Kugelhopf, Pain au lait, Pan D'oro, Pannetone, Roll, Sticky, Sticky Buns, Stollen, Sugar, Sweet, Viennoiserie
Posted in Reviews, Sweet Stuff, Travel, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Monday, June 6th, 2011
BIG day for me on Friday. I broke my S’Mores virginity. We don’t really have anything like this traditional US fireside treat in the UK, so I thought it warranted a little post.
For the uninitiated (as I was until a few days ago) s’mores are a kind of sweet sandwich of Graham Cracker (a bit like a digestive biscuit back home), marshmallow and chocolate. Traditionally enjoyed by girl guides and scouts round the camp fire, you toast a marshmallow over a fire and then sandwich it between two crackers containing a square of chocolate. The residual heat from the molten mallow melts the chocolate, and you’ve got yourself a sweet, chewy, crunchy, chocolatey treat.
We had some ‘posh’ s’mores at college this week as the wood fired oven had been stoked up by Mike, the SFBI’s resident pyromaniac. I was chatting to him about them, and he told me that the Graham cracker was invented by an eccentric minister from the same school of thought as Dr Kellogg, and believed that his crackers could cure all sorts of modern life’s ills from alcoholism to ’self abuse’.
So there you have it. Tasty AND good for you. Win win.
Oh, and I should add that the s’mores in question were created by Jen, one of the interns at SFBI, who has seriously wicked way with all things sweet.
Tags: America, Camp, Camping, Chocolate, Digestive, Fire, Graham Cracker, Marshmallow, S'More, Tradition
Posted in Snack, Sweet Stuff | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
Portuguese Custard Tarts, or pastel de nata, have got to be as good a reason as any to get on a plane and head over to Portugal. They seem to vary from place to place, but I think the best one I’ve ever had was after destroying a hog roast sandwich from these fellas at an event down the road from me. I can still taste it now. Insane.
In my (limited) experience, you can tell a good one by the spiral shape of the pastry on the base, and a slightly caramelised skin on top. As you’ll see from the ingredients list, they are pretty rich, but as they’re only small lets not worry too much about that. This recipe makes 12.
Ingredients
3 free-range eggs, yolk only
1 vanilla pod, seeds scraped out
125g golden caster sugar
30g cornflour
225ml double cream
175ml full-fat milk
Pinch of salt, small
1/2 cinnamon stick
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Tags: Caster Sugar, Custard, Double Cream, Milk, Pastel De Nata, Portuguese, Puff Pastry, Roast Hog, Seeds, Tart, Vanilla Pod
Posted in Recipes, Snack, Sweet Stuff | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011
I’d never made marmalade before, but inspired by an article and recipe written by one of my baking heroes Dan Lepard I read last week, I decided to have a stab. It is a little time consuming, but it’s very satisfying, and it also makes your kitchen smell awesome. It starts with a fresh, zingy citrus whiff, and then at some point during the process it suddenly changes, and BANG! Your kitchen smells like marmalade.
I was pretty pleased with the results. The only things I’d say were that I wish it had set a bit firmer, but as I understand it this can be a bit hit and miss, and I also prefer a bit more peel in my marmalade, so I’ve adjusted the recipe accordingly.This should make around 4 big-ish jars, or a couple of bigger Kilner style preserve jars.
Ingredients
400g Seville oranges (about four)
Zest of 1 additional orange
1 lemon
1 litre water
775g white sugar
25g dark muscovado sugar
Method
One thing you’re going to need to make the sweet stuff is some muslin, and a jam / sugar thermometer. Neither are particularly expensive, and are worth having anyway, so put your hand in your pocket.
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Tags: Dan Lepard, Guardian, Jam, Kilner, Lemon, Marmalade, Muslin, Orange, Pectin, Peel, Seville, Sugar, Zest
Posted in Breakfast, Recipes, Sweet Stuff | No Comments »
Sunday, January 23rd, 2011
Apologies for the radio silence, but yet again the day job has been getting in the way of me putting finger to key. It’s been what can only be described as an unpleasantly busy start to the year, but at least I got to head out to Stockholm earlier in the week, if only for 24 hours.
Rewinding again to Christmas, if you can remember that far back, here’s a recipe for a classic lemon tart. It’s basically a piece of cake (or rather tart), particularly if you use shop bought pastry, which I’d recommend unless you’ve got the time to make your own.
I’ve not managed to work out how patisseries manage to get that glossy finish on their tarts, so I cheated and added a festive twist by glazing mine with a bit of raspberry jelly.
This recipe was made in a 30cm / 12″ tart case to serve around 8-10 people, if you’re making desert for less use a 20cm / 8″ case and half the quantities. Lets begin.
Ingredients
500g all butter shortcrust pastry
10 free range eggs
8 lemons, juiced
380g caster sugar
500 ml double cream
Zest of 4 lemons
4 tablespoons of raspberry jelly for the glaze, optional
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Tags: Bake, Clotted Cream, Cream, Eggs, Glaze, Jelly, Lemon, Pastry, Raspberry, Shortcrust, Sugar, Tart, Zest
Posted in Dinner, Lunch, Recipes, Snack, Sweet Stuff | No Comments »
