Claire Elizabeth: October 2011

Happy Halloween!

17:09

Puff pastry practice and the classic Cornflake Tart!

16:06

After making danish pastries at college, I thought I'd have a go at making puff pastry at home as the technique of making the dough is fairly similar and therefore it would be good practice for my assesment!

Puff pastry is time consuming to make, which I why I decided that Sunday would be the perfect day for attempting it! I actually found the whole process rather therapeutic and enjoyable, as I was able to take my time and work at my own (slow!) pace.

After much rolling and folding, my dough was complete. Now I just had to decide what to make with it! In the end I chose to bake some peach frangipan tarts, hazlenut and cinnamon palmiers and mini mille-feuilles filled with creme patisserie. I must say, I was rather happy with the results - the pastry rose up just as it should and was lovely, buttery and light.

After all my hard work making puff pastry that day, later on in the week I suggested to my sister Helen that we bake something together for a change. I let Helen choose the treats, and she said she'd like to make cornflake tart (just like we used to have at school), amaretto cupcakes and rocky road (can't really go wrong there!).

For the cornflake tart, we found a recipe on the internet (see here) and used this as a guideline. Instead of normal cornflakes we used crunchy nut and reduced the sugar slightly to compensate. We also made our own shortcrust pastry rather than using ready rolled!

The amaretto cupcakes were soaked in an amaretto syrup once removed from the oven to really intensify the almond flavour and keep them moist. As the cupcakes were quite sweet, I made an almond buttercream icing rather than the sickly sweet butter icing you normally find on a cupcake.

It was my grandma who gave me my recipe for rocky road as she once made some and I thought it was absolutely divine! It is really simple thing to make, requires no baking and there are so many variations. I like to add mini marshmallows, raisins, biscuits and glace cherries to mine, but you can include whatever you like really!

I think Helen found our baking session to be quite enjoyable and a nice break from her university work so it seems likely that we will be baking together again in the near future!

birthday cake

Cakes for men!

16:32

cinnamon swirls

College: Danish and Croissants

11:33

Well it was another challenging day at college last week as we had the task of making danish pastries and croissants. I had attempted danish pastries before, but they weren't brilliant so I was looking forward to learning how to make them properly!

We worked in pairs, with one person doing the croissant dough and the other doing the danish dough. I had the job of making the croissant dough as I wanted to try my hand at something new.

Both danish and croissants are made from a yeasted laminated dough. Lamination is the process of folding and rolling butter into a dough to create thin layers. These thin layers of butter within the dough melt when baked, and the water inside the butter evaporates to give steam. The steam causes the pastry to puff up during baking, giving a light and crisp finish.

Making the dough is a rather lengthy process, as it has to be rolled and folded three times, letting the dough chill and rest inbetween each fold. Unfortunately, as we were slightly pushed for time, our dough wasn't able to chill for as long as it should so the butter became too warm and started to seep out of the dough. Nevertheless, we carried on as there was little we could do at this stage.

As I had not made croissants before, I was unsure of the length that the cut out triangular pieces of dough had to be, so mine were a little bit short and fat (not so good for rolling into cresents!). They were also quite heavy once baked, and didn't have the light airy interior that they should have. Our danish turned out to be slightly better, and I was particularly happy with the cinnamon swirls (my partner and I certainly didn't skimp on the cinnamon sugar!). Despite our initial butter-seeping disaster, the pastries were really quite tasty and I was pleasantly surprised.

Next week we have an assesment which involves making four types of danish pastry in three hours, so I certainly feel I need to have a little more practice before then....looks like we could have a kitchen full of danish fairly soon!