Claire Elizabeth

banana bread

Gateau st Honore- a classic French cake which was named for the Bishop of Amiens, Saint Honorius, in the sixth century and the French patron saint of pastry cooks (can you tell I've been doing my research?). There is also a street in Paris that bears his name; the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore - a street that I did pass by on my trip to Paris last year. Anyway, before I bore you all too much with the history, I'll tell you a little about what this extravagant gateau actually is!

The gateau consists of a puff pastry base, topped with a swirl of choux pastry which is piped from the centre of the base in a spiral outwards, and little choux buns dipped in caramel dotted around the outer edge. It is then finished with creme patisserie and spun sugar.

It is quite a challenging dessert to make, as there are so many different components involved, but time can be saved by preparing the pastry and filling in advance, which then just leaves the assembling. Of course you can save even more time by buying the ready-to-roll puff pastry, but I assure you that it is incredibly satisfying making your own, and the quality is far better than what you can buy in the shops.

There are quite a few variations you can make on this gateau- I have seen recipes that use shortcrust pastry for the base, fresh fruit fillings and even salted caramel choux buns. I stuck to a fairly classic recipe which I took from Michel Roux's book 'Desserts'. Michel makes a black and white gateau which calls for both vanilla and chocolate chantilly cream in the centre, giving a two-tone striped finish (hence the name). I'm not a fan of whipped cream, so instead I made both vanilla and chocolate creme patisserie for my topping, which I also used to fill each choux bun.

I used generous amount of caramel to coat my choux buns (since I have a very sweet tooth!) and used this to stick them to the puff pastry base. I also attempted to make a sugar cage to by drizzling caramel over a greased plastic bowl but unfortunately it broke into pieces once I tried to remove it! Nevertheless, I still used the broken bits to sit on top of the gateau, and actually, it doesn't look too bad!

Overall, I thought this dessert was a winner but it does tend to go a little soggy after a while so is best eaten fairly quickly after assembling, which is not exactly too difficult to do!

bears

Valentines Gifts

16:17

apple

Gluten Free Apple Streusel Cake

16:16

buche de noel

Triple Chocolate Yule Log

11:56

For as long as I can remember, we have always had a shop-bought Christmas pudding on Christmas day. This year, two small 'extra special' (I'll let you guess the shop) Christmas puds were added to the shopping basket but I decided that I wanted to make a 'buche de noel' or chocolate log as it's known here in the UK. Now I don't have anything against Christmas pudding, infact, I love it (especially with a good helping of brandy butter) but I just fancied doing something different, for three main reasons:
1. I've never made a yule log or even a swiss roll before so I wanted to have a go at it,
2. My sister is the only one in my family who doesn't like Christmas pudding so has to silenty sit and watch us eat it while she has to put up with yet another mince pie,
3. I love chocolate, enough said.

Anyway, I found a recipe in the Delia Smith Christmas book and got to work. I used her recipe for the sponge- a simple mixture of beaten eggs whites, sugar and cocoa powder baked in a swiss roll tin. Now I'm not a huge fan of cream so I thought that I'd add some melted milk chocolate to the whipped cream filling to make it really chocolatey.

For the final outer icing, I actually made two types. The first was a bit like a rich chocolate sauce- dark chocolate, butter and syrup, and the second a simple chocolate butter icing. The butter icing was slightly lighter in colour so I was able to use a fork to create a two tone effect on the outside of the log so it looked more like real wood.

I felt that my chocolate log wouldn't be complete without some festive holly leaves, berries and ofcourse a little robin red breast so I made these out of icing and marzipan, then dusted the whole thing with a little icing sugar and grated white chocolate for that snowy look!

Unfortunately, everybody (except me) was far to full to manage any pudding after the huge turkey my mum bought from the butchers, but the log lasted a good few days in the fridge without drying out and was still rather tasty! However, as we missed out on Christmas pud this year, I am now really craving some, and so I am looking forward to new years day when we will probably pop that in the microwave after dinner- yum!