I am a custard person. I love cakes, fruit pies, cookies and so on, but creamy custard, in any way shape or form, is my dessert of choice. And if the custard in question contains lots of mini specs of vanilla bean, then I'm in heaven.
After making the apricot pate de fruit a few days ago, I still had some apricot puree left in the freezer and a bit of passion fruit puree as well. I decided to use it all up by making a thin jam. The process is very similar to pate de fruit but the mixture is not cooked as long and not as much pectin is used resulting in a viscose jam.
As you might have noticed, sable breton is my favorite tart base and I use it many, many times, just as I did this time. This is a very simple tart with the sable breton, the passion fruit and apricot jam and the vanilla bean mousseline. I decorated it with a little bit of the apricot pate de fruit I had left over and it made a great stormy afternoon treat.
If you look closely at the photos, you can tell it is very humid here. Look at the pate de fruit how it sweats... amazing. Also, because I do not use any artificial lighting or flashes, my photos take a blue-grey hue when the sky is cloudy. I didn't like that at first but I think it looks romantic now. Subtle.
Sable Breton
160 grams sugar
160 grams salted butter
4 egg yolks
zest of half an orange
1/2 vanilla bean
225 grams unbleached all purpose flour
15 grams baking powder
In an electric mixer, cream the butter and the sugar together. Add the egg yolks, vanilla bean and the orange zest. Add the flour and baking powder combined until it comes together. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
Roll out to about 1/2" thickness and cut 3" circles with a round cutter. Place the circles in molds and bake at 350F for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.
Passion Fruit and Apricot Jam
100 grams passion fruit puree
100 grams apricot puree
1/2 vanilla bean
75 grams sugar
30 grams glucose
20 grams sugar
4 grams pectin
15 grams lemon juice
Place the fruit purees in a small saucepan. Mix the 20 grams of sugar with the 4 grams of pectin. When the puree is about 100 degrees F, add the sugar and pectin mixture. Bring it to a boil and add the rest of the sugar and glucose. Bring to a boil. Remove the pan from the heat and add the lemon juice.
Transfer the jam into a clean bowl and lt it cool slightly before refrigerating it.
Vanilla Mousseline
250 grams whole milk
1/4 vanilla bean
50 grams egg yolk
75 grams sugar
25 grams cornstarch
125 grams butter, cut into medium pieces
Place the milk, half of the sugar and vanilla bean in a small saucepan. Separately, whisk together in a bowl the egg yolks, cornstarch and the other half of the sugar. Bring the milk to a boil and temper into the egg yolks. Return the custard to the saucepan and cook until it thickens.
Immediately, transfer the cream to a clean bowl and add the pieces of butter. Whisk until they melt into the custard. Place plastic wrap over the bowl touching the cream and refrigerate until cool.
Place the cream in a piping bag fitted with a round pastry tip and pipe the cream on top of the baked and cooled sable breton. Pipe some passion fruit and apricot jam in the middle and top with more mousseline cream.
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A few night ago, I was flipping through some of my pastry books and I decided to pick up "Chocolate Obsession" by Michael Recchiuti and Fran Gage. I have had this book for years but I don't remember ever baking any recipes from it.
I have to admit I have a cookbook addiction, but after I get them, I tend to leave them on the shelf and never really bake from them. I do enjoy photographs and they do bring much inspiration, but I don't usually copy a recipe from a book. However, this time, I was drawn to a chocolate souffle photo. It was beautiful, full of texture, dark, rich. I said, "I have to try this".
I flipped to the recipe page and started reading through it to see what method the authors used. I am very particular about souffle and its consistency. I despise meringue based souffles and most chocolate souffle recipes I see are meringue based. I feel cheated with these... I want a souffle that has a thick, creamy interior and that is why I like my roux or pastry cream base recipes.
I went back to the chocolate souffle photo and saw that this souffle had an incredible texture inside. I had to give it a shot. Marvellous, indeed. The amount of chocolate in the recipe makes it almost like a molten cake but without egg yolks. Of course, no need to say that you must use the best available chocolate because that is what makes this souffle. If the chocolate is poor, then the souffle will be poor.
Just a little note about the book though. The recipe in the book fails to mention one of the steps. It lists the grated chocolate in the ingredient list, but then, it does not mention when or how this chocolate is supposed to be added. No big deal. It was pretty easy to figure out, but I did find that error. I haven't tried any other recipes from it, but I think it is well worth it just for the photography and the food styling.
Chocolate Souffle
130 grams cocoa powder
350 ml water
1 vanilla bean, split
40 grams 70% chocolate, grated
70 grams egg whites
pinch of salt
75 grams sugar
10 grams sugar
20 grams 70% chocolate, grated
softened butter
Brush softened butter over all sides of the ramekins you are going to use. Make sure you brush applying vertical strokes. This will allow the souffle to rise straight up nicely. Mix the grated chocolate and sugar and pour into one ramekin. Turn so all sides are coated with this mixture and dump the excess into the next ramekin. Once they are all coated, refrigerate them until ready to use.
In a medium saucepan, bring the water and the vanilla to a boil. Turn heat off and let it steep for 5 minutes. Remove the vanilla bean and reserve it for another use. Return the pan to the heat and bring to another boil. Add half of the cocoa powder into the boiling water and whisk constantly until all the cocoa has been absorbed. Add the rest and whisk constantly for about 3 minutes or until it thickens. Remove from heat and transfer the cocoa paste into a large bowl.
In the meantime, whip the egg whites with the pinch of salt. When they are almost fully whipped, add the sugar slowly, in batches. Let the meringue whip to semi stiff peaks.
Add the meringue into the warm cocoa paste and fold gently until no more white streaks are showing. Fold in the grated chocolate.
Spoon the souffle batter into the ramekins. Fill to the top. Bake in a preheated 350F degree oven until they rise. The time will depend on the size of your ramekins. Serve immediately.
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My lemon verbena plant is growing out of control and I have been using it every chance I get. I have been infusing it in simple syrups for drinks, crème anglaise, in fruit papillote... I even made a sugar body scrub with it. The aroma that it exudes when rubbed between the fingers is amazing.
I wanted to make an ice cream with it and I thought of combining it with white chocolate. I think lemon and white chocolate really compliment each other so I thought why not use the verbena I have. The result is subtle but bright.
Ice cream sandwiches are so fun in the summer. It brings back memories of summers at the beach for me when ice cream sandwiches were always the afternoon treat. This time I made a very crumbly and delicate chocolate and almond shortbread that has a bit of crunch but it's still soft enough to eat with the ice cream. The bit of sea salt really enhances the chocolate.
Lemon Verbena and White Chocolate Ice Cream
250 grams whole milk
500 grams heavy cream
125 grams sugar
100 grams egg yolks
10 grams lemon verbena leaves, washed and dried
225 grams white chocolate, chopped
In a medium saucepan, place the whole milk, heavy cream, half of the sugar and the lemon verbena leaves. Slowly bring to a boil. When it comes to a boil, turn the heat off and let the leaves steep in the milk for about 15 minutes. Turn the heat back on and bring it back to a boil.
In the meantime, whisk the egg yolks with the other half of the sugar. Temper the hot milk mixture into the egg yolks and whisk. Return this base back to the saucepan and cook until nappe or until it reaches 84C.
Have the white chocolate chopped in a large bowl. Strain the custard over the white chocolate and stir until all the chocolate has melted.
Place the bowl with the ice cream base over an ice bath to cool down quickly. Refrigerate overnight. Churn in your ice cream machine overnight.
Chocolate and Almond Short Dough
125 grams butter
75 grams sugar
2 grams salt
1/2 vanilla bean
1 egg yolk
25 grams almond meal
200 grams flour
5 grams cocoa powder
Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla bean seeds together. Add the egg yolk and scrape. Sift together all the dry ingredients and add them to the butter mixture. Mix until combined.
Make a ball with the dough and wrap it in plastic wrap. Gently flatten it with your hands forming a disk. Refrigerate the dough for at least an hour.
Roll the dough to 1/4" thick and cut with cookie cutter. This is a very crumbly dough that tends to crack so you might have to warm up the dough a bit with your hands to soften it.
Bake at 350F for about 10 minutes. Let the cookies cool completely before sandwich them with the white chocolate verbena ice cream.
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I have thoroughly chronicled my quest to find the perfect petit suisse recipe. Some think it's insane that I would spend so much time trying to replicate something that back home, is just baby food. But you must understand, I live far, far away from home and sometimes one needs closeness and needs to feed the soul with childhood memories and flavors.
I believe this is my third attempt at it and as we say in Spanish, "a la tercera, la vencida". And so it was. This time, it worked. Wonderful, thick, creamy, sweet and tangy petit suisse.
But there is something I must tell you. Something wonderful happened during this whole process of finding the perfect recipe. Another "insane" blogger decided to join me on this quest. She had brilliant ideas and we both put our minds and our palates to the test. So this would have never happened without her help, the wonderful, inspiring and "Baker Zen Master" herself, Tartelette.
Helen emailed me a couple of months ago saying she was in. She also wanted to "break the petit suisse" code. Of course, I was jumping up and down with joy. Time passed and we both got busy with life until I recently emailed her to tell her about how my creme fraiche blancmange tasted just like petit suisse. Surprisingly, she had just made some creme fraiche from scratch herself and was about to email me the same thought.
So soon after that, we scheduled a first experiment. We agreed to try to culture a mixture of some heavy cream and whole milk with creme fraiche and a bit of buttermilk. We decided to go against using a starter because both creme fraiche and buttermilk are cultured products so there would be enough bacteria in them to incubate the base. I let mine incubate overnight in my yogurt maker and in the morning, I was greeted by something similar to creme bulgare, which I have blogged about, with a good layer of cream on top. Surprisingly, not all the little jars had set the same way and for some reason, some of them ended up with a layer of cream but a liquid center. So good tasting but not what I was looking for.
I still wanted to go the fromage frais route which I had read about originally. So for our second experiment, we decided to use whole milk and rennet. We let the milk inoculate overnight and in the morning, when the milk curd had formed, we decided to add heavy cream to it. This was the key. I laddled the curd into a strainer lined with cheesecloth and I added 20% of heavy cream. Gently mixed it and let it drain the excess whey for about 4 hours. The result was unbelievable. Just like the petit suisse I grew up eating.
I made some strawberry compote to go with it and since it is so hot and humid, I thought my little boy would really enjoy some petit suisse popsicles so I folded some petit suisse and lightly whipped cream together, piped it into my shot glasses and froze it. He could not keep his hands off them!
So here is the recipe that worked wonders.
Petit Suisse
2 liters organic whole milk
30 ml organic cultured buttermilk
1/8 tablet of rennet
30 ml water
200 grams heavy cream (40% butterfat)
Sterilize a large pot by covering and boiling a small amount of water in it for 5 minutes prior to use.
Pour in the fresh milk, then the buttermilk. Warm up stirring to a final temperature of 65°F. Since my pot was warm from sterilizing it, I didn't even have to turn the heat on. Meanwhile, dissolve the rennet in 30 ml of cool water. Stir dissolved rennet into warm milk. Stir well to blend thoroughly. Cover and let it sit undisturbed overnight at room temperature.
The next morning, a soft curd should have formed; if not, let it sit until it does form which could take up to an additional 12 hours (mine was done overnight). When the curd is adequately formed, cut it into 1/2 inch cubes. Ladle cut curds into clean sterile cheesecloth suspended in a large strainer or stainless steel colander. Pour remaining whey through the cloth.
At this point, weigh the curd and add about 20% of its weight in heavy cream. Mine was 1 kg so I added 200 grams of cream. Stir gently. Place the curd and cream back on the strainer with the cheesecloth and refrigerate for 4 hours until most of the whey has drained off. Spoon the petit suisse into your jars.
I really want to thank Helen for helping me on this project. It was so much more fun to be able to share the steps and results with someone else. Like she said on Sunday morning... "who else out there is getting excited over curd like we are?". Yes, that's us! Merci Helen!
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The abundance of stone fruits is making me go crazy. My head spins thinking about new recipes, how to visually display them, the vibrant colors, flavor combinations. My last three recipes have featured stone fruits, so this time I just had to take it slow and make something rather simple. Something like pate de fruit which I think is a perfect way to utilize stone fruits and yes, get an enormous sugar high!
This recipe makes a lot of pate de fruit so be ready to give some away. It will keep really well for days (the amount of sugar and the tartaric acid solution helps with that) but still... I don't think a family can handle so much sugar. Not even mine! So get out your pretty food packaging boxes or bags and make a list of friends and family to share these with!
Apricot and Vanilla Bean Pate de Fruit
Makes half a sheetpan
750 grams apricot puree
2 vanilla beans
18 grams yellow pectin
75 grams sugar
150 grams glucose
750 grams sugar
6 grams tartaric acid solution (equal parts water and tartaric acid)
12 grams peach liquer
Place the apricot puree and the vanilla bean seeds into a large pot with tall sides. Heat to about 45 degrees celsius (about 113 F).
In the meantime, mix the yellow pectin and the 75 grams of sugar in a bowl. Make sure they are thoroughly combined. If there are clusters of yellow pectin left unmixed with the sugar, this will leave undissolved gummy pieces of pectin in the finished product. So once the puree is warm, add the yellow pectin and sugar to it and whisk very well.
Bring the mixture to a boil and add the rest of the sugar and the glucose. Whisk well and let it boil and cook to 106 degrees Celsius (223F). Make sure to whisk often.
Turn the heat off and add the liquer and the tartaric acid solution. Whisk.
Pour into a half sheetpan lined with parchment paper or silicon mat. Let it set for about 2 hours or until it is completely cool and it has hardened.
Cut squares or different shapes and roll in sugar. Serve immediately. The uncut pate de fruit will keep for a few days lightly covered with plastic wrap. If you are in a humid climate like me, you might notice that it turns very sticky. That's from the humidity in the air melting the sugar.
Happy July 4th weekend to all of you and I will see you next week!
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