Monday, July 09, 2007

Choux, wonderful choux!

Spent the day working with some of the many beautiful possibilities with choux pastry. Below, are a half-sheet of eclairs and profiteroles-to-be. The ones I piped are on the left. See the fat tails and lopsided rounds? My teammate Nicole piped the other half.


This is what you do with day-old choux pastry...add cheese, and voila, you have gougeres, aka cheesy puffs. Here they've been formed into the traditional quenelle shape using two spoons. They were a welcome snack at 11:30, as none of us had had breakfast. See how big and poufy they get once baked?




Chef did a centerpiece, or entremet, which is three rings of choux pastry (two on bottom, a third on top), topped with egg wash and raw sliced almonds. What you are looking at, ladies and gentlemen, is a Paris-Brest, thus dubbed for its inception on a train between the two cities. It will be sliced in half and filled with pastry cream.
And finally, a little demonstration in decor possibilities. Profiteroles topped with fondant, some coffee eclairs, Myer's rum-infused and caramel-topped salambo, and a sugar-crusted "S" filled with creme chantilly and jam. Which one did I like best? The S. All the others were either too sweet from the fondant, or had too much alcohol, but the S was light, crunchy, fluffy, and had a tang from the jam. Perfect.

4 comments:

greeeenwithenv said...

Note to self: don't read this blog during evenings at work when I have had and will have nothing to eat

Lana said...

From your description, I just know that the "S" is the pastry for me, too! Creme chantilly!

I wish I could be there to eat it. Since it's pastry, and flaky, I shouldn't have trouble biting into/chewing it, even with my teeth out!

Your piping job looked much better, by the way.

Kea said...

Wow, my mom would love to learn to make these.

MooCow said...

Aww, shucks, folks! As for learning to make them, it's actually really easy. You just need a pastry bag and the right tip, and everything else is pretty simple to make. You'd just have a loooong shopping list of ingredients to begin with. I guess that's why people buy these things versus making them at home.