Showing posts with label choux pastry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label choux pastry. Show all posts

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Beef Wellington Bites

A traditional Beef Wellington is made with whole tenderloin wrapped in puff pastry along with mushrooms duxelles and foie gras. These beef Wellington bites are the finger food version made with choux pastry puffs.

Let me start by saying that this dish was the result of leftovers of the very best kind. I made duxelles for a different dish and ended up sharing it for a group post celebrating mushrooms. And I had frozen choux pastry from a croquembouche challenge. When a weekend barbecue left me with a couple of grilled filet mignon steaks, it suddenly came to me that I had the makings of beef Wellington of a sort and just needed some foie gras or liver paté. Oh, we dined richly that night! I'd been waiting for the ideal time to share them when Sunday Supper announced a Finger Food for Dinner theme. Perfect!

Make sure you scroll down to see all the wonderful fork-free dishes we are sharing today, from appetizers through desserts. Many thanks to our host Christie from A Kitchen Hoor's Adventures and her guiding light, Marion from Life Tastes Good.

Ingredients
For the duxelles:
3 oz or 85g shallots
1/3 cup or 75g butter
12 oz or 340g mushrooms
1 cup or 240ml dry white wine
1 cup or 240ml whipping cream
Sea salt
Black pepper
- Instructions here  You may not use the whole recipe. Stir the rest through some pasta. Or eat it with a spoon.

For the choux pastry:
1 cup or 125g plain flour
1 pinch salt
7 tablespoons or 100g butter
1 cup or 240ml water
4 eggs, at room temperature
- The dough makes about 50 small choux buns. They freeze well before baking!

For assembly: Makes 18 Beef Wellington Bites
6 oz or 170g grilled tenderloin steak
6 oz or 170g smooth duck or pork paté, at room temperature

Method
Make your duxelles ahead of time and store the bowl in the refrigerator. Do not leave it out as you work, because its volume will greatly decrease, spoon by spoon, if it's handy. That stuff is GOOD.

Now we'll make the choux pastry. Preheat your oven to 445°F or 230°C and prepare your baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper stuck down with a little non-stick spray. If you are feeling particularly anal, as I usually am, you can draw some circles to guide you on the underside of the parchment paper.

Sift together your flour and a pinch of salt and put the bowl right next to the stove in readiness.

In a medium pot, combine the butter and water and bring to the boil.



Pour the flour/salt mixture into the boiling water/butter all at once. Stir vigorously until the mixture forms a ball and pulls right away from the sides. This takes just a minute or two.



Now take the pot off of the stove and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well with your wooden spoon in between. With each addition, it looks like the egg won’t mix in and the dough starts to fall apart but keep mixing and after a couple of minutes of hard labor, the dough comes together again in one big lump and it’s time to add the next egg.


After the fourth egg has been thoroughly incorporated, put the dough into a piping bag with a large tip, about 1/2 in or 1 cm wide.

Pipe the soft dough on the parchment paper in 1 inch or 2.5cm circles about an equal measure apart from each other.


Poke down any pointy tops with a damp finger.


Bake in your preheated oven for 10 minutes then turn the temperature down to 400°F or 200°C and bake for a further 25 minutes. (OR you can now pop them in the freezer if you want to keep some for later.  You only need 18 for the Beef Wellington Bites. Once frozen, slip them off the parchment and into a Ziploc bag for storage. They are perfect for sweet or savory fillings and can be taken out of the freezer and baked as you need them.)

Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.

Once they are completely cooled, store them in an airtight container until you are ready to serve.

When you are ready to serve, warm your duxelles and your tenderloin steaks. Slice the steaks thinly.



Split the choux buns open horizontally. Add a good spoon of the duxelles to the bottom. Top with sliced steak and finally, add a small slice of paté.



Put the top of the choux bun back on and repeat the process until all the Beef Wellington Bites are assembled.

Enjoy!



Do you enjoy Finger Foods for Dinner? I think they are great for movie nights but in our house we also always do all appetizers for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve as well.

I want everything on this list!

Pinky Appetizers
Manual Mains
Digit Desserts


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Thursday, February 5, 2015

Petit Croquembouche Citron Framboise #ValentineCroque


Both an edible centerpiece and a festive celebration, this choux pastry bun turret is filled with fresh lemon custard and held together with crunchy when dried royal icing, thereby fulfilling the croque part of its croquembouche or "crunch in mouth" name. Fresh red raspberries add a burst of color and a wonderful juicy counterpoint to the choux buns and lemon custard.

Traditional croquembouche are tall, tall towers constructed of choux buns filled with vanilla pastry cream and are held together as much by faith and luck as the spun caramelized sugar. When my friend Jenni, from Pastry Chef Online  - of Fearless in the Kitchen fame - challenged me to make one as part of a group event, I signed up in haste and repented in leisure.

I knew that I wouldn’t have the time to make a towering tower. But I have a hard time resisting a challenge, especially one of a baking/food nature. So I thought to myself: How about a small turret? A turret would be totally doable, right? But what about the unattractive and painful sugar burns that are almost always the result of spinning caramelized sugar?  Wouldn’t royal icing work instead? If it can hold together a gingerbread mosque, surely it could cement a few choux buns in place, providing the necessary eponymous crunch in the process. Channeling Jenni and her fearlessness in the kitchen, I plowed ahead. I’ll let you be the judge of the results - it's not the straightest of turrets - but I can tell you that it was delicious.

Come join me and all my croquembouche building friends as we leap outside our comfort zones for your amusement. Make sure you scroll down to the bottom to see all the links. This is a long post because there are three recipes to make and then assemble but you can do it too!

Ingredients
For the lemon custard:
1/4 cup or 50g sugar
3 tablespoons plain flour
1 pinch salt
1 cup or 240ml milk
Zest 1 lemon
1 egg yolk, slightly beaten (Save the white for the royal icing!)
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon butter
Plus another teaspoon or so of lemon juice to slightly loosen the custard after chilling, if necessary.

For the choux pastry:
1/4 cup or 50g butter
1/2 cup or 120ml water
1/2 cup or 65g plain flour
1 pinch salt
2 eggs, at room temperature

For the royal icing
1 1/2 cups or 190g pure icing sugar, sifted
1 egg white
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
Tiny pinch salt
Pinch cream of tartar

Method
I made the choux buns a couple of days before I needed them and kept them fresh and dry in a Ziploc bag. I read somewhere online that as long as you let them cool completely before bagging, the drier, two-day-old choux buns are actually better for assembling your croquembouche because they stay crisp longer once filled with custard or pastry cream. The custard and royal icing can also be made a couple of days in advance. Just keep them well covered in the refrigerator to prevent them from drying out. Fill the buns and assemble the croquembouche no more than a few hours before serving lest they soften too much and risk collapse.

Lemon Custard Filling
In a small saucepan, not on the stove or with the stove turned off, combine sugar, flour and the pinch of salt. Stir in your milk, a little at a time, whisking until smooth.



Turn on the stove and bring your mixture to the boil over medium heat, stirring constantly.

Boil 60 seconds and then pour about a 1/4 cup or 60ml of the hot liquid into the beaten egg yolk while you whisk constantly. This warms the egg yolk so it doesn’t cook when you add it to the saucepan. Now add the heated egg yolk to the saucepan gradually, once again, whisking all the while and then keep stirring until mixture starts to bubble again. Your custard should be quite thick now.


Remove from heat and add the lemon juice, zest and butter. Stir well until the butter is melted and the butter and juice are fully incorporated.



Put the custard in a bowl and cover the surface with cling film so a skin doesn’t form on top as it cools. Chill in a refrigerator until ready to use.

Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C and prepare your baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper stuck down with a little non-stick spray or a silicone baking mat.

Choux Pastry Buns
Sift together your flour and a pinch of salt and put it right next to the stove in readiness.

In a medium pot, combine the butter and water and bring to the boil. Pour the flour/salt mixture into the boiling water/butter all at once.

Stir vigorously until the mixture forms a ball and pulls right away from the sides. This takes just a minute or two.



Now take the pot off of the stove and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well with your wooden spoon in between. It looks like the egg won’t mix in and the dough starts to fall apart but keep mixing and after a couple of minutes of hard labor, the dough comes together again and it’s time to add the second egg.

After both eggs have been added in.


After the last egg has been incorporated into the dough, put it by spoonfuls into a piping bag with a large tip.

Pipe the soft dough on the parchment paper in 1 inch or 2.5cm circles about an equal measure apart from each other.

Poke down any pointy tops with a damp finger.

Bake in your preheated oven for 10 minutes then turn the temperature down to 350°F or 180°C and bake for a further 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and poke a hole in one side of each choux bun with a toothpick. This allows the steam to escape and helps the choux bun keep its shape as it cools. Cool completely on a wire rack.



Royal Icing
Sift your icing sugar into a medium sized mixing bowl and add the pinch of salt and cream of tartar.

Beat your egg white until it’s a little frothy and add it along with the lemon juice to the icing sugar.

Mix thoroughly. Cover the icing with cling film to keep it from drying out.



Building the Croquembouche
When you are ready to build your turret, take the custard out of the refrigerator and give it a good stir to loosen it up. Put a test spoonful in your piping bag with a filling tip and see if you can squeeze it out. If it’s too stiff, add one teaspoon of lemon juice to the bowl and stir well to completely incorporate it. Mine was borderline so I decided to just power through and squeeze hard.

Note: The Wilton site says that the filling tip doesn’t work with a coupler but I didn’t read that until after, so I made it work with a coupler. It wasn’t easy but I got that sucker all screwed together properly. Amazing what one can do when one doesn’t know one can’t.

Fill your piping bag with the lemon custard. Use the filling tip to poke a bigger hole in the choux buns where you put the toothpick to let the steam out. I ended up with 7 oz by volume or 240g, which was enough to fill 19 of my 21 buns. I used 17 of those in the croquembouche.



Put your royal icing in a piping bag with a small round tip. I used the Wilton #3. Pipe some icing onto your plate in a circle to anchor the filled choux buns.



My bottom layer had only six in a circle initially but then I realized as I built up that one in the center of the bottom was needed for structural integrity so the layers are as follows, with royal icing between, under and on top of each:

Bottom – seven choux buns

2nd layer – five choux buns



Leave the croquembouche to set for about 20-30 minutes at this point, in a cool, dry place, which allows the royal icing to harden.

3rd layer – four choux buns


Top – one choux bun

Use the royal icing to fill small gaps between the choux buns and drizzle decoratively, generously, on the outside.

Allow to dry for a further 20-30 minutes, or longer.  When you are ready to serve the croquembouche, stick the raspberries on the reasonably horizontal bits with more royal icing. You can get them to stick to the sides if you have time to hold each one on till the icing hardens but I am guessing ain’t nobody got time for that.



Enjoy! Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?



If you are looking for inspiration for Valentine’s Day, start with this great link list of croquembouche. There’s even a savory version for those who aren’t crazy about sweets.



Welcome to our Valentine Croquembouche Challenge (#ValentineCroque). We are a group of intrepid bloggers who occasionally like to push ourselves well out of our comfort zone to meet baking challenges fearlessly.

We are here to show you that you do not always have to be bound by tradition, so we created croquembouche that adhere to the spirit of the dish if not the actual letter. You’ll find all sorts of combinations of flavors here (including a savory version) that will hopefully expand your idea of croquembouche. Not all of our croques were wildly successful, but we all learned something, and we all pushed ourselves. Besides, blogging shouldn’t always be about aspirational and often unobtainable Pinterest moments. It should also be about the near misses and the journey we take when we take a chance. Thanks for joining us today.

If you’re interested in participating in future challenges, please contact Jenni.

Follow our Valentine Croquembouche Pinterest Board for more Croquembouche inspiration.

Going with French tradition, I served the croquembouche for my dear mother-in-law's 81st birthday dessert, instead of cake. And for family, here's two shots of the birthday girl enjoying her treat. 

 



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Sunday, October 19, 2014

Profiteroles with Caramel Drizzle


Profiteroles is a fancy name for choux pastry, baked into little buns then split open and filled with custard or sometimes even ice cream. A drizzle of caramel or chocolate sauce finishes this fancy dessert that can be made with ingredients most people keep on hand. 

Budget Friendly Recipes
This week our Sunday Supper group is sharing a wonderful varied bunch of budget friendly recipes. As I was browsing through my cookbooks and the internet, I was suddenly struck by the idea of profiteroles because, despite their fancy looks, they are made of choux pastry with normal ingredients most folks keep on hand anyway– butter, flour, water and eggs - that don’t cost a fortune. And if you fill them with traditional custard, that’s just milk, flour, sugar, eggs and butter - more staples that won’t break the bank. You certainly don’t have to, but if you top them with homemade caramel sauce, that’s easily made by caramelizing sugar and adding milk! I find it quite amazing that we can take pantry and refrigerator staples – none of them expensive items - and transform them with heat and time into something as special as profiteroles.

Make sure to scroll down to the bottom of this post to see the links to all the other wonderful Budget Friendly recipes we are sharing today. Many thanks to our hosts for this great theme, T.R. of Gluten Free Crumbley and David of Cooking Chat.

Ingredients
For the vanilla custard:
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
5 tablespoons plain flour
1 good pinch salt
2 cups or 475ml milk
2 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons butter

For the choux pastry:
7 tablespoons or 100g butter
1 cup or 240ml water
1 cup or 125g plain flour
1 pinch salt
4 eggs, at room temperature

For the caramel sauce:
1 cup or 200g sugar
1 1/4 cups or 300ml milk
1/4 teaspoon salt

N.B. I won’t repeat the instructions for the caramel sauce since you can find them here on Confessions of a Bright-eyed Baker, whose recipe I used. Follow her directions to cook the sauce a little longer for a thicker caramel.

Method
Make your caramel sauce ahead of time to make sure you are not distracted by choux pastry baking in the oven or custard thickening on the stove. (See link in note just above.) It will require your complete concentration. Set it aside to cool.

Next comes the custard. In a small saucepan, either not on the stove or with the stove turned off, combine sugar, flour and the pinch of salt. Stir in your milk, a little at a time, whisking until smooth.

Turn on the stove and bring your mixture to the boil over medium heat, stirring constantly.

Boil 60 seconds and then pour about a 1/4 cup or 60 ml of the hot liquid into the two beaten egg yolks while you whisk constantly. This warms the egg yolks so they don’t cook when you add them to the saucepan.

Need a visual of how slow to pour and how fast to whisk? It’s not the best but it will give you a good idea.



Now add the heated egg yolks to the saucepan gradually, once again, stirring all the while and then keep stirring until mixture starts to bubble again.

Your custard should be quite thick now. Remove from heat and add the vanilla and butter. Stir well until the butter is melted and both are fully incorporated.



Put the custard in a bowl and cover the surface with cling film so a skin doesn’t form on top as it cools. Chill in a refrigerator.

Tip for making nice even profiteroles: Use a circle template or bottle cap that is about an inch or 2.5cm in diameter to draw circles with a pencil about an inch or 2.5cm apart on the back of your baking parchment. Turn the parchment over and stick it down to your baking sheet with a quick shot of non-stick spray.

Preheat your oven to 445°F or 230°C and prepare your baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper stuck down with a little non-stick spray – with or without circles drawn on the bottom. (See note just above.) I have a small baking pan so I had to prepare two.

Now let’s get on with the main attraction, the choux pastry. Sift together your flour and a pinch of salt and put the bowl right next to the stove in readiness.

In a medium pot, combine the butter and water and bring to the boil.



Pour the flour/salt mixture into the boiling water/butter all at once. Stir vigorously until the mixture forms a ball and pulls right away from the sides. This takes just a minute or two.



Now take the pot off of the stove and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well with your wooden spoon in between. With each addition, it looks like the egg won’t mix in and the dough starts to fall apart but keep mixing and after a couple of minutes of hard labor, the dough comes together again in one big lump and it’s time to add the next egg.


After the fourth egg has been thoroughly incorporated, put the dough into a piping bag with a large tip, about 1/2 in or 1 cm wide.

Pipe the soft dough on the parchment paper in 1 inch or 2.5cm circles about an equal measure apart from each other.


Poke down any pointy tops with a damp finger.


Bake in your preheated oven for 10 minutes then turn the temperature down to 400°F or 200°C and bake for a further 25 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely. The dough makes about 50 choux buns.



When you are ready to serve the profiteroles, cut the completely cooled choux pastry buns in half with a serrated knife and fill them with the chilled vanilla custard. I used a piping bag for this as well but you could also just spoon it in. Pop the tops back on the choux buns.

Drizzle with a little of your caramel sauce. You may now call them profiteroles!


Store any unfilled choux buns in an airtight container where they will stay nicely for several days.


Enjoy!






Looking for tasty recipes that won’t empty your wallet? This is your Sunday Supper week!

Scrumptious Mains (Breakfast and Dinner)
Satisfying Sides
Sweet Treats
Sips, Spreads, and Snacks




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