Mini Apple and Chocolate Eclairs

I've had my eye on a little book called "Secrets of Eclairs" for some time so when I saw the theme for this month's Classic French was eclairs, I decided it was a good excuse to treat myself to the book. The book explains in several steps how to make eclairs and then gives recipes for different fillings and toppings. I really liked the sound of the caramelized apple eclairs and had some stewed apple in the freezer I wanted to use up.

To make 6-8 eclairs, depending on size, you need:

80ml milk

80ml water

70g butter, diced

large pinch of salt

10g sugar

100g plain flour

2 eggs

Put the milk, water and butter in a saucepan then add the salt and sugar and stir until melted. Bring to the boil then remove from the heat. As soon as you take it off the heat, add the flour and stir well.

The mixture will very quickly form a dough. Gradually add the eggs and stir in.

Put a wide round nozzle onto a piping bag and pipe out the dough onto a greased and lined baking sheet. These were actually quite small when they were cooked so next time I would pipe two rows to make one eclair.

The recipe said they would take nearly an hour to cook, but they were done - almost well done - after about 20 minutes, probably because my eclairs were quite small. While they did go brown on the outside they were still lovely and fluffy on the inside.

I split open the eclairs and filled with stewed apple which I had defrosted from the freezer and warmed through.

And finished them with cream - from a spray can! It's definitely the easiest way to get cream into eclairs.

I also made some more traditional eclairs, filled with cream with melted chocolate on the top.

These were lovely and easier to make than I was expecting. I will definitely be making something else from my eclairs recipe book soon!

I'm sending this to Classic French, hosted by Maison Cupcake and created by Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes.

I'm also sharing this with Tea Time Treats, hosted by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked, as their theme this month is fruit.

The theme for Calendar Cakes this month is also fruit, so I'm sending my apple eclairs to Laura of Laura Loves Cakes and Rachel of DollyBakes for their challenge.

Finally I'm sending this to the No Waste Food Challenge, as the challenge this month is to use up leftovers from the freezer, and my stewed apple has been in there a while! The event is hosted this month by Elizabeth's Kitchen and was created by Kate at Turquoise Lemons.

Orange and Fennel Tuiles

As many of you know, I co-host a monthly blogging challenge called Alphabakes, where Ros and I take it in turns to choose a letter of the alphabet at random, and ask other bloggers to submit bakes beginning with that letter, or using a main ingredient that begins with that letter. We've been doing it for nearly a year and a half now and we're having a great time! The letter that came up this month was F, and a few things sprang to mind, like flapjacks and fudge, but I wanted to see what my collection of around 100 recipe books would offer up. And so I came across this recipe in Marian Keyes' Saved by Cake for orange and fennel tuiles.

You need:

50g butter

1/2 tsp fennel seeds

2 egg whites

110g icing sugar

50g plain flour

zest of 1 orange

I had a small pot of fennel seeds in the back of the cupboard that I'd never found a use for, so they were perfect for this recipe! You need to grind the fennel seeds in a pestle and mortar first, and also melt the butter and put to one side to cool. Preheat the oven to 180C.

In a clean bowl, whip the egg whites until they form soft peaks.

Gently fold in the icing sugar and flour

 Finely grate the zest of one orange, and add to the mixture along with the fennel and the melted butter.

Mix in until you have a thick batter.

Line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper and spoon the batter onto the sheet, leaving a good space in between. The mixture will spread; mine turned out quite large so 1 tbsp of mixture is probably enough.

These only take about ten minutes to bake. The idea is that when they come out of the oven - literally the moment you take them out - they are pliable enough to be shaped into a curve, a little like a Pringle. You can apparently do this by curving them around a rolling pin, and the recipe recommends taking them out of the oven just a couple at a time. Even though I did that, they cooled too fast and I was unable to curve them. Still, they tasted good! In fact, I was very pleasantly surprised by these cookies. They are thin and a little brittle, but really chewy (in a good way) with a hint of orange and fennel. We ate them after dinner as that's when I made them, but I think they would be great with a cup of coffee in the afternoon.

I'm sending these to Alphabakes, which I am hosting this month; come back to my site for the roundup of everyone's recipes at the end of the month!

I'm also sending this to Cooking With Herbs, hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage.

 

I'm updating this to add it to the Classic French blogging challenge, as their theme this month is tuiles - and I'm about to go on holiday so won't have time to bake these again! The challenge is hosted by Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes.

A romantic new year's eve dinner for two

My boyfriend and I decided to stay in on new year's eve and I wanted to cook us a romantic dinner. The menu I chose was: herbed bacon and egg souffle; steak in a stilton sauce with boulangere potato stack; tiramisu. I thought I'd combine all the recipes into one blog post: enjoy!

Herbed cheese and bacon souffles

This recipe is adapted from the Slimming World recipe book Extra Easy Entertaining

Serves 2

You need:
Fry Light spray oil or similar
two rashers lean bacon, chopped
1 spring onion, chopped
pinch of chilli flakes
2 eggs, separated
chopped fresh parsley
dried dill
40g grated parmesan
pinch of mustard powder
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180C or 160 C fan. Place a roasting pan one third full of hot water in the oven.

Fry the bacon and spring onion and add a pinch of dried chilli flakes.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff

In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with the bacon and spring onion mixture and the herbs, along with three quarters of the parmesan. Add the mustard powder and season.

Fold the mixture into the egg whites, using a metal spoon.

Spray the insides of two ramekin dishes with oil and spoon the mixture into the ramekins. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top.

Bake for around 20 minutes until risen. These can be made the day before and heated up on the day.

We had these as a starter on new year's eve; I think they would work really well for breakfast or brunch as well.

I am sending these to Herbs on Saturday, hosted by Bangers and Mash and started by Karen of Lavender and Lovage.

I am also sending this to Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes for her Classic French cooking challenge, as the recipe she has chosen this month is the souffle.

Steak in Stilton Sauce

This was our main course on new year's eve. I didn't follow a recipe, and just fried some rump steak; helpfully, when I went to buy some that day they were reduced from £4 each to £1.79 in Tesco. I added some double cream to the meat juices in the pan (also in the reduced price section - I love going shopping after Christmas!) and then added some Stilton - left over from Christmas. The stilton melted and made a lovely creamy sauce.

As this meal used reduced-price steak and cream, and leftover cheese, I am sending it to Frugal Food Fridays, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

Boulangere potato stacks

We had this as a side dish to accompany the steak (I also cooked some broccoli); I took the recipe from my new book Slimming World Extra Easy Entertaining. It was absolutely delicious and I will definitely make this again!

Serves 2
You need:
500g potatoes
1 litre vegetable stock
Fry Light or similar spray oil
tbsp chopped fresh parsley
4 tbsp Quark
2 garlic cloves, crushed or half a tablespoon garlic puree
salt and pepper
25g reduced fat grated cheddar

Peel the potatoes and slice with a mandolin or the wide edge on a grater

Bring the stock to the boil in a saucepan, add the potatoes and bring back to the boil

Drain the potatoes and reserve the stock. Put the potatoes into a bowl.

Mix in the quark, herbs and garlic with 6 tbsp of the reserved stock and season. Toss gently with the potatoes.

Spray a muffin tin with oil and press spoonfulls of the potato mixture down into each muffin cup.

Sprinkle the grated cheese over the top- I used more than the recipe suggested but my boyfriend definitely wasn't complaining! Bake for 25-30 mins. I didn't take a picture of these on the plate but if you remove them carefully you have neat little stacks of potato slices. And they taste fantastic!

Tiramisu

I got Nigella's new book Nigellissima for Christmas and adapted this recipe from the book as our new year's eve dessert.

Serves 2
You need:
50ml coffee (eg made up from instant)
1 tbsp coffee or chocolate liqueur
2 sponge fingers
1 egg white
200g mascarpone cheese
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp marsala
1 tsp cocoa powder

Make up the coffee, add the liqueur - I used a chocolate liqueur I bought in Italy last year -  and leave to cool.

Break each sponge finger into four pieces and place in a martini glass.

Pour the coffee mixture over the sponge fingers.

Beat the egg white with an electric whisk. In a separate bowl, beat the mascarpone and honey, then add the marsala if using and beat again.

Fold in the egg whites then spoon into the martini glasses.

Sprinkle with cocoa powder or grated chocolate

And serve!

I am sending this to the blog challenge Forever Nigella, hosted this month by Recipe Junkie. Forever Nigella is organised by Sarah at Maison Cupcake. The theme in January is "food to cherish your loved ones", and what better way to spoil my boyfriend than to make him this lovely dessert for our romantic dinner together? (Incidentally, we followed our romantic dinner by spending a romantic evening... playing Xbox. It was actually a lot of fun!)

Valrhona chocolate fondant

When I did the chocolate workshop for Valentine's Day, we were told about different types of chocolate, one of which was Valrhona. I'd never tried it, so when I was given a recipe book for Christmas and I spotted a recipe for a Valrhona chocolate fondant dessert, I bookmarked it for later. But the recipe looked pretty complicated so I hadn't gotten around to making it.... Then V came up as the letter for Alphabakes this month and I decided I couldn't put it off any longer!

According to Wikipedia, Valrhona is a French chocolate manufacturer founded in 1922 by a French pastry chef, Albéric Guironnet. It is today one of the leading producers of chocolate in the world and while it is sold to the mass market, the chocolate is commonly used by professional chefs. And it's expensive! These two small bars cost me almost £13 including postage - that's a lot for 140g of chocolate!

The recipe is from Galvin: a cookbook de luxe, by the Michelin-starred chefs Chris and Jeff Galvin, who run restaurants including La Chapelle, Bistro de Luxe and Galvin at Windows. I've never eaten in any of their restaurants but my boyfriend's mum knows them through her job and got me a signed copy of their recipe book for Christmas.

Unfortunately I don't think I've got time to email the publishers to ask for permission to reproduce the whole recipe here in time to enter it in this month's Alphabakes, so I will give a general overview of how I made the dessert. As usual, I altered a few bits anyway, and I didn't bother with the homemade honeycomb that was also part of the recipe, to be served with the chocolate fondant.

To begin, I heated some cream

Then break up a small quantity of the Valrhona chocolate (I actually divided all quantities given by three, as the recipe was to serve six and I only wanted it for two people) and add to some cocoa powder. Pour the heated cream mixture over the top and stir until dissolved.

Line an ice cube tray with clingfilm and pour the chocolate mixture in. Freeze overnight.

This is the interesting part of the chocolate fondant - it's what I would call a reverse fondant! Usually they are served warm with a hot liquid centre, but this dessert is served at room temperature, with a cold liquid centre!

The next day, to make the main part of the dessert - melt the rest of the chocolate in a bain marie

Heat cream and trimoline. I'd never even heard of this and had to Google it; it's a type of inverted sugar used in the baking and confectionery industry to prevent recrystallization of sugar. I couldn't find any websites showing where I could buy this - though admittedly I didn't look all that hard, because I did find a few websites saying I could use honey as a substitute so I decided to do that instead.

Add the cream then cubes of chilled butter to the chocolate mixture

Pour half into two ramekins

Place one (or two, if they are quite small!) of the frozen chocolate cubes in the middle

Pour the rest of the chocolate mixture over the top

Refridgerate - I think the recipe said for about two hours, but I found them very solid so took them out of the fridge at least an hour before we wanted to eat them. I also decorated the top with some Dr Oetker chocolate stars.

And serve! You can just see in this picture when you dig in with a spoon, the fondant is like a thick chocolate truffle texture, and there's a lovely liquid chocolate centre!

 This recipe was a bit of a faff, and I'm glad I didn't try to do the honeycomb at the same time - maybe next time! It tasted absolutely delicious though and was definitely worth the effort. My boyfriend commented that he thought it would taste just as nice using any good quality chocolate like Green & Black's, and that I should make it again but not necessarily go to the lengths (and cost) of ordering the Valrhona. I'd be interested to know if anyone else has tried Valrhona chocolate what they think!

I am entering my Valrhona chocolate fondant in Alphabakes, hosted by Ros from TheMoreThanOccasionalBaker, as this month the letter is V. You've still got until the 25th to enter, then check out my site on July 1st to find out the letter for next month!

 Laura Loves Cakes and Dolly Bakes are hosting a new challenge, Calendar Cakes, and their theme for this month is Euro 2012. As Valrhona chocolate is French, and France is still in Euro 2012 (so I'm told, I'm not a football fan!) then this should qualify as a suitable entry!

I'm updating this to share it with the Classic French challenge, as the theme this month is chocolate fondants. And I don't have the time right now to make one of these again! The challenge is hosted by Claire of Under the Blue Gum Tree on behalf of Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes.