Advocaat, a Dutch delicacy
Made with yolks, sugar, brandy and vanilla. It is really easy to make and truly delicious! It is like Eggnog but flavoured with vanilla and without nutmeg.
Did you know that the word “brandy” comes from the Dutch word “brandewijn” which means “burnt wine”.
Nice to make for Easter, but hey, do we need an excuse to make a brandy liquor?
Recipe for Advocaat
200 gr yolks
200 gr sugar
200 ml brandy (or 250 ml for a stronger Advocaat)
1 vanilla bean
Whisk the yolks, sugar and vanilla together and add the brandy. Whisk this mixture ‘au bain marie’ until it thickens. Cool the ‘Advocaat’ over an ice bath and it is ready. Serve with soft peak whipped cream.
Happy Easter!
Chocolate-Espresso Cake
Hmmm, rich chocolate mousse infused with the best espresso you can get.
What’s not to love about that?
I made a chocolate and espresso genoise for the bottom and I also used a slice as an insert. The bottom genoise is coated with tempered milk chocolate, mixed with praline for a crunch. On the insert is a vanilla caramel sauce to add some extra deliciousness.
The base for the chocolate mousse is a ganache made with Italian Musetti 100% Arabica espresso beans. The ganache is mixed with a pâte à bombe and whipped cream. On top of the cake is a milk chocolate ganache glaze and rosettes made from Italian buttercream mixed with chocolate.
Get yourself a hot espresso and enjoy!
Happy Birthday
And it was a happy birthday with all the gifts and the treats! I made profiteroles with streusel and a light vanilla crème chiboust. This is a pastry cream with an Italian meringue folded in. This makes it light and delicious! The bonbons were filled with an espresso (100% Arabica) ganache and hazelnut and the other ones with a vanilla caramel. The truffles, on the top right in the picture, are also made with an espresso ganache and hazelnut. And a refreshing raspberry mousse cake was also on the menu.
The streusel adds a really nice flavour and texture to the profiteroles. Definitely worth a try! Make sure that the filling for the profiteroles is not too sweet. The streusel already adds sweetness to the profiteroles. Here you can find the recipe for streusel.
White Chocolate Vanilla Mousse Cake
And again I am baking! Also a mousse cake this time. A friend of mine asked me if I would make a Lidl theme cake (Lidl is a discount supermarket chain in Europe). Of course I was more than willing to make the cakes. And what is better than one cake? Two cakes!
The bottom is a coconut sablée with melted white chocolate on top. The sides are made with a joconde with a blue and yellow pate décor. In the middle of the cake is a raspberry puree layer.
The base for the white chocolate mousse is a crème anglaise. For the top I made a lemon gelee. The Lidl logo is made with fondant and the writing with tempered chocolate.
Here’s the recipe for the mousse:
White chocolate mousse
250 ml milk
15 gram sugar
57 gram egg yolks
1 vanilla bean
6.5 gram gelatin
477 gram white chocolate
730 ml heavy cream
- Bloom the gelatin in cold water and reserve.
- Melt the white chocolate and reserve.
- Whip the heavy cream to soft peak and reserve.
- Make a crème anglaise with the milk, vanilla, sugar and egg yolks.
- Strain the crème anglaise through a fine chinois into a clean and dry bowl, add the bloomed gelatin. Stir to emulsify.
- Add the melted white chocolate to the crème anglaise, and form an emulsion.
- When this mixture reaches 27°C, fold in the soft peak whipped cream. Use right away!
Recipe from the book ‘Advanced bread and pastry’ from Michel Suas
Lemon tarts
The most lemon tarts that I ate are too acidic or the flavor is just too strong for my taste. So I decided to make a lemon tart with a thin layer of traditional lemon curd and a thick layer of lemon mousse on top.
This way you get the strong acidic lemon flavor from the curd and a smooth and creamy lemon flavor from the mousse. I still had some leftover coconut sablée that I used for the tart shells. With white chocolate I made a moisture barrier. Enjoy!
Recipe for lemon curd:
250 gram sugar
125 gram fresh lemon juice
8 gram lemon zest
120 gram egg yolks
50 gram unsalted butter
Measure the sugar into a stainless steel bowl and then whisk in the lemon juice and zest, followed by the egg yolks. Place over a bain-marie and cook until thickened, whisking occasionally. Once cooked, strain into a container and cool until the mixture reaches 32°C. Add the butter and emulsify with an immersion blender. Deposit a thin layer of lemon curd in the tart shells.
For the lemon mousse, take equal parts of lemon curd and soft peak whipped cream. Fold them together and deposit on top of the lemon curd in the tart shells.
Orange Carrot mousse cake
My first baking in 2012! This one is for my dad. He asked me if I would make him cakes with carrot in it, for 60 people. They took a tour through the company. My dad has a farm and carrots are a big part of the company. So the thinking started… Something with carrots. What about a carrot and orange mousse cake? Not just an ordinary carrot cake but one in a new style?
I made a carrot cake with cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and walnuts for the bottom. A nice jaconde with orange stripes and for the filling an orange mousse. And also an orange puree insert. For decoration I made carrots from marzipan and I candied some oranges, also really delicious! On the pictures you see the result!
Christmas 2011
Back home for Christmas! The picture shows the christmas dessert I made.
It is a vanilla bavarian cream with a coconut sablée bottom and toasted coconut on top. Paired with a citrus salad. After this course we had fresh brewed espresso with bonbons. Ofcourse home made! One filled with grated coconut, white chocolate and a coconut sablée, the other with a creamy vanilla caramel.
I wish everyone the best for 2012!
Thierry Chocolaterie Patisserie and Café
My culinary adventures in Canada have come to an end. After my graduation at PICA I worked for several months at the Sheraton Wall Centre as a pastry cook. Here I learned to prepare pastries for large banqueting events. A valuable experience!
On my days off I did a stage at Thierry Chocolaterie, Patisserie and Café. It opened a few months ago in downtown Vancouver, here I worked with the famous pastry chef Thierry Busset. A French chef that has worked with the best of the best. Gordon Ramsay called him “one of the finest pastry chefs in the world”. Here I learned to make beautiful chocolates, viennoiserie, and pastries with only the best ingredients. In the kitchen we made the products with French classical music in the background. It makes sense, the music is a piece of art, just like the products we made! For more visit: www.thierrychocolates.com
Canada has been an amazing experience! Stay tuned for more culinary adventures back in Europe!
Christmas at Thomas Haas
The reindeers, angels and christmas trees are ready!
During my stage I was helping the pattisiers and chocolatiers to get all the chocolates and pastries ready for the busy christmas season. It was an amazing experience to work with the famous Thomas Haas. We made very impressive chocolate work as you can see on the pictures. And this is just a small part of the collection. For more see www.thomashaas.com
And ofcourse I made the famous ‘double baked almond croissants’! You absolutely have to try them.
Custard
A basic egg custard is an egg-based cream consisting of eggs, milk or cream, sugar and flavouring, often vanilla. The mixture is thickened or gelled trough the heat coagulation of egg proteins. It is made tempering the eggs/yolks and cream/milk.
Tempering is a way to ease two ingredients of extremely different temperatures (room temperature egg yolks, and cooked milk/cream) together to prevent premature coagulation. If eggs are added directly to hot milk, heat from the milk prematurely cooks the eggs. Slowly add a small amount of hot milk/cream to the eggs (whisk constantly) before they are added to the pot with the rest of the milk/cream. This dilutes the eggs without drastically raising their temperature. Once diluted the eggs are much less likely to be heat damaged (scramble) as they are added to the rest of the milk.
Many pastries have a custard base. For example, pumpkin pie filling, bread pudding, rice pudding, pastry cream, quiches, cream pie filling and even cheesecakes are variations on the basic egg custard.
They are best baked in a wather bath. This slows down the process and evens out baking so that the outside of the custard does not become tough, rubbery, and curdled before the inside bakes.
There are many different types of custards. We distinguish stovetop custards and oven-baked custards.
Stovetop custards
- Crème anglaise is a sauce and the base for many pastries. It is used for ice-cream, sauces, buttercream or mousse it is the base for baked custards. They all are variations on the basic formula for crème anglaise. It thickens around 71°C and turn into scrambled eggs at 82 degrees, not much room for error!
- Pastry creamor crème pâtissière is a creamy custard and is used as a filling or base cream in many pastries. Think about Danishes, fruit tarts, cream pies, profiteroles and éclairs and Napoleon. It uses the same method as crème anglaise but the ingredients are a little different. A little bit of starch is added (cornstarch or other starches) and the liquid is only milk. While crème anglaise cannot be heated above 82°C, pastry cream is cooked. The starch prevents the egg yolks from curdling.
Oven-baked custards
- Crème brûlée: the most famous of all baked custards. It is baked in a ramekin in a water bath at low temperature and has a crispy layer of caramel on top. It is served in the ramekin.
- Crème caramel: the base is similar to that of crème brulee but slightly firmer because it is turned out of its mold before serving. Before baking the ramekin is coated with a thin layer of caramel. This will turn in to a sauce after baking.
- Pot de crème: a baked custard that translates in “pot of cream” because the custard barely sets and is very silky in texture. It is slightly richer than crème caramel and a little less rich than crème brulee. It is also easier to make than the two other baked custards because it requires no extra step in making caramel.
Advanced crèmes
- Crème diplomat: pastry cream combined with whipped cream and gelatin. It is used as a filling for cakes, tarts and other pastries.
- Crème Chiboust or crème St. Honoré: pastry cream combined with French or Italian meringue. This makes the cream very light. Sometimes gelatin is added to stabilize the crème. The ratio of pastry cream to meringue is about 4:1.
- Mousseline: pastry cream combined with soft butter that is whipped until light and fluffy.
- Crémeux: a crème anglaise that has been thickened with butter and sometimes gelatin. It is often used as a filling for a tart or as an insert for a moussecake.
- Crème Paris Brest: pastry cream combined with butter and praline paste. This is the classic filling for a Paris-Brest pastry.
- Crème Baumanière: mix pastry cream with Grand Marnier and fold in stiff whipped cream. This is one of my favourites!
Variations
Vanilla is most often used to flavour custard but consider also these other options:
- Coffee: add crushed coffee beans to the milk and bring the milk to a simmer for a coffee flavoured custard.
- Almond: use almond milk instead of milk. Add some almond essence and amaretto to make the flavour more intense.
- Chocolate: add some chocolate to the milk, stir until melted and well combined.
- Pistachio: lightly toast some pistachios, finely chop them and add to the milk and steep overnight.
Suggestions? The options are unlimited!
