Livin' the kosher dream
Another month, and another Kosher Connection Link-Up thingy. This month’s theme – Miniatures, which is great, because I made these here eclairs a little while back, and it was totally on purpose that they came out way smaller than I was expecting. Well then, let’s get going shall we?
Of course we shall, what a ridiculous question.
Anywhoo, so eclairs, they’re pretty much awesome, correct? So why aren’t we making it more often? Well I don’t know, I guess most people assume that they’re pretty difficult to make, well I’m here to tell you not to assume (you probably think I’m going to say not to assume because it makes an ass out of you and me right? Wrong! You never assume because it makes an ass out of Uma Thurman, and that’s never a good thing). An eclair is simply baked pate a choux, filled with pastry cream, and topped with chocolate, and I intend to tackle each one starting…now.
Pate a choux, which translates into cabbage paste, luckily stuck around even after those damn Frenchies gave it that ridiculous name. Choux paste in it’s most simplistic form is melted butter with some water mixed together with flour, and then mixed together with eggs. It’s really a thing of beauty; It relies on the simple conversion of water to steam to deliver its lift, and what ends up happening is you end up with one giant bubble stuck inside the final product, which is perfect for filling.
In order to make choux paste. First butter is melted in some water, and when ready, flour is added, and cooked for a little to remove any flour-y taste.
The resulting batter is left to cool, and then eggs are added and mixed in, which will take a little time to fully incorporate, and the resulting dough will go from the consistency of a paste to more like a thick pancake batter.
The batter can then be “cooked” in a few different ways, and one of those ways is to bake it for eclairs/profiteroles. (frying would be another great way which would get you beignets, but that’s another post). I based the recipe off of Michael Ruhlman’s ratio for pate a choux, which means you need a scale (I’m telling you, if there’s one piece of equipment you really should have, it’s a scale, but you know me, I’m not preachy). The ratio he uses (in his book Ratio, which is a great book by the way) is: 2 parts water: 1 part butter : 1 part flour : 2 parts eggs. For me the eggs are usually the rate limiting step, and I base how big/small the recipe will be on the eggs. Since one large egg weighs 50 grams, if you use 1 large egg, you end up with: 50grams water, and 25 grams butter and flour (besides salt, and other flavorings like sugar and vanilla if you want).
For the pastry cream filing, I based it on another ratio in Ruhlman’s book, the ratio for Creme anglais. Creme anglais is a loose custard (whereby custard is defined by – a mixture of eggs and a liquid, which can either be free standing [eg – quiches, cheesecakes…] or not [ex – creme anglais, which includes French style ice creams, creme brulee, pastry cream]). For the non free standing types, there are different ways to thicken the resulting cream, and for our pastry cream (or Crème Pâtisserie if you want to be fancy) it gets thickened by a starch (cornstarch being the first choice since it’s pure starch, but flour, potato, tapioca/cassava would also work). The ratio he uses for creme anglais is: 4 parts Milk/cream: 1 part yolk : 1 part sugar.
The general idea for making any type of custard usually is to mix the eggs and sugar together, to start dissolving the sugar, and to lighten the eggs with thorough whipping.
Then the milk is heated up, along with your vanilla bean.
In our case, I used some ground vanilla bean, which I got so graciously from Bakto Flavors via Kosher Scoop because I’m one of the taste testers…more on that in the future.
Once the milk is at the desired temperature, it’s slowly added to the eggs a little at a time to temper the eggs (temper means to slowly bring the temperature of one thing that’s colder to the temperature of another thing that’s warmer, but done slowly and gently to avoid overcooking), once tempered, the remaining milk/cream is added to the eggs, and then it’s all poured back into the pot to cook a little more, and if needed strained out. In our case, to incorporate the starch, you first have to mix the cornstarch with some cold milk until it makes a slurry, and then you add the slurry to the heating up milk, and it will then start to thicken (starch only thickens at a specific temperature, which is also why you don’t want to dump it all in dry, because it will begin to thicken the second it hits the hot milk, and form clumps). Set aside to allow to cool.
To cook the eclairs, preheat an oven to 450, transfer the batter to a piping bag (what you really need is a tip coupler, which can turn any cut ziploc bag into a real piping bag), and pipe onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, although you might want to pipe them a little bigger than I did. (You can push down any irregularities, by dabbing at it with a wet finger)
Bake at 450 for 10 minutes, and then lower to 350 for the last 10-20 minutes, until nicely browned. Take out of the oven, and pierce with tip of paring knife to allow steam to vent out. When cooled enough to handle, use the star tip to pipe the pastry cream inside the eclairs (this will be hard if you don’t have the tips). Set aside on cooling rack.
To make the chocolate topping, melt a whole bunch of chocolate in a double boiler with a little bit of some sort of fat (butter, vegetable oil, whatever), and dip eclairs into the chocolate. Allow the chocolate tool cool and it will slightly harden, but not too much because of the addition of the fat. (I tried making a ganache by mixing equel parts chocolate and hot milk, but it didn’t work as I had planned, but if I were to make it now, I would do it this way)
Comments: So I made a few mistake – From the beginning in order of appearance:
And there ya have it – eclairs. So it might seem like it’s a lot, with fancy words like: scale, piping bag, temper…oooh that sounds like it’s too much…too much of a patchke…well, it’s not, and you should do it. But do it better than I did.
And to the three people who read this much and haven’t been referred here from another blog (Hey mom, dad, and fan favorite Phoenix Fresser), don’t’ forget to Check out all the other participants in this months Kosher Link-up, by clicking on the funny frog thin-a-ma-bob under here.
adapted from Ratio by Ruhlman
For the pate a choux:
For the Pastry cream
For the Chocolate sauce:
To make the pate a choux:
For the custard:
For the chocolate:
To assemble -
Wow, that’s a mouthful. Anyway, it was quite a hectic weekend, the whole family was down for a kiddush for the daughter, and although I made a whole lot of stuff, I just didn’t have time to take pictures of everything. However, I knew that I had to make at least one thing that I could then post on the blog. I had bought these Key limes a while back, and have been trying to figure out what to do with it.
But before we get cooking, this post is part of this years Rosh Hashana’s Blogger Party, which means a bunch of us weirdos who like food just a little too much, come out with stuff that’s got something to do with Rosh Hashana. What does my post have to do with that? I have no idea, but you could make it and it eat on Rosh Hashana right?
Plus there’s also a giveaway! Hooray, for free stuff! The people sponsoring this stuff are giving away 3 of Levana Kirschenbaum’s cookbook – Levana’s Whole Foods Kosher Kitchen.
Here are the details -
So anyway, back to business, I got it in my brain when I bought these, that I wanted to make some sort of cheesecake bar, but I pushed it off, and pushed it off some more, thinking to myself that I wanted to come up with something else, but alas my brain couldn’t come up with anything. Obviously, I could have made Key Lime Pie, but that would have been too obvious, so that was out (plus, traditional key lime pie is made with sweetened condensed milk, which back in the day since the Keys in southern Florida was very inaccessible was the only thing they had to use to make key lime pie (since milk wasn’t available), but I believe I’m in the process of digressing, so I’ll stop now).
I don’t know how well you know me yet, but I couldn’t just look up a recipe for key lime cheesecake bar, because I had to do it my way. I’m kinda stubborn that way. There were really two steps to the cheesecake bar, the “bar” part and the cheesecake part. For the bar part, I decided to go with a shortbread recipe, and followed the ratio of 1 part sugar 1 part margarine, and 3 parts flour.
Start by creaming the sugar and margarine, and in order to do that properly, the margarine needs to be at room temperature. I find that limes go well with coconuts, so I used half margarine and half coconut oil (which has the advantage of being at room temperature already, and in recent times has been touted as being better for you than margarine). So into your mixer goes 2/3 cup sugar with 1/3 cup margarine, and 1/3 cup coconut oil (which is a little more than 5 tablespoons by the way), and cream away, until a paste forms. The whole purpose of creaming margarine, is to allow the sugar to punch tiny holes in the fat, which will aerate the dough, which is why it’s crucial for the fat to be at room temperature.
Scrape that down, and add in your flour (2 cups), salt and vanilla, and continue mixing until it just comes together.
This is very similar to making a streusal topping, but instead of sprinkling all of this over something, we’re going to press it into a pan, dock it (ie poke it a bunch of times with a fork) and bake it at 350 until nice and golden, approximately 15-20 minutes.
Now for the cheesecake part. Again, my stubbornness was shining through, and I couldn’t just look up a cheesecake recipe, because that’s what normal people do. No, I had to do it by myself, like the 2 year old I am.
So by classification, a cheesecake is really a custard made with cheese. A custard is pretty much any liquid mixed with eggs, that’s cooked gently so the egg can set up into a solid gel. For a cheesecake, the cheese takes the place of the liquid, and in order to aerate it a little, we cream the cheese with the sugar, and then mix in the eggs. Since we’re going to be making this parve, we used dairy free cream cheese, and dairy free sour cream. Again, the cheese needs to be at room temperature in order to cream properly.
The ratio I normally use for a free standing custard is 2 parts liquid to 1 part egg, as in a creme caramel, or a quiche. If you decrease the amount of eggs and increase the amount of liquid, you get a looser custard (think ice cream, [which happens to be thickened by the process of freezing] or creme anglais [which can be a sauce, and thin, or thickened by a starch…]), or if you remove the whites, and just use yolks, you also get a looser custard (eg a creme brulee).
I started by creaming equal weights of the cream cheese and sugar (8 oz, or 225grams), until smooth, and then added in the 4 eggs one at a time. Then I added 1/4 cup of the key lime juice, the zest (more on that in a bit), some vanilla extract, and about 6 oz of the non-dairy sour cream, and mixed until smooth.
I poured it over the now cooled crust, and baked in a 300 degree oven, for about 30 minutes (if you can, bake it in a water bath because of how gently it heats it, but my pan didn’t fit in another container). You want to take it out when it’s still slightly jiggly because it continues to cook after it’s out of the oven, and if you take it out when it’s done, by the time it’s finished cooking, it will be overdone.
That’s it for the cheesecake bar, but wait there’s more!
Didja notice the “with key lime caramel” part of the heading? Were you wondering what heck that was? Well wonder no more my friend. I saw this idea on Gilt Taste, where they were talking about making caramel sauce, and traditionally it’s made by cooking sugar down to the caramel stage (320-350 degrees), and at which point you add heavy cream, to get what we normally call “caramel,” and they talked about instead of adding heavy cream, why not strawberry puree, and make a strawberry caramel sauce. Well that got me thinking, what about adding key lime juice? So guess what? That’s what I did.
I brought 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/4 cup of water to a boil, and let it cook, until color started to form
I didn’t use a candy thermometer, but just estimated when it was nice and dark, and added the lime juice. It will bubble like crazy, and that’s normal.
Then I poured that over the cooled cheesecake, and let it set up
There’s a lot more to say on the topic of candy making, and the science behind it, but I think I’ve taken up plenty of your time, so maybe another time.
Now for critique – the texture of the cheesecake and the bar, were pretty good in my opinion. I think it was a little too tart partly because of the lime zest (which I would leave out next time), and the amount of lime juice I used (I used a total of 1/2 cup [1/4 cup in the cheesecake, and 1/4 in the caramel sauce]) and I think next time I make it, I would decrease that amount also. Also the caramel sauce never set up into a hard candy like shell, which is what I was going for, and that could also be because I added too much lime juice, and it was more like a creme caramel topping consistency, which isn’t a bad thing, but not what I was anticipating.
Also, I poured it on the cheesecake right away, it to harden, but it never did. I don’t know what I would do differently next time. I would decrease the amount of lime, and possibly, wait a little more before pouring it over the cheesecake. Another thing that happened, was even though I added the caramel after the cheesecake was cool, it formed these cracks in the cheesecake, which was more an esthetic issue then anything else, and since the caramel was slightly runny, it seeped into the cracks. Another option is instead of using 1/4 water, I would use the lime juice. The only problem I see with that is, the whole time you’re cooking the sugar, you’re cooking off the water, so it will all but cook off, but maybe the flavors will stay behind just enough to shine through. I don’t know, but it’s definitely worth a try.
It was still servable, and I think the general consensus was that it was pretty good. Oh well, azoy gaytis, ammiright? Or instead of calling it a “caramel,” I would call it a key lime creme caramel, so it’s supposed to be runny, right? I’m a genius
Well that’s it for now, thanks for joining me for this years Rosh Hashana Blogger Party, and I hope you enjoyed, and don’t forget to comment away, and to visit the other blogs, which I’m sure you’ll be able to get real recipes, that you can actually use…at least you come here for the comedic genius, I know 
I know you like cinnamon buns, heck who doesn’t? And don’t give me that “Oh, I’m more of a candy person, than a cake person” because it’s just bogus, and you’re lying to yourself, and you have years of cake eating to catch up on, so let’s get started.
Cinnamon buns start with a yeasted dough, which falls under the category of doughs known as rich doughs. In general, there’s your regular run of the mill bread, which is some sort of variation of water, flour and yeast. Once you add fat you get into the realm of “Enriched breads.” Add even more fat, and you’ve got yourself “Rich breads” which by definition have at least 10 percent by weight (in ratio to the flour) of fat and/or sweeteners, but usually have more than that. An example of enriched breads are a whole wheat loaf with some olive oil added, or soft rolls. An example of rich breads are challah, or cinnamon buns.
When you add fat to a dough, besides adding flavor, it tenderizes it, and locks in moisture, which will soften the bread, and extend the shelf life (staling happens when water gets expelled from the starchy network, in a process known as retrogradation, and fats help hold this process off longer). Sugar (whether in liquid form or not) obviously make the dough sweet, but it also makes the dough soft, and will also help to retain moisture (sugars are “hygroscoptic” which mean they like to hold on to water). They also contribute to the color of the dough in the way of caramelization. When also adding eggs or dairy, they pretty much bring their own fats, sugars, and flavor, so to an extent they have similar properties as adding fats and sugar. One thing eggs have that makes it a kitchen powerhouse is the phospholipid called lecithin, which acts as an emulsifier (which for bread making, makes it useful when creaming butter, and will help trap air better, and make a lighter bread).
These cinnamon buns, which I got from Peter Reinhart’s book Artisan Breads Every Day, doesn’t call for eggs, but in baker’s percentages (which means the % is based on the weight of flour, and I’ll explain in a second) it calls for 14.25% fat, 61% milk, and 10.7% sugar. I feel like we’ve discussed this before, but baker’s percentage is a ratio of the ingredients in the recipe, but it uses flour as a starting point, and everything is based off of it. So let’s say for example you have 100 grams of flour, if the recipe calls for 61 grams of milk, then we say it’s 61% milk. And if the recipe tells you the baker’s percentage is 14.25% fat, that doesn’t mean 14.25% of the total recipe weight is fat, it means 14.25% of the weight of the flour, is fat. So in our example (of 100grams of flour) there will be 14.25grams of fat. Kapish?
(Just as an aside, if this isn’t good enough reason to buy a scale, I don’t know what is. Basically, all you need to know is the baker’s percentage for any particular bread you want to make, and you can scale it up or down based on how much you need. So let’s say you want to make ciabatta, which normally is a very “wet” dough, and usually is at a 70% bakers percentage [aka 70% hydrated], all you need to do is plop a big bowl on a scale, weigh out however much flour your cranium desires, and then multiply that number by .7 to figure out how much water you need, and you have your 70%.)
Onward.
This dough, as Mr Reinhart calls it, is an All purpose Sweet dough. You can make cinnamon buns, sticky buns, or any type of danish. I made this dough, and had so much leftover dough, that I made his version of coffee cake with this dough (which wasn’t that great). For some reason I got it in my mind to do a reverse cinnamon bun also. Often times cinnamon buns come with a cream cheese frosting, so I decided to make a cream cheese bun with a cinnamon frosting. Sounds good right? A+ for idea, and somewhere around a D- for execution. Anyway, let’s get going.
Make the dough and roll it out to a 12×15 inch rectangle.
And spread a layer of melted butter over it
Then spread your cinnamon-sugar mixture over top.
Because I wanted to kick it up a notch, I decided to grind my own cinnamon. Now, I’m not going to say how you have to grind your own cinnamon, or you’re going to go to foodie hell, but what I can say is, you can smell and even taste the difference. It’s minimal (gasp, now I’m going to go to foodie hell), but just the knowledge that you did it yourself I think makes it worth while, but that’s me.
Then roll it up (not like a jelly roll!…wait, didn’t get that last reference? Well fear not, click here, read through the post, and you’ll be all caught up) like a cinnamon bun!
(That’s a picture of the cheese bun by the way, which we’ll get to shortly)
Then cut it up. I find it better to cut through it in a sawing motion, as opposed to a crushing motion (ie don’t use a bench scraper like I did for some of them, use a knife, and actually cut it).
Allow the dough to rise for 2 hours, and then bake in a 350 oven for 15-20 minutes rotating halfway through, until golden brown and delicious
So back to me genius idea. For the cheese buns, I just took cream cheese, and creamed it with 1/4 cup of sugar, which I then spread on the 12×15 inch rectangle of dough, then I rolled it up (as you saw earlier), and cut it up
Nice right? What can go wrong right? Well here’s where things started going downhill. You see, I don’t really make frosting all too often, and in my mind, I wanted some sort of thickened cinnamon glaze; like confectionary sugar with some cinnamon and milk or what not. You know what I’m saying? Well, yeah, that didn’t work out…I ended up with this gloopy thick cinnamon soup of some kind. It tasted good, but it wasn’t really what I wanted. Oh well.
adapted from Artisan Breads Every Day
For the dough:
For the topping:
Here’s a slight perspective on exactly how big of a slacker I am. I made these blueberry muffins in September, and I’m just getting to posting them. September…that’s like 8 months ago. Whatever, somehow it’s all your fault, so you have yourselves to blame.
Anyway, if you couldn’t tell by now, I’m a really big fan of America’s Test Kitchen, and this recipe is from them. Not only that, when I made them, I had posted a picture of it on twitter (I’m sure you remember, because I’m sure you’re following my awesomeness), and they actually posted it on their website…I’m like famous or something.
The reason why I like America’s Test Kitchen is because they actually do research into their recipes, and find out why things work, and what the best way to make something is. Being the nerd I am, I kinda like that sort of stuff. So I bring to you today the best blueberry muffin recipe.
With any cake like food, there are pretty much three different ways to bring the batter together. There’s the creaming method, the biscuit method, and the muffin method. Creaming, which is beating room temperature butter with sugar to aerate it, is more for airy stuff like cakes; the biscuit method, combining really cold butter with flour to form little specks of butter within the flour, is more for like biscuits and pie dough. The muffin method, which are for…wait for it…keep on waiting…you never know, I might say something different than muffin…keep on waiting…I’m stalling, I know…hey did I mention that I finished dental school, and I’m graduating in two week? I know crazy right?..where was I…oh right…wait for it…just a little more…ok this joke just got real stupid, real quick…muffins! Whoah…so yeah, the muffin method is for muffins, and the way that whole shebang works, is you combine dry ingredients in one bowl, and wet in another bowl, and combine the two, until they just come together (you know the shpiel, the whole over mixing the batter, leads to more gluten produced, and more gluten, means a tougher end product…). Can you use the creaming method for muffins? Yeah sure you can, but then you’d have something more like a cupcake, than a muffin.
Ok, now that we know the whole muffin thing, it’s time to talk blueberries. Blueberries are great, but they can be a little finicky. We want maximum flavor, but the more blueberries we add, the more likely it is that they’ll sink to the bottom. So the way around that is, by adding half of the blueberries fresh, and the other half we added as a jam. That way, each muffin is chock full of blueberry goodness, and I think if I say blueberry one more time, I just might go crazy…It’s just one of those words that has a limit to how many times it can be said in one sitting, you know what I mean? Like smidgen, or powdered sugar…I dunno call me crazy…but when you do, don’t say it to my face, because that’s just not nice.
All right, let’s get cooking.
First let’s start with making the blueberry jam.
Combine 1 cup of blueberries with 1 teaspoon of sugar, and cook over medium heat, until it starts to simmer. Start mashing the blueberries with a potato masher, or a wooden spoon, and continue to mash and cook, until it’s homogeneous, and thickened, and about 1/4 of a cup (it should take about 5-7 minutes), and set it aside.
Next, we’ll make the topping. Combine the lemon zest and sugar, and rub it together slightly, to allow the essential oils of the lemon to come (oh, “essential oils” is another one of those words), and set it aside.
To make the muffins, combine the dry ingredients – whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in one bowl, and in another bowl combine the wet ingredients. Start by putting the sugar and eggs in the bowl, and whisk until it’s foamy, and lighter in color. (Now, I know what you’re thinking, Nossi, I know you’re a dentist and all [oh hey, did I mention I finished dental school?? No?...Oh, I finished dental school...], but sugar is more dry than it is wet…and you’re totally right, and here’s where it gets tricky. Remember before how we mentioned the “creaming method” which was aerating the fat with sugar? Well that’s what we’re doing here, were combining the eggs with sugar, which aerates it, and those bubbles (ie the air) will incorporate into the batter, and make it airy, and fluffy..So how is this different than the creaming method? Well to be honest with you, I’m not 100% sure, maybe when you mix the sugar into the fat it produces an airy-er crumb…I’m not sure…and this might technically be called “creaming”..I’m not sure). Then slowly mix in the melted butter and vegetable oil, and then mix in the buttermilk. I decided to make this parve, so instead of using butter I used margarine, and instead of 1 cup of buttermilk, I used a cup of soy milk combined with a tablespoon of vinegar, and let that sit for 10 mins. (Just as a side – most “buttermilk” sold in the supermarket, is really milk with a culture added to it, and not the by product of butter [the real way to make buttermilk is take cream, churn it to make butter, and the liquid that's leftover is buttermilk], so this soy milk plus vinegar is not so far off from the fake buttermilk you’d get in the supermarket anyway).
Once team wet and dry are ready to go, add the wet to the dry, and fold the mixture until it just comes together. Then pour in the remaining blueberries, and fold it in. There might be streaks of flour, and that’s fine, the alternative is over mixing, and that’s not fine.
Put the batter into the muffin tin; I like to use an ice cream scooper, but whatever works for you. Then spoon in the blueberry jam, and using a skewer or chopstick, swirl the jam around. Then top with the lemon-sugar mix.
Bake in a pre-heated 425 degree oven until they’re nice and ready, about 15 minutes or so, allow them to rest, and then eat every single one of them.
Sorry for the crappy quality pictures. I’m not the best photographer, and I was using my camera phone, probably because my actual slightly-less-crappier-camera was broken, because there was flour or something stuck in there…either way, enjoy.
