Chocolate Éclairs by Pierre Hermé

This Daring Bakers entry, Chocolate Éclairs by Pierre Hermé, is my first, and it was almost my last. All because of choux pastry, that vexing yet tantalizing dough first concocted in my country of historical origin, France. I say historical because I'm half-French Canadian, which means I had ancestors in France about, oh, 400+ years ago? Can't I still call myself half-French?

Anyway, let me explain. Choux pastry is supposed to be smooth, glossy, and pipeable, forming "ribbons" when falling off a wooden spoon back into your mixing bowl.

That is to say, choux pastry is not supposed to look like this:


Curdled and goopy. No, thank you. It's very rare these days that I fail completely in the kitchen. I think the last time I screwed up so badly was when I tried to make meringues as a 10 year old. They formed pools of sugary egg whites and baked in one wide, thin layer. My first adventure in choux pastry felt sort of like that. I think I was most upset about wasting the ingredients.

So, what happened? I forgot to add the butter to the original mixture. The biggest problem? I should have just thrown out the butterless dough which was an inexpensive mixture of flour and water. Instead, I thought I'd try adding the butter to the wrecked dough after it already came together. Even as I dumped half a stick of butter in, I thought, "Oh, this isn't a good idea." So instead of wasting flour and water, I wasted half a stick of butter and two eggs! Oh, well. I scrubbed my badly-burnt pan clean and tried again.

And here is what I came up with:


Compared to making the dough, baking it was a snap. It did seem to brown a lot faster than I had expected, but I slid a sheet of aluminum foil on the rack above (I didn't want to accidentally deflate the choux) and that worked nicely to keep my eclairs and cream puffs from burning.


Now, I should mention that I recently bought a real pastry bag, but neglected to buy a wide plain tip. I have a star tip and a very tiny plain tip (about 2 mm), but 2/3 of a centimetre wide? Nope. Sorry. So my eclairs were not the prettiest, but I think the mounds of dough I piped into cream puff shapes turned out quite well.


I made a basic vanilla pastry cream and a chocolate glaze for the top. If I make this recipe again, I'd like to experiment a little more. Maple pastry cream? Cinnamon pastry cream? So many options. For my first Daring Bakers attempt, I just wanted to keep things simple.


Now that I know how not to make choux pastry, I realize how easy it really is to make. I'm excited to have expanded my baking repertoire just a bit further into French territory. Why not try choux pastry sometime? C'est bon.

Four Foods on Friday: All About Potatoes

It's time for another edition of Four Foods on Friday!


#1. Potato Chips. What kind of chips are your favorite?
Miss Vickie's Sea Salt and Malt Vinegar, hands down. I used to eat them until my mouth hurt from the saltiness and sourness.


#2. What’s your favorite thing to dip chips in?
Artichoke and asiago dip. It's terribly bad for you, but it tastes amazing! Hot spinach and artichoke dip is wonderful, too. I guess I have a thing for artichoke dips.

#3. What’s your favorite way to eat a baked potato?
With lots of sour cream and some kosher salt baked onto the outside, like they serve it at Red Lobster. When I was in England a couple of years ago I also grew to appreciate jacket potatoes, which are essentially baked potatoes with a pile of toppings (tuna, mushrooms, curry, etc.). Restaurants sell them for few pounds each, and for something so simple, they're very tasty and filling. I guess I can't pick just one best way to eat a baked potato!

#4. How do you make mashed potatoes?
I love red potatoes mashed with the skins on. A healthy dose of garlic -- roasted garlic, if you can swing it -- and some butter and heavy cream round it out.

Alright--now I want potato chips. Enjoy your long weekend, everyone! I have scheduled posts coming up on Sunday (my first Daring Bakers entry!) and Tuesday (Tuesdays With Dorie), but I'm actually taking the whole long weekend off, plus Tuesday, to spend time with my family in Windsor. I'll be heading into the States Sunday for -- what else -- American groceries I can't get in Canada. Monday my boyfriend finally gets back to Canada, with lots of photos of Italian food in hand.

Whatever your Labour Day plans, I hope you enjoy them.

Pub Food at Home: Cheese, Ranch and Bacon Oven Fries

Perhaps to compensate for my love of baking, I try to eat healthily most of the time. But every so often I get a craving for something greasy and really bad for me. If I can make it at home, it's even better. Last week I crisped some bacon, made some oven fries out of new potatoes, and threw them together with some cheddar cheese and ranch dressing. The result was spectacular, and the fact that the potatoes were baked in my oven made me feel a little less guilty about the fact that this dish is almost devoid of nutritional value.


I meant to pair the fries with a salad, but I didn't. And I didn't feel that guilty, either. Approximate recipe after the jump!

The dish was a hodgepodge of a couple of recipes.

I modeled the fries loosely on this Food Network Recipe, forgoing the herbs and sprinkling the fries with salt and pepper before baking.

The ranch dressing is a Top Secret Recipe version of the Outback Steakhouse's ranch dressing. It elevated the dish into restaurant-quality territory.

I sprinkled cheddar cheese over the cooked fries and popped them in the microwave until the cheese was melted. Then I drizzled the ranch on top and topped it with the crispy bacon -- about half a strip for me.

Then it was ready to serve!

Barefoot Contessa's Parmesan Chicken

When I got home from work yesterday, I just wasn't in the mood to cook. I sat there doing a whole lot of nothing for a couple of hours, and then suddenly realized it was 7 o'clock, and I was hungry. I considered whipping together a box of macaroni and cheese, but luckily I had a boneless skinless chicken breast thawed in the fridge. It saved me from a processed, albeit tasty, boxed dinner.




Instead of KD, I made something almost as easy to put together: Barefoot Contessa's Parmesan Chicken. The entire meal came together in less than 15 minutes, and when you consider how elegant it is, and how perfect it would be for entertaining, it makes KD almost not worth considering. Almost. The crust was flavourful and crunchy and the chicken cooked up in less than 10 minutes. I wasn't a huge fan of the lemon vinaigrette, but there's plenty of room to experiment with that.

Click here for the recipe.

Four Foods on Friday

I thought I'd do something a little different on Fridays so that I can still post but take it relatively easy. This is especially helpful this week, when I'm sick with a sinus infection that has devolved into a coughing fest. So I've decided to participate in Four Foods on Friday, and this week's questions couldn't be better, given my circumstances. They're mostly about health.

#1. What do you drink to rehydrate in the heat or after working out?
In the summer heat, I love to drink iced tea. I make my own for when I'm at home; my three favourite varieties are plain iced tea, green iced tea, and raspberry iced tea. But when it comes to working out, I stick with water. I worked out today, and figured I might as well take it as an opportunity to also keep fluids in me to help myself get better. In fact, I drank the full 8 glasses that doctors are always recommending. We'll see if it helps!

#2. What do you eat to help boost or create energy?
Even though I'm a sugar fiend, I try to stay away from sugary foods when I'm trying to get energized, since I've read that it just leads to a crash and burn effect. Instead, I'll eat eggs or even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A banana does the trick for me, too.

#3. What’s the healthiest snack you eat?
When I snack, it's rarely healthy! I'm all about white cheddar covered popcorn and nachos and cheese. At work, my habits are a bit better. I'll pack a Cheesestring or an apple instead, mostly because they're more portable than my preferred snacks. Clearly, I'm no health nut.

#4. Share a recipe or instructions for your ideal three course meal.
Oh, this is hard. I love so many foods! Well, if money and calories were no object, I think this is what I would choose:

1. A really decadent Lobster Bisque for an appetizer, and, while I'm at it, some baked brie on the side with sliced baguette rounds.

2. For the entree, Spago's Quattro Formaggi pasta. I've never tasted anything better.

3. For dessert, a smorgasbord of all of my favourite desserts: crisp meringues, creme brulee, fudgy brownies, maple fudge. Paired with some Cattail Creek Barrel Fermented Vidal Icewine, which I fell in love with on a trip to the Niagara Region earlier in the summer but, unfortunately, never bought.