Pete Fred

That’s the one. 👍 It’s a very good cookie.

Another day, another way to put egg whites to good use. François Payard's Chocolate-Walnut Cookie... I'm a fan. Very easy to make, and gluten-free if that's your thing.

Peanut and sweet potato stew from Melissa Thompson's Jamaican cookbook 'Motherland'... I had no red kidney beans so subbed in flageolet beans which was all I had to hand. It was good, but lacked some acidity. A splash of lemon juice and a sprinkling of sumac lifted it for my taste.

I always seem to have an abundance of egg whites. So in the the last couple of weeks I've put them to good use. The first port of call is usually financiers. A buckwheat one from a Christophe Felder recipe... And a hazelnut one by Cedric Grolet... But when I need to use up a lot of egg whites (nine!) then I make L’annécien by Maxime Frédéric... The texture's soft but bouncy (in a good way!). When I first made it last year it seemed to me it was basically a Gâteau Lorrain (similar to Angel Food Cake, only with butter), hence the cross... The Bundt version is the way to go because the mould is dusted with crunchy sugar for added interest.

I'm not sure there's much you can do taste-wise with a brownie, other than the quality of the chocolate and quantity and type of sugar. I guess it's more of a texture thing with Mr Young's brownies. They're on the fudgy side. 🙂

After seeing mention of the Paul A Young brownies a few posts back I wondered if I'd ever got round to making them myself. It turns out I hadn't. So... I think I pulled it a couple of minutes too early, but better under than over, huh? Anyway, they were very good. So add another recommendation to the long list of plaudits. 👍

Added to RecipeGullet. Bon courage!

For @Kim Shookand anyone else who fancies a date with Mister Crunch... 15g butter 15g flour 160g milk, warmed a bay leaf freshly grated nutmeg, salt and pepper 25g butter, softened 2 slices of bread 1 tsp Dijon mustard, or to taste 60g Comté or Gruyère, grated 60g ham Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute or two. Off the heat, gradually whisk in the milk until smooth. Add the bay leaf and bring to the boil. Cook until thickened, stirring constantly. Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper. Set aside. Preheat the grill to high. Butter each slice of bread on one side and place under the grill, buttered side up. Toast until golden. Preheat the oven to 220°C/Gas 7/200°C Fan. Line a baking tray with parchment. Spread a little mustard on the untoasted sides of bread. Cover one slice with half of the béchamel, right up to the edges. Sprinkle with half of the cheese and cover with the ham. Top with the other slice of bread, toasted side up, and spread with the remaining béchamel. Sprinkle over the rest of the cheese and season with a little more nutmeg and pepper. Transfer to the prepared tray and bake until bubbling and golden, 15-20 minutes. Tips For the béchamel, a splash of Worcestershire sauce is highly recommended. And if there's any parmesan lying around I'll grate some of that in for a double umami-bomb. I let the béchamel cool to room temperature to thicken to the texture of wallpaper paste (yum!). That way it clings to the bread better so the sides crunch-up nicely. Any cheese that melts well should work. Gruyère is traditional, but i prefer Comté. Avoid Emmental, too bland. If the croque's nice and hot all the way through but not coloured to your liking, whack it under the grill until blistered and bubbling.

Crème Brûlée using my last Tahitian vanilla pod. I'm too frightened to look what a re-up is gonna cost me these days.

Ahhhh, yes... when I said "made", perhaps "assembled" would be more accurate. The three that went in the freezer were unbaked and simply wrapped in clingfilm... When I can resist their siren call no longer I defrost overnight in the fridge and bake from chilled in a 200C/400F oven. By the time the top is nicely browned and bubbly, the croque is piping hot all the way through, about 25 minutes. I can't say that I've noticed any issues with the bechamel separating after being frozen, but then again I've never had a good poke around to check. Too busy enjoying the cheesy goodness! 😋

Croque Monsieur made with 18-month unpasteurized Comte and a generous splash of Worcestershire sauce in the bechamel. I made three more for the freezer. I suspect they may not last the week.

Yup. Just like nutmeg. But it is very strong, so just a very light grating with a microplane is enough. For example, the custard tart a few posts back had basically a whole nutmeg grated onto it. For this cake, maybe it was a dozen strokes on the microplane.

Dorie Greenspan's Have-It-Your-Way Almond Cake... Quite an unassuming and plain looking cake, but very quick to come together with a delightfully light texture. I flavoured this with freshly grated tonka and it really complemented the almonds. So much so that I've already polished off four of the nine squares from the 8-inch cake. 😏 (Hopefully no-one from the FDA is reading this and coming to arrest me.)

Another day, another pancake. This time in the form of a Dutch Baby... I filled it with a bag of red berries that was lurking at the back of the freezer, together with a good glug of creme anglaise. I must make this more often. Such a great mix of temperatures and textures: hot, crispy, soft, chewy, cold, creamy, fruity. So good.

Seeing as it's Shrove Tuesday I thought I'd have custard pancakes... I made some crepes, added a dollop of vanilla pastry cream, folded like a spring roll, then pan-fried in butter and sugar for five minutes, turning a few times until caramelized. I usually make a quick butterscotch pan-sauce with a little more butter, sugar and rum. Not today though.

I'll second that. Thanks for the heads up. The Kindle book is discounted at the moment so I might have to check it out.

Sure. Fully bake a sweet tart shell. Warm the custard* to 55°C. Fill shell and dust generously with freshly grated nutmeg. Cook in very low oven (90°C) until barely set. You can see some useful pointers here, although they temper the egg (yolks) with hot cream, whereas I prefer to warm the custard in a bain-marie or pan. *Custard 1 L (enough for a 20 x 3.5 cm tart) 330g whole egg; 140g caster sugar; 530g cream (35-50% fat) Whisk egg and sugar. Stir in cream. Pass through fine sieve and leave to stand for 30 minutes. Remove foam from surface.

I can't let the French take all the creamy glory, so here's an individual English Custard Tart that I just wolfed down... And there's also a slice from it's big brother that I made a couple of weeks ago, jazzed up with some Medjool dates... God Save the King!

I was reading a review of a London restaurant that serves unashamedly classic French cuisine, and mention was made of a Tarte Vaudoise. It was a new one on me so I had a trawl through the internet and discovered the version by Swiss chef Frédy Girardet. For all of his Michelin stars and legendary status it’s actually a humble affair, being basically a rustic, cooked-cream tart. I found a video on facebook of a chef at Troisgros making it. I thought it unusual that the sugar is a layer on the bottom over which thick cream is carefully poured so as not to disturb it too much (he specifically counsels not to mix them). The tart then gets a light sprinkle of cinnamon and is cooked in a hot oven until bubbly and somewhat caramelized. It was indeed very tasty. Quite sweet from that layer of sugar, but offset by the delightful cooked cream above. I used double cream but in the video the chef mentions crème double/crème triple and his looks a little thicker than mine. I can imagine that there’s some pretty amazing cream in that part of the world. Next time I might use clotted cream and see how that works out. The pastry was really good, too. Very easy to work with and lightened with yeast. Looking at other recipes, the cautious non-mixing bit is not necessarily standard. In fact, I think the original direction from Girardet may have been to spread the cream delicately with fingertips. I think that might result in a touch more blending. Another thing to try. Oh, and there’s also a version where the cream is replaced by white wine. Of course there is. 🙄

A half-batch date, chocolate and honey soda bread by Benjamina Ebuehi, made with rather good Medjool dates left over from Christmas and local lavender honey from a lady at the market... Nice. Will make again.

I think the French might call this cake a moelleux or a fondant. It falls somewhere between a mi-cuit (like a chocolate lava cake) and a regular cake, so the texture is moist and fudgy, but a little firmer and cakey at the edge. In the picture, the left one is underbaked like a mi-cuit, whereas I cooked the right one more like a brownie with an internal temperature around 90C/195F (the probe came out with moist crumbs). I preferred the fudgier version, which was best served still warm (or reheated briefly in the microwave). I used shop-bought, skinned and roasted ground hazelnuts rather than processing my own. I think the finer texture absorbs moisture better. In the original recipe, the nuts are homemade and the cake in the picture looks looser and wetter than mine. If you can’t source ground hazelnuts, maybe try commercial ground almonds, oven-roasted a little. I cooked mine in steel rings placed directly on a parchment lined tray. I imagine this gives better heat transfer than your ramekins, and therefore a shorter bake time. Maybe you could try turning down the oven once they’ve risen and firmed at the edge, then just wait however long it takes until the centre is just set. You don’t want a clean toothpick, and the cake will inevitably sink a little. And if you let yours fully cool, I do think they benefit from a gentle rewarming to regain some moistness and lightness. Bon courage!

It's a little bit outside of my competence zone, so perhaps somebody else could chip in, but i think you don't have to do the maths; it's already done for you. Gold sheets weigh more than platinum sheets (2g v 1.6g), so the same number of sheets will set the same amount of liquid. Therefore you should be fine with 1½ sheets of gold.

The gelatin most commonly sold in UK supermarkets is Platinum strength, and is packaged so that four sheets will set one pint of liquid. 👍

I’m always on the lookout for ways to use up surplus egg whites and this caught my eye on a French blog. A small-batch, super-simple recipe and also gluten-free. I made two 10 cm (4”) cakes and experimented with the cooking time. For those whose French is a little rusty… 70g dark chocolate 40g butter 100g sugar 10g cocoa powder (Dutch processed) 3g (½ tsp) baking powder a pinch of salt 40g ground hazelnuts 30g roasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped 70g egg whites (2 whites) Melt together chocolate and butter. Mix together remaining ingredients. Combine the two mixtures. Divide between two 10 cm rings (170g) and bake at 160°C fan for +/- 20 mins. It’s rich, and half a cake was enough for me. Halve the recipe and it's perfect for two people.

It's been a few years since I last made any, but my rain dance to the Gods of pastry includes... Cranking the oven as high as possible for the first 15 minutes or so (250C fan for me). This seems to 'set' the top of the cannele so that it barely clears the rim. The top (or bottom, depending on how you look at it) does get a touch more bruleed but that's something I like... Once set, I drop the temperature (160C fan) and cook for another 35-40 minutes. They usually take around 50 minutes in total, rotating the tray three or four times. I don't like leaving them in much longer because I find it thickens the shell... ...and they they get too dark and bitter. (That little hint of brulee on the bottom is just right for me.) I line the moulds with just a very thin coating of beeswax (no butter) and fill the moulds pretty full, just 5 mm from the top. That's 80g of batter in my Matfer moulds. (Mine were from Meilleur du Chef, too, but this was a decade ago and looking at the website now I'm not sure if they're still the same ones.) I leave them in the mould for ten minutes before upending, and they fall out easily. Like you, it used to bug me if they weren't an even colour all over, but after many batches I became much more relaxed if the top wasn't perfect... In fact, I quite like it when the dimple is a pale cream bullseye that shows off the vanilla seeds inside. Good luck with your quest. It's pretty much the only way you'll experience a good cannele: still warm an hour out of the oven, with a crisp, thin shell, and a soft, yielding interior. Can't be beaten. (By the way, I have never had a good cannele in France. Ever. I get suckered in every time I see them in a bakery or patisserie. And they always disappoint: chewy shell, dense and claggy inside, with fake vanilla and rum. So bad. Every. Single. Time. Maybe it's different in Paris or Bordeaux, but everywhere else I've been... merde.)