Your Daily Sweets (2005-2012)

[Megan Blocker]

Thanks, guys! The cake was way fun to make...I highly recommend having a couple of extra hands...

Here's a link to my version of the recipe: click!

[Sethro]

We didn't find Hesser's recipe to be terribly user-friendly; for instance, you should probably chill the cake again after bruleeing the top, as the first layer of cream became oozy and gooey, which you don't want.

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I refridgerate anything bruleed involving custard for at least 2 minutes, even creme brulees during service. I think 5-7 minutes does the job just right; cool custard and crisp sugar.

That looks friggin awesome btw, I could go for a stack of crepes right now...

[SweetSide]

Awesome!  It looks delicious!  Your success definately encourages me to try this sometime soon.

I hope this spawns a dedicated Mille Crepes Thread.  I think someone else tried a chocolate version somewhere else in the P&B forum.

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I, too, had a Mille Crepe for dessert last night. No photos though, but it was quite a pretty sight.

I had posted under Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme thread, as my version was adapted from some of his recipes. Used his chocolate crepes and chocolate pastry cream with Frangelico added. For the whipped cream, I added Frangelico and folded with the pastry cream. Scrumptious.

One issue I had with the cake though, was how it was eaten. Slicing with the knife was easy -- nice clean cuts. However, we ended up eating the cake by layers since a fork squished a lot of the filling out before cutting through the crepes.

I think I'll go and start a new thread now...

[Pille]

Thanks, guys!  The cake was way fun to make...I highly recommend having a couple of extra hands...

Here's a link to my version of the recipe: click!

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Megan, it does look stunning! We do "pancake tarts" back home, but they're nothing like your 20-layer elegant affair!

[Megan Blocker]

Awesome!  It looks delicious!  Your success definately encourages me to try this sometime soon.

I hope this spawns a dedicated Mille Crepes Thread.  I think someone else tried a chocolate version somewhere else in the P&B forum.

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Ask and ye shall receive, ludja! SweetSide started a thread...click! I've moved my step-by-step over there!

[racheld]

Tonight I'm having eclairs filled with coffee-infused pastry cream, and glazed with some of valrhona 61% glaze I had in the freezer.

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Patrick, you've been taking Alinka-lessons!! Gorgeous.

[Megan Blocker]

Patrick, you've been taking Alinka-lessons!!  Gorgeous.

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Does anyone else love how you can see Patrick's reflection in that perfect glaze? In the eclair on the lower-left...

[SweetSide]

Patrick, you've been taking Alinka-lessons!!   Gorgeous.

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Does anyone else love how you can see Patrick's reflection in that perfect glaze? In the eclair on the lower-left...

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Didn't notice before -- that's a beautiful shiny eclair!

[Patrick S]

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That looks great - congratulations! Obviously you put a lot of work into that cake.

[Patrick S]

Patrick - stunning-looking eclairs, I think these were always my pick at patisseries growing up in Montreal - haven't seen any real eclairs since moving to Halifax though.  I have had them on my "list" to make one day - would you say they are a high difficulty level pastry to make?  Also how many days-long is the whole process?

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Thank you for the compliment, Shaya.

Eclairs aren't difficult to make, but like lots of other things, after you make it once you think of things you could do differently the next time. You could certainly make them in one day, but if you want to take you time, you can make them over several days. The choux dough can be baked and stored in advance. The pastry cream I would make when you are ready to use it.

[SweetSide]

Patrick - stunning-looking eclairs, I think these were always my pick at patisseries growing up in Montreal - haven't seen any real eclairs since moving to Halifax though.  I have had them on my "list" to make one day - would you say they are a high difficulty level pastry to make?  Also how many days-long is the whole process?

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Thank you for the compliment, Shaya.

Eclairs aren't difficult to make, but like lots of other things, after you make it once you think of things you could do differently the next time. You could certainly make them in one day, but if you want to take you time, you can make them over several days. The choux dough can be baked and stored in advance. The pastry cream I would make when you are ready to use it.

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Actually, I do mine just the opposite. I make the pastry cream the night before. I make the choux and bake it off the day I'm going to use it because I find they are at their crispest then. When the choux is cool, I fill then glaze, then eat.

While you can store the choux, mine never seem to be quite as crisp or I end up having to reheat them. Either way -- and I'm not going to criticize a thing Patrick does as it is all so marvelous -- you can easily make it a two day affair and not stress yourself over it. I agree that eclairs are not at all difficult. They were my first foray that made me decide working in pastry was for me.

[Patrick S]

Patrick - stunning-looking eclairs, I think these were always my pick at patisseries growing up in Montreal - haven't seen any real eclairs since moving to Halifax though.  I have had them on my "list" to make one day - would you say they are a high difficulty level pastry to make?  Also how many days-long is the whole process?

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Thank you for the compliment, Shaya.

Eclairs aren't difficult to make, but like lots of other things, after you make it once you think of things you could do differently the next time. You could certainly make them in one day, but if you want to take you time, you can make them over several days. The choux dough can be baked and stored in advance. The pastry cream I would make when you are ready to use it.

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Actually, I do mine just the opposite. I make the pastry cream the night before. I make the choux and bake it off the day I'm going to use it because I find they are at their crispest then. When the choux is cool, I fill then glaze, then eat.

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The reason I don't make the pastry cream in advance is that I want it to be fluid enough to be injected into the eclair from one end -- I prefer that to cutting them open like a bun. But that's just my personal preference. Also, I find that if you dry the choux out really good in the oven, and then store them in a zip-lock so that they can't absorb moisture, they actually keep really well.

[SweetSide]

Patrick, I'll have to remember that about the pastry cream. That's one of the things I don't like is trying to squish that thick cream through a Bismark tube. I have weak, carpal hands. Next time, as eclairs are a favorite in the house, I'll try it your way. The easier filling may very well be the better alternative.

[Megan Blocker]

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That looks great - congratulations! Obviously you put a lot of work into that cake.

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Seriously...this cake is awesome. I love the bright colors...I would have killed for a cake like this at age five. It's like dessert re-imagined by Dr. Seuss.

Heck, I'd kill for it now - who am I kidding?

Edited March 26, 2006 by Megan Blocker (log)

[Shaya]

Patrick, Cheryl, thanks for the advice. Hope to have a photo to post one day soon!

[Mike Hunt]

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That looks great - congratulations! Obviously you put a lot of work into that cake.

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Seriously...this cake is awesome. I love the bright colors...I would have killed for a cake like this at age five. It's like dessert re-imagined by Dr. Seuss.

Heck, I'd kill for it now - who am I kidding?

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Awesome cake for a child, one question though, how did you manage to make icing with such vivid colours and avoid a serious E number intake ?

I still have nightmares of trying to get my 6 yr old off the ceiling after she consumed an equally colourful creation at a friends party a few years back

Edited March 26, 2006 by Mike Hunt (log)

[Megan Blocker]

Awesome cake for a child, one question though, how did you manage to make icing with such vivid colours and avoid a serious E number intake ?

I still have nightmares of trying to get my 6 yr old off the ceiling after she consumed an equally colourful creation at a friends party a few years back 

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Oh, man...I'd forgotten about this. About four years ago, I made a rainbow layer cake (red cake, orange icing, yellow cake, green icing, etc.) for a friend's birthday (sort of a joke), and accidcentally made a green layer, which ended being baked off as cupcakes. My friend Caroline, who has the most insatiable sweet tooth this side of our Ling, ate every single cupcake.

She called me the next morning at work, as I was slicing the cake for my colleague...she had come from the bathroom and was quite alarmed by what had happened to her.

[RuthWells]

A Crooked Cake I helped a girlfriend make for her daughter's 5th birthday. It wasn't quite finished here. We also made "candles" out of white chocolate tinted pink with yellow white chocolate "flames" and they were mounted on each of the rosettes you can see. About 26 of them so each child got a candle. This is from a book Ruth often recommends called "The Whimsical Bakehouse". An awesome book of cake ideas for those of us who are amateurs at decorating.

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Awesome cake, CB!! Aren't the Whimsical Bakehouse designs fun?

[DiH]

A Crooked Cake I helped a girlfriend make for her daughter's 5th birthday. It wasn't quite finished here. We also made "candles" out of white chocolate tinted pink with yellow white chocolate "flames" and they were mounted on each of the rosettes you can see. About 26 of them so each child got a candle. This is from a book Ruth often recommends called "The Whimsical Bakehouse". An awesome book of cake ideas for those of us who are amateurs at decorating.

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Too, tooooooo cute... what a lucky kid!

What sizes were your tiers?

Di

[CanadianBakin']

Awesome cake for a child, one question though, how did you manage to make icing with such vivid colours and avoid a serious E number intake ?

I used gel colours. I wasn't able to attend the party so I'm not sure how it affected the kids, although I think there were 28 kids plus moms so the pieces weren't that big.

What sizes were your tiers?

9, 6 and 4"

Awesome cake, CB!! Aren't the Whimsical Bakehouse designs fun?

I love them! I've also made the polka dot cake a couple times and as simple as it is, it always garners squeals of delight.

It was a lot of fun to make. I've made this cake several times but just a single cake, not tiered. By the time you're done there is sooo much icing on it but the kids really liked it. It was my friends idea to make this particular cake, she just needed help making it happen. She's never been happy with the birthday cakes she's made so she was really excited to be able to make this one. I thought she was crazy making a tiered cake as neither of us have ever made one but as all of you who have know, it's really not that hard.

Edited March 27, 2006 by CanadianBakin' (log)

[Ling]

^That birthday cake is crazy cool. Such a lucky kid! You girls did an awesome job!

[Patrick S]

I tried making honeycomb from the recipe in the latest Chocolatier magazine. Basically it is a honey and sugar syrup cooked to hard crack stage, and mixed with baking soda so you get a honeycomb-looking candy. I must have made it right, because it looked just like the picture. But it tasted horrible (too much baking soda), and was practically inedible.

[gfron1]

I was all prepared for a great pic of a great dessert...but then disaster! 

Tonight I'm serving Chambord soaked genois topped with candied kumquat cremoix, topped with a second layer of soaked genois, and finally topped with Julia Child's lemon chiffon, adorned with a sliver of candied kumquat.  It was all supposed to be wrapped in a white chocolate robe, but I must have used too much inverted sugar and it didn't work.  Delicious, just not as pretty as I had hoped.  On the side I had Hermes orange Tuille formed into a cup with a fresh kumquat.

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I'm a little slow on getting my pics posted, but here was my dessert. This is the only one where I could get the chocolate to stay on the dessert, and as it melted very quickly, I think it turned out pretty.

[Patrick S]

I was all prepared for a great pic of a great dessert...but then disaster! 

Tonight I'm serving Chambord soaked genois topped with candied kumquat cremoix, topped with a second layer of soaked genois, and finally topped with Julia Child's lemon chiffon, adorned with a sliver of candied kumquat.  It was all supposed to be wrapped in a white chocolate robe, but I must have used too much inverted sugar and it didn't work.  Delicious, just not as pretty as I had hoped.  On the side I had Hermes orange Tuille formed into a cup with a fresh kumquat.

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Sounds delicious, and looks Dali-esque.

[Megan Blocker]

Shortbread heats, baked off from some dough I made ages ago and had in the freezer, along with some raspberries, creme fraiche, and turbinado sugar.