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Friday, January 23, 2009
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In the essence of what M told L :
" If i spend another second in this house, i will go absolutely out of my fucking mind."
this black venom runs in my confucian blood and i am just dying to purge it out.
~
yay! PROFITEROLES
I have the faintest memory of my first home made cream puff. The crust was soft, the cream was smooth. That is about all i can recollect.
About a few years later, I was initiated into the Sun Moulin fan club with its Cream puffs. A tower of probably the freshest, tastiest (without an all too conspicuous added sugar-ness) Japanese fresh cream (in Singapore that is) sandwiched between two soft, slightly salty pastry shells.
Then beard papa came around. With its crispy Pâte à Choux and creme patisserie. More liquidy than ever but smooth like a smooth operator.
There was a Japanese bakery in Pudong, Shanghai which D boasted had the best cream ever. The pastry forgettable, but the cream inspired me - it had no intention of hiding their kitchen formula: Cream puff cream usually had whipping cream in it. In fact, their yellow yolky creme patisserie was separate from their white whipping cream! It wasn't spectacular but i savoured the new-found knowledge.
And finally, Liang Court (SG)'s Tampopo Cream puffs. JJ, a self-proclaimed non-cream puff fan but queue-obsessed heartlander, went to queue (he din even get to queue actually, it was empty that day) for that 40-cream-puffs-an-hr-for-4-hours-with-max-order-per-person. He is SUCH a sucker for Limited stuff. But i cannot complain since i queued hmmm 5.5 hours for LCG bakwa. I KNOW. First and last time , I swear. It was all to appease the insatiable appetite of the Thunder Gods (to no avail apparently -see above-) Anyways! The cream here was normal. But they had a very interesting choux pastry that was uber crispy AND layered somehow. I really can't say that choux pastry can get very yummy unless someone decided to add whiskey into it somehow but its all about how its texture complements the cream (and the addition of salt or not).
Then there is mine. Hohoho.
It never really crossed my mind to make profiteroles until I tried those at the Pudong bakery. It wasn't so much that it was good, but it was fun to know the cream had 2 different elements in it (i always thought it was boring whipping cream that only tasted different with random infusions and cos of the quality of milk used - silly me! i should have been able to taste the yolk!)
And very coincidentally the day after the Pudong bakery, I went to Shanghai's 书城 to look for a reference book for an exam and erm..ended up sitting off the edge of a book shelf, copying dessert recipes for an hour off a browsing copy of French Recipes. Heheh. It was too expensive! 50 sgd for it plus i had no idea if its recipes were feasible. Although i must say it had pretty full page photos that stirred both the appetite and curiosity. Anyways (I digressed again!), i saw the recipe for Creme Patisserie and Choux Pastry! What luck.
So like a day before my birthday, I attempted the great Profiterole! It was funny how the dough for the choux had to be cooked in a pot and i was lucky it didn't get burnt cos my stove fire burns bright heh. I have reservations about the accuracy of the recipe since my dough dried up almost immediately and i was so worried it'll burn that i added quite alot of additional milk (which might explain why my choux went soft quite quickly?).
Piping choux raised alot of debate online but i'm thinking "SERIOUSLY.". There were like the piping in figure of 8, piping like a coil of poo, piping inwards, piping outwards?! I'm no nitpicky cook so whatever goes. I say, if you like "cute as a button", pipe ; if you like your pastry shaped more naturally, then use a spoon. But generally, i prefer smaller choux. Cos it means more cream:pastry ratio and more pop-into-mouthy. HEH.
Then there was also the whole issue about baking the choux dry. The bottoms were browned too quickly (foil to the rescue) and i still have no idea when the choux was ideally baked. There were so many varying opinions floating in cyberspace on how to achieve the perfect baking result: Some called for pricking the pastry half way to let out moisture inside (which made sense), some called for opening the oven door for the last 15 min to let out excess moisture , others disallow opening the oven door. There was the remove-one-choux-prematurely to test if it was done. Too many methods. I pricked and opened my oven door since my oven was a non-ventilation.
I ended up with a little bit of raw pastry inside my choux which the recipe book said was normal (at least for the Choux Ring). Just had to dig it out before filling in with cream. That got a little messy as the raw pastry was limp and flappy. And it made a few holes in my choux but all in all it was quite successful. Didn't collapse immediately but 1-2 hours out of the oven (even in super dry shanghai) , it turned all soft. I'll definitely try baking it for another 10-20 minutes.
The cream however was SPLENDID. Do remember to carry out cling wrap instruction (over the cream) or the hard skin will form. I whipped it together with whipping cream and it turned out with the perfect sweetness, and smoothness without being all too watery. D said it was better than BPapa's and SY said it was equivalent to BPapa's (which i decided was a compliment!).
I tried to make two Profiterole swans. Not as easy as i thought : the neck of the swan didn't seem to expand evenly throughout so i got a fat-headed swan. And piping was tough too since i haven't gotten my nozzles yet. But i chose the better "necks" of the lot and added my favorite fruit to the body to make it prettier. Didn't get to use blanched almonds for the beak nor add the chocolate eye (too much work!). But i was pleased with the swans overall. I remember mum making it, hers were prettier but i think i have the better cream. HOHO.
Anyways, i baked into my birthday, as a resolution to improve my baking for 2009! (It was also meant to be a 好兆头, for things and our pockets to PUFF up! so 俗!)
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