Flan Flavored Cream Puffs

Mmkay, so right off the bat the vision I had in my head was that I could make flan and then blend it into a thick custard that I could then pipe into the cream puffs. This won't work. It will basically return it to a liquid, a thick liquid..but definitely not pipeable. At this point, I was like "incorporate it into a whipped cream!," but then I added basically way too much flan liquid and had to do a subsequent whipped cream incorporation to get a consistency that was okay. Below I'll list something that I'm sure will work way better.

There are three components for this recipe. The choux pastry, the flan /caramel, and whipped cream filling. I used the recipe from Allrecipes for the flan.

1. Choux pastry: [for about 25-30 cream puffs]

200 g water

125 g milk

112 g butter (stick, cut into small pieces)

4 g salt

4 g sugar

150 g flour

4 eggs

1. Preheat oven to 400F.

2. Add milk, water, butter, sugar, and salt into a saucepan and bring to boil. You want your butter to have melted prior to boiling, so make sure you cut up the stick of butter into small pieces.

3. Take the saucepan off the heat, and add in the flour. Stir in (wooden spoon is best) the flour until everything comes together into a ball.

4. Return to heat and stir vigorously until you start to see some dried residue on the side (~2-3 minutes). Sometimes if I'm not sure, I just stir for longer. In my experience, having less liquid in that dough hasn't been an issue.

5. Transfer the dough into a bowl and beat until steam no longer rises. If it's in a stand mixer, until the bowl is no longer hot to the touch. You don't want to scramble your eggs that you're about to incorporate.

6. One at a time, beat in the eggs. Be patient and don't add them all at once.

7. Dough/ batter should now be a bit droopy. Add to a piping bag with a large round tip.

8. Pipe you desired size onto a silpat or parchment paper (though, silpats are awesome and everyone should use them).

9. Grab a small bowl of water and using your finger dipped in water, flatten all the points which resulted from piping them. Those little points will burn in the oven, so flatten those and any other pointy edges which may be on your silpat.

10. Bake until the cream puffs are golden brown (~30 minutes). Opening the oven/ taking them out before this will cause them to collapse on themselves. You want the puffs to form a solid structure.

11. After a light golden brown, I take out the tray and stab holes in the bottom of all the puffs using a chopstick. I'm sure there are better ways to do this.

12. I drop the temp down to 300ish F and put the chopstick stabbed puffs back into the oven to allow the insides to dry out. Usually I leave them in for another 15 minutes. I eat a sample one and if it's still doughy inside, I leave it for longer.

13. Let cool.

2. Flan:

200 g sugar (though you can definitely get away with less)

3 eggs

1 can evaporated milk (12 fl oz)

1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 fl oz)

a bit of vanilla extract if you want

1. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Make your caramel by adding the sugar into a saucepan and letting it heat up over low-medium heat. Melt until fully liquefied and golden. Do not stir it constantly, as this will cause the caramel to seize. With your caramel, add to the bottom of your flan dish/ ramekins. Save a little bit of caramel to swirl into the filling.

3. In a large bowl, beat the eggs.

4. Add and beat in evaporated milk and vanilla and then condensed milk until you get a smooth mixture.

5. Pour the mixture into your dish/ ramekins, about 2/3 filled.

6. Heat up some water and stop before boiling. Add to a deep roasting pan and put your flan dish/ ramekins into the water bath. About half way up the sides of the flan dishes is good.

7. Bake in the oven for about 40-60 minutes until set.

3. Flan whipped cream filling:

1/3 of the flan your prepared

set aside caramel + a little extra cream

300 g heavy cream

1. Throw mixing bowl and whisk that you're going to make the whipped cream in into the fridge. Cold helps the whipping process.

2. Add a small amount of cream (this will vary depending on how much caramel you set aside, but a tbsp is probably sufficient) to the caramel, which has probably solidified. Throw in the microwave for 30 seconds and stir everything together. You should have a nice caramel sauce. Let cool (a quick time in the fridge speeds up the process, but don't let it harden!).

3. Take the flan and blend together. I used a hand blender. They make everything better. At this point it should have reverted back into a thick liquid. Throw it in the fridge/ freezer to cool.

4. Add the heavy cream to the chilled bowl and whisk until stiff peaks. Don't be afraid to take it pretty far.

5. Fold in some chilled blended flan mixture to the whipped cream. You need to use your judgement here. My issue when I made this was that I added it all to the whipped cream and made the entire mixture too soft. Keep folding in more flan mixture until you start noticing the stiff peaks are being soft.

6. Take the caramel sauce and swirl it into the mixture.

7. Add to a piping bag and pipe into chopstick hole of the room temperature puffs when ready to serve. Warm puffs will melt the filling. Don't fill the night before. They will get soggy.

Main Takeaways + Tips:

1. I baked the flan because I really wanted to get the flavor into the filling and there were raw eggs in the mixture, so I couldn't just incorporate that. Turns out the eggs don't add that much taste. The predominant taste from the blended flan was condensed milk.

2. SO, to save yourself the step of baking flan (though, it is super tasty!), you can just make some whipped cream and fold in/ whisk in some condensed milk. Adding in that final swirl of caramel should replicate the taste of flan pretty well without having to go through the actual flan step.

3. Packaged powder flan is also a good bet. A few months ago, I made a whipped cream and added the powdered flan and the caramel sauce it came with and it tasted great. This is also an option.

Whatever you choose, gluck! I use this choux pastry recipe for all my cream puffs and eclairs. It has served me well and hopefully it does the same for you!

Thai Tea, Ube, and Green Tea Madeleines

I based my recipe from Just One Cookbook, which covers a basic green tea one. However, I split the batter into three and added flavoring at the end. I'm not sure if that's taboo, since the recipe said don't overmix...BUT, I didn't have any issues so I think it's fine. I'll list what I did. The thai tea, ube, and green tea amounts are for 1/3 of the batter. If you want to make just one of those flavors, multiply by 3.

Madeleines: thai tea/ ube/ green tea [18-20 total madeleines]

113 g unsalted butter + some melted butter for coating pan

113 g sugar

120 g flour (sifted)

pinch of salt

5 g baking powder

2 large eggs (room temp)

15 g milk

For green tea: 2.5 g matcha powder

For ube: 2.5 g ube extract

For thai tea: 2.5 g thai tea powder

1. Melt butter in a small pan. Cool butter to room temp once it has melted.

2. Add sugar, flour, and sugar into a bowl. Note, if you're going to make only one flavor, add any dry ingredients now (thai tea powder or matcha powder). Whisk to combine.

3. In a separate bowl, add eggs and milk and whisk until frothy throughout. If you're making only the ube flavor, add the ube extract to this mixture.

4. Add the wet ingredients to dry ingredients and fold together.

5. Add the cooled butter and fold some more until completely blended.

6. Now, for multiple flavors, divide your batter into three (I put ~150 g of this batter into two other bowls).

7. Add in the flavoring and fold until incorporated. I tried not over over mixing.

8. Cool the batters down in the fridge for at least an hour or if you're in a hurry you can throw them in the freezer for 30 min (guilty).

9. Use a pastry brush or something to spread the melted butter onto the madeleine pan. Be generous.

10. Fill each mold with some batter. I put the pan on a scale and added in 25 g of batter. It equated to about a 1 tbsp of batter. Youtube videos online also use those small ice cream scoops as well. You don't want to overfill it.

11. Bake at 375F for 11 min.

12. Take out and let cool for a few minutes and then remove from pans and let cool further on a cooling rack.

Custard: thai tea/ ube/ green tea

1 large egg yolk

9.25 g corn starch

85 g milk

25 g sugar

~1ish gram of either thai tea powder, ube extact, or matcha powder

1. Combine egg yolks and cornstarch until fully incorporated.

2. In a saucepan, high heat, combine milk and sugar. If you're just doing one flavor for the custard, incorporate it now.

3. Bring to boil and remove from heat.

4. While whisking constantly, slowly add to bowl with yolks and cornstarch. You are tempering the egg yolks so that they won't scramble.

5. Return the mixture to the saucepan on high heat.

6. Bring to rolling boil, while whisking/ mixing constantly. The mixture will become custard like.

7. To get rid of lumps in your custard you can either sieve it through a fine mesh or use a hand blender (works like magic!). Or you might not have any lumps to begin with and then you're all set.

8. Divide custard into three and then stir in respective flavoring.

9. Add custard into a piping bag with a small tip.

Filling:

1. Make a cavity in the madeleines. I was ghetto and stabbed the bottom edge of the madeleine with a chopstick and swirled it around, making sure to not crack the entry point or the cookie itself. 

2. Pipe in the custard. You should feel pressure to stop/ see that the cookie might crack soon.

3. Enjoy the deliciousness :D.

Final notes:

It might be beneficial to make the custard first, that way you can pipe it into warm madeleines. I didn't do that and it still worked, but I figure the cookie is easier to cavitize (is this a word?) when warm.

Gluck!

Blackberry Mousse Cake

I've been wanting to make a mousse cake for a while and I knew when I made one, I would make one based off of Verdade de sabor (an awesome Russian blog I stumbled upon). 
The recipe below is a transcribed/ modified version the translated recipe from Verdade de sabor: torta rubus. Lots of things didn't make sense with the straight translation, so I made sure to list my modifications.

Heads up, it's a very long process. Lots of freezing/ cooling wait steps. Not for the faint of heart. However, the blackberry mousse and gel is really good. So if you're going to make anything, make those. :D

There are 6 components: the chocolate sponge (sort of like a Jaconde sponge), blackberry jam, blackberry mousse, blackberry gelée, vanilla cream cheese mousse, and a mirror glaze. This recipe is for a circular cake around 7.5 - 8 inches diameter).

1. Chocolate Sponge:

70 g almond flour
70 g powdered sugar
70 g egg yolk
30 g egg white (1)
130 g egg white (2)
45 g sugar
55 g flour
20 g cocoa powder
25 g melted butter

1. Preheat oven to 440F. Get a sheet pan and lie down some parchment paper of silpat.

2. Mix almond flour and powdered sugar.

3. To that same bowl, add the yolks and the whites (1) and beat until smooth.

4. Add the sifted flour and cocoa powder.

5. Make a meringue by whisking the second egg whites (2) with the sugar to stiff peaks.

6. Fold the meringue into the rest of the ingredients.

7. Finally, add the melted butter and gently mix.

8. Pour the dough on a baking sheet (it shouldn’t really move that much since it’s a thick batter, so just make sure it’s spread out enough for the size of the cake you’re making) and bake for 6 minutes. Use a toothpick to make sure the batter has cooked.

9. Cool cake and separate from silpat. Cut out your cake shape (6.5-7in).


2. Blackberry jam:

70 g sugar (1)
15 ml of water
40 g corn syrup
200g frozen blackberries
8 g pectin
45 g sugar (2)
12 ml lemon juice

1. In a small bowl, mix the sugar (2) and pectin.

2. In a small saucepan, add the water, corn syrup, frozen blackberries and lemon juice. Put on medium heat, stirring constantly.

3. Once the sugar has dissolved and blackberries have thawed, stir the mixture until it’s very smooth.

4. When it comes to a boil, take off the heat and pour a thin stream of a mixture onto the sugar/ pectin, stirring constantly.

5. Put back into the saucepan and boil on high for a few minutes until it reduces a good amount (about 5 minutes).

6. Remove from heat and strain through a sieve. Let cool.

7. When the jam has cooled and thickened, put a thin layer on top of the sponge cake. Put in the fridge to cool.


3. Blackberry Mousse:

90 g heavy cream
90 g of blackberry pulp (pureed)
3.5 g gelatin (+ about 15 g water to bloom)
18 g berry liqueur
30 g Italian meringue **
**
15 g water
60g sugar
30 g egg white

1. Bloom the gelatin. Stir water into gelatin to get an apple sauce like consistency.

2. Heat the blackberry puree over medium heat and dissolve the soaked gelatin in it. Pour in a bowl and leave to cool.

3. Prepare the Italian meringue:
a. In a small saucepan, combine the sugar and water.
b. On low and stirring occasionally, cook the syrup.
c. Start whisking the egg whites until foaming.
d. When the syrup reaches 240F, remove the saucepan from the heat pour in a thin stream, while whisking the egg white.
e. Continue whisking to stiff peaks, then add in the berry liqueur.

4. Whip the cream. Prechilled bowl and whisk speed up the process.

5. Fold in meringue into the puree/gelatin (make sure it’s not warm).

6. Fold in the whipped cream into that mixture.

7. Pour the mousse into a mold or cake ring (6.5-7in) for and make a layer a little under an inch. Freeze.


4. Blackberry Gelée:

4.5 g gelatin (+ about 15 g water to bloom)
100 g pulp of blackberry (pureed)
50 g water
30 g sugar

1. Bloom gelatin. Stir water into gelatin to get apple sauce consistency.

2. Head the blackberry puree, water and sugar in a small saucepan and dissolve sugar and 
bring to a boil.

3. Remove from heat and add the gelatin. Mix. 

4. Cool to room temperature. 5. Pour over the frozen blackberry mousse, forming a thin layer (less than half an inch). Freeze.


5. Vanilla Cream Cheese Mousse:

70 ml of milk
50 g sugar
2 tsp vanilla (or to taste)
4 egg yolks
9.5 g gelatin (+about 20 g water to bloom)
250 g of cream cheese
350 g heavy cream
40 g dark chocolate (shaved/ chopped)

1. Bloom gelatin.

2. Add egg yolks and sugar into a bowl and whisk a bit until they become a bit whiter in color.

3. In a saucepan, mix milk and vanilla and bring to a boil.

4. As soon as the milk starts to boil, remove it from the heat and pour a thin stream (about half the milk mixture) onto the egg yolks/sugar, whisking constantly. This is tempering the egg yolks so they won’t scramble.

5. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan with remaining milk and set on low heat.

6. While constantly mixing/ whisking, bring the mixture up to 170F.

7. Remove from heat and add in gelatin and stir until fully dissolved.

8. Stir in the room temp cream cheese.

9. If the mixture isn’t already, let it cool to 85F.

10. Whip the heavy cream.

11. Fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture.

12. Fold in the chocolate shavings.


Assembly:

1. In a larger mold (8in), add about half of the cream cheese mousse.

2. Next, add the frozen layers of blackberry mousse and jelly and gently push them into the mousse.

3. Next, lay out the remaining mousse with cream cheese.

4. Finally, add the layer of sponge cake with blackberry jam and also slightly push it to the mousse.

5. Add saran wrap to cover/tighten the mold and put into the freezer for a few hours.


6. Mirror Glaze:

100 g white chocolate
35 g condensed milk
50 g sugar
61.25 g corn syrup
25 ml water
4 g gelatin (+ about 15 ml water to bloom)

1. Mix gelatin in water until you get an apple sauce consistency.

2. In a small pot add corn syrup, water, matcha powder, and sugar and bring to a boil.

3. Add in gelatin and condensed milk. Whisk until gelatin fully dissolved.

4. In a bowl with the chocolate, add the liquid mixture and whisk until chocolate is fully melted. If you have a hand blender, I highly recommend that you use it to blend the chocolate.

5. Portion off and add desired food coloring. Do some more hand blending.

6. Bring the glaze to about room temp.


Final Decoration:

1. After cake has set, remove from mold and set it on top of a smaller bowl or something in a sheet pan.

2. Pour glaze over, creating desired designs with other colors.

3. Let the glaze fully drip off. Clean off the surplus drips on the bottom of the cake and then transfer to a serving plate.

4. Garnish with whatever other fancy stuff you want.

5. Freeze or refrigerate. The mousse tastes when it’s not frozen, but even then, still good!

This is a marathon to make. I guarantee it's delicious though! Gluck!