Yesterday, I made some adorable looking Profiteroles. Inspired to make them bigger, I decided to make another recipe of Profiteroles today. I got too excited and went on making the recipe of Choux pastry from memory. I had a song in my head and was bobbing my head to it the whole time. Bad idea.
While piping the second batch of pastry dough onto the baking sheet and waiting for the first one, already in the oven to bake, I felt something was off. I noticed the batter was easier to squeeze out than yesterday's. I decided to check and see if the first batch are done. There was definitely no puffing and the undersides of the pastry was turning brown too fast; it had some sort of foamy bubbles forming around each pastry. PANIC.
What the heck happened? Why is there oil in the pan? Fudge.
Julie Powell was wrong: You CAN have too much butter.
I didn't realize I placed a bar of butter (equivalent to 2 sticks) instead of halving it to put into a recipe of which resulted to an oily mess in the baking sheet and a flat dense pastry.
Also, I think I have a problem with eggs. In the French Macaron fail, it got whisked too much; I was heavy handed with them. Now with today's Choux, I added 1 too many. I pray I won't have any egg-related disasters anytime soon, my dad already complained about me using up the egg supply in the house.
I told my boyfriend about how I got so pissed at myself for messing up the eggs again and he couldn't resist cracking these lines:
"Don't beat your eggs too much, I mean, yourself too much."
"I know you want it perfect, but you gotta spill some egg, I mean milk to make a good one."
What a supportive boyfriend I have noh?
Anyway, I had no other choice but to find a way to make them at least palatable. The pastry were dense and had the strong taste of egg and butter. It was crusty on the outside and very dense inside. The crust reminded me of egg tart... hmm... what if.... LIGHTBULB!
I scurried through the kitchen and looked for ingredients. Remembered a cooking show making custard cream by combining milk, sugar and egg yolk. Whatelse? whatelse? Oooh, nice bananas... Wondered if there were any banana filling recipes, so I researched on the net. Too many of them, so I decided to derive from them a pretty basic recipe which I had the ingredients for.
So I made Banana Cinnamon Filling. Originally, I made just a plain banana filling, but it lacked warmth, it was just, well, boring. We only had local bananas, a Cavendish variety would've done a better job. And so I got some cinnamon powder, mixed it in.
Thus the impromptu Banana Cinnamon Filling turned these sorry looking pastries, from this:
 |
| Looked like dried up p---... oh, nevermind. |
To these (of course, with the help of chocolate Ganache and powdered sugar)...
 |
| Pastry sandwich? Scoop out insides thru the bottom. Fill with filling. Assemble sandwich. Drizzle with Ganache and dust with powdered sugar. |
 |
| (Piped these ones into bee-hives.) Cut off the top. Scoop out the inside. Fill with filling. Replace top. Drizzle Ganache and dust with powdered sugar. |
My nephew ate one... and another... and another. Mom ate the scooped insides, licked off the spoon I used for the filling. My dad had his mouth full with one as soon as he arrived. Even dogs even liked the burnt ones!
As for me... knowing it's a FAIL made it look less appetizing, because I know how this should taste like if these were puffy and light. I've gotten my dose of humble pie.
Here's the recipe of the filling I made that somewhat saved the day. Be warned it's very simple as I had to make it from scratch.
BANANA CINNAMON FILLING
INGREDIENTS
1 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup white sugar
2 tbsp of cornstarch
1 tbsp flour
2 egg yolks
1 ripe banana
1/8 scant tsp fresh kalamansi juice
1/8 tsp vanilla
a pinch of cinnamon powder
PROCEDURE
1. Mash banana in a bowl. Mix in kalamansi juice to prevent the bananas from browning.
2. Sift together cornstarch, flour, sugar and cinnamon.
3. Scald milk in a saucepan. Stir in the sifted dry ingredients until no lumps appear.
4. Beat in egg yolk, one at a time. Continue stirring until thick and smooth. Remove from heat.
5. Pour in mashed banana and vanilla. Mix well. Let cool before using.
Upside: There were still some Ganache left, so I sliced some bananas and apples. Et voila, faux-fondue as consolation. ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment