A mighty Poire D'Eve attempt

My roommate D's birthday was this weekend and I wanted to make her a special cake so I thought of this beautiful concoction that Tartlette posted a while ago. It's a Poire D'Eve, a crispy chocolate feuillantine layer topped by a caramel mousse layer topped by a poached pear bavarian cream layer topped by a pear syrup "glass". It looked light and beautiful.

I started the night before, making the feuillantine and the caramel mousse. Both were delicious and I almost ate all the caramel mousse right away but I exercised great restraint and put it in the fridge instead.

In the morning I made the bavarian cream but used agar agar instead of gelatin. It wasn't the easiest substitution since the two are very different. Next time I think I would boil some agar agar in water to make sure it is completely dissolved and then put 3-4 tablespoons of the liquid into the creme anglaise. Also, you have to be careful with agar since it starts setting earlier than jello. I would keep stirring the agar'ed creme anglaise until it's cooled. Then whip in 1/3 of the whipped cream before folding the rest in.

When I brought out the mold to add the bavarian cream, I noticed that there was caramel liquid leaking out. Maybe I didn't whip the cream stiff enough?

When using agar agar for the mirror, I found it best to simmer the syrup and agar for 10 minutes then keep stirring it until it cools down to just slightly warmer than finger temperature. If you wait longer than that to pour it, it will be too thick and chunky as evidenced by my mirror.

Here's it is before unmolding:


It was quite pretty unmolded but I definitely didn't have a chance to take a picture. Also, I think the bavarian cream and the mousse were too soft so it was hard to cut nice slices. Maybe the cake has to be sliced frozen? Or it could be the agar agar. I think the agar has to be incorporated before it cools down otherwise it doesn't really gel the mixture, just makes clumps of gelled mixture in the whipped cream. I'll try to make a small 4" version of this with gelatin to see what the consistency should be and then see if I can recreate it with agar.

Also D made some pretty awesome matcha cupcakes with pomegranate cream cheese frosting:

Mille Feuilles

We went apple, grape and raspberry picking this last weekend at Milborn Orchards. The grapes were phenomenal! And I came home with a beautiful box of raspberries.

The first thought that ran through my head was "Napoleons!!!"

It was my first attempt at puff pastry and mille feuille, aka Napoleons. I clearly remember the first time I ate a Napoleon. I was in 10th grade, sleeping over at a friend's house and her parents had just returned from NY city bringing back a big boxful of pastries from a fancy shmancy bakery. I got to have the Napoleon and oh my god, it was one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten. I continued to have an obsession with Napoleons and came across this intriguing recipe on Tartlette's blog last week. I took it as a sign and I gave it a go.

I was up at 6 am, translating grams into our silly english measurements and measuring out crazy shit like 3/4 cup + 1 T + 1 t butter and 2/3 c - 1 T flour, etc. Maybe it's time to get a scale?

Rolling out the dough encased in butter block wasn't intuitive to me. The butter block softened much more quickly than the dough block so whenever I rolled it, the butter block would all squish to the edges. Maybe that's why it's usually the inverse of this inverted recipe. I probably should thrown it in the fridge to firm it up a bit too. But after the 4th hour of rolling, folding and chilling, I had a nice looking dough:


I baked it according to directions by sandwiching the dough between baking sheets to keep it from puffing up. My result was a somewhat heavy and dense puff pastry. It's probably how I rolled out the dough or that the dough got too warm or that my pan was too heavy but the pastry wasn't fall apart flaky bits of heavenly lightness which was disappointing. I decided to cut each piece in half thickwise to lighten it up a bit.






I whipped up some heavy cream with sugar and got out my lemon curd and proceeded to layer. It was good but, again, not the light airy pastry orgasm I had a long time ago. I'll have to fiddle around and maybe get a book out on puff pastry. Note to self: here's a nice video, showing a logical way to make it and here is an illustrated recipe.