Daisy Bun over at fullthymestudent asked me about a caneles recipe.

Here it is until i get the time to do a full article with step by step pictures

You will needs caneles molds. The original ones come as copper molds.
I have the copper with tin lining and the silicone ones.
They both work well. The copper ones are a little bit more difficult to work with.

Ingredients: (for about 15 caneles)

• 500 ml (1 pint) milk
• 125 g all purpose flour
• 250 g sugar
• 3 eggs

Beat the three eggs; boil the milk; pour the boiling milk over the beaten eggs while whisking the eggs to prevent them from cooking. Let it cool down.

Mix the dry ingredients (flour and sugar). Add the milk/eggs little by little to get a smooth batter. Store in a covered tupperware in the fridge for a day.

The next day, pre-heat the oven at 400F.

Melt some butter. Add a little  bit of bees wax to the butter. Grease the molds with a brush. If using copper molds, this step is critical.

Pour the batter to 3/4 of the molds and bake for about an hour.

Unmold while hot.

This is the simplest recipe to do when you are testing puff pastry.

It makes delicious cookies

Ingredients

• a batch of puff pastry (here or store bough)
• egg and milk wash
• sugar

pre heat oven

Roll the puff pastry to a rectangle about 25 cm tall and 40 cm wide.

pour sugar on the dough.

Fold the top and bottom toward the middle, pour sugar.

repeat last instruction.

Finally fold in two and pour more sugar.

Cut the dough in 1 cm slices and put on a silicone sheet in a baking pan. Make sure there is plenty of space as they will get flatter.

With and egg and some milk, make an egg wash and spread with a brush on the cookies.

Cook about 15 minutes, turning half way.

Very few people make their own puff pastry thinking it’s too difficult.

It’s not. It takes some time but it’s not difficult. And most of the time is waiting for the dough to cool. Basically, it’s a layering of butter in a flour/water dough. When it cooks, the water in the butter steams up and that’s what makes the dough rise.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of unsalted butter at room temperature
• 19 ounces of flour
• 5 grams of salt
• 1 cup of water

The dough is in two parts: mostly water and flour and a little bit of butter (“detrempe”) on one side and mostly butter with a little bit of flour on the other.

Start by pouring 15 ounces of flour on a work surface or in a large mixing bowl. Add the salt and two ounces of butter and mix with a spatula. then add the water little by little and mix it. try and mix it gently with the spatula or a dough cutter instead of your hands so as not to knead it otherwise it will become too elastic. When the detrempe is ready, cover and put it in the fridge to rest.

Mix the rest of the butter with 4 ounces of flour. it makes a sticky mess. use the wax paper the butter came in to shape the butter in a flat rectangular shape. put it in the fridge.

After a couple of hours, take the detrempe out and roll it in the shape of a cross with a large square and 4 thinner arms. Put the butter in the middle and cover with the four arms.
The consistency of the detrempe and butter should be similar which will make rolling possible.

You are now going to do what is called turns. A turn is when you roll the dough down then fold it in thirds: fold the left third then right third over the middle. So you go from one square of dough to a 3×1 rectangle back to a square of dough. The dough is then turned 90 degrees either side and the process is repeated.

Puff pastry calls usually for 4 to 6 turns. Some people fold like a book: make a 4×1 rectangle, then fold each side toward the middle and finally fold in two. This is known as a turn and a half.

You cannot do 6 turns one after the other, usually after rolling and folding twice, then dough needs to be set in the fridge to rest and cool down for an hour or so.