Last week, we celebrated my daughter’s 10th birthday!

We made a Croquembouche (“Piece montee”): a pyramid of cream puffs with creme patissiere filling.

Let’s start with the creme patissiere!

Ingredients

• 1 quart of milk
• 8 oz of sugar
• vanilla beans or extract
• 4 eggs
• 4 egg yolks
• 2 1/2 oz corn starch
• 1 oz butter.

Start by heating the milk, 4 oz of sugar and a couple of vanilla beans (score then in two and get the seeds with a knife, put the seeds and the beans in the milk).
While it’s heating, mix in a large bowl the eggs and egg yolks, 4 ox of sugar and the corn starch.
You can add a little bit of Grand Marnier liqueur though it’s not compulsory.
When the milk is nearly boiling, remove the vanilla pods, add the milk little by little to mixing bowl while mixing with a wooden spoon, then transfer it all back to the pan and heat while mixing until you can see the bottom of the pan while moving the spoon. Add four oz of butter and mix; pour to a container and cover with cling film; refrigerate.

The creme patissiere is ready for piping to the cream puffs!

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.