The other day my daughter was watching a commercial about the new movie, The Princess and the Frog. It mentioned something about Tia being a chef famous for her beignets. My daughter asked what a beignet was so I told her we would make some! We smelled them in New Orleans square in Disneyland and I new the basic recipe so we whipped some up then got creative and made a few more variations! Yum! These are so easy, transform into many different other recipes and should become a recipe you use anytime you want to entertain! The basic recipe is a pate a choux:
1 cup water
1 stick (8 tb) unsalted butter
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup all purpose flour
3 to 4 eggs
Bring the water, butter and salt to a boil, remove from heat. Add flour all at once and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon. Add eggs, one at a time, incorporating each egg completely, about one minute, before adding the next egg. If your dough is not pulling away from the sides of the pan in a nice, sticky dough by the time you have incorporated the third egg, add the fourth egg. Let cool a little bit before proceeding.
Once you have the pate a choux cooled down and into a piping bag (or simply a plastic food storage bag with the corner cut off), here is how to transform it into all of these different recipes:
Beignets: Pipe small dollops about the size of a ping pong ball into oil warmed in a sauce pan over med-high heat. Fry until golden brown, remove to a paper bag lined sheet pan and toss into powdered sugar (we also made some with cinnamon). In many restaurants you can be served beignets in a brown lunch bag with the powdered sugar, you get to shake it up yourself! We also gilded the lily by drizzling part of our recipe with some strawberry pancake syrup.
Churros: Using a piping tip that creates lines, pipe lines of dough into oil warmed over med-high heat. Fry until golden brown, remove to a paper bag lined sheet pan then toss with cinnamon-sugar. For real "wow" factor, for your next get together pipe the dough into a big coil (larger open pan, such as a chicken fryer, pan on med heat this time since it will be a larger amount of dough all at once) and serve it on a big round serving platter. Everyone can break off a piece and enjoy! For real authenticity serve with Mexican hot chocolate for dunking!
Cream puffs, croquembouches, eclairs: Pipe golf-ball size dollops (3 inch long strips) on a sheet pan, bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then lower heat to 350 and bake another 20 minutes. For cream puffs and eclairs simply fill with sweetened whipped cream (or pastry cream), top with chocolate ganache. For croquembouches, an amazing centerpiece of cream puffs created into a Christmas--tree form, simply make your cream puffs, then start creating your tree by using homemade caramel (2-1/2 cups sugar, 2/3 cup water, boiled until golden brown-no stirring) as the glue. Dust with powdered sugar or wrap in strands of caramel, creating a cage.
Gougeres: These are the savory pate a choux, traditionally made with Gruyere cheese. You can substitute other cheeses, such as sharp cheddar, parmesan, add chopped herbs, etc. Simply add 1 cup of the cheese after all of the eggs are incorporated. Bake as cream puffs and serve as a simple appetizer or pipe the dough into 4 inch coils, with one more coil added to the outside to make a shell, and fill with a creamy seafood sauce or the same filling you would make for chicken pot-pie.
Pretend you are sitting in a cafe in France and enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment