Profiterole

Profiterole

Profiterole or ice cream filled cream puffs, are a classic French dessert. And it is so so good. The cold ice cream with the crispy puffs and the warm chocolate is everything you need in a dessert.

Makes a lot of small puffs

Ingredients:

Cream puffs (pâte à choux):

• 100 g butter, salted

• 200 ml water

• 125 g all-purpose flour

• a pinch salt

• 1 pinch baking powder

• 3 large eggs

Chocolate sauce:

• 160 g dark chocolate

• 250 g heavy whipping cream

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• 1 teaspoon espresso

• 1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder

• ½ teaspoon vanilla paste

Filling:

• vanilla ice cream

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400℉ (200℃). Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Put water and butter in a medium saucepan and bring it to a boil over medium heat. In a bowl sift flour, baking powder and salt. When the butter is all melted add all the flour at once, and stir the mixture with a wooden spoon. Lower the heat and keep stirring until a dough is formed and it pulls away from the sides of the pan and is slightly shiny. 

Keep beating the dough with the wooden spoon until slightly cooled, about 2 minutes.  

Beat all the eggs in a bowl. Add a little of the beaten eggs, incorporating it thoroughly before adding more. Add the egg in small amounts until you have a thick paste but not runny at all.

Fill a large pastry bag fitted with an open tip, with the cream puff dough. Pipe quarter-size circular mounds about 2 inches apart, onto the parchment paper. To get the best tops on the cream puffs stop pressing on the pastry bag before you lift it, make a small circular move with your wrist as you lift the tip of the puff. If you have small tips on the puffs anyway, dab the tops of each puff with a fingertip dipped in water to smoothen the tops. 

Bake the puffs for 18-20 minutes, until they are puffed up and golden brown.

DO NOT open the oven while baking cream puffs, it will cause them to deflate.

Let the puffs cool on a wire rack.

Chocolate sauce:

Heat the cream in a small sauce pan, add chocolate, cocoa, coffee vanilla and sugar, and stir while heating. You don't want it to come to a boil.

Filling:

Fill each puff with about a teaspoon good vanilla ice cream.

Serve the profiterole with the warm sauce on top.

Enjoy!

Marzipan Brioche

Marzipan Brioche

Making a classic brioche is time consuming, but well worth the effort. The best thing, it's not hands-on all the time, so you can get a lot of thing done, while making this. Brioche is made from an enriched dough with eggs and butter.  By all means it's not a health food, more likely a comfort food for special occasions.

I wanted to add some more flavor to the rolls, and added some pistachio marzipan. This gave a slightly flaky brioche with a hint of sweetness from the marzipan. 

Makes 10-12 rolls

Ingredients:

Dough Starter (Sponge):

• 30 g (2 tablespoons) water, room temperature

• 12.5 g (1 tablespoon) sugar

• 70 g all-purpose flour

• 1 g (¼ teaspoon) dry active yeast

• 1 large egg, room temperature

Dough:

• 155 g all-purpose flour

• 30 g sugar

• 4 g dry active yeast

• ¼ teaspoon  salt

• 2 large eggs, cold

• 115 g butter, salted and soft

Remonce:

• 100 g pistachio marzipan (ODENSE Dessertmasse med pistaciesmag)

or

• 50 g butter room temperature

• 50 g sugar

• 50 g marzipan

Directions:

Dough Starter (Sponge):

Whisk the ingredients together  in a bowl and keep whisking for about 2 minutes to incorporate air.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap.

Sift together flour, sugars and yeast, then stir in the salt. Sprinkle this mixture on top of the dough starter, do not mix it in. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap again and let it sit to ferment for 2 hours at room temperature.

By now the dough starter will have bubbled through the layer of flour. Add the 2 eggs and knead the dough for about 5-6 minutes, scraping down the sides, until the dough is soft, elastic and shiny. Add the butter a little at a time, making sure to get the butter fully incorporated. The dough will end up very soft and it is meant to be like that. Lightly coat another bowl with some vegetable oil. Using a oiled spatula to scrape the dough into the prepared bowl. Lightly coat the dough with a small amount of oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let the dough rise until doubled in size, about 2 hours.

Put the dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour, to prevent the butter from separating. 

Deflate the dough with a spatular, and return it to the refrigerator for another hour.

Letter fold

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and roll it into a rectangle, and make a letter fold, like the one used in laminating a puff pastry dough. 

Carefully brush off any excess flour, to avoid hardening the dough.

Make the letter fold three times, before placing the dough in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. 

Let the dough mature in the refrigerator for 6 hours or up to 2 days. I left mine overnight. 

Remove dough from the refrigerator and let it warm for about 1 hour. Make the Remonce, if using, I used a flavored marzipan instead.

Remonce:

Mix the sugar and marzipan well. Add butter little by little until it’s just incorporated.  Be careful not to over mix or the remonce will be runny when baked.

Forming the rolls:

On a lightly floured surface roll the dough into a good sized rectangle, gently spread the remonce on two thirds of the rectangle. Fold the part without remounce over half the part without, then fold the last part over this. Like the letter fold earlier. Make another letter fold. 

Roll the dough into a rectangle, and roll it up, so you end up with a long log. Cut the log in slices, and place the slices in muffin pans looking like cinnamon rolls.

Let the rolls rise for 60-90 minutes, until doubled in size.  (You can brush off any excess flour)

Preheat the oven to 325℉ (160℃).

Bake the rolls for 15-25 minutes until dark golden.

Serve the brioche warmed and with a nice cup of tea.

Enjoy!

Bondepige med Slør - Apple/Rhubarb Dessert

Bondepige med Slør - Apple/Rhubarb Dessert

This is an old classic Danish dessert, normally made only with applesauce, rye bread crunch and whipped cream. But I wanted to add some spring flavor and freshness to the dessert. So I added some rhubarb sauce. This dessert is a keeper, for sure.

Serves 6

Ingredients:

Apple Sauce:

• 6-8 apples (Pink Lady)

• 100 g sugar (depending on how sweet you want the Apple Sauce)

• 1 teaspoon vanilla paste

• 50 ml water

Crunch:

• 200 g rye bread without seeds

• 50 g butter

• 50 g brown sugar

• 50 g sugar

And:

• 1 portion rhubarb sauce

• 250 ml heavy whipping cream

Directions:

Apple Sauce:

Peel and core the apples and cut them in small pieces. Cook the apples with sugar, water and vanilla paste, until they are very soft. Cool the Apple sauce in the refrigerator.

Crunch:

Grate the rye bread. Melt the butter in a pan and toast the rye bread in the butter over medium heat, until light crispy. Add the sugars and let it just caramelize and coat the rye bread. Spread the crispy rye bread on a piece of parchment paper, mix in the brown sugar and let the crunch cool completely.

Whipped Cream:

Whisk the cream until little over soft peak, be careful not to over-whisk the cream, because it will become grainy and eventually turn into butter. Do not add any sugar, you want the clean taste of the cream. 

Assembly:

Layer the sauces with the crunch in a serving glasses and top of with the whipped cream.

Enjoy!

Raspberry Jelly Roll - Hindbærroulade

Raspberry Jelly Roll - Hindbærroulade

Raspberry jelly roll, aka hindbærroulade, is a traditional cake in Denmark. The kind of cake you would buy at a gas station or at the supermarket. My mom did sometimes buy the jelly roll in the supermarket, and I saw her dressing it up, by covering it with whipped cream and some fresh berries. As a working mom, she didn't have time to do all her cooking from scratch, she did cut some corners, as did a lot of housewives back then, and now.

My mom loved to bake, when she did have the time. I found this recipe in her handwritten recipe book dating back from before she married my dad. 

Well, you can get a better version of this jelly roll by making it yourself or buying it at a good bakers shop. The supermarket cake really doesn't make this cake justice. If made well, with good ingredients the jelly roll is very delicious. Soft, sweet and with a crunch of sugar. A perfect cake to bring for a picnic. The soft cake travels well, and can easily be cut, and eaten off a napkin.

Makes 1 cake, serves 10-12.

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs (room temperature)
• 125 g sugar
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla paste
• 60 g potato starch
• 60 g all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon hjortetaksalt (baker's ammonia/Ammonium bicarbonate (NH₄HCO₃))

Filling:

• raspberry jam

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425℉ (225℃). Line a jelly roll pan with parchment paper, and spray it with coconut oil, set aside.

Sift potato starch, flour and baker's ammonia, and set aside.

Whisk the eggs light and foamy with the sugar, it takes about 5 minutes to get maximum foaming when whisking on a stand mixer. Whip in the vanilla and water. 

Very gently fold the dry ingredients in the foamy eggs. Be very careful not to deflate the egg mixture to much.

Pour the batter in the prepared baking pan in a thin layer. Bake the cake for 7-9 minutes until golden brown.

Place a new piece of parchment paper on your counter. Sprinkle the paper with a thin layer of sugar on the parchment paper.

Remove cake from the oven. Flip the cake (top-side down) onto the sugar. Gently remove the parchment paper from the back side of the cake. Spread jam all over the cake, leaving about ½-inch from the edge on the side you are rolling it up towards. Using the parchment paper, roll the cake up tightly. Let the cake cool completely. Trim the sides, and serve the cake on a platter.

Enjoy!

Easter Cake

Easter Cake.

I saw this decorating on Pinterest and I was sold. I had to make this cake for our Easter celebration/family gathering. 

I have been wanting to put up recipes for a traditional Danish layer cake for the longest time. Every time I made a cake, we have had people over, and the cake has been eaten before we could take a picture. So this was my chance. Well, so I thought. Because we had to bring the cake to the family gathering, we could only take pictures of the decorated cake, and no pictures of a slice. 

Slicing the cake was not an easy task. The edible grass was kinda difficult to cut, to get a pretty slice. But it was fun making, and the reaction to the cake was well worth the effort. 

Serves 10-12

Ingredients:

• 1 portion of lagkagebunde (spongecake)

• 1 portion of passionfruit mousse

• 1 portion of chocolate mousse

• 1 portion vanilla buttercream

• 3 bags of edible grass

• 1 bunny, I used a Lindt milk chocolate

• a few easter M&M's with peanuts

Directions:

Make the cake/lagkagebunde/the spongecake and the mousses. I normally make the cake a day in advance, to ease my workload on the day I need the cake.

Place a springform or ring lined with some plastic cake wrap on a cutting board. Place one layer of the cake in the bottom, (I sprinkle the cake with some water/port or juice to moisten the cake). Pipe the chocolate mousse on the cake and even it out. Place the cake in the refrigerator for the mousse to set for 10-15 minutes. Place a thin piece of cake on top of the mousse, and put the passionfruit mousse on top followed by the last piece of cake, this placed upside down on the mousse. Put the cake back in the refrigerator for a minimum of 2 hours to set.

Make the buttercream.

Remove the ring or springform.  

Spread a thin even layer of buttercream on the top of the cake, repeat on the sides of the cake. 

Cut up 1 pack of edible grass into 1-inch (2,5 cm) pieces into a large shallow dish. Spray a very small amount of water over the edible grass, this will make the grass a bit sticky. Now using your hands, mix the grass together, so the water spreads, and the grass starts to clump together. Working in small batches, take a clump of grass up and adhere it to the buttercream on the cake. Repeat putting the grass on the cake until it is all covered. Spray with very little water over the cake, for the grass to stay in place.

Place the bunny on top and sprinkle the M&M's round the bunny.

Let the grass dry completely, and place the cake on a cake stand and serve it.

Enjoy!