Frasier Choux: Traditional cake in choux pastry form

This is another recipe tried from Daily Delicious Blog.  I doubled the quantity and made a ring and a few individual choux pastry.  My young son as usual was hovering round the desserts while waiting for it to be served after the photo taking.  Daily Delicious has published a detailed step by step on making choux pastry.  Making this needed quite a bit of effort, other than the choux and cookie dough, the pastry cream and butter cream had to be made.  I simplified 1 step by using store bought non dairy whipping cream instead of making buttercream.  The end product should be equally good.  I asked one of the tasters if the pastry would still be good if only pastry cream was used.  His opinion was the whipping cream added to the texture of the puff and should not be left out.  

These are the single serving choux puffs which were easier to serve instead of a ring one.   I have made both the strawberry and longan version.  The strawberries are a bit tart, and helps to reduce the sweetness and also gives a prettier effect to the puff.  The longan version would be much preferred for those who do not fancy strawberries,  I personally prefer the longan version of this.  

Chocolate Eclair

Eclair that uses fondant as one of the ingredients for the coating chocolate at the top of the choux pastry. These little puffies were filled with thick chocolate ganache, absolutely delicious though the appearance didn't look very appealing as the fondant topping hardens rather quickly.

I did this a second time and tried adding more water to the fondant topping that I prepared, the result was horrenous as the fondant topping melted when these little eclairs were put in the fridge to chill. I got feedback that just normal chocolate topping with less mess was preferred. If that is what was preferred, it would be even easier to do...ie to melt compound chocolate and coat the top of these little puffies.

Puff Pastry Class - Lesson 2

During our second lesson for Puff Pastry, we were taught how to make Apple strudel and Curry Puffs. The lesson, the puff pastry was made of butter instead of magarine that we learnt in the first lesson. As butter melts faster than magarine, it makes it more tricky to make the puff pastry. The texture is lighter and quality of the puff pastry is definitely better than the ones made of magarine.

Judy taught us how to make the cream for the apple strudel which was amazingly delicious. Hub loved the apple strudel and has requested me to make some over this weekend.

These were the curry puffs that we made with the puff pastry. The curry chicken filling was delicious but to compare this with apple strudel, I still prefer the apple strudel especially when it is chilled. Yummy!!

Chicken Puffs

I attended Puff Pastry Lesson yesterday. This is a 2 lesson course on making Puff Pastry. The first lesson yesterday, we were taught to make the simple puff pastry using pastry margarine. We used this pastry that we made to make chicken pies and also sasuage rolls. The puff pastry was fragrant and very delicious. The only problem was that we all went home smelling like a walking chicken pie as well.

This weekend will be a busy week for me as a friend ordered a Pandan Kaya Cake from me. Besides that, I had to make a cream cake for Hub who is celebrating his birthday a week ahead as my sister-in-law is flying off to taiwan for a short holiday the following weekend. Other than that, I am suppose to come out with 3 types of pastry for sampling for a friend who wants to order some petite cakes/pastries for her wedding next month. These bakes are to be served with the buffet lunch that she is having at her place on the wedding day.