“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward”
Kurt Vonnegut
Happy New Year with an Ombre Almond Layered Cream Cake. Sorry I haven’t made an appearance yet. The beginning of the year is always BUSY! Call it bad planning, but the elder teen was born on the 2nd of Jan 17 years ago. In this absolutely freezing cold, where the temperature dips and the power trips, I’ve been baking birthday cakes every 1st January for the past 16 years.
We’ve broken ‘cold‘ records for the past 45 years this January. With a country not planned with central heating, we are surviving in ice boxes at 0.7 C temperatures. Absolutely bone chilling here these days. It’s one thing to shiver; another to shiver and bake!! Must be a glutton for punishment as I shiver through the process every year. I made an ombre cake a while ago for a dear friends birthday. It was TALL with many shades of pink. How the daughter whined! “You never make tall cakes in shades of pink for me”, “Why have I never got one like this”, “I WANT pink for my birthday”.
Then I saw this beautiful piece of art at BS in the Kitchen. Stunning and inspiring. I set off to replicate it but this January has been tougher than ever. Bitterly cold, power cuts galore … and if I may be allowed some more whining, cream that refused to oblige! I got down to whipping the low fat cream thrice … every single time we had a power cut. It usually obliges. Not this time though. I almost wept.
I should have made a buttercream; really should have. We don’t particularly love buttercream at home, so I decided to innovate. Lesson learnt: roses are made from firmer stuff i.e. buttercream! In sheer desperation, I began piping my frosting which was good enough to pipe roses on top, but played slip sliding roses on the walls of the cake. Thank heavens for lace collars. When all else fails, it seems to salvage the situation somewhat.
The cake tasted great and the birthday teen loved it to bits, pink and all. It got over really quick. In all the running around that day, I never did manage a proper picture before it was cut. It was worth the heartache though, well worth it!
[print_this]Recipe: Almond Layered Cream Cake
Summary: A light almond flavoured sponge sandwiched and frosted with an equally light almond whipped buttercream. Inspired from here. Serves 8
Prep Time: 15 minutes Total Time: 40 minutes Ingredients:
Sponge X 2 {to make 4 round cakes. Each portion makes 2 X 7″ cakes}
4 eggs
110g raw sugar {or powdered}
1 vanilla bean, scraped
4 drops almond extract
80g plain flour
25g almond meal
1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp light olive oil
Pink colour
Filling and frosting
100g unsalted butter, room temperature
400g low fat cream, chilled
150-200g icing sugar {adjust according to taste}
Few drops almond extract
Method:
Sponge {each portion of batter makes 2 cakes}
Line the bottoms and sides of 2 7″ round tin. Preheat oven to 180C.
Sift the flour, almond meal, baking powder and salt together. Reserve.
Beat the eggs and sugar over simmering water on high speed for about 10 minutes until the mixtures becomes thick and mousse like, tripling in quantity {Thermomix, Speed 4, Butterfly insert, 37C, 10 minutes or more}
Take off water, add vanilla bean almond extract and continue beating for 3-4 minutes until it cools down a bit. {Thermomix, Speed 4, Butterfly insert, 3-4 minutes}
Gently fold in the flour mixture in 3-4 goes. {Thermomix, Reverse Speed 2}, followed by the olive oil.
Divide batter into two {approximately 200-210g per portion}.
Pour one plain white portion into tin nbr 1. Add 2 drops of pink to the next. Repeat for another portion of batter but increase the amount of pink in the next two. You could use a drop of purple additionally in the 4th portion to get a darker hue.
Bake for 30-35 minutes until the sponge springs back when touched lightly, or a tester comes out clean. {Don’t overbake els the sponges will get dry}
Cool on rack for 5 minutes, remove from tin and cool completely.
Filling and frosting
Whip the cream and sugar to medium peaks. Add the butter and almond extract and whip until light and fluffy. {You cannot pipe roses with this}
Sandwich the layers with this, then frost the top and sides with remaining cream. Pipe rosettes on top if desired.
“Coffee smells like freshly ground heaven.”
Jesse Lane Adams
A Coffee & Vanilla Bean Layered Cake … this is what my dreams are made up of. Coffee in a birthday cake has become a quintessential part of my birthday, a flavour that inspires me like no other. A lot of friends express surprise, dismay and even chide me for baking on ‘my big day’ every year… yet this is what relaxes me the most – baking!
The teen did offer to bake for me the night before! She said she would begin baking after Grey’s Anatomywhich continued late into the night. She offered to do a rainbow cake {her current obsession} but I wanted coffee. “How about rainbow coffee cake?” she asked. I was soon out cold after a hectic Diwali. She passed out soon too!
I tiptoed into the kitchen the next morning to get a head-start while the teens snoozed. Throw coffee into the cake batter and I can climb the highest mountain, sail the roughest sea and still come out good! This is a cake I look forward to baking, one with no plan in particular.
It’s a good relaxed feeling when you are bake for yourself. No disappointments, no one judges your slips and you get to enjoy the fruits of your own ‘labour‘! Therapy at your own pace, in your own time, in your own space!
Coffee is my favourite flavour in dessert, so my birthday cake is predictable. The tiramisu we did for the Daring Bakers sang to me. The tiramisu variants that the Olive churns out call my name. I thrive on cold coffee even in the winter.
I use generous doses of Bru instant coffee to get depth of flavour. Bru is one of India’s best known and oldest chicory coffee powders. We love that first mug every morning! It’s a blend we grew up on, the green packaging a nostalgic bit of our teenage years.
When we were young, coffee was forbidden. As teens, we took our first steps into the delicious world of coffee. Both our kids are true lovers of everything coffee, often the first flavour they reach for. Sometimes, chocolate comes second.
A study from the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences found that a daily dose of caffeine may block the disruptive effects of high cholesterol that scientists have linked to Alzheimer’s disease. Coffee is now listed as one of many brain foods.
I am not advocating the benefits of coffee. Just saying that if you are a coffee lover, don’t miss the opportunity to enjoy a cake like this. Use your best loved coffee brand; indulge your palette!! This Coffee & Vanilla Bean Layered Cake is testament to it.
The flavours developed deeply and nicely. Alternate layers of vanilla bean and coffee sponge sandwiched with a light whipped coffee cream. I did contemplate a chocolate filling but the clock grew wings. Time flew away! So I grabbed a huge bowl of chilled low fat cream and beat the daylights out of it. 2 tbsps of coffee later, junior teen dug a spoon in …. “Yummm. Can I finish whats left?”
I asked him to take a teeny video of me assembling the cake if he wanted the cream! Bribery works. Little hands, sometimes shaky, sometimes distracted, tired easily, we did get something on camera. Will process and post it soon. It was shot basically for the chocolate lace collar as I get a lot of mails asking me how I make it.
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Recipe: Coffee & Vanilla Bean Layered Cake
Summary: Light as air vanilla and coffee layers of cake sandwiched with delicious whipped coffee cream make for a perfect dessert. Make a day ahead if you like. The tastes mature beautifully!
Prep Time: 15 minutes Total Time: 40 minutes Ingredients:
Vanilla Bean Sponge
3 eggs
75g raw sugar / bura {or powdered sugar}
75g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
pinch salt
2tsp extra virign olive oil
1tbsp 2% milk
1/2 vanilla bean scraped
Coffee Sponge
4 eggs
100g raw sugar / bura {or powdered sugar}
1/2 vanilla bean scraped
1 1/2 tbsp instant coffee powder
20ml warm water
100g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
pinch salt
2tsp extra virign olive oil
1tbsp 2% milk
Simple Coffee Syrup
1/2 cup water
1 tbsp instant coffee
2tbsp raw sugar {or powdered sugar}
Coffee Whipped Cream
800ml low fat cream, chilled
150g raw sugar / bura {or powdered sugar}
1 1/2 to 2 tbsp instant coffee powder {as per taste}
Method:
Vanilla Bean Sponge
Preheat oven to 180C. Line the base and sides of a 8″ round cake tin with baking parchment.
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt. Reserve.
Beat the eggs with raw/powdered sugar and scraped vanilla bean in a big bowl over a pan of simmering water until tripled in volume and mousse like, about 7 minutes. {Thermomix: Butterfly insert, Speed 4, 37c, 7 minutes}
Gently add the flour mix and fold through, followed by the olive oil and milk.
Transfer batter to prepared tin and bake for 25-30 minutes in conventional oven until light golden brown.
Cool in tin for 5 minutes, and demold and cool completely on cooling rack.
Slice into 2 layers.
Coffee Sponge
Preheat oven to 180C. Line the base and sides of a 8″ round cake tin with baking parchment.
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt. Reserve.
Stir the coffee into the warm water. Leave to mature flavours.
Beat the eggs with raw/powdered sugar and scraped vanilla bean in a big bowl over a pan of simmering water until tripled in volume and mousse like, about 7 minutes. {Thermomix: Butterfly insert, Speed 4, 37c, 7 minutes}.
Add the coffee mixture and beat to incorporate.
Gently add the flour mix and fold through, followed by the olive oil and milk.
Transfer batter to prepared tin and bake for 25-30 minutes in conventional oven until light golden brown.
Cool in tin for 5 minutes, and demold and cool completely on cooling rack.
Slice into 3 layers.
Simple Coffee Syrup
Stir together all ingredients, heat gently if required. Cool and reserve in bowl.
Coffee Whipped Cream
Make sure the cream is well chilled. {You can use whipping cream if available. Life just becomes a lot easier and quicker, but make sure you don’t over whip it and get butter}
Whip the cream and sugar {reserve a little to add later once you taste the sweetness} to stiff peaks. Low fat cream available in India takes quite a while to beat up if the weather is warm. It sometimes even fails to oblige. Feel free to use whipping cream if you like.
Assembling
Divide the coffee cream into 2 bowls, one for filling and the second half for frosting.
Place a layer of vanilla sponge on your cake plate/ dessert platter. Paint lightly with coffee syrup. Put a generous dollop of coffee cream and spread uniformly to the sides.
Top with a layer of coffee sponge. Repaet until you use all layers, alternating between vanilla & coffee.
Frost the sides and top of the cake with the remaining coffee cream. Pipe some rosettes on top if you like, garnish with chocolate flakes. Finish the cake with a piped chocolate lace border if desired.
Chill until ready to serve. Leave out for about 30 minutes prior to cutting.
“A good cupcake and a good life have many of the same ingredients – good timing, sugar, and spice.”
Evelyn Beilenson
Almond Chocolate Chip Cupcakes, my current favourites! A recent visit to the cupcake factory led me to hop back onto the cupcake trail after quite a long hiatus. Much to the teens delight, these little babies are beginning to show up more frequently now … dressed in butter cream and often ‘undressed‘ too!Either way, they go like hot cakes. There is something endearing about a freshly baked cupcake! Of course, given the choice, the call is always for the ones lavished with butter cream. For school snack boxes though, the plain ones work great as it’s still quite warm here in North India.So when one of India’s most popular magazines Femina {first published in 1959} asked to interview me, with a photo shoot at home to follow, I wanted to bake something ‘nice‘, something original and something that was ‘me‘!
Femina is a magazine, published fortnightly in India. It is owned by Worldwide Media, a 50:50 joint venture between BBC Worldwide and The Times Group. It is primarily a women’s magazine and features articles on relationships, beauty and fashion,travels,women fight back, cuisine, and health and fitness. It also features articles on celebrities and cultural facets of Indian women.
The Almond Chocolate Chip Cupcakes were what I baked! A natural choice because these are my current ‘cupcakes on the go‘, healthy, requested quite often, good with frosting and good even without. You can play around with the pairings as you like. Just plain almond meal is nice and carries frosting well. Roasted chopped almonds would pair well with a chocolate ganache, or maybe hazelnuts with a Nutella frosting {YUM}. I like the texture that almond meal adds. It’s a nice feeling to throw whole almonds into your processor with a little sugar and soon have ‘healthy nut meal’. I continue to use ‘raw sugar‘ in my baking and that has worked well so far. It’s marginally better than processed sugar. The good thing is that you don’t need to grind it as it has a nice, fine grain. I’ve even begun using it in butter cream instead of icing sugar. Works a charm, and is cheaper too!!The Borgonovo Bottle Indro from Urban Dazzle has my home made pure vanilla extract that is now ready. The polka dot cupcake liners are ones that my sweet friend Bina sent me from the US quite a while ago. I use them very sparingly Bina because I really like them, and they remind me of you. When I’m in a more rustic frame of mind, I like to line the muffin tray with parchment paper squares. It gives them a rough, earthy look!
Summary: ‘Cupcakes on the go‘, healthy, requested quite often, good with frosting and good even without. The almond meal adds interesting texture and taste to them. Makes 12
Prep Time: 15 minutes Total Time: 40 minutes Ingredients:
Cupcakes
180g plain flour
85g whole almonds
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
150g raw sugar
100g butter
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 vanilla bean
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
220ml 2% fat milk
100g dark chocolate chips
Flaked almonds, optional
Buttercream
100g unsalted butter, room temperature {not too soft}
50ml low fat cream, chilled
75-100g raw sugar {to taste}
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a 12 cup muffin tray with liners.
Run the whole almonds in the processor with 30gm raw sugar in short spurts until you end up with a fine meal. Don’t over process else you might have almond paste! {Thermomix Speed 10, 10 seconds, repeat as required}
Put in the flour, baking powder and salt and process briefly to mix. {Thermomix Speed 10, 20 seconds}
Beat the butter and remaining sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, vanilla bean and vanilla extract and beat again for 30 seconds. {Thermomix Speed 4, butterfly attachment, 4 minutes for butter, and 2 minutes with egg. Remove butterfly.}
Alternatively add the flour/almond meal mix with milk until just uniformly mixed. Donot over mix. {Thermomix: Add the milk and flour/almond meal mix and mix on reverse speed for 30 seconds, scraping sides once or twice}. Fold in the chocolate chips, and sprinkle over with flaked almonds if desired.
Divide between liners and bake for 20 minutes/until risen and golden brown. Cool completely before frosting.
Buttercream frosting
Beat all ingredients until smooth and firm. taste and adjust sugar if required. {I keep the butter on the cooler side, almost firm, as it is still warm-ish here
Place into a piping fat fitted with a star nozzle and pipe onto cupcakes.
“I loved their home. Everything smelled older, worn but safe; the food aroma had baked itself into the furniture.”
Susan Strasberg
Petite Iced Cakes for an event I enjoyed creating for. I had a blast making these, experimenting with different flavours and layering mini cakes. Had I the time, I would have made a second batch because the first one turned out to be such fun! The event? An Interflora challenge for the baking blogger community to create a delicious treat for ‘Grandparents’ Day Baking Challenge’ on Sunday 7th October.It’s got a nice feel to it . All you need to do is bake a recipe that’s been handed down to you from generation to generation, or something you have fond memories of baking with your grandma in the kitchen or simply a delicious sweet treat to celebrate the occasion. Bake it, blog about it and mail a link to these good florists in London who are hosting the challenge. A public vote will decide the winner!I have a confession to make. My Grandma never baked, an oven in a remote Indian house unheard of at the time. She cooked a LOT, my paternal grandma that is. I still remember her sitting all hunched up in a brick and stone kitchen, cooking over a low wood fire, blowing air through an iron pipe when the flame needed some help! The aromas from that almost extinct Indian kitchen still dance in my head, and come alive each time I smell a wood fire oven!So much for connect and food memories.She even had a dark room where she stored HUGE jars of Indian pickles and preserves, the room kept locked to keep pesky kids from sticking their fingers in. We visited once every year as my father was in the Air Force and we were always posted far away. The little dark room was always open for us, much to the other kids chagrin!Thankfully my mother did bake ‘some’, in the sense that she baked an annual Christmas Fruit Cake {with garam masala} that we waited for eagerly every December, the high point of our curious little lives.The funny thing is that it always got so late that in many ways it became a New Years Fruit Cake! I’ve blogged about her Garam Masala Chritmas Cake and am thankful the kids can remember her as baking something, anything! She used to bake a mean roast once upon a time … about 30 years ago!
So here we go … I have created little somethings to help spread the awareness about Grandparents day, a day to recognise the contribution that the older generation gave to their families and wider society. These little iced cakes may not look perfect but they hold something for everyone! There’s Coffee Cream {my personal favourite}, there’s Chocolate Cream that everyone loves, and there’s Raspberry Cream, reminiscent of the favourite British Victoria sandwich cake.Once again ingredients laid out, the mind began experimenting. I had a genoise sponge in mind, using melted butter in the batter. Thoughts of the Del Monte contest on IndiBlogger made me reach out for Del Monte Olive Oil instead! The sponge came out moist and pillowy soft! The petite iced cakes are on their way to WorldFoody as there is some raspberry fruit filling from Del Monte in one of them too.
When I started off I had just a layered coffee cream cake in mind. As I mixed the batter, my mind went towards many little cakes, and then the possibilities exploded in my mind. I was a baker in a hurry! I narrowed down to Coffee Cream, Raspberry Cream and Peaches ‘n’ Cream. Then ‘normal life happened’. While one terrible teen demanded to be dropped to a friends place, the other had to be picked up, some more deadlines had to be met … blah blah blah! The peaches lived happily ever after in their tin, and I made a Chocolate Cream cake instead as I had a small portion of chocolate pastry cream in the fridge. So come, put your best baking skills forward and bake something sweet to celebrate Grandparents Day … a desert that might be a family speciality, a dessert that might be just the thing to bring a smile to their face, or one that you can surprise them with. When I looked at these little almost crooked cakes, I heard the junior teens voice deep in my head, ” Why does Nana always keep laughing so loudly at everything, I mean EVERYTHING?”
To enter the competition simply email your photos, recipe and a link to your blog article to blog@interflora.co.uk by Friday 21st September.The winner will receive a luxury arrangement of flowers of their choice plus a Grandparents’ Day Gift Basket which will be delivered to your chosen recipient in time for Grandparents’ Day. 5 runners up will also receive a Grandparents’ Day Gift Basket for their nominated grandparent.
[print_this]Recipe: Petite Iced Cakes
Summary: Dainty little iced cakes lavished with a vanilla buttercream. Each good to serve four, they are made with different flavours – coffee, chocolate & raspberry. The flavour possibilities are endless … and the fun, infinite!
Prep Time: 1 hour Total Time: 1hour 30 minutes Ingredients:
150gm icing sugar {it was a little oversweet for me, but fine with the kids}
pinch salt
1/2 vanilla bean scraped
Flavourings
1 tsp coffee for the coffee cake
Dark chocolate ganache, chocolate chips
Del Monte Raspberry Fruit Filling
Method:
Sponge
Line the bottoms and sides of three small 4″ baking tins. Preheat oven to 180C.
Sift the flour, almond meal, baking powder and salt together. Reserve.
Mix the olive oil and milk in a small bowl Reserve.
Beat the eggs and sugar over simmering water on high speed for about 10 minutes until the mixtures becomes thick and mousse like, tripling in quantity {Thermomix, Speed 4, Butterfly insert, 37C, 10 minutes or more}
Take off water and continue beating for 3-4 minutes until it cools down a bit. {Thermomix, Speed 4, Butterfly insert, 3-4 minutes}
Gently fold in the flour mixture in 3-4 goes. {Thermomix, Reverse Speed 2}, followed by the olive oil and milk mixture. Blend in gently but uniformly, divide batter between tins and bake for 20-25 minutes until the sponge springs back when touched lightly, ora tester comes out clean.
Cool on racks for 5 minutes, remove from tins and cool completely.
Classic Vanilla Buttercream
Beat the ingredients together until smooth and light. Taste and adjust sugar if required.
Assembling
Reserve a little buttercream for piping on top if desired.
Cut the little cakes horizontally into 2-3 layers each. Sandwich one with the buttercream, add a few chocolate chips within if desired, and top with a chocolate ganache. Pipe some plain buttercream if desired.
Sandwich the second with some buttercream and raspberry fruit filling, topping that cake with some buttercream and a dollop of filling.
Whi the remaining buttercream with 1 tsp of coffee and sandwich and frost the little cake with it. Pipe some plain vanilla rosettes if desired and add a chocolate lace border if you have the time and/or inclination!
“I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats and I don’t intend to waste any of mine.”
Neil Armstrong
When the pastry turned from ugly ducklings into swans it was definitely an ‘almost missed a heartbeat’ moment! Ever since I got these gorgeous glasses from Urban Dazzle, I thought coffee filled pate-a-choux drizzled with melted chocolate would look beautiful in them! Fancy getting to the Daring Bakers rather late this month, and finding one of the easiest pastries ever but with a delightful challenge woven in – Filled Pate a Choux Swans!
Kat of The Bobwhites was our August 2012 Daring Baker hostess who inspired us to have fun in creating pate a choux shapes, filled with crème patisserie or Chantilly cream. We were encouraged to create swans or any shape we wanted and to go crazy with filling flavors allowing our creativity to go wild!
It was a strange coincidence that I’d been thinking choux pastry the last few weeks and knew I HAD to make the swans even though they did look a little formidable. My only concern was the pastry creme filling, given the hot and humid weather these days. However, the month passed in a heartbeat {what is it with time these days?} and the challenge got left behind!Then 2 days ago at Veda for a Delhi Bloggers Table meet, the very talented and sweet {wickedly so if I may add} food blogger and fellow Daring BakerRuchira fished out a pastry bag clandestinely and whispered, “Have got these. How much do I snip to get the necks right? Mine are just not piping OK!”You need a trigger sometimes … sometimes stronger than Mr PABs persistent prod when he doesn’t see a show stopper by the 25th of any month. This was it! The next evening it was choux pastry time, done in minutes by the ever efficient Thermomix! The weather has been REALLY drippy and wet the past week, and all of last night too {the pic above is from this morning}. Humidity is HIGH … and crisp pastry proved elusive.The arty daughter decided to pipe a few swan necks too, and got the one that looks the best! See…Made the pastry cream last night {Thermomix again, 7 minutes and done} … and just as my DB alarm rings out loud on my phone, I am hitting the keyboard while the pictures download! Breathless as always, so much to do and so little time … but I got there! Thank you for the inspiration Ruchira @ Cookaroo!I loved the way these came out … whimsical, charming, romantic like a fairytale! Much like the ugly duckling story we read when we were little. I would have liked to whip some home made mascarpone that I had left over into the pastry cream, but there was no time!Pate a choux is one of the simplest and lightest pastries to make – think chooclate eclairs, think Croquembouche, think profiteroles, think cream, puffs or think gougères. One delightful, light as air, crisp golden puff and so much variety. I love that you need very basic ingredients, a strong arm and you are good to go!The Thermomix Cookbook had a choux recipe in there, so my work was easy! The tough part was the waiting to see if the necks came out good, if the piped out ‘poopy‘ shapes made the ugly ducklings into swans, if the crème patisserie would hold. Worked a charm! The swans remind me of TchaikovskysUgly Duckling … a ballet we attached on TV several times as kids; the LP would play forever at home!
Summary: Light as air p’pate a choux swans filled with a crème patisserie. Choux recipe source: Good Housekeeping Illustrated Guide to Cooking, 1980 edition. Crème patisserie recipe source adapted from Thermomix Cookbook
Line at least two baking sheets with silicone mats or parchment paper, or grease pans well.
Preheat oven to moderately hot 190°C.
In a small saucepan, combine butter, water, and salt. Heat over until butter melts, then remove from stove.
Add flour all at once and beat, beat, beat the mixture until the dough pulls away from the sides of the pot.
Add one egg, and beat until well combined. Add remaining eggs individually, beating vigorously after each addition. Resulting mixture should be somewhat glossy, very smooth, and somewhat thick.
Thermomix Recipe
Place water, salt, sugar and butter in TM bowl and cook at 100C /Speed 2 for 10 minutes. Add the flour and mix for 30 seconds on speed 4. Allow to cool for around 10 minutes. Once cool, add eggs to the mix by dropping one egg at a time onto rotating blades for 30-40 seconds each on speed 5.
… the choux swans
Using a ¼” (6 mm) tip on a pastry bag, pipe out about 36 swan heads. You’re aiming for something between a numeral 2 and a question mark, with a little beak if you’re skilled and/or lucky.
Remove the tip from the bag and pipe out 36 swan bodies{ I got about 28}. These will be about 1.5” (40 mm) long, and about 1” (25 mm) wide. One end should be a bit narrower than the other.
Bake the heads and bodies until golden and puffy. {I baked the heads and bodies in separate lots}. The heads will be done a few minutes before the bodies, so keep a close eye on the baking process.
Remove the pastries to a cooling rack, and let cool completely before filling
Crème patisserie
In the meantime, whisk the egg yolks and sugar with a wooden spoon in a big bowl until the mixture becomes pale and light. Stir in the flour slowly until it is thoroughly mixed with the egg mixture.
Pour the boiling milk into the mixture a little by little while whisking continuously to avoid curdling. And then stir in the rest of the milk until the mixture is well combined.
Transfer the whole mixture into a pot, with the seeds scraped from the vanilla bean, and heat it under low setting. Stir it constantly with the wooden spoon or spatula scraping the sides and bottom until it has thickened.
Once the custard has thickened, take it off the heat, and strain / pour it into a clean bowl.
Thermomix Recipe
Place sugar and vanilla bean in TM bowl, and process for 30seconds on speed 10.
Add remaining ingrdeints, plus vanilla bean shell and cook on 90C/Speed 4 for 7 minutes {until thick}. Strain into a bowl immediately to cool. I chilled it overnight.
Assembling
Take a swan body and use a very sharp knife to cut off the top 1/3rd to ½. Cut the removed top down the center to make two wings.
Dollop a bit of filling into the body, insert head, and then add wings. {I used some pastry cream to secure the wings too}.
Your first attempt will probably not look like much, but the more you make, the more your bevy of swans will become a beautiful work of swan art.
“Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun.”
Pablo Picasso
It’s raining summer desserts at home. The mango crop has been fantastic {as has been the peach harvest}. How better to celebrate this luscious fruit than with David Lebovitz! The man is genius, and his Mango Sorbet an absolute winner! The Perfect Scoop is a favorite on my shelf; indispensable for ice cream lovers. Remember the Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream? Droolicious stuff!I’ve had this Mango Sorbet in my drafts for a bit. Then suddenly this week things took a turn for the worse … the power grid collapsed, not once but twice!12 hours without electricity, then back, then gone again for 4 hours! Just when we kind of resurrected, the second collapse came by, 14 hours this time! While newspapers and TV channels were crying themselves hoarse about the worlds biggest black out, 600 million folk without power, all I could think about was “my mango sorbet”!It was a good lesson in preparedness for the future that awaits the generations to come. As kids we’ve lived different times, a country traditionally having exposed its people to frequent power cuts, so it was no big deal as power would go off all the time. Add to it black outs during the Indo Pak war in 1971. Brown paper darkened the windows, jets flew low over the town, sirens echoed over the city, trenches were ready and waiting. No power and no back up … and it didn’t bother us!Cut to now! The power goes off and the inverter cuts in. Instant solution and the kids barely even notice. The grid failure was different however! They learnt a new lesson … when the national grip trips, NO ONE knows when the power will be back! And another yummy one … grid failure is time for smoothies, ice cream, loads of food cooked non stop by a mother who cannot see food wasted!Remember my frozen cherries I mentioned in the Fresh Cherry Quark Cheesecake Pie post?Ho hum… since they threatened not to be frozen for long, they were hurriedly cooked with balsamic vinegar and made to top a delicious dessert to fill these gorgeous Urban Dazzle glasses. Result – happy family who didn’t complain about power cuts! Recipe to be posted next …The mango sorbet is light, refreshing, delicious and screams summer! It’s also my tribute to a beautiful lady – Barbara of Winos & Foodie who was diagnosed with cancer in 2004 and sadly lost her battle recently. I was fortunate to meet her virtually on and off over her Yellow events; she was a fighter all the way!Monthly Mingle is the brainchild of the lovely Meeta @ Whats For Lunch Honey, and this month it celebrates Barbara’s spirit at the wonderful Jeanne @ Cook Sister. So positive, so full of energy, great sense of humour, always ready to share her experiences, Barbara held the food blogger world in awe, her love touching a lot of us. For years she successfully ran the Taste of yellow blog event. Of late, I had met her over Thermomix recipes after I bought one. RIP sweet Barbara … you were and are an inspiration to all of us!
{I am linking a few other yellow posts I did recently to this months Monthly Mingle}
Macaron à la Peaches et CrèmeRustic Peach ‘n Plum Summer GaletteFresh Peach Brown Streusel Coffee Cake
[print_this]Recipe: Mango Sorbet
Summary: The mango sorbet is light, refreshing, delicious and screams summer! Recipe adapted minimally from ‘The Perfect Scoop’, David Lebovitz.
