Wow we’re over half way through the series now and the challenges keep getting more interesting. This week it’s Religieuse, a dessert made up of 2 choux pastry buns filled with crème pâtissière then topped with cream and chocolate, what could go wrong?

Once again with the progression of the series the challenges are definitely getting more complex, not just with the methods but also with the kit involved. Things are certainly stepping up a gear

Old friend, small fears.
As you may have seen from earlier post, I have made choux pastry before.  It started out as one of those skills that that I felt I have to conquer and achieve. I first made them fro a friend at work that wanted them as a birthday cake!  So that weekend I practised until my flat mate and I were so stuffed that we almost felt like the eclairs we have been consuming! Anyway after that I felt pretty confident at my choux pastry abilities, meaning this technical was just another step in enhancing the skill.

I love making this pastry, not just because you get to beat it and develop your arm muscles, but it is amazing to the alchemy of ingredients coming together to make something light and delicious. This alchemy mainly comes into place after the butter and water (sometimes you’ll use a mixture of milk and water) has melted and you add the flour. You have to let the mixture cool a little before adding in the eggs, just so that they don’t cook with the heat.

Let the work out begin!
Next comes the fun bit. Once once the flour, butter and water dough is cooled enough you have to crack in the eggs one at ta time. Once you add the egg you need to beat it into the mix using a wooden spoon.  It makes a very sloppy sounding noise and you’ll be convoked that the mix won’t combine. The eggs mixture will slip and slide between the flour and butter mix, almost as if they are avoiding each other, but bear with it and keep beating. Eventually the two mixtures will combine, then you have to add the next egg and until they are mixed in and thoroughly incorporated into the dough.

Precision is the key
The is the first time that I and to measure out the size of my choux pastry, but if I want these little buns to sit on top of each other and look uniform, it is something that must be precise!  Digging out my compass  set (one I had to by for a previous craft project) I marked out eight circles 5cm/2in wide and another eight circles 2.5cm/1in wide.

Interesting shapes
Armed with the choux mix its time to start piping.  I have to say I was not too sure about this piping method, looks a bit questionable. But for the first half of the batch I decided to go with it. When piping profiteroles you keep the flow of the piping steady and in one spot, to allow the optimum rise from steam created from the moisture content in the dough mix. The piping method described in the BBC recipe and shown by some of the contestants was piping in a round circle, leaving you the the images below in the left.

Sometimes the old ways are the best.
As you can see from the picture on the left, there was not a good even steady rise from the piping in a round method.  There were air pocket created but not consistent ones that would hold the  crème pâtissière, let alone look uniform once they were finished.  So for the final 4 choux buns I used the traditional method I mentioned previously which left me with a much better result.

This was a also another recipe for my newly purchased oven thermometer to be put to the test.  This recipe calls for a hot oven for 10 minutes then ad cooler over for the next 10mins… Oh for a digital oven that cools quickly! When cooking the choux pastry it is important to remember to let the steam escape and the sought to dry out in the oven other wise you get a soggy soft bun, that is not easy to pipe into, or very pleasant to eat.

Yummy Yummy Custard!
Crème pâtissière, crème pât or pastry cream is just another way of saying heavenly vanilla custard in my book!  It uses a similar method with pouring boiling milk over eggs yolks whisked with sugar, flour and cornflour, then returning the saucepan to thicken.  Difference between this and regular custard, as far as I can tell is that crème pât is thicker so that it can be piped (once cooled and set) for use in french tarts and eclairs etc.

Glossy choc
While the crème pât cools and the nun buns dry out its time for the glorious chocolate! Very simple this bit, boil the cream add the broken chocolate and mix till it melts then leave to cool and thicken to a nice classy consistency, while avoiding the temptation eat it all!

Careful with the whipping cream
Opps due to the heat in the kitchen, I was once again foiled by the whipping cream and ended up with what looked like cottage cheese!  Luckily the local Co-op was still open and the boyfriend came to the the rescue!

Fill, Dip, stack and whip!
With one piping bag filled with crème pât, a bowl of glossy chocolate ganache and another piping bag filled with whipped cream it was time to assemble these choux ‘nun’ buns. Armed with everything needed to finish of the buns in a methodical manner, the process was more messy that planned. I defiantly need to spend some time practising my piping methods, but I’ll leave that for another, slightly cooler, day

Check out these little ladies

Not quite as uniform as I would have liked, but definitely very indulgent.  You certainly can’t eat more that one for these with out a little bit gluttonous!

EnRICHed dough...
I should think so with this amount of ingredients!  This Apricot Couronne is definitely a step up from the last few weeks of basic components.

Another first
Having never made an enriched dough, I wondered what the difference would be compared to making a regular bread dough. According to the voice over given by Mel & Sue when dealing with an enriched dough you have a work harder than with regular bread dough. The kneading is just as, if not more, important with this type of dough because the addition of the butter and eggs. It makes it particularly wet, meaning that the yeast will have to work harder to rise.  And they weren’t kidding.  I was looking a this mound of sticky, very wet dough wondering if this was what it was meant to be like, and not seeing how it was ever going to come together. I avoided the temptation to add more flour and kept at it, once I had past the 12 minute marker, I could see a change, not only in my tired and worn wrists but also the dough. It had finally started to come together into a less sticky dough, and I could see in-between my fingers without any dough webbing! I continued to need it for another few minutes until I was happy with this texture and elasticity. Now I had to leave it to rise using the tried and proved (pardon the pun) method of the warmed oven, in the absence of a warming drawer.

Hard working yeast
They weren’t kidding when they said it the yeast had to work harder.  I took the beast part of 2 hours for this dough baby to rise.  I was reluctant to take it out of its warm enclosure, but I was on a deadline, I had friends coming for dinner and needed to get a wriggle on! Once the dough was removed it was knocked back by having to roll it into a nice rectangle approximately 33x25cm/13x10in. Mid roll I realised that I didn’t have a long enough ruler, or even find the short 15cm one, but the boyfriend can to the rescue with a metal tape measure, grimy but it worked!

Rich goodiness
While the yeast was working its magic during the first prove, I made the filling.  I decided to go old school with this and used the good old wooden spoon rather than the electric whisk.  You can’t beat (ha ha!) a bit of elbow grease! You have to soak the dried apricots in the orange juice to ensure that they are nice and plump, I added the raisins to the juice too. I know, I know, that is straying slightly away from the recipe but my raisins were a little dry looking and no one likes as dry wrinkled chewy raisin! Once the butter was nice and soft and creamed together with the sugar you add all of the rest of ingredients for the filling, and mix well.  It smelt pretty good, mainly because of the orange zest.

Spread the love
One the dough had risen and been rolled out is was now time for the build! First the filling was spread all over the rectangle, then the whole thing had to be rolled up, lengthways, so you ended up with a long sausage! Now came the tricky it, the rope
ring.  I had to cut it down the middle, lengthways along the roll, but leave the top joined together.

Lets do the Twist
After watching the programme, seeing the results and listening to the judges comments it was clear that Ruby’s was one of the better rings.  Ruby had twisted each strand of the dough before then twisting them together, so I decided to do the same. This was a lot easier said than done, not only was it very sticky, it also made the dough stretch, which made the likelihood of it fitting onto my baking tray less and less.   Once the two strands were twisted, then twisted together, it was time to shape them into a ring, join the ends and transfer that to tray.

Hard working yeast Part 2
After a bit of adjustment here and there I was kind of happy with the shape that I was now looking at, and it was tme to cover and leave to prove again.  This time you had to cover the whole tray with a plastic bag to stop a crust from forming and or the filling drying out.  Using my improvised proving draw technique, i had to make sure it wasn’t so warm that it would melt the bag and plus that there was enough space around bag for the dough to rise again.  Finding a bag big enough was a little tricky, especially trying to find one that wasn’t a bin bag! Thank fully there was a delivery at work that was packaged in a large enough bag, so even if I did get some funny looks when I stuffed it gleefully into my bag, I had something that would work.

Slightly over proved…
As I mentioned earlier we had some friends coming over for lunch/dinner so I kind of forgot about the ring in the cooking of the meal.  This meant that when I did check on the ring, it had risen well, but then fell slightly when I took it out of the improvised warming drawer to heat the oven up to temperature. Eek, but I’m sure it’ll rise some more in the oven…right?
Well it did rise a bit more in the oven but not as much as I would of liked. But it smelt fantastic while it was cooking.

Finishing Touches
By the time the couronne was cooked, and cooled down slightly it was really late in the evening and I was a bit tired. Pathetic I know, I mean it was only a whole day of cooking for 6, baking a couronne plus a toddler running around (not mine)!  This state of mind is not one to have when you are toasting flaked almonds….they can catch if you are not watching them like a hawk, or if you are trying to warm apricot jam, for the glaze, on another ring of the hob at the same time! Hey ho, I threw most of the burnt almonds in the bin, and let them cool while brushing the still warm couronne with the glaze, which was made using my mum’s homemade jam.

Making water icing always reminds me of my days at play scheme that used to be held at my primary school during the summer holidays.  We made coloured water icing and decorated rich tea biscuits…simple but great fun when your a kid. After this nostalgic moment while mixing the icing, I drizzled it over the ring, and then sprinkled over the remaining toasted almonds.

Glaze covers a multitude of sins!
As you can see from the picture below the couronne did catch slightly in the oven on the left hand side,  and it was a little flatter than the ones on the show, but smelt festive and tasted delicious.  I will definitely be doing this again.  Maybe with a mincemeat filling instead?

This weeks technical challenge was Tuiles, but I was met with an additional challenge, a physical one.  I have a badly sprained ankle with has been slowly turning into a kaleidoscope of colours from black/purple to yellow/green. Nice! The other challenge was where to buy the template at a reasonable price.  This was a lot more difficult to find than I first thought, there was only place I could find them online was, but I wouldn’t be able to get them in time.  Instead I decided to make my own, using  compass, stanley knife, scissors and a plastic clipboard from wilko! The end product resulted in a slighty less smooth edged template but one that still worked just as well as one priced nearly 5 times as much.  It just took 5 times longer to make!

Whisk it, beat it, cool it. With the template made to correct specifications (if a little rustic) it was onto the mix. This one is similar to a normal sponge mix, but is uses just the egg whites instead of the whole eggs.  This will I suppose, help make the tuiles crispy and light.  After a lot of whisking and beating, you need get another bowl pout in half the mix and add the cocoa powder to it. This not only leaves you with two bowls of mixture, but also a melee of bowls to wash up later.  Since I was a child and started baking, I liked to measure out all the ingredients into little bowls first, and pretend that I was Delia Smith (who mum used to watch regularly), which also meant I talked into an imaginary camera while explaining what I was doing! Unfortunately this little trait (the use of many bowls) has stayed with me, resulting in eye-rolling from my boyfriends when he see the stacks of washing up piled up by the sink! Anyway back to the important stuff, the two bowls filled with mixture.  These bowls now need to be chilled so that they thicken up,

Spread, spread, lift. Now for the tricky messy part. The template needed to be placed on top of the lined baking sheet so that you can spread the tuple paste over them.  I’d bought a new pallete knife for this one as  the one I had was going to be a little too large for the task.  Spreading the mix was a messy one, because you have make sure they are all even and not to thick, otherwise they won’t bake evenly. Perfecting this spreading took some time to perfect, sometimes I had to scrape it all off and start again!

Steady hand, shaky rings As stated at the start of the challenge, you have to create two types of tuiles, ones that were plain and others that were spiralled with chocolate. This meant putting the chocolate into a piping bag with a very fine nozzle and having a steady hand. This was easier said that done (the steady hand part) especially trying to balance with the bad ankle!

Hawk eye baking and heatproof fingers I’m really not kidding when I say hawk eye! Once the guiles were spread and piped, the template was peeled back and into the oven they went.  This was not the type of baking where I could go off and do something else while they do their thing in the oven.  I had to sit in front of the newly cleaned oven door, cleaned specifically so that I could eyeball the tuiles though their baking process. 5/6 minutes can feel like a long time, and it didn’t look like much was happening, so I left it for another few minutes.  In the end, with my oven, it took about 8 minutes for them to cook, and I had to turn the tray half way through the baking time. Once I took them out of the oven it was time to work fast! As soon as the tuiles come out of they oven they started to cool, obvious deduction I know, but this will was crucial.  I had to work fast to remove them and mould them

Rolled or rolls. Depending on whether they were plain or chocolate swirls was the determining factor to the burning pain that my finger tips were to experience next! The biscuits that had to cool on a rolling pin, to create the curved biscuits were the easier ones to manipulate.  I lifted them off the baking tray with the palette knife and laid them quickly onto the wedges rolling pin.  Grabbing a clean tea-towel, I laid it on top and gently pressed down not the biscuits, so that they would take the shape of the rolling pin and not break. The biscuits that need to be rolled presented were certainly more painful. Having removed them from the baking tray I flipped them over and had to start wrapping them around the handle of a wooden spoon, and roll gently so that they are tight enough to hold position and not break all without the aide of a tea-towel barrier! Needless to say with either technique I lost a few. Oh well chefs perks and all that! Once all the biscuits were cooked and cooled it was time for the more fun bit, melting chocolate and dipping in the end of the rolled up biscuits. A simple process that needs no further explanation.

I’ll be honest this whole challenge patience and practise.The first ones tuiles that were baked were definitely too think, and they were not easy to mould into the shapes. Others were too thin and cracked as soon as I touched them for moulded!

After this technical I’ve semi-acquired gained another skill and with a little more practise they would be more uniform. I don’t think I will be making these on a regular basis, my fingertips just wouldn’t cope!