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Tag Archives: French pastry

Courtesan au Chocolat | Fiesta Friday #42

14 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by Angie | Fiesta Friday in Baking, Fiesta Friday

≈ 170 Comments

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Courtesan au Chocolat, dessert, Fiesta Friday, Fiesta Friday #42, French pastry, recipe, religieuse, The Grand Budapest Hotel

courtesan au chocolat

courtesans au chocolat

I sort of fell in love with Wes Anderson a little bit after seeing The Grand Budapest Hotel. Not only because his movie made me happy, but also because he came up with Courtesan au Chocolat, which also makes me happy. So, double happiness = in love.

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Religieuse

02 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by Angie | Fiesta Friday in Baking

≈ 90 Comments

Tags

choux pastry, dessert, French pastry, pastry cream, recipes, religieuse, religieuse au chocolat, religieuse pastry

French pastry religieuse au chocolat

Do they really look like nuns? Fat nuns, maybe. Sorry Sister Claire, I didn’t invent the name. The French did. Always the French! They are also to blame for foie gras, by the way. And possibly French fries, the one thing in the world that I love as much as my family.

There’s some debate that they could be of Belgian origin. Doesn’t matter to me, they’re called French fries, so the French should take the blame. For making fries the bane of my diet, and the reason that I find it hard to shed a few pounds. I love them in any shape or form. Thick, thin, long, short, it matters not, as long as they’re potatoes and fried, and there’s ketchup or honey mustard sauce for dipping them in.

Here’s another French creation I can easily use to sabotage my diet. Religieuse. The word means “nun” in French. The pastry is thought to resemble the appearance of a nun, although I find it hard to see. Maybe with loads of imagination. After a few glasses of Champagne.

religieuse French pastry

Make these religieuses, enjoy them with much pleasure, and then if you gain some weight because of them, just blame the French entirely. For always coming up with irresistible, delectable food! You want proof? Béarnaise sauce, their fault. Croissants, their fault. Éclairs, their fault. Macarons, definitely their fault!

Religieuses are not widely available in American pastry shops, at least not where I live, but I first had them in New York, believe it or not. Not in Paris. In Paris, I had my first full-fledged Israeli meal. So, it’ll only be natural that when I finally go to Israel, which I will (right, hubby?), I probably will enjoy my first proper Russian dinner. Just a feeling I have.

religieuse au chocolat

Religieuse au Chocolat

  • Difficulty: Moderate
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For the pastry (pâte à choux)
1/2 stick (4 tbsp) of butter
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch of salt
2 eggs

1. Preheat oven to 400° F.
2. In a medium saucepan, combine water, salt, and butter. Place over medium-heat and cook just until butter melts.
3. Add all the flour at once, and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until a smooth dough forms.
4. Continue stirring until dough becomes stiff and pulls away from the sides of the pan, about 2 minutes.
5. Scrape the dough into a bowl; let cool for 1 minute. Then add eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly between each one, until mixture is smooth and glossy.
6. Transfer the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a wide round tip and pipe the dough into rounded mounds on parchment lined cookie sheets. Make 5 bigger rounds (about 2 inches) and 5 smaller rounds (about 1 inch). With a wet finger, flatten and smooth out tops slightly.
7. Bake for 20 minutes (15 minutes for the small ones) or until golden brown. Pierce each pastry with a skewer, near its top, and bake for another 5 minutes. Let cool completely before filling.

For the filling
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
Pinch of salt
1 whole egg + 1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup heavy cream

1. Mix sugar, salt, and flour until well blended.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg and the yolk until blended, then slowly whisk in the flour mixture. It’ll become thick and pasty.
3. In a medium saucepan, heat milk just until bubbles start forming around the edges of the pan. Remove from heat and slowly add it to the flour mixture. Return mixture back to saucepan and place over medium heat. Whisk vigorously and continuously until it thickens and comes to a boil. Essentially, you’re making a custard.
4. Remove from heat, strain through a fine-mesh sieve to catch any lumps. I strained mine into a stainless steel bowl set into a bigger bowl filled with crushed ice. You can chill in the refrigerator, if you have plenty of time. It must be completely cold before incorporating whipped cream into it. While custard is chilling, cover it with plastic wrap, placing the wrap directly on the surface of the custard, to prevent skin from forming.
5. Whip the heavy cream until it’s thick and holds a peak.
6. Fold the whipped cream into chilled custard, until thoroughly combined. You’ll get about 3 cups of filling, enough to fill the 10 choux pastries, with leftover.

The chocolate ganache
Scald 1/4 cup of heavy cream, pour over 1/3 cup chocolate morsels/chips. Let stand for 30 second, then stir until chocolate is completely melted and smooth.

To assemble the pastries
1. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a small round tip with the filling.
2. Try to find the hole left by the skewer near the top of each pastry, and pipe the cream in. Or make another small hole if you can’t find it.
3. Dip each pastry half-way down into the ganache. Set a small one on top of a bigger one.
4. Decorate with whipped cream, however you like.

Ladurée, of course, makes perfect religieuses. The chocolate one is a must-try. But the pink one is to die for.

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Fiesta Friday #439

Fiesta Friday #439

Happy early 4th, guys! How are you all going to celebrate? Is anybody thinking of having a block party? Wouldn’t that be fun, huh?! A couple of years ago, just before the pandemic, we celebrated with several of our immediate neighbors, potluck style. We had such a good time we promised to repeat it annually. […]

Fiesta Friday #438

Fiesta Friday #438

So, the elderflower champagne experiment was a bust, unfortunately. And I spent SO. MUCH. TIME! I trimmed off every little stem from the blossoms since the green parts are reportedly toxic. That alone took me a couple of hours! Pretty much my whole afternoon was spent making the elderflower concoction. It was supposed to ferment […]

Fiesta Friday #437

Fiesta Friday #437

School is out, finally! Hurray, hurray! So now, what?! The first day I don’t have to go to work and I’m not sure what to do. Too many choices! I’ve never been a decisive decider. Sleep. That’s the first order of business. Everything will become clearer after a good, sound sleep. So I’m just going […]

Fiesta Friday #436

Fiesta Friday #436

A friend from work who knows about my blog, and no doubt has been perusing it, recently commented about my recipes. She tried a few and found them to be, in her words, delicious gourmet fancy food. She marvels at the food photos on the blog and contends that I must spend an excessive amount […]

Fiesta Friday #435

Fiesta Friday #435

Gosh, it got so hot this week! I can’t stand the heat, guys! So I got out of the kitchen. We’re subsisting on salads and cold sandwiches. Don’t feel sorry for us. We’re eating well, truly. Yesterday’s salad looked like this. Pasta salad for the win! With minimal cooking and prep other than boiling the […]

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