Week 9: Puff Pastry Exam and Start of Viennoiserie

Last week was the end of our puff pastry unit, and our exam was on Thursday. After the exam, we moved into what I suspect will be one of my favorite units - viennoiserie. Viennoiserie is breakfast pastry made from yeast-levened dough. I haven't worked much with yeast, so I'm excited to start. Plus I love eating croissants and breads.

To finish off the puff pastry unit, we made speedy vol au vents, an apple dartois, and a mille-feuille (more commonly known here as a Napoleon). I don't know why these vol au vents are called speedy. I'm pretty sure they took just as long as the first ones. These were a square/diamond shape and we filled them with pastry cream and fresh fruit.

Mangoes and blueberries

The apple dartois was kind of like a fancier apple tart made with puff pastry. To make the top, we used a lattice cutter and then stretched the cut piece of puff pastry over the compote. I put cut outs of leaves on the sides. I love everything with apples, so this was a highlight of the week.

Apple Dartois

We made our third Napoleon on Tuesday. This one was just the classic version. Some classmates used some fresh fruit and jam in theirs, but I wanted to do the traditional version.

Napoleon Strip

Puff pastry was our third exam so far. It's getting progressively more relaxed for these exams, but it's still a very frenzied 3 hours or so. I was pretty fortunate this time. To determine what everyone would be making, we each drew a set of three items out of a mixing bowl. I got mille feuille ronde (round Napoleon cake), palmiers and paillettes. Both pailletes and palmiers are two pretty simple puff pastry items, and a Napoleon cake isn't the worst thing you could need to make. Paillettes are puff pastry cheese straws with a bit of spice. I had missed the class when we made them because of the flu, but they were pretty simple. A couple of my classmates weren't so lucky and received sets of pastries that were far more complicated. They all did really well though, so it was nothing they couldn't handle!

Puff Pastry Exam Tray

Vienoisserie started on Saturday morning. First, let me state that yeast is really the most foul smelling thing in the world. Particularly if you have a slight hangover. That being said, the bread it makes is delicious. There's also a lot of waiting involved in making bread. You mix the dough, then let it rest and rise in the proofer (something that looks like a cabinet and stays at the perfect temperature for yeast activity), then deflate it a little, then put it back in the proofer, more rising, and eventually it's ready to bake. The first thing on the agenda was orange cinnamon swirl bread. It tasted as awesome as that sounds. The inside of the bread was so soft and delicious. I will definitely be making that again.

Orange Cinnamon Swirl Bread - Outside and inside view

Using a portion of the dough from the orange bread, we made pecan sticky buns. A caramel, whiskey, pecan mixture gets poured into the bottom of the pan. Then the dough gets rolled into a log with a brown sugar spice mixture on the inside. We sliced the log into the rolls and fit them around the pan. After they baked, we flipped them out of the pan so that the caramel nut mixture was on top. These looked really great. It definitely made me wish I wasn't allergic to nuts. We also made something called Sally Lunn rolls, but somehow I forgot to take a picture of those. I'll see if I can steal a pic from a classmate to post up here, so you all don't feel left out.

Before Oven

Post baking

Saturday in Hoboken was the annual St. Patrick's Day celebration. St. Patty's Day in Hoboken is a really big deal. The town has a really large Irish population, 100 bars in 1 square mile, and a lot of young people. It's a recipe for a really great celebration. The drinking starts early and lasts all day (well as long as you can stay awake. I was in bed, asleep, last year by 7:00 pm), and when I left for class at 7:45 am, there was already people lined up outside the bars waiting for them to open. When I got off the PATH train with all these baked goods, I was engulfed in a sea of drunk revelers, who seemed to all want a piece of the sticky buns. I was able to protect them in order to bring them to the party all my friends are at. If you ever want to feel like the most popular person, bring a bag filled with home baked bread to a party with a bunch of people who are drinking. It's a big hit. The 24 chocolate Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's frosting I made as well didn't hurt either.

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes (Minus the Whiskey)

For a graduation party request I baked this weekend, one of the flavors they asked for was chocolate Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's frosting. The party was on Saturday, and I knew I would never get everything baked on time if I waited until Friday night to start (especially since I knew I would be going out with friends Friday night). Because of this, I started the baking before leaving Hoboken for the weekend. This was a crucial call, especially being as I struggled to complete the order as it was.

Guinness post-explosion, still foaming at the top

There's a convenience store named Delite two blocks away from me that has been my go-to place for all of my pre and mid baking needs. I am terrible when it comes to running out of ingredients in the midst of mixing, and these store owners have seen me in various states of panic, desperately running in for eggs, cocoa powder, etc. Last Thursday, I stopped into Delite pre-baking to pick up some eggs and Guinness. The cashier looked horrified when I insisted I could just put the Guinness in my purse to carry home (it was raining really hard and I just didn't have enough hands).

Butter melting into the Guinness - two delicious ingredients

Not surprisingly, when I went to open one of the cans to use for the recipe, it exploded all over me & my kitchen. Excellent way to start the whole baking process. After finishing the Guinness cupcakes, I still needed to make plain chocolate cupcakes and realized that I had no milk in the apartment. Running back out to Delite, I realized in a mix of slight amusement and embarrassment that I not only was covered in a fine layer of flour, but also reeked of alcohol from the Guinness explosion that occurred. Standing as far back from the register as possible, I quickly paid for my milk and ran out of the store, praying the cupcakes I had left unattended in the oven hadn't burnt down my apartment. I got back and the cupcakes were perfectly baked, there were no fires, and I had all the ingredients needed for the rest of the night.

Buying mini bottles of alcohol always makes me feel like an alcoholic for some reason

I don't have any pictures of these cupcakes on their own, but in the next couple days I'll post all the cupcakes from the weekend and you can see the Car Bomb ones set up on the stand with the others.

Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes

For some reason, Hoboken celebrates St. Patrick's Day on the first Saturday of March, way before the traditional March 17. I had heard a lot about the craziness of the day, and I felt there was only one possible cupcake I could bake to celebrate the day-Chocolate Guinness cupcakes. The original recipe came from Feast by Nigella Lawson. I had used this recipe once before, and it came out really well so I was happy to revisit it. While the batter is made with beer, the Guinness taste is not very strong and combined with the cocoa powder, it makes for a very dark-colored cake.

Guinness with the more conventional ingredients

You can see that the cocoa powder in the picture is Hershey's. Usually, I think you should use the best ingredients you can find. At my grocery store, that happens to be Ghiradelli, but I've been meaning to locate even better quality cocoa powder. Ghiradelli has been working out pretty well for me, but I really don't like Hershey's.

The cupcakes straight out of the oven

Because I was unsure of exactly how many people my roommate and I were expecting for the festivities, I doubled the recipe and made 36 regular sized cupcakes and 24 mini cupcakes. This reminded me how tricky mini cupcakes are. Due to the small size, it is very easy to over bake them. I frosted them with cream cheese frosting, and I think they looked like a pint of poured Guinness.

Frosted cupcakes-intended to look like poured Guinness

Chocolate Guinness Cake Recipe
makes 24 cupcakes

Ingredients:
1 cup Guinness stout
1 stick unsalted butter, sliced
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place cupcake liners in tins.

2. Pour Guinness into a large saucepan, add butter and heat until melted. Whisk in cocoa powder and sugar.

3. In a small bowl, beat sour cream with eggs and vanilla and then pour into butter-beer mixture and then whisk in flour and baking soda.

4. Pour batter into cupcake tins and bake for 17-20 minutes until cake springs back when touched slightly.