After making my first ever batch of crème pâtissière, I obviously needed something to use it for. My first thought was to make my own version of the toffee choux pastries from our local patisserie which is a favourite of the hubby and I, but I decided I didn’t want to play around with hot sugar on this particular occasion so that idea was scrapped. I did want to stick with making choux pastry as I haven’t made it for quite some time so I settled on making éclairs instead.
Crème Pâtissière (Pastry Cream)
I was watching an episode of the of the Great British Bake Off recently and one of the challenges was to make a Fraisier Cake chock full of crème pâtissière, or pastry cream as it can be known as. Not long before I saw this episode, I came across a recipe for crème pâtissière on The Little French Bakery so all signs were pointing to me making some.
Crème pâtissière is obviously French and features in a number of pastries such as profiteroles, Napoleons, éclairs and tarts and although it is usually vanilla in flavour, you can mix it up with addition of liquors, infusing the milk whilst it is heating with ingredients such as cinnamon, dried (culinary) lavender or coffee beans. If you are interested in a chocolate version, you can add some chocolate near the end of the cooking whisking until it is all melted.
Portuguese Tarts
Before I met my husband I had never eaten a Portuguese Tart. There is a woman at our local farmers market who sells different pastries, including these little beauties and he brought one home for me to try. Needless to say I absolutely loved it.
Jamie Oliver has a recipe for Quick Portuguese Tarts in his 30 Minute Meals cook book which we have made a couple of time that uses créme fraîche rather than making a custard and the hubby and I have made those a couple of times as they’re quite delicious. After a recent order of my Oreo Cookies and Cream Cupcakes, I had some leftover egg yolks so I thought I would make a more traditional Portuguese Tarts using a recipe from Bill Grainger.
Crème de Menthe Marshmallows
I still have half a bottle of crème de menthe sitting in cupboard which is slowly being used up since making the Purple Corset Cake. One day the hubby came across a recipe for chocolate dipped crème de menthe marshmallows on the interweb and encouraged me to make them. I didn’t have the right amount of gelatine required in that particular recipe, so I turned to my copy of Marshmallow Madness by Shauna Sever (where the Chocolate Malt Marshmallows came from) and lo and behold there was a recipe for Crème de Menthe Marshmallows so I got to work.
Pavlova
Pavlova can be a very temperamental dessert and with my past experience I was hesitant when Miss B asked me to make it on her visit, especially as I have my mother-in-law’s Pavlova to live up to. I have attempted the Pav a couple of times past, once in our last house where you could not see the temperature on the oven dial and had to rely on the dodgy oven thermometer (so I should have known then and there it wouldn’t work) as well as once in the new house. They both ended up being over cooked, the first one was inedible and the second was able to be saved so we had more of an Eton Mess for dessert that night.
After we got home from the Australia Day festivities, I set about making the mixture and crossed my fingers and toes that it would work out!