Episode 91
February 20, 2012
Apple Fritters

As I mention in the video, when I was a kid my dad would bake only a couple of different products but they were always really tasty.  He would make blueberry muffins, chocolate chip cookies, and apple fritters!  Though the apple fritters I make in the video aren’t quite like his, they still bring me back to being 8 years old.

The original fritter recipe I found is from the food blog dishing up nirvana.  She makes banana fritters which sound equally tasty, but I just had to make apple fritters in honor of my dad and my childhood.  What I liked about her recipe was that she used fennel to give the batter a special kick.  I’m finding that fennel goes amazing well with fruit.  Fennel is found in prepared sausage, but it’s mild licorice-like flavor goes great with most foods.  I recommend using a coffee grinder to grind up the fennel, but you can use whole if you’d like.  To customize this recipe, use different spices or even different extracts.  Add the spices to the dry ingredients (adjusting for the strength of the spice) and extracts to the milk and eggs.

One problem I encountered with the recipe was that the batter was just too thick to coat the slices the way I liked.  The original recipe asks for 4 ounces of whole milk (1/2 cup) but I increased it to 7 ounces (just under 1 cup).  Feel free to adjust the whole milk in either direction to adjust the fluidity of the batter.  I wouldn’t go beyond 9 ounces though.

Another issue I encountered was with the cinnamon sugar.  I found that the oil quickly ruins the sugar mixture by making it clumpy and preventing it from sticking to the finished fritters.  To compensate, break up the cinnamon sugar into smaller parts.  You’ll waste less – if any – that way.  My typically cinnamon sugar mixture is 1 cup sugar to 1 tsp of cinnamon but feel free to adjust the cinnamon as necessary.

Frying them is pretty straight-forward.  If you have a friend helping you, you can probably get more in the oil faster.  Just make sure you don’t over crowd your fritters and that the oil is at 360 degrees F for each batch.  Too much hotter and you’ll get splattered by the oil and your fritters will still be raw inside.  Too cold and your fritters will soak up oil and get soggy.  One key to preventing yourself from splashing hot oil back on you as you add the fritters is to insert them into the oil before releasing.  It’s kind of like sliding them into the oil (like a straw into a glass of water) rather than throwing them in (like a penny into a wishing well).  I’m terrible with analogies, so if that doesn’t make sense just pretend I never said it.

Here’s the recipe for the apple fritters and the video is below.  Thank you for watching!

Episode 90
February 13, 2012
Tiramisu

When I was in high school, I remember eating a good deal of tiramisu.  I think for me this was because high school was the Age of Coffee where I loved all things coffee and espresso related – particularly of the blended with ice variety.  Of course after working in 2+ barista positions coffee can really wear on you.  I’m more of a tea person now, but my love for tiramisu hasn’t faded.

I think a lot of that has to do with the delicious tiramisu filling which, in this case, is a blend of cream cheese and mascarpone cheese.  In my experience, tiramisu is one of those desserts where each person you ask has a different idea of it should be made – some much more vehement than others.  Can it be made with only mascarpone cheese?  Only cream cheese?  Should I use neufchatel (1/3 less fat cream cheese)?  Should I lighten it with whipped cream, a Swiss meringue, or a Italian meringue?  In the end it is your tiramisu, so customize it anyway you want.

The one ingredient that seems to link all the different variations for the filling is the mascarpone cheese which has a neufchatel consistency but a more velvety texture (rather than creamy).  It seems to be pretty expensive – at least where I live – so feel free to adjust the recipe with more or less cream cheese to fit your budget.

The next two key components of a tiramisu are ladyfingers and espresso.  Ladyfingers

Ready to be baked!

really give body to the tiramisu.  If you’ve never had ladyfingers, imagine spongecake in cookie-form.  Ladyfingers are very easy to make as long as you don’t underbake them like I do in the video (ha!).  The key to making good ladyfingers is to keep in as much volume in them as possible.  This volume comes from the air whipped into the French meringue and the ribbon stage egg yolks.  In order to keep as much air as possible in the batter, you need to be careful not to over fold and deflate your batter.  The great thing about air is that it is free (quite possibly the last thing in life that is truly free at that!) so the more air you whip into your ladyfingers, the more ladyfingers you can make, and the less expensive they become!

Ladyfingers are great because they can be used for a variety of desserts.  If you pipe the batter into a disc and bake it (as I do in the video) you can create cake layers.  If you pipe several fingers in a row you can create a band which you can use to line a cake ring.  I mention in the video that Ada, the woman who gave me the recipe for the pecan tassies, makes an ice cream cake for her son every year using a ladyfinger disc and ladyfinger band to hold the ice cream in place.  Its texture holds up incredibly well even when frozen.

Espresso is then used to soak the ladyfingers to give them extra flavor.  Espresso also contributes to tiramisu’s name which translates to something along the lines of “pick-me-up.”  If you don’t want to buy espresso powder or don’t have access to espresso for any reason you can use a very strong coffee and get a similar result.  This would be a great recipe to help use up leftover coffee.

When you make your tiramisu start with a layer of the ladyfingers lightly soaked with the

I prefer to use layers instead of individual ladyfingers - speeds things up a bit

espresso and then a layer of the tiramisu filling.  Repeat one more time (so you have two layers of each) and then refrigerate for about two hours.  This chilling process allows the filling to set up nice and firm so you can get nice clean slices.  The chilling could be unique to recipes made with cream cheese, since both neufchatel and mascarpone cheese are much softer even when chilled.

Once your tiramisu is ready to be served it needs to be topped off with something.  There are mixed opinions on what exactly that something is but most say cocoa powder or espresso powder.  I like to meet them half way with a 75% cocoa 25% espresso powder blend.  Careful not to sprinkle on too thick of a layer of cocoa or espresso powder as it can give your tiramisu a pasty texture or overly bitter flavor.  Mini chocolate curls or chocolate shavings are commonly used in high production facilities, like grocery stores, since the powdery topping can absorb liquid and become dark and appear unappetizing.

I broke up the tiramisu recipe into the ladyfingers recipe and the tiramisu filling recipe (which includes assembling the tiramisu) so that it would be a little easier to categorize them – ladyfingers as a cookie and the filling as a filling.  Enjoy your videos below – and happy Valentine’s Day!

Episode 89
February 6, 2012
Triple Chocolate Cake

Time for another cake episode!  I have to say this was the first time I made this recipe but I had a great time doing it.  It’s actually pretty easy to make the majority of the cake – the cake itself and the whipped ganache icing.  The tricky part comes in with the chocolate praline sheets.

This cake is another fantastic recipe from the Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum.  A few months back when I was looking for inspiration on new episodes to film I stumbled upon this recipe.  I was a little unsure about it because of the chocolate praline sheets.  I’ve had some experience in school applying chocolate to the side of a cake, but in school the chocolate was meant to be rigid and just wrap around the cake.  Beranbaum’s Triple Chocolate Cake involves chocolate doing graceful dips around the top of the cake.  I am clumsy forgetful person – how would I be able to coax chocolate into being graceful and memorable?  I decided to give it a shot anyway because I thought it would be fun to try and give everybody something different to decorate a cake with instead of always using fondant.

Even though the chocolate genoise cake came out fine I had some issues with its appearance.  As I released the cake from the pans I noticed that there were large flecks and chunks of flour scattered throughout.  Maybe I was just having an off day or maybe because the cake is dark in color and it is more noticeable.  Either way I wasn’t really happy about that.  Considering that there is hardly any flour in the cake and the whole eggs are whipped like crazy anyway, I recommend trying to just whip in the flour instead of folding it in – after whipping up the eggs initially.  Again, there is so little flour in the cake that I doubt it’s going to be a huge issue with either gluten development or ruining the egg’s air cells.  In fact, I would recommend whipping in the cooled melted chocolate too.  I’ve made a little note in the recipe so you have both methods.  If you make this cake and you whip it all together, let me how it works for you.

This recipe also introduces a very easy to make but very satisfying whipped ganache icing.  If you’ve made ganache before you know that it is simply heavy cream boiled and then added to chocolate chips then stirred together until it comes together.  Beranbaum takes it a step further and incorporates the cooled ganache into chilled whipped cream.  It’s very much like chocolate mousse in the way that it behaves and tastes.  This is important to know because as the ganache icing cools it quickly gets harder to use.  This is in contrast to buttercream which always seems to work better when slightly chilled.  If you’re having trouble making it perfectly smooth I wouldn’t worry too much because it’ll be completely covered by the praline sheets.

I’d like to focus the remaining parts of this blog post on the chocolate praline sheets.  As I said earlier, I was a little apprehensive about making a video of my first time working with something I really had so little experience using.  I hope you don’t mind me throwing caution to the wind and doing it anyway.  At the very least, I hope this video inspires you to be adventurous, put yourself out there, and try something unfamiliar.  By the end of applying the sheets I really got the hang of it.  Well… I think so anyway.

Honestly, I think the trickiest part is making the actual sheets.  The chocolate praline sheets are actually two separate components: Praline and chocolate (surprise!)  To make the praline all you really need to do is take toasted hazelnuts, place them on a silpat (or lightly oiled parchment paper), and pour hot caramel on top.  The praline is going to be ground into powder in your food processor so it doesn’t really matter how it looks prior to that.

The chocolate is a little more tricky.  Now if you follow me I’ve talked about tempering chocolate time and time again, and that’s because I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to properly temper chocolate if you’re using real chocolate.  Coating chocolate (also known as candy melts and summer coating) has all the cocoa butter removed and replaced with vegetable oil.  This is done so coating chocolate doesn’t have to be tempered before using.  Real chocolate, cocoa butter and all, needs to be tempered because the melted cocoa butter in the chocolate wants to form into all different kinds of fat crystals.  Left alone and untempered, these crystals form haphazardly and make for a very weak product.  Untempered chocolate takes much longer to set up (if it sets up at all), has a crumbly texture (instead of a nice clean snap), and will get whitish-grayish streaks in it called fat bloom.  There are few things more frustrating than tempering chocolate only to come back the next day to see it is actually out of temper.

Ghirardelli has a very good video on tempering chocolate but I also demonstrate how to temper chocolate in the video.  I’ve actually gotten pretty good at using the vaccination method at home – only took about 2 years…  Before I talk about the vaccination method let me describe the tabling method, which is the method we used in school.  The table method takes your melted chocolate (heated to about 115-120 degrees F for dark chocolate) and places about 1/2 to 2/3 of it on a marble table.  The chocolate is then manipulated with a bench scraper, paint scraper (food safe!), and/or offset spatula.  This movement helps promote uniform fat crystal formation in the cocoa butter while the marble cools the chocolate down quickly.  After it is worked for a while it is then reintroduced into the remaining chocolate and checked for temper.  While space consuming, this is supposed to be the best way to temper chocolate. Also, the table method is usually quick and doesn’t require tempered chocolate to be successful.

The vaccination method, also called seeding method, is much more convenient method for tempering chocolate at home.  With this method, tempered chocolate is chopped up finely.  (In case you’re wondering, chocolate you buy in the store is in temper.)  Anyway, 1/3 of the chocolate gets melted on the stove over a double boiler – once again to about 115-120 degrees F for dark.  After it reaches the proper temperature, the remaining 2/3 of the finely chopped chocolate is reintroduced into the melted chocolate a handful or so at time while being carefully and constantly stirred, but not so much that you beat air into it.  This is called seeding because we’re seeding the desired cocoa butter crystals into the melted chocolate.  This is repeated until the chocolate reaches 89 – 91 degrees F (which is the desired temperature for tempered melted dark chocolate no matter which method you use) and then checked for temper.  While space saving, vaccinating chocolate can take much longer than the table method and sometimes you get chunky pieces left in your chocolate.  You can try to take the chunks out, but you can also warm up your chocolate to 91 degrees F on a double boiler.  Too much higher, and you’ll have to seed it again.  Unlike the table method, it is very difficult to temper chocolate using the seeding method when you don’t have tempered chocolate to use as seed.  I won’t say impossible, because there is probably somebody out there that has, but then again it is called the vaccination/seeding method for a reason.

By the way, when I say check for temper what I mean is I take a piece of parchment paper and dip it slightly in the chocolate.  If it sets up in about 3 minutes at room temperature then it should be in temper.

Once your chocolate is in temper throw in all of the ground praline powder and stir it in until “smooth.”  I say “smooth” because it’ll be lumpy from the praline powder and nuts.  I guess a better phrase would be “completely incorporated.”  Your praline chocolate is ready to use immediately.  Scoop a small amount on a piece of parchment paper, layer another piece of parchment on top, and then roll it out with a rolling pin.  You’ll want it somewhat thin – thinner than cookie dough and pie dough.  For me I rolled it out until it was about as thin as the praline pieces allowed.  Not too much thinner, or it might break easily.  If you’re having trouble, Beranbaum says that her chocolate praline sheets can actually be retempered easily even with all the praline powder in them.  Once rolled out let the sheets set up for a couple hours or overnight.

Applying the sheets can be a bit of a challenge.  It was for me at least.  What you want to do, is trim off the bottom of the praline sheet (so you have a flat bottom to match up with your iced cake) then use the parchment paper as a guide to wrap it around the cake using a little bit of reserved ganache icing as glue.  The praline sheets are supposed to naturally fall over gracefully.  Mine however did not.  They decided to stand perfectly still and straight up.  Beranbaum states that a warm house (80 degrees F or so) helps make the sheets pliable.  So I did that but the sheets were still a little frail and when coaxed (by gentle pushing) snapped apart.  The next thing I tried was warming up the sheets with a hair dryer (Ever so slightly!  Don’t want to knock it out of temper!) but I found they were too pliable and fell over too quickly.  What ended up working best for me in the end was to apply all the sheets then, from about 2-3 feet away, blow hot air on them with a hair dryer.  The gentle blowing pressure helped coax them toward the middle while the slightly heated air warmed them up very slowly so I could pinpoint exactly when I needed to stop applying hot air.  You can see all three of these methods in the video – I quadrupled the speed on the hair drying part because I thought it was all necessary to see but not necessarily in real time. Once the cake is decorated to your heart’s content a touch of powdered sugar helps add a little bit of depth.

Even though the cake didn’t come out perfectly like Beranbaum’s I was still pretty satisfied with the finished product.  I really liked the idea of using the praline sheets to cover the cake instead of fondant – especially since most people peel fondant off the cake and not eat it.  I hope that this video demo helps encourage you to give it a try.  Just give yourself a couple of days to do it so you don’t feel rushed.  Another thing to keep in mind that Beranbaum cannot stress enough is that even if all the sheets shatter, just enjoy the cake for what it is.  It will still look interesting, and the praline sheets taste delicious.  Nobody but you really knows how the cake is actually supposed to look so if you’re having a party just tell everyone that it was the end goal all along!  Accept the praise without guilt – tempering chocolate and applying the sheets are both challenges unto themselves!  I’m looking forward to trying this cake again now that I know the hair dryer works so well.

Here are the recipes for the whipped ganache icing, the chocolate praline sheets, the chocolate genoise, and the directions on how to assemble the Triple Chocolate Cake.  Keep in mind that any of these recipes can be used for any other cake.  I don’t see why you couldn’t ice the chocolate genoise with chocolate swiss buttercream or use the chocolate praline sheets on a vanilla cake.  The videos are below!  Thank you for watching – I hope you enjoy!

Episode 88
January 29, 2012
Biscotti and a Mini Chocolate Showpiece

Is it too early for a Valentine’s Day episode?  Yes?  Well… too bad!  Okay, I’ll be honest.  I didn’t want to release this episode until next week, but my class is making these this coming Wednesday and I wanted to have the video available to them in case they wanted to watch it first or watch it right after.  Either way, I don’t think it’s too early to plan for Valentine’s Day!

You’re probably wondering what biscotti has to do with Valentine’s Day.  Come with me as I walk you down the twisted corridor that is my train of thought.  When the activities director and I were planning the Baking & Pastry Fundamentals course at the Manassas Park Community Center we decided we wanted to do something for Valentine’s Day since the class would end right before it.  I wanted to keep it easy but introduce something interesting and fun.  I know a lot of people think of chocolate and floral candies and chocolate souffle for Valentine’s Day but I usually think of fondue.  Not always warmly though.

My first, and last, experience with making homemade fondue was unfortunate.  I thought it would be romantic and fun to have a cheese fondue for dinner and chocolate fondue for dessert.  I made the cheese sauce with a little bit of wine and it came out okay – I felt the wine was a little overwhelming.  The frustrating part was all the little pieces of food to dip in the cheese fondue.  By the time I had finished preparing the meal we were both really hungry and dipping the food was like a ridiculous diet plan neither of us opted into.  We ended up literally taking the pot of fondue and pouring it nacho-style all over the food.  Classy!

We both very much enjoyed the chocolate fondue and we had fun dipping marshmallows, strawberries, cookies, and cake into the warm ganache.  It was kind of like a chocolate fountain but instead of just melted chocolate it was chocolate fudge.  Ganache is super easy to make.  Just take equal parts by weight chocolate chips and heavy cream, boil the heavy cream on the stove, pour it over the chocolate chips and stir until melted.  For a thinner ganache (good for delicate foods) use more heavy cream.  For the chocolate fondue, keep it in a warming dish like a mini crock pot (Hey! Now you know  how you can use that little crock pot that came with your big crock pot!).  If your ganache ever seizes or gets dry just stir in a little more heavy cream.

Getting back to the class’ topic and my clearly easy to derail train of thought… when I thought of fondue I thought of chocolate fondue and for some reason biscotti came to mind.  That is probably because biscotti is easy to make and is a great shape for dipping.  When I worked at a bakery one of my favorite customers used to tell me her relative got biscotti to “whet her coffee and tea,” which made us both giggle because it was the biscotti that was getting wet.  Anyway, the next thing I thought of when I thought of biscotti was the mini chocolate showpiece we made to display our biscotti in when I was in school.  In a long convoluted way I had designed the session: Valentine’s Day Chocolate Fondue (the holiday) with Biscotti (the actual baked good) and a mini Chocolate Showpiece (the fun and interesting part).

I personally love biscotti and I don’t know why I don’t make it more often.  The ingredients are always on hand and the dough is so easy to customize.  In the episode I divide the dough into two parts and make hazelnut biscotti and rosemary chocolate chip biscotti.  By the end of the episode though, I realized the biscotti should have been half as thick because I could barely put any into the showpiece I made.

Before I get to the showpiece I feel a little obligated to say that biscotti means twice baked.  That’s because after the first time it’s baked (baked all the way through I might add) it is then sliced into pieces and baked again.  The second bake is more like toasting in my opinion but that might be splitting hairs.  I find that if the biscotti are still slightly warm they are easier to nicely cut.

Please don’t think for a second that because I made this little showpiece that I am any good at making giant chocolate sculptures or anything.  I like to keep it simple and functional.  In school another functional chocolate showpiece we made was a chocolate box.  The chocolate box was a simple four sided box made out of chocolate but the lid had an elaborate piped chocolate showpiece on top.  It was a lot of fun to make and it was interesting to see all my classmates’ unique imaginations coming to life.  However, I’m not sure if I could easily replicate that box now after all these years.

This showpiece is much more simple and doesn’t even require piping skills.  All you need is coating chocolate (or tempered chocolate), a small spatula, and round cookie cutters.  Coating chocolate, as I’m sure you’ve heard me mention before, is regular chocolate that has had all the cocoa butter taken out and replaced with vegetable oil.  This is done so that the person using the coating chocolate doesn’t have to worry about tempering the chocolate.  White coating chocolate is often just milk solids and vegetable oil so many times it’s sold under the name Candy Melts.  You can purchase two different colors of coating chocolate or you can buy just a bunch of white.  If you do want to color the white chocolate I strongly recommend using powdered food coloring.  It’s expensive but works very well.  Water or gel based coloring can seize your chocolate, making it impossible to make your showpiece, and oil based can add extra oil to your chocolate.  This could make it even softer.

Once you have your coating chocolate melted and colored then you can begin to make your

Lightly apply a small amount of colored coating chocolate to your parchment paper

showpiece.  First take about 1 – 3 ounces of the colored chocolate and spread it thinly on a 1/4 sheet of parchment paper that has been taped to the table.  Taping your paper holds it in place and prevents it from curling.  Be sure to make thick and thin spots with the colored chocolate.  This will create streaks of color in your showpiece.  Let the colored chocolate set up at least part way – which is right when it turns dull.  By letting it set up you help prevent the colored chocolate from melting into the white chocolate.  This means your colored streaks will be a little more defined.

Once your colored chocolate is set up pour on 6 ounces of melted white coating chocolate.

Spread 6 oz of white coating chocolate on top of the colored chocolate, allow to slightly set up

Remember that with either chocolate you want to only warm it up – not make it crazy hot in the microwave.  If you make it too hot you risk seizing it and at the very least it will ruin the streaks you made with the colored chocolate.  Once you’ve poured on the 6 ounces of melted chocolate take your small spatula and just evenly smooth it out.  Don’t go all the way to the edge – this will help prevent it from getting too thin but also so you have a place to pick up the parchment paper.

Once the white chocolate has set up most of the way you can begin cutting out the pieces you need.  This can be a little tricky because it can be difficult to determine when the chocolate is ready to cut.  If it is too soft the chocolate will not be cleanly cut or it will meld back together.  If it is too hard your cuts will just end up breaking it the chocolate.

If you have the Ateco round cutters this will be much easier to explain.  If you do, think of

Glue the #2 discs on the inside edge of the #12 ring and the outside edge of the #9 ring

the smallest center cutter as #1 and the largest outer cutter as #12.  Take your #12 cutter and cut two discs.  Take your #8 cutter and cut right in the middle of those #12 discs to create a ring.  Do the same thing using your #9 cutter and your #5 cutter.  Then cut a ton of #2 discs out with the remaining chocolate – you need at least 8 good ones.  If you’d like, you can place the chocolate in the fridge to set up strong.  Make sure you tape it down to the sheet pan so the paper doesn’t curl up in the fridge.

For those of you without the Ateco cutters this might get a little confusing but I’ll try to make it simple.  Take the below measurements and replace them in the above instructions.
#12 cutter = 4 7/16″
#8 cutter = 3 3/16″

#9 cutter = 3 1/2″
#5 cutter = 2 3/16″

#2 cutter = 1 3/16″

I tried to be as precise as possible with the cutter measurements.  Unfortunately, they

Use white chocolate as glue, and adhere the #9 ring to the plate

don’t land very cleanly on nice measures.  It is important that they land pretty close in those ranges because of the way we build the showpiece.  If you don’t know if your cutters will work trace them on pieces of paper and practice.  It might not be a perfect model but at least all you’ll waste is a piece of paper.

Once you’ve released your rings and discs place them to the side so they are easy to access.  If you don’t have any leftover melted white chocolate, melt some more.  You’ll need it for glue.  Take the nicer of each ring (the #12 and #9 rings) and place them in front of you so the colored side is underneath.  The next step can get a little tricky.  Take your thicker #2 discs and dip them slightly in the white chocolate.  On the #12 ring, glue the discs along the inner edge of the ring in the 12, 3, 6, and 9 o’clock positions.  On the #9 ring, glue the discs along the outer edge of the ring in the same positions.  It is especially important to get the edges correct especially for the #12 ring.  If they aren’t correct, it won’t match up with the #9 ring when you go to assemble it.  Allow the chocolate glue to set up completely.

On your plate or serving dish glue the disc created by the #5 ring in the center.  Take your

Adhere the #12 ring to the #9 ring, staggering the #2 discs

#9 ring with the #2 discs and place a little glue on the top of each disc using a piping bag, spatula, or tool.  Immediately flip the entire piece over and place it over the #5 ring.  Allow it to set up.  Repeat this with the #12 ring but stagger the discs so they don’t all line up.  Pay attention to how the discs attached to the #12 ring land on the #5 ring.  Allow the white chocolate to set up and you’re done!

Now I know that’s a really lengthy description but hopefully the pictures help – of course you can always watch the video too!  Another way you can decorate the white chocolate for your showpiece is to use something called a chocolate transfer sheet.  Transfer sheets are really pretty designs made with cocoa butter and food coloring.  They are available at baking and pastry supply stores like Fran’s Cake and Candy.  Use the transfer sheets instead of parchment paper and, if you want, skip the step with the colored chocolate.  Transfer sheets work really well with darker chocolate too.

Okay!  That’s a terribly long post but luckily the video is pretty short.  I’ve been working on cutting the videos’ lengths down as best as I can but please keep in mind that some of these videos take me all day to record so I have a lot of clips I need to cut through.  In addition, please realize I want to teach you more than simply how to do it.  I want you to know the whys.  If you know why we do something then it’ll make more sense to you and you’ll remember better.  Plus if something goes wrong, you will be able to identify where you may have made an error.

Here’s the recipe for the biscotti.  It includes amounts for flavor variations.  Be aware that the variations are for the full batch.  If you divide the dough in half or into quarters, do the same thing for each flavoring.  The video is below!  Thank you for watching!

Episode 87
January 22, 2012
Napoleons

Napoleons are popular French patisserie desserts that combines several different recipes together.  Napoleons are also known as mille feuille which translates to 1000 sheets (or layers or leaves – I’ve heard it translated into all those terms).  Making Napoleons 100% from scratch is not for the weak of heart.  It takes nearly all day to make it.  If you’re able to break it up into different days you’ll thank yourself in the end.

The first recipe for napoleons is found in every classic napoleon recipe: the puff pastry.  Puff pastry is not to be confused with pate a choux which is used to make cream puffs and eclairs.  Puff pastry is a laminated dough which means that it is a dough with a layer of butter that has been rolled out over and over again to create many many layers of butter and dough.  The process for making laminated dough is further explained in the techniques pages here. It’s a very long process taking about 1-2 hours to complete (depending on if you count resting time).  Puff pastry dough freezes very well, so once you finish it you can freeze it and save it for another day.

After the puff pastry dough is made it is then rolled out into a sheet.  There are different ways to approach this depending on the size of your sheets pans and the space in your oven.  If you have a large sheet pan and not much room in your oven, you can make one large sheet.  If you have smaller sheet pans but double ovens, you can make 3 smaller sheets.  Before you bake them the dough must be docked (poked with holes using a fork or dough docker) to prevent it from rising too much or unpredictably.  You can also sprinkle on a little granulated sugar for added sweetness and mild caramelization.  The puff pastry goes into the oven at 425 degrees F to promote the puffiness.  I also recommend double panning your sheet pans to prevent them from burning on the bottom.

A baked sheet of puff pastry, before pressing down

After about 25 minutes in the oven, the puff pastry is removed from the heat and is actually pressed down to compress the layers.  It is very important that the puff pastry be baked thoroughly to the core so there is no raw dough in the center of the puff pastry.  In addition, because of the butter’s greasiness if the layers are not fully cooked, they will become soggy.  The layers are squished down with another sheet pan so that they are easier to handle in assembling the napoleons.  Simply take a piece of parchment paper and place it on top of the baked puff pastry and then press it all down with another sheet pan.  Bake the entire product just like this (sheet pan on top and all) for another 8 – 10 minutes.

Once it comes out of the oven at this point there are multiple directions to go.  I’ve made two different style napoleons in my baking career so far.  The first style is the one I learned from school which is the one I demonstrate in the video.  It uses a glazing or poured fondant for decoration on the top.  The second style is one I learned in the grocery store and is significantly easier.  For the second one, you wait until the puff pastry is completely cooled then sprinkle on (using a sieve) a thin layer of powdered sugar and then bake it in a hot oven (about 450 – 500 degrees F) until the powdered sugar caramelizes.  Take care not to allow the puff pastry to burn.  These caramelized layers are removed from the heat and allowed to cool completely.

Once the layers are completely cooled they are then cut to the same size using a sharp knife.  This can be done by measuring but it’s even easier to cut one piece, then using it as a template cut two more pieces.  You need three pieces all together (though some napoleons are made with only two pieces).

At this point you can be creative and use a variety of fillings and glazes.  I used apricot glaze and diplomat cream.  The apricot glaze was used to glaze each and every layer and side.  This helps keep the puff pastry from getting soggy from the diplomat cream or the glazing fondant.  It also helps the toasted almonds stick to the sides.  Diplomat cream is a pastry cream that has been lightened with whipped cream.  I like it more than plain pastry cream because it is much lighter and stretches your pastry cream further.

To assemble the napoleon, take a cut layer of puff pastry, glaze it with apricot glaze, fill it with pastry cream, and then repeat.  The final layer will just get apricot glaze.  If you did the caramelization method (method 2 from the grocery store) you will not need apricot glaze at all.

For the top of traditional napoleons a glazing or poured fondant is used.  This is the same kind of icing that is used to decorate petits fours glace.  Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of requests for a homemade glazing fondant recipe so I decided to ask the baking and pastry forum I belong to for some advice.  I ended up creating a separate video (also attached to this blog post) on how to make the two best recipes.  The recipes were chosen because they were easy and they were most like real glazing fondant.  If you prefer to use commercially produced glazing fondant, the online pastry community is abuzz over Caullet glazing fondant.

Whichever glazing fondant you use, you want to warm it up gently to between 100 – 110 degrees F though keeping it below 100 degrees if best.  You also want to thin out your fondant with a 2:1 ratio of simple syrup.  To make the simple syrup take 2 parts sugar (1#) to 1 part water (8 ounces) and bring them to a boil with a pinch of cream of tartar.  Once it comes to a boil, remove it from the heat and allow to cool.  Sometimes an extra splash or two of water helps get the consistency correct but the simple syrup will get you a nice texture and a nice shine.

Once your glazing fondant is ready, pour a layer of it on top of the napoleon and push it all the way to the edge.  It’s okay if it goes over slightly.  Then taking melted tempered chocolate or melted coating chocolate create the napoleon style decoration on top.  You can view the method in the video or visit the link here on the decorations page for a step-by-step picture tutorial.  After the decoration is finished, press on the toasted almonds along the side (using more apricot glaze if necessary) and you’re finished!

Serving napoleons is a bit of a struggle.  At the grocery store we had a special tool that

Show your guests your finished napoleon. That way if it gets destroyed while it's sliced, at least they saw how it used to look.

allowed us to cut perfect slices but even then diplomat cream oozed out the sides (we would clean it up with bench scraper then wrap them up in plastic sheets to hold them in place).  It helps to refrigerate the napoleon for about an hour or so, but the diplomat cream is still very soft.  Be sure to show your guests your finished napoleon before serving, as it is very likely it will get destroyed in the process.

If there’s anything I realized from making this recipe from scratch by myself it’s that people a long time ago had a ton of free time.  Feel free to take short cuts such as using frozen puff pastry dough.  If there’s anything you get from this episode, I hope it’s an appreciation of how much time and effort goes into this kind of dessert.  Many times we can take for granted how much time and skill it takes to make pastries since all we see is the finished product.  Show your bakers your appreciation with a sincere compliment and send your friends their way to support their business.

Here are the recipes for puff pastry dough, the diplomat cream (use a half batch of the smallest batch), the apricot glaze, and the new glazing/poured fondant recipes.  Once you have those recipes the Napoleon recipe details how to assemble it.  Enjoy the videos below!

More on glazing fondant

As I mentioned I asked a baking forum I belong to about a good solid homemade glazing fondant recipe.  In the glazing fondant video I cover the my two favorites.

The first method comes from Sarah Scott who simply suggested thinning out rolled fondant with a liquid.  This method is perfect for bakers who use premade fondant (like Satin Ice, Wilton, and possibly marshmallow fondant) and have a ton left over.  After the fondant sets up, it is still soft like rolled fondant so it’s not suitable for stacking but it has a nice bite.

The second glazing fondant method or recipe was pointed out to me by Lisa Ellis and is from Sharon Zambito’s website Sharon Sugar Shack.  It is more like a cookie icing but still uses very few readily available ingredients: powdered sugar, whole milk, corn syrup, and extracts.  This method is great for bakers who don’t have access to rolled fondant or need a quick recipe.  I start off with two tablespoons each of whole milk and corn syrup and work my way up from them.  This allows you to be in control of the icing.  I usually end somewhere around 5 1/2 tablespoons each and you want to make sure you’re adding in a tablespoon or so of each as you’re making the icing.  This poured fondant sets up very hard, especially in the fridge, and has a nice shine to it.  It does have a gritty texture because of the powdered sugar.

Thank you to everyone who gave me glazing fondant recipes to try out!