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How to Present Your “Last Hurrah” Peaches of the Season

August 28, 2011 by Georgette 5 Comments

Chocolate Tart with Peach-Flavored Pastry Cream Decorated with Liqueur-Marinated Peaches

I enjoy writing this blog, but I would enjoy much more if you would send me requests. For instance: would you like to read about how to work with chocolates and recipes using chocolates, rather then what I wrote here? It takes me the same time to write about things that you are interested to read or learn about as compared to what I think you may be interested to learn.

I love to teach, coach and educate. Why not take advantage of it?

I cannot get enough of the summer fruits. I always buy a ton of them when I am going to the market, because I feel as if they are conversing with me: “Take me. Take me! You will not regret it!” And you know what, they are right. Even dough when I get home, I do not know what to do with them. If I want to place all the fruits that I purchased during a single visit, into the refrigerator, I would need to take out everything else and leave just the fruits.

Since that is not possible, I also create myself a problem, because I refuse to throw out food (this feeling of refusing to throw out food is a remnant from my childhood, when we had periods when it was nearly impossible to get any food and we went to bed hungry. The truth of the matter is that my parents gave us, kids, whatever they were able to get, and they went to sleep hungry most of the nights – but this is another story for another time), so I have lots of jams, fruits preserved in alcohol, or just frozen fruits in a plastic bags, ready to be used in the entire winter.

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Filed Under: Baking, Recipes, tarts and pies, Tips, Tutorials Tagged With: mascarpone mousse, pastry cream, peach liqueur, Peach tart, tips

The Secrets of Successful Pate a Choux, Part I.

August 16, 2011 by Georgette 10 Comments

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If you’ve ever eaten éclairs, cream puffs, gougeres (cheese puffs), or beignets (fritters), you’ve eaten pâte à choux (paht-ah-shoo). It means “cabbage paste” in French.

This twice-cooked paste is probably the most versatile dough used in cooking and pastry making. Pâte à choux can be savory or sweet. It can be baked, poached, or fried. It can be piped into various shapes, including my favorite, swans.

A lot of the appeal in making pâte à choux comes from the ease with which you can make a great variety of elegant pastries with it, including Gateau Saint-Honoré, or Croquembouches, stacks of profiteroles glued together with caramel. And what kid wouldn’t love to make pets de nonne (nun’s farts)?

It achieves its puff not through leavening but through steam deriving from its high moisture content, like popovers. The cavities that result can conveniently be filled with anything from chicken salad to chocolate mousse, while the exterior remains crisp.

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Filed Under: Cakes, How to, Recipes, Tips, Tutorials Tagged With: Chantilly cream, how to.., Pate a choux, recipe, ring cake, tips

Ten Tips to Become a Better Baker

April 12, 2011 by Georgette Leave a Comment

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Rigo Jancsi: The cake is named after Rigo Jancsi, a Hungarian gypsy violinist, who helped create it for the woman he loved!

There are so many books about baking, bakers, cakes, desserts, chocolates, etc., that it made me wonder how all these books are doing so well in a crowded market? How a publisher can accept to publish another baking book, unless the author accepts a sure failure?

But here we are in 2011 with more food bloggers getting ready to publish their book (e.g. Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, in 2012), celebrities are having more fun writing cookbooks then acting (Suzanne Somers, Gwyneth Paltrow), and Joanne Chang, the owner of Flour Bakery in Boston, sold 20,000 copies of her new book before she could even start her book signing tour.

How can it be? Well, for one, there are so many of us baking enthusiasts who rather buy more bookshelves than miss a new book about baking. The truth of the matter is that it is one of the better ways to enhance our knowledge and understanding in baking and learn new techniques and creative recipes.

Pound Cake with Chocolate Ganache Frosting

Another great source to satisfy our thirst for understanding the culture of baking is the Internet, particularly the many blogs that appear to cover foods from appetizers to after dinner drinks and more. Chocolates & Figs is one these blogs, where we aspire to be your resource with problem solving and making sure that you are up-to-date in the baking world. Our goal is assisting you to cut the events when your baking product is less than perfect. We are aiming to reinforce your confidence in baking (and in creating confections) and provide you with the necessary tools to be successful all the time, not only some of the time.