The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

I have a huge craving for "puffs" (as how we call these in Taiwan) ever since I arrived at Chile, the only place that has them is Le Petit Patisserie on Av. Vitacura. Never thought I'll be making them myself but YEY for Daring Kitchen and Cat for giving me the "need" to try it. 

The original recipe can be found  here.

This recipe has three major components, the choux (puff), the crème patissiere (cream filling), and the glaze used for mounting or decoration. I followed the recipe of all three components as is, except that I made orange-vanilla cream cheese filling as I wanted to chill them and make a choux-cheese-cake montée.
 

Orange Vanilla Cream Cheese Filling

2 cup (225 ml.) whole milk
2 Tbsp. cornstarch

12 Tbsp. (100 g.) sugar
2 large egg
4 large egg yolks
4 Tbsp. (60 g.) unsalted butter
2 Tsp. Vanilla

1 stick of cream cheese (8oz or 225 g.)

1 Tbsp. Orange zest (I used orange zest wine I made last week)

1. Dissolve cornstarch in ¼ cup of milk.
2. Combine the remaining milk 3/4 with the sugar in a saucepan; bring to boil; remove from heat.

3. Beat the whole egg and cream cheese, then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture.
4. Pour 1/3 of boiling milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook.

5. Return the remaining milk to boil (add the orange zest now unless you have it in liquid form).
6. Pour in the entire hot egg mixture in a stream, continuing whisking.

7. Continue whisking (this is important – you do not want the eggs to solidify/cook) until the cream thickens and comes to a boil.
8. Remove from heat and beat in the butter, orange wine and vanilla. 

Do not refrigerate the chesse cream until it is filled in the choux.

Pate a Choux (Yield: about 28)

¾ cup (175 ml.) water
6 Tbsp. (85 g.) unsalted butter
¼ Tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup (125 g.) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

Pre-heat oven to 425◦F/220◦C degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Preparing batter:
1. Combine water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally for 1 min.

2. Remove from heat and sift in the flour, stirring to combine completely.

3. Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly until the batter dries slightly and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.

4. Add in an egg at a time, stirr until the egg is well absorbed and then add in the next egg. The dough should have a shinny appearance. Repeat until all 4 eggs are in.

Piping:

1. Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large open tip (I piped directly from the bag opening without a tip). 

2. Pipe choux about 1 inch-part in the baking sheets. Choux should be about 1 inch high about 1 inch wide.

3. Using a clean finger dipped in hot water, gently press down on any tips that have formed on the top of choux when piping. You want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on top.

If you dont have  a pastry bag, as I didn't you may try to scoop it and then smooth the tips. 

option: Brush tops with egg wash (1 egg lightly beaten with pinch of salt).

Baking:
1. Bake the choux at 425◦F/220◦C degrees until well-puffed and turning lightly golden in color, about 10 minutes.
2. Lower the temperature to 350◦F/180◦C degrees and continue baking until well-colored and dry, about 20 minutes more. Remove to a rack and cool.

I baked them in 2 different sizes for better assembly.

Filling:
When you are ready to assemble your piece montée, using a plain pastry tip, pierce the bottom of each choux. Fill the choux with pastry cream using either the same tip or a star tip, and place on a paper-lined sheet. Filled choux can now be refrigerated for 1hr so that the cheese filling hardens.

And now you may decorate it with the Caramel Glaze, also it is used for sticking the choux together. I think the traditional way is to spin it around the final "cone" but since my husband is a kindda almost has diabetes so I try to cut low on sugar or use substitutes whenever possible.

Hard Caramel Glaze:
1 cup (225 g.) sugar
½ teaspoon lemon juice

Combine and cook until brown. Use immediately before it cools off and hardens.

And it tastes soooo good!!! The orange zing gave it the "light" and happy tone. I strongly suggest anyone who's not a huge fan of "milky cream taste" to try this.

I think I might even use the left over puffs and try something salty for tomorrow, perhaps smoked salmon with cream cheese (again?). LOL

Orange-wine + Simple scones

昨天我家老公請了一天假 在家陪我,我們中午去買了halogen floor lamp 300Watts, I know, halogen is so 20 years ago, BUT, couldn't find a worthy replacement. And now, finally, some light in our living room! YEY~~

TODAY, very good mood! ^-^
把前天的Spinach salmon tarta 吃掉後 (damn! should've taken some picture of it, it was good... a layer of spinach+egg+cheese blend, a layer of smoke salmon and then another layer of the spinach blend), I've decided to bake some scones.


I've tried the "World's Best Scones! From Scotland to the Savoy to the U.S." and no, it was not the world's best scones at all, it was... okay... a bit on the dry side. So! today I am baking the "Simple Scones".



Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, frozen
• 1/2 cup raisins (or dried currants)
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 large egg

Very simple indeed, mix all the dries together then finger blend in butter (they always recommend freezing it and then grate it, but I always just put it in the microwave for 30sec and it's superb soft). Slowly blend in the sourcream+egg mix. Voila! I doubled the recipe so:

This is ALOT better than the world's best! their main difference is that this one contains egg, and the other uses the egg as "brush on top" glaze and uses milk instead.

After baking these pretty scones, it's my daily orange time (我每天吃4~6顆 oranges/day). We buy those super large oranges with extremly thick skin. These oranges are no good for juicing but great for bitting. I have always wanted to do something with their zest (candied? too sweet...) So, after we bought this bottle of too sweet whitewine (not icewine, but too sweet still), I've decided to try something... pretty :P

Let's wait and see how it turns after a week! I guess I could always use it as cooking wine or for baking sweets, ^-^

這是從我家客廳看出去的景色,  一片厚重的雲covering the mountains a couple of days ago.
Oh, by the way, 昨天出門, we saw most of the mountains are covered by snow already! yeppy~

The Daring Cook's May Challange: Chicken Enchiladas

Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.  Or you may take a look at many member's finish products and the recipe that was given to us in detail here.

I was sooo excited at seeing this challange the first day it was out, first of all, it's my first daring cook's challange, 2nd, I love mexican food, 3rd We love spice and last... I have some frozen tortillas not knowing what to do with, had too many tacos since I finally came back to South America (always had them during ACA's camp).

The challange was about roasting the peppers and making your own sauce. For the sauce I used:
4 Japalenos Chili
6 of the most common chili here
1 cup of phylasis Cape Gooseberries (the original recipe called for tomatillos, but couldn't find them here)
1 limon's juice
1 large chopped tomato
1 large minced onion
1 clove minced garlic
salt, pepper, perejil to taste
1 cup of chicken broth
1 tbsp cornstarch + 2 tbsp water

1. After baking and peeling/deseeding the chilis and the phylasis, chop them up.
2. Heat up sauten with 1 tsp of grapeseed oil and put all the sauce ingredient's in. Cook til boil as most of the ingredients gives off water (around 10min).
3. Add chicken broth and cooked in medium heat for another 10min, season it with the salt, pepper and perejil.
4. Finally thicken it with the cornstarch water, stir and bring to boil. Done!

Chicken:
In a baking pan, lay out 2 pcs chicken breast cut in large-long strips (around 5 strips/ breast). Season the chicken breast with 2 minced garlic cloves, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp veg oil, 1 tbsp corn starch. Bake for 15min at 210 Celcius.

Now the FUN STACKING (as I used my 2 left over flour tortillas AND DORITOS' Tostitos, the traditional type with no cheese).

You should have:
2 cup hot sause
2 pan fried tortillas
10pcs Doritos (if you dont want Doritos, you may use another tortilla as I wanted some corn taste)
1/2 cup shredded Parmigiano and 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella tossed together
Baked chicken


1. In a baking dish ladle a thin layer of sauce. (I used a 8x8 in glass dish)
2. Lay 1 tortilla in the dish and ladle another 2/3 cup (4 ounces/112 grams) of sauce over the tortilla.
3. Divide half the chicken among the first layer of tortilla, top with another 2/3 cup of sauce and 1/3 of the grated cheese.
4. Stack now with the Doritos, top with the rest of the chicken, more sauce and another third of the cheese.
5. Finish with the third tortilla, topped with the remaining sauce and cheese.
6. Bake until the sauce has thickened and the cheese melted, about 20 minutes. Let rest for 5-10 minutes.
7. Ready to serve HOT

The picture looked kindda dry cus it's taken after I refrigerated it, was making it for my DH's microwave lunch box for the next day, so. ^-^ He loved it, except it's too spicy for him, but was okay for me! hahaha~~~ He called me and said: "It started out wonderful, but the further I ate, I just wanted to grab something to dip it in with."

I am adding this to one of my monthly menus ^-^ except maybe use less spicy chili. LOVE THIS CHALLANGE!

Semana Santa, Tren del Vino (4/15)

So, for Semana Santa, we went to el Tren Del Vino (wine train), which sounded like an exclusive train ride with all sort of wine tasting! YUMMY!!!!!

My 老公 does not drink much, but it's nice just to go out of the city. Here's our first stop:

Now this is a weird sign I found outside the vineyard, Zona de Seguridad (Security Zone) With a smily fish?!!! what warning should it give to those who doesn't read their language? humm

 The train that we took

看到旁邊身材姣好屁股翹穿得少少的外國人 就知道你到了南美拉~~ :P

God I love this, it reminded me of how there's always some guy coming up on the bus back in Paraguay with a guitar and sings all sorta folksongs.