Month: April 2017

How to use Easter eggs

I hope you had a great Easter.  The next question is what to do with all these Easter eggs? Here are some ideas on how to use Easter eggs.  The outcome result will be directly proportional to the quality of the chocolate of your eggs.  Because Easter eggs are often done with very sweet chocolate, I will advise you to reduce the sugar quantities in each recipe.

Three ideas to use your Easter eggs:

  1. Use the easter eggs in choc chip cookies.  You can use my great choc chip cookie recipe.  You will need to reduce the sugar amount probably 50 g less for each type, simply because Easter eggs are usually very high in sugar.
  2. Melt the chocolates and use them in a simple chocolate cake.  One of the easier recipe, made so many times as a child and now if the Queen of Sheba Cake (Reine de Saba). Again here, reduce the sugar by a third.  double the base recipe given and use a round cake tin for an afternoon tea cake.
  3. Easter eggs go around cake! This is a plain cake in which we insert two circles of Easter eggs.  The fun bit is that those eggs often fall in the cake and cannot be seen once the cake is cooked. This is the recipe I am sharing below.

Easter eggs go around cake:

I made this one this weekend for a bunch of children who were spending the afternoon with us.  One of the child helped me making the cake.  She loved placing the eggs around.  There was no left overs!

how to use easter eggs

Ingredients:
  • 4 large eggs
  • 240 g of butter, melted
  • 180 g of caster sugar
  • 240 g of flour
  • 1.5 tspn of baking powder
  • Easter eggs (about 20)
Method:
  1. Preheat the oven at 180°C.
  2. Butter the bottom and sides of a large round tin, line the bottom with baking paper.
  3. Place the eggs and sugar together and beat (using a large whisk or a food mixer) until light and fluffy.how to use easter eggs
  4. Add the butter slowly mixing.  Then add the flour and baking powder together and mix with a  wooden spoon.
  5. Transfer the batter to the tin, unwrap the chocolate eggs and place in two circles or in a pattern of your choice.
  6. Bake until firm at the touch or golden brown.

 

Homemade Easter Eggs!

Spare time this weekend? What about homemade Easter eggs?

eggs chocolate

I tried this last weekend with my daughters.  This is a lot of fun, and yes, the children do tend to eat a fair bit of the chocolate in the process.  I used couverture dark chocolate, couverture milk chocolate and couverture white chocolate.  Now if you do not have the couverture chocolate, use a good quality one from the supermarket.  For white chocolate, it will not change anything because white chocolate is purely cocoa butter (and sugar).  What is important to ensure the little eggs and bigger eggs too come off the moulds in one piece and all shiny, is to temper the chocolate. You do need a special thermometer with a range at least between 25 and 55°C.  Those are easy to find in any cooking shop. And since you are going to that shop, get a few moulds for chocolates!  For small pieces, silicone or plastic moulds are fine, for larger pieces, I prefer the plastic ones, they are easier to use when comes the time to pop out the piece from the mould.

Tempering the chocolate is a three stages process, the chocolate needs to be melted slowly (ideally on a bain marie), then cooled down to about 26-27°C.  For that stage, there are a few approaches.  Finally, the chocolate is slightly warmed up to 31-32°C which makes it easier to work with (a little more runny).

The cooling down of the chocolate (step 2) can be done by:

  1. Waiting until the chocolate cools down mixing from time to time.  Pretty straight forward but the longest in term of time.
  2. Adding to the melted chocolate some finely cut pieces of the same chocolate. This exchange of energy will make your mix cool down much quicker. Keep mixing until the added pieces are fully melted.
  3. pouring the chocolate on a marble top, spreading and gathering it with a flat spatula.  You may have seen that method on TV cooking shows.  Go for it if you want to try it, I can’t tell you much about it.
eggs chocolate
Measuring the temperature during the tempering process

Making the chocolates

For the black ones, we actually make a salted caramel chocolate truffle preparation to use a filling (at least the day before).  You can choose a plain chocolate truffle if you are not fan of the salted caramel one.

For the little pieces:

Now is the time to use your little moulds, if you want to have them hollow for filling latter, pour tempered chocolate over the mould, distribute to each print, it must be full. Then place yourself over the bowl of chocolate and pour back the excess. Use a large knive to clean the top surface and place to cool down  in the fridge.  Once they are hard, you can do the filling.

If you want full eggs (or other shape), keep the print full, clean the top surface and let to cool down and harden (again quicker in the fridge).  You can choose to mix up colours or to have a little of another chocolate for a feature part of the item, as is the case on the flowers we made.

eggs chocolateTo attach two halves together, heat up a baking sheet (not too hot). Place each half on it to melt the edges a little. If you are filling the eggs with a truffle, fill them ensuring they do not overflow.  Then stick the two halves together!

 

 

 

 

Tips: try to keep clean hands to avoid leaving traces on the tempered chocolate

Tips: White chocolate, then milk chocolate will harden much quicker than dark chocolate. Tis is directly related to the proportion of cocoa butter in the chocolate. 

Making larger pieces

This can get a little tricky.  The key is to make sure the thickness of the chocolate is sufficient in the fragile parts: the edges, the collars of the bunny, ears of the bunny , etc.

Pour the chocolate, remove the excess after 2 minutes. Cool down (quicker in the fridge). When solidified repeat and place face down on a baking paper sheet.  If you judge that the edges are too thin, use a kitchen brush to add chocolate along the edges. Cool down completely.  The shapes will actually come undone from the mould on their own, this can take overnight.  Alternatively, when you see it has solidified, you can pull out opposite sides of the moulds to check if the form is ready to come out.  Then you just need to assemble by melting the edges of both pieces on a warm baking sheet and joining together.

HAPPY EASTER !

eggs chocolate eggs chocolate eggs chocolate eggs chocolate eggs chocolate eggs chocolate

 

The perfect season for the sugar tarte!

This is the perfect season for the sugar tarte or maybe just an excuse to do it as really it can be done and remains delicious all year round.

I think I promised this recipe a long while ago, and I spoke about it in my rhubarb post.  It is a specialty from the northern part of France and from Belgium.  For me, this tarte au sucre, as I know it, means the smell of the fresh yeast which had to be mixed up with a little milk, then the touch of the soft dough when spread in the tin and of course the final taste of it!

If you are wondering who are the biggest fan of it, no hesitation: kids! That said grownups also love it.

La tarte au sucre, the concept:

A simple yeasted dough with a topping of soft brown sugar and cream.

sugar tarte

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Want to make it? Yes!

Ingredients:

For the dough

  • 200 g of plain flour
  • 100 g of butter
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tbsp of milk
  • 1 tbsp of caster sugar
  • 10 g of fresh yeast (or 4 of dry yeast)
  • 1 pinch of salt (omit if using salted butter)

For the toping:

  • 125 g of soft brown sugar
  • 1 dL (100 mL) of cream
Method:
  1. In a large bowl, place the flour in the bowl and with a spoon, make a well (a hole in the middle of the flour in which you will place all the other ingredients).
  2. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk.
  3. Add in the well, the yeast, butter, caster sugar, egg and salt.
  4. Mix until you obtain a nice dough.
  5. Transfer into a large bowl, cover with a clean tea-towel and allow to rise in a warm corner until almost double.
  6. Preheat the oven on 180°C.
  7. Butter and flour your tarte tin. Transfer the dough and using the palm of your hand, spread it gently making a little edge.  in the centre spread the soft brown sugar, then randomly pour the cream.
  8. Bake until the edges are golden brown.
  9. Eat warm or cold (do not place in the fridge).