Tag: easter

Easter 2020. Pear and no chocolate overdose!

Easter 2020 and pear. And chocolate of course.  Did you manage Easter without a chocolate overdose?

Not to worry, there was chocolate involved in our household.  We made an Easter bunny, two large Easter eggs and a myriad of small eggs.  Tempering chocolate is a great introduction for children to chemistry. Very messy though!

Poached autumn pear and its zabaglione mousse

This Easter 2020, for the meals I aimed at using some beautiful autumn ingredients I had gathered (in the shops considering we can’t travel): chestnuts, mushrooms, beans, a nice joint of lamb, different types of pears.  What to do? Slowly this idea came up.  Pear was going to be the queen of Easter 2020.  I ended up poaching some pears in a mix of squeezed orange juice and spices.  I was not going to discard the poaching liquid! The poaching liquid was the basis for a zabaglione mousse.  The zabaglione was delicious warm, as a  mousse, it has a great texture and works well with the poached pear.  I  prefered it warm butone of my kids loves it as a cold mousse, so that comes down to personal preferences.

poached pear poached pear in zabaglione

Other pear recipes

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I cook a lot with pears at the moment, obviously peak season. Check out these recipes that may inspire you.

Pear tarte tatin – works for pear and apple. The trick is to cook the fruits in a very buttery water bath before making the pie. The method behind the recipe comes from a reknown French pastry chef, Christophe Michalak.  PS- you can find real butter puff pastry in Asutralian supermarkets now!

Pear and chocolate flan – a rapid and very easy recipe. It is a crowd lover and can be used to make use of those pears about to go off.

A bit more elaborate, this pear and chocolate tarte is a winner and always makes an impression.  You will need to make a shorcrust pastry. It is a great dessert to finish off a diner party! – the photo I have is not exceptional, a good excuse to do it soon!

I like this more conventional pear and almond tarte.

Last year, I made this chocolate and standing pear cake. It was pretty good. I will put it back on my list for this month.

My last idea, the very simple Poire Belle Helene, one of my favourite classic.  Here with a little chocolate twist.

I can’t  believe I was about to forget the good old simple rural pear tarte.  it is the same recipe as the classic apple tarte or pretty much.  The evening classic of many families.  I grew up with those!

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

 

Chocolate truffles

This recipe makes about 50 truffles.  The name refers to the likeness to the highly prized truffles grown in the earth and used in refined cooking. Those chocolate truffles are easy to make and just delicious. They keep for a couple of weeks. Make sure you use a good quality chocolate,

Ingredients:
  • 330 g of dark chocolate 70% cocoa
  • 25 cl (250 ml) of cream
  • 50 g of good quality soft butter (real butter please, no substitute here)
  • Cocoa for rolling (I like using dutch cocoa)
Method
  1. Cut the chocolate in small pieces with a large knife, place in a bowl.
  2. Boil the cream in a saucepan
  3. Pour the cream on top of the chocolate, cover for one minute then mix well until all the chocolate is melted.
  4. Add the butter, mix well.  Place in a shallow container and refrigerate for 2 hours minimum until firm.
  5. When ready to shape the truffles, put a tablespoon of cocoa in a soup plate or large bottom bowl.  With a teaspoon, scoop out the equivalent of a macadamia nut (for those who don’t know macadamia, it is between a walnut and an hazelnut). Roll in your hands to form a ball, then place in the cocoa and move the bowl around or roll the truffles with your finger tips.
  6. Transfer to a serving plate or storage container.

This recipe of truffles does not have eggs, it will keep in the fridge for over a week.  You may find they disappear before!

Tip: If you are using couverture chocolate, you need to be a bit more careful when doing the ganache to prevent splitting when adding the butter. you may want to melt 2/3 of the chocolate first, then the next 1/3 to the mix.  If the ganache splits, warm it up slowly mixing until it comes back together.

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