Madeleines are one of my favourite things to bake. They're fantastically easy, fill the kitchen with a gorgeous aroma, and are absolutely delicious. If you don't inhale the whole batch immediately, they freeze very well too. Armed with that knowledge, I made 2 batches this week, and froze them, ready for Mum's birthday party. I'll defrost them the night before, arrange them on a platter and whip them out after the savouries are done and dusted.

By the way, I've seen packets of 6-8 madeleines at gourmet supermarkets around town, selling for $10. TEN DOLLARS!!!!!!! How could you justify spending that much on something so simple? They aren't difficult to make like macarons, or full of expensive couverture chocolate like brownies. I admit that the tins are a speciality item, but I got my Baker's Secret non-stick madeleine tray for less than $10 at Myer, and it's lasted for years. I also think these would be worth baking if you just had a patty-pan or mini-muffin tray - they'd taste the same, and I often saw round "madeleines" at bakeries in Japan. However, being an avid madeleine-baker myself, I actually own 3 trays - one non-stick tray with large indentations, one tray for mini-madeleines, and a silicon tray I picked up at Kappabashi Kitchen Town.

Unless I'm experimenting with a new flavour, I'll always use the Roux Brothers' recipe for madeleines au miel (honey madeleines), because it is the easiest, and the best.

No machinery is required. You just beat eggs and sugar with a spatula (don't be too energetic about it), and fold in flour, baking powder, vanilla extract, melted butter and honey. Let the batter sit for 30 minutes, and spoon into your madeleine trays.


Full size madeleines only take 8~10 minutes, and the mini ones (see below) take just 5~6.

I always thought that the patterned side was supposed to be the top, but in the Roux Brothers' book, they display them with the domed-side uppermost.

This week was the first time I tried out the silicon tray. I didn't have enough batter to fill the whole thing, so I just filled what I could, and poured water into the remaining indentations. I read somewhere that that prevents the madeleines from burning.

As you can see in the photos (above and below), the batter didn't spread out as much in these ones, and they didn't brown as evenly. They seemed to brown mainly where they came into contact with the metal sheet that the silicon tray had been resting upon. I think I prefer the shape of the silicon mould though; it's deeper and a bit more shell-like.


Packed away.

Incidentally, I am totally obsessed with these Decor Tellfresh containers and labels. I've been using their 1 litre rectangular containers for months now, mainly to store soup and home-made ice-cream. You do not want to know how many I bought last week when they were half price at Safeway. (It's not a habit, it's cool....)

1. Ricotta and Chive Choux Puffs


More choux pastry! These little savoury choux puffs were inspired by a recipe posted on Foodbeam on Wednesday. Perfect timing! You add a mixture of ricotta and chives to a basic choux pastry recipe. Fanny deep-fries hers, which look incredibly delicious and crispy, but for the purposes of party planning, I wanted to see if oven-baking would work. In the above photo, they look great, but they weren't crispy, and deflated pretty much instantly. My mum said it was because the batter must have been too wet.

Even though they didn't look great, the upside is that they tasted good, especially sprinkled with generous amounts of good salt. I've frozen the remaining deflated puffs, and will probably bring them out to go with soup or another gravy-rich meal.

I'm going to have a go of some simpler gruyère gougères this week. They can be kept for 3 days in an airtight container, and only contain grated cheese rather than a large amount of deflating ricotta.


2. Festive Fusilli


This pasta salad is my cheap trial-run version of Nigella's festive fusilli, from Nigella Express. In the original recipe, you mix together vodka-steeped sun-dried tomatoes with cooked pasta and mascarpone. Finally, you sprinkle parmesan cheese and parsley over the top. For my trial, I greatly decreased quantities and replaced mascarpone with cream cheese. You see, I'm more likely to eat leftover cream cheese (on toast or whatever), whereas a remaining half-tub mascarpone is likely to grow mould and go feral in my fridge.

On my initial taste, I found it a bit bland, but after the first few mouthfuls it became addictive. Very nice at a warmish room temperature. The next day the dressing had congealed unattractively, but I think this wouldn't have happened with mascarpone instead of budget cream cheese. I think it will make a good, filling addition to the buffet. Of course, I'm not going to call it Festive Fusili, but will rename it "pasta salad with mascarpone and vodka dressing". Much more descriptive. And I'll serve it at room temperature!


3. Cheese Stars

Cheese stars rock! (Remember?). For ease, I'm making them in rounds instead of stars. I made up a quadruple batch of dough, wrapped it well and stashed it in the freezer. Later on in the week, I'll slice and bake them! These are going to be nibbles with drinks.


4. Coq au Riesling


I want something warm and substantial for the hungry hordes once the canapés are done. If we're standing around, we'll need an easy-to-eat stew or hot-pot, preferably boneless. This is where Nigella's coq au riesling comes in. From Nigella Express, it's very, very simple. It's just a matter of cooking together leeks, boneless and skinless chicken thighs, mushrooms and bacon in riesling for about 40 minutes. Ta-dah! I made a trial half-batch, and thought it was delicious. In fact, I found it similar to many of the long-simmered, preparation-intensive stews from How to Eat. The only problem is that it looks quite unattractive... even a good scattering of parsley couldn't disguise that murky grey colour. I'll be considering other stews over the next week, but may very well come back to this one.

With all that croquembouche talk, I forgot to show you what they looked like on the inside!



And an illustration of good crackly caramel, vs hard-ass-break-your-mouth-glue-caramel:

Good caramel on the top, bad caramel on the bottom.

More test runs coming up....!

My first homemade pissaladière

When we started our planning last week, and I realised we had a definite French theme to the desserts, I started looking through my collection of cookbooks for appropriate snacky finger food. The first recipe that caught my eye was Tyler Florence's caramelized onion toast, in Tyler's Ultimate. In effect, it's a simplified version of pissaladière. Instead of pastry or bread dough, he uses a sliced baguette as a base for the caramelised onions (although he'd say carrrr-melized), anchovies and olives.

Later that night, I was chatting with my fabulous Francophile foodie friend Clarice. When I told her that I was thinking of making pissaladière for the party, she responded with an enthusiastic, "OMG YUM pissaladière!!!!! Ina's recipe is amazing!!!!!!!!!" Well! That was all the encouragement I needed! The recipe is available online, here.

The next day when I went shopping for the ingredients, I happened to see that pissaladière is this month's featured "classic dish" in Gourmet Traveller. This reassured me that I am very much on the pulse of current culinary trends. (I know, how could I have slept at night otherwise?)


1. The Onions

A shitload of onions are sliced thinly (you'll need a good knife, or a mandolin), and then sautéed in olive oil with garlic and thyme until nice and soft and sweet.



2. The Bread Dough

I can categorically say that I have never had as great a success with yeasted dough as I had with this one. Mix and knead (with a dough hook), and that was all there was to it.
It didn't seem to rise that much (it was freezing that day!), but the dough was wonderfully soft and elastic, and stretched out easily to fit my baking sheet.


3. The topping

You should be more generous with the topping than I was. I couldn't get a criss-cross (will make you jump) pattern happening with the anchovies, as I only had a small jar. I also had to spread the onions more thinly than is desirable because I decided at the last minute to test the recipe on bread dough, and on puff pastry.


Bake it at a very high heat for 15 minutes, and Bob's your oncle.


The Verdict:
- They were très delicieux, but a bit too salty for our taste. I think that this is because I got the anchovies from the bottom of the jar, covered in the oil and salt of their departed brothers. I'll buy a new jar for next time, and give the anchovies a little soak in water first.
- Puff pastry was good, but only hot out of the oven. This makes things difficult for timing purposes. It also crumbles everywhere, which is not a sexy look for people or carpets.
- Ina's bread dough rocks. It was nice and crispy, and the slightly sweet taste from the honey in the dough was great. As a bonus, the bread-pissaladière is edible at room temperature too. I'm making Ina's version!
- I'll probably do 4 loaves (freezing the dough, making the topping in advance, and assembling and baking them on the day). I'll bake 2 at a time, cut them when they come out and pass them around.

I spent 5 hours on Monday doing a practice mini-Croquembouche as a trial run for my mother's birthday cake.



You're making her a croq-em-what now?

Croquembouche is the traditional cake for French weddings and christenings and is made of a conical tower of choux puffs filled with crème pâtissière, glued together and glazed with crunchy caramel. The name means "crunch in the mouth". The French name for the Cookie Monster (as seen on my blog header) is "Croque Croque", don't you know.


Ok, I get it. Why on earth are you making it?

I've never made a croquembouche before, and in fact, when I was a kid and we went to family dinners or parties, I'd always be disappointed if the dessert turned out to be a croquembouche. I'd always be hanging out for a something decadent, rich and chocolatey. Black forest cake, fondues, chocolate mud cake, that sort of thing.

However, I think that a croquembouche will be completely appropriate, if I can pull it off.

They look impressive, functioning as decoration AND delectation. The majority of guests will be my mum's friends and family - Malaysians love choux balls and crème pâtissière. (We just call them cream puffs back home). I think that after a big night of eating and drinking, most people will only want something small and sweet to signal an end to the eating. Furthermore, croquembouches are ridiculously expensive at patisseries, so being able to make my own will be a good skill to have. At one particular cake shop, I saw a sign for their croquembouche: "Price on application. We recommend 2 balls per person". HAH! How could I not make a cake with such ripe opportunity for innuendo?


That's a lot of balls. What recipe are you using?

I started off with a long series of back-and-forth emails between myself and my friend Lisa, an experienced croquembouchière (not a real word), for advice. After that invaluable advice, and much googling, I decided to use the Roux Brothers' classic recipe, but do half classique, half chocolat, and try to get a funky spiral effect happening.

However, I don't think that the specific recipe is that important. Choux pastry and crème pâtissière and caramel are staples of French pâtisserie, widely available in cookbooks or online. Rather, the assembly and presentation of a croquembouche are the deal breakers.


Enough talk. Show me some photos!

1. The Choux Puffs


Choux pastry itself is easy enough to make, but I found the piping a bit of a challenge. See those weird nipply shapes in the centre of the above photos? Oh dear. I smoothed them out with a wet spoon to get a round shape. Not perfect, obviously, but better. For baking, the Roux Bros' recipe said to keep the oven door ajar after the first 5 minutes. It seemed like a waste of energy (the oven's, not mine), but they turned out nicely in the end. Does anyone know why you'd need to keep the oven ajar? I have to say, it felt like a huge accomplishment pulling my own tray of choux puffs out of the oven. They smell delicious, and look very cute. I had to break one open to see what they were like on the inside. Aah! They're hollow on the inside so you can fill them with cream!


2. The Crème:

Making crème pâtissière is similar to making what I would call a regular custard (a crème anglaise, appropriately enough). For regular custard, you'd beat egg yolks and sugar, pour hot milk over them, and then cook the mixture on a low heat until thickened. With crème pâtissière, there's slightly less pressure. There's flour in the mixture, you see, which stabilises the egg yolks and makes them less likely to curdle over heat. So live on the edge, and cook it until nice and thick. After all, soggy custard will make soggy balls, and no-one wants soggy balls.

I made one batch of crème pâtissière and divided it in half. I turned one half into chocolate crème pâtissière by adding finely chopped chocolate (a Gabriel Gaté tip). For both the chocolate and the vanilla crèmes, I folded in some whipped cream to lighten them. (Half the volume of unwhipped cream to crème pâtissière).

I love a good whisk shot. Clockwise from top left: the beaten egg-sugar-flour mixture. The vanilla crème pâtissière. The "light vanilla crème pâtissière". Making the "chocolate crème pâtissière".


3. Filling and Coating


Injecting choux-puffs with cream is fun! You make a little hole in the base of the puff with a small knife or chopstick, then pipe the cream through the hole. I covered the chocolate-filled ones with a chocolate ganache. Making the caramel (water, sugar and glucose) was surprisingly not nerve wracking - I had a thermometer, which told me when my caramel was at the hard crack stage. It took about 15 minutes. Dipping the choux puffs in caramel wasn't too bad, but it was sticky. I used 2 pairs of tongs to avoid burns which progressively got stickier and stickier. Still, it was not impossible, and I managed to coat all the balls. You need to let the caramel cool completely and get hard before assembling the balls. Don't put them in the fridge, or they'll go soggy. Remember what I said about soggy balls!


4. Assembly

The next step is to assemble your balls. Many recipes call for a conical mould, but for this practice run, I just did it free-form, glueing the balls to one another with more caramel. Lisa says that a mould is unnecessary, if you keep building progressively inwards, but as we can tell from my wonky attempt, I'm definitely going to need some sort of mould or guide to help. One more ball and it would have been a complete pyramid! If only I hadn't broken open that first one.

Argh... what a messy day.



The most rewarding part of the whole exercise? The taste test! We had a few with coffee in the afternoon, and later in the evening, I took some round to my friend Georgina's place to get an outside opinion.


So, what did you think?

- Croquembouche is a good birthday cake!
- The balls can be made a week in advance and frozen, then I'll defrost and fill them on the day.
- The classic vanilla/caramel balls are delicious! My family loved them, especially my mother. The thin and crackly caramel coating provides a delicious contrast to the balls.
- We weren't so keen on the chocolate ones, finding them a bit bitter and rich.
- My friend George loved the chocolate ones! Go figure.
- A ganache topping is not a good idea, as it melts too easily in contact with the hot caramel, gets fingerprints in it, and provides no texture contrast. If I choose to continue with the half vanilla/half chocolate balls, I'll cover them with plain melted chocolate.
- I will definitely need a mould of some sort, especially if I want attractive contrasting spirals happening. I do.
- The caramel has a small window of opportunity where it's perfect for use. Left too long it gets hard and will break the roof of your mouth, especially the thicker caramel glue between the balls. I will make it in 2 batches - one for the coating, one for the gluing.


Tomorrow: Pissaladière!

Just a quick post to let y'all know that Sarah Cooks is currently a featured blog on I eat I drink I work. This is an Australian website including hospitality job vacancies, food stories, bloggers, videos, podcasts and more. My RSS feed will be posted on the website for a period of 10 weeks. Click here to see my profile!





And seeing as my blog is being featured on a hospitality website, I thought I should post a little something vaguely related to working in hospitality. As you may have guessed from the title, it's about shoes. They are so important if you're in a job where you are on your feet all day.

Throughout high school and uni, I worked a number of part time jobs - cinemas, cafes, in a kitchen, in retail - and for the first few years I just wore my old school shoes. They were Doc Martens, I'd worn them all through high school, and they were super-comfy. Once they started getting a bit worse for wear, I upgraded to a brand new pair of the same shoes, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't tame them. The leather and soles were so "durable" (i.e. hard), that even after wearing them 5 days a week for 10 months, they were still hard and painful. All I got were calluses and back pain. Not good!

The moral of the story is that good shoes are incredibly important, and once I got myself a good pair of shoes, my work life got so much better. These magic shoes are... ta-dah...



Brooks Addiction Walker '04's.

I got them from The Athlete's Foot, which is a great place to get properly fitted shoes. I asked for a soft-soled black pair of shoes that I could wear all day long. The salesperson measured my feet, gave me a Fitprint® analysis, and brought out this pair of perfectly-fitting shoes. They're great for working in hospitality or retail because they are durable, comfortable, supportive, and black! So many shops and cafes these days seem to have a simple all black dress code. As long as you don't need to wear dress shoes, these are perfect.

They are the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn. They didn't need to be broken in. Soft leather, soft supportive sole, great fit. They were expensive, but with all this technology going into them, they were absolutely worth it.