Le Pate A Choux Le Chef Safura....

Cream Puff, profiteroles, eclairs, paris brest, religieuse, cygnes, gougeres, saint honore, crullers...these are some of the different names, varieties that come from Pate A Choux....Chous Pastry. The last time I learnt to make profiteroles was when I was doing my Bar in London, I used a recipe from Sainsbury's cookbook....it was a success, but I used the instant custard and cream as filling.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to learn from my master chef Safura, of how to correctly do the choux pastry, learn loads of tips, made the swan version "cygnes", cream puffs, eclairs, gougeres (cheese) and the fried version crullers. We also learnt how to make the my so called custard cream, but Saf's version is called Vanilla Pastry Cream....the picture above was the Vanilla Pastry Cream covered in cling film to be chilled, after that we folded whipping cream (yehah...the beginning of the operasi clogging arteries!!)!
Pate A Choux - the recipe... all copyrights belong to Safura Atan

125 g water

125 g milk

100 g butter

1/4 teaspoon salt

150g flour

5 eggs

1. Sift flour on paper.

2.Place water, milk, butter and salt in a pot and heat until butter melts and the mixture starts to boil.

3. Remove from heat and pour in all the flour while continu beating.

4. Put back on the stove and mix until the dough forms a ball and leaves the side of the pot.

5. Remove the pot and pour the dough into a mixing bowl. Using a beater start beating the dough for 2 minutes.

6. Add eggs one at a time making sure thoroughly mixed. Dough should be soft and shiny.

7. Place into piping bag and pipe into shpaes.

8. Bake in a preheated oven 180C until it's golden brown.

The picture above shows French Crullers ready to be ngaped! Sedap....a hint of lemon peel in the crust and dipped in sugar cinnamon dip.....1000 kali kalah rasa Auntie Anne's pretzels...its was a "now you see, now you don't affair" with this cruella devil cruel tasting crullers!!
Frying the crullers in hot oil.
The piped crullers on aluminium foil, ready to be fried.
Maizura, kawanku from BBGS (now dah jadi Pavilion) yang ku kenali semula semenjak join Saf's class....trying her skill piping the cruella devil cruelly tasting crullers on aluminum foil. I, then slide the crueller into the hot oil! Didnt know that one can actually fry choux pastry... Of course, Maizura and I had the most scolding from Saf, as we were hingarq, comparing notes and creating our own recipes and gossipped about god knows what during the teaching learning session!! Just like in BBGS dulu-dulu!!
Half of the swan's body is cut and the top part cut into halves to make the swan's wings....and then after we ate the swan...we were all ".....flying without wings", sedap tak terkata!
The piped swan body....

The swan....ahhh, look at the Vanilla Pasrty Cream oozing from the body of the swan...to die for! Here's the recipe for Vanilla Pastry Cream....

Vanilla Pastry Cream...all copyrights belong to Safura Atan

330g milk
1/2 vanilla pod/1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
110g sugar
40g corn flour
6 egg yolk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup whipping cream- until soft peaks form

1. Scald milk and vanilla pod, let it infuse for 5 minutes.
2. Mix the egg yolks, sugar, salt and corn flour making sure there are no lumps.
3. Heat the milk until it starts to boil.
4. Pour 1/3 of the milk into the yolk mixture and pour back the yolk mixture into the pot.
5. Continuously stir using a whisk until small bubble appear. Cook for another 2 minutes. Remove and pour into another container and cover with cling film. Cool down and chill for 2 hours.
6. Once cold fold in the whipping cream. Place in fridge until ready to use.

For lunch, Saf served us with Tuna Quiche! And to me it so berbaloi to attend any of her classes as she is very very generous with her tips and dos and don'ts and I think her recipes are different from others, and most of the time she uses those ingredients that one can easily find from the neighbourhood baking supplier...So, let's all jopm to her next class....Classic Italian Pizza and Pasta in March. To see Saf's works you can look out for panidolce.wordpress.com !

We started at 9 am thereabouts and finished at around 1.45. I left later, because I had questions on some of the utencils that she uses and the busted tak jadi cross between Martha and Amy cupcakes that I made about 3 weeks ago...rupanya I used liquid cup for measuring my flur and sugar...tha....will give it another go, soon!

Conclusion from Saf's class yesterday...yes Maizura the cream puffs were "da bomb"!!

I dropped by my mom's house to jengok orang tua tu and then head straight to Bagus to get butter and souffle cups to make cupcakes for Umar to bring to school today.....ingatkan can go to zzz land early last night, but Bad, Liza and their brood came after maghrib and tanya...."oii , orang rumah masak apa hari ni?"...I had to prepare dinner in a flash, so we had kari ikan tenggiri, telorq dadar, udang goreng kunyit and lada hitam and sayurq kailan....At around 10 pm my lovely guests left, and so did all the food and the cupcakes that I made ( I made extra for Bad and his family and my childrean...tak cukup!!) Hmm , what a lovely close for a weekend, I slept smiling!!