And so... here is petit four series 2!



I and my Le Cordon Bleu school mate Manju (I will update with the link of her blog as soon as she confirms) try to maintain pastry making skills and that we are getting together once a week or so to make these things.
We have made various tartlettes (some with creme de almond, others with creme pattiserie), choux buns, and brownies to make the plate a bit fancy;)

I used a recipe of THE Alain Ducasse which I picked from a magazine Figaro Japanese version 2011 and it turned out to be very good that anyone wants to try can get it herewith:

<Pate a choux de Alain Ducasse>
140g Soft flour
125ml Milk
125ml Water
1 tsp Salt
125g Butter
4 Whole eggs

1. Preheat an oven at 200 degree.
2. Sift the flour
3. Heat milk, water, salt and butter together and remove it when it starts to boil.
4. Pour the flour immediately all at once and stir with wooden spatula very hard.
5. Put back under medium heat and continuously stir for a few minutes to get evaporated.
6. Remove from heat and cool down a bit.
7. Whisk eggs lightly just to incorporate yolks and whites, then add to step6 little at once (total 4-6 batches), mix well till the dough and eggs are well incorporated to go for an another batch.
8. When the dough is very slowly dropped when it is lifted up with a spatula, the dough is done, place it in a piping bag with a plain 80mm nozzle.
9. Prepare a baking tray with silpat mat or baking parchment and pipe the 2.5cm wide dough onto the tray leaving 2cm gap between each of them so that they won't stick together as they are being baked.
10. Put in the preheated oven by lowering the temperature to 180 degree and bake for about 15-20 min.(depending on the characteristics of your oven) till the dough swells well and turns to golden brown.

And, here it is:

A normal creme chantilly (a whipped double cream with little bit of vanilla scented sugar) is used to fill the little buns (I personally like to add Grandmarnier into the cream..) and topped with a dash of icing sugar.

There is a little brownie with raspberry in centre of the plate to add a punch on this picture...  the recipe? well I have to ask Manju with this, but I have my own that it might be introduced sometime if you are patient waiting to be uploaded here;)-...


Will do another baking workshop with her soon so stay tuned...