Desserts de France…

Les crêpes !
Crêpes Suzette mandarine – Crêpes boisettes (berry) – Crêpes little sun – Crêpes soufflées tropicales

More : crêpes compilation (sweet and savory)

Noël et Rois (Xmas and Kings) :
Pompe à l’huile (sweet fougasse) – Nonnettes (fluffy gingerbread) – Flocon de neige (snowflake cake) – Nougat glacé (honey ice-cream) – Galette des Rois (Kings’ cake) – Galette des Rois au chocolat

More : Christmas dessert compilation

Les fruits !
Poire pochée au chocolat – Baked pineapple – Fruity papillote – Tartelette aux figues – Pomme lampion (baked apple) – Crémet aux fruits rouges

Classiques :
Génoise – Cygne et choux (cream puffs and swan) – Millefeuille –Tarte au chocolat – Religieuse (cream puff “nun”)

Regions :
Brioche de Pâques (Easter bread, Provence) – Gâteau de Metz (retro chocolate cake, Lorraine) – Croustade or Pastis aux pommes (apple pie, Gascogne) – Millas (corn and pumpkin, South-West) –Farz fourn (butter cake, Bretagne)

Chocolat.
Coffee sunglasses – Gâteau truffe aux kumquats – White chocolate cinnamon apple cake – Raspeberry choco-carob cake

More chocolate sweets.

Festifs.
Pets de nonne (‘farting nun’ carnival donuts) – Mango coco millefeuille – Star anise mandarin chocolate tarte – Crémet in mint sauce – Gâteau de la bergère (Shepherd’s cake made with potato) – Petits flans a la betterave (sweet beetroot puddings)

More ? French dessert compilation.

Farz fou ! Crazy pagan baking.

The famous dessert from Bretagne, in its ancestral version. And it’s great. If you like the simplicity of salty butter caramel, you can only love it.
I followed… freely the familial recipe of Pagan (from his blog in French). Merci pour cette recette !

That’s not a dainty creation your Parisian artsy pâtissier. Not even presentable like the more pudding-like chilled version with prunes. It’s really a grandma-bakes-me-my-after-school-cake, something you devour hot from the oven. As it disappeared in a few minutes, I can’t say what it’s like when it cools. Well, it’s surely deflated.

Butter foam guzzling at the surface… Ah, if you could smell it !

Hokkaido’s butter has salt in it… but less than Bretagne’s. So I’ve added some.

It really tried to run out of the dish. Spectacular. I made it very flat because my oven is low and at first try, it went up so high that the top was scorched.

Ika à l’armoricaine

Ika is the Japanese for calamari, squid, cuttlefish and that kind of seafood. Today, it’s in a classic French dish.

The sauce has a long story that probably starts in Provence where, in 19th Century, Pierre Fraise, a chef grew up. He went to work in the US. He come back in Paris in 1858 to open his restaurant, the legend says. And he serve this sauce with lobster and named it “à l’américaine ” (American style). That was a day when he had no inspiration for dish names nor for recipes. So he made his mother’s tomato sauce, slightly upgraded. With a lobster. That was copied, became a French classic sauce for lobster, and cheaper seafood, particularli calamari. And calamari being abundant in Bretagne (Brittany), the “calamars à l’américaine ” became a local specialty. What relation with America ? None, At some point, in 20th Century, some restaurants started to write “à l’armoricaine” on the menus, as Armor is a name for local seaside area. And now, you can hear some swear that was an ancestral recipe of Brittany dating back to dinosaurs.
So we got : “calamars à l’armoricaine”. That’s how you create a regional dish, you copy anything you like and you rename !

You followed ? Oh that doesn’t matter. That’s a delicious seafood dish with tomato and cognac sauce. It’s very popular in France.

It’s longly simmered, so the flesh becomes extremely tender.

Served with a star of rice.

Crêperie gourmande

La Chandeleur, crepe day is February second, in France and some other countries in Europe. That’s a very old celebration that correspond to the Day of the Marmot in America and the Setsubun in Japan. The start of “Spring”, well, maybe Spring. At least, Sun is coming back in the skies after the darkest months. So crepes look like small suns..

The French tradition is each member of the family cooks his/her crepe in flat pan. And you have to hold some money in one hand and flip the crepe with the second hand. If you succeed, you will be rich during one year. If not…you get a crepe on the floor, on the head, or whatever, and you’ll have had a good time laughing about your clumsiness.

WHEAT CREPES
crêpes de froment

Easy recipe :
1 average size egg
3 tbs of flour
1 glass of milk (1/2 US cup)
1 tbs oil or melted butter

A-whip well B-wait 2 hours C-cook the crepes

a few savory variations