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.

Chocolats au caramel salé (melty salty fudge choco sweets)

Decadent simplicity. Dark bitter chocolate filled with a soft salted butter caramel paste.

Tant pour tant, equal weight.
(1 : 1 : 1) sugar : cream : salted butter.
Melt the sugar into blond caramel, add in the warmed cream. Remove from stove, add butter. Let cool and whip.

Recipe credit : Catherine H.

I’ve used chips of cocoa mass (100% cocoa), unsweeted, for a happy contrast of flavors, bitterness/sweeteness, textures.

Le nouveau gâteau truffe au chocolat , with soy yogurt

Not your grandma’s usual yogurt, not her salon de thé ‘s truffe au chocolat. I had no intention to remake them. The cake ended up similar just like that as I was improvising. Lucky !

Freshly made soy yogurt

It’s the greatest soy yogurt for me. Commercial soy yogurt are always on the runny side of creamy, or on the jello side. And the Japanese soy yogurt, oh my, I’d never eat that, it’s over-sweetened and flavored with with stevia that I loath.
This one has a texture of… yogurt. And a taste of soy. It’s perfect.
Don’t skip the sugar, it helps maturation and the result is not sweet at all.

Easy recipe :
-make one liter of thick tonyu soy milk (tutorial)
-in a small cup mix 1 tbs of potato starch, 1/4 of agar, 1/2 cup of soy milk. Cook a few seconds in the micro-wave till its thickens. You get a mess.
-in the blender, mix the warmed soy milk, the cup of starch, 1 tbs of sugar, 2 tbs of store bough soy yogurt
-let overnight in a yogurt maker

Tip : you can take a thermos/thick pot with a lid, place glass bin in the middle, very hot water around…and you have a yogurt maker. I do that for smaller batches.

Freshly made soy ‘Greek’ yogurt.
Drained in a cheese cloth (from the pharmacy), let overnight in the fridge. Drink the whey or use it for cooking, it’s full of healthy probiotics.

Other dairy-like ideas : my diary-free diary.

Now, let’s make the cake : I whip all that to make a chocolate mousse.

A nutty biscuit base (just blend all together).

Composition : the base, a layer of mousse, slices of kumquat, more mousse, cocoa.
The result is really bluffing. That’s not exactly looking like those from the pâtissier‘s, but that’s as close as you dream of getting for some sweet you make like that in 10 minutes. Taste is divine…

These kinkan (kumquats) are still in season and visible in the streets.

Berry Valentine

A cake from the heart… for chocolate day in Japan.

Mmm… the best of chocolate and some early strawberries.

It’s an okara cake, nearly a classic of this blog :

1 cup of wet okara (tofu fibers, DIY here)
1 egg
40 g of melted dark chocolate
1 ts of sugar
1 tbs of coconut cream
1 ts of potato starch (optional if the batter is very liquid)

Mix well and bake (I trust my oven).

Then I sprinkled a little bitter almond extract on the cooling cake, and later cut strawberries.

I used silicon molds to make the little fans.

Simplest and laziest galette des rois au chocolat

Belated due to technical hiccups… I had to eat 3 such galettes to post one, but I’m really devoted. Or too gourmande. I couldn’t resist. So here is a 2013 vintage galette des rois (French kings’ cake for “King’s day” on January 6th). It’s filled with chocolate.

That’s far from the classic one with butter pastry like here. It takes 10 minutes to prepare, and it’s quite healthy, dairy free, vegan. But it does taste decadent, don’t worry.

Just mix boiled azuki, sugar and cocoa.

No puff pastry, but quick and crispy pastry : about 1 cup of flour, baking powder, kurozato (black sugar) to taste, a little turmeric for gold reflects, 3 tbs of olive oil. Then add just enough hot water to get a very soft dough.
Don’t forget to hide a fève (token) in the filling.

Paint with oil, bake gently, caramelize the top.

Serve warm. Cut. Ask the youngest person to dispatch the wedges. The one that finds the token is a king or a queen for a year. He or she will have to pay next year’s galette.