September’s round up

A little retrospective about last month.
In September, the readers’ favorites are :

Sprouted hemp seed bread, improved version
Simple 10 minute falafels
Milk your beans (make soy milk)
Eating like a queen : bouchée à la reine
Yaki ika, Ika yaki (Japanese calamari)
Kabocha and carrot kibbeh

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Sweets :

Farz fou ! Crazy pagan baking.
Guilt free chocolate cake
Kabocha polka-dot yokan

Hey, the kabocha is getting popular as Autumn is looming…

Some more :

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Desserts :

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Pon de rin, donut like a ring of pearls, baked version

A ring of ball cakes, sweetened with kurozato black sugar.

The fast-food Mr Donut sells those pon de rin. The mean is “pon” like pao de queijo, shaped in ring… and donutifried, of course.

The dough was nearly the same as :

pao de queijo (click here)

But I used 1/3 of cheese and added kurozato (black sugar).

I formed the rings on baking paper. Painted oil all around. Baked 20 minutes. Passing oil 2 or 3 times during that time.

With confectioner’s sugar and cinnamon.

Carnival doughnuts : orange blossom farting nuns

This is the season of Carnival in Europe. The tradition is to make all sorts of beignets (doughnuts).
The pets de nonnes are very popular home-made treats in France.
Pets de nonne literally means “farts of a nun”.

Because this looks like a nun’s veil. And the sainte woman can “prout prout” into the oil :

Even if actually most people use a spoon and gets this round shape.

That’s a pâte à choux(same dough as cream puff). I made it, this time, with olive oil and water instead of milk and butter, but don’t worry, that doesn’t make them healthy at all. They are flavored with orange blossom water and cane sugar and the olive oil, the trio is great.

When fried, they double of volume.

So they are very light, fluffy, full of air :

They are delicious hot or room temperature, with or without sugar on top. And that’s addictive, if you eat one, you eat them all. And you become phaaaat like a pig, but that doesn’t matter because you’re going to Lent till your so skinny that you need an emergency refueling of chocolate. Well, whatever your religious practice : enjoy the Carnaval Mardi-Gras !

Bakonuts 2, magic mauve

Today let’s make them purple blue mauve…

The mauve (mallow) is this flower used for herb tea. It’s purple, and the water become blue.

(photo from this site about herbs, “la garrigue gourmande” with the recipe of “infusion de mauve”)

There is no mauve in my donut, but the effect happens with purple vegetables.

I made 3 styles of bakonuts (baked donuts).
Kurogoma (black sesame), simply decorated with sugar stars, flavor is enhanced by a few drops of bitter almond essence. They are presented here. The recipe is the same for the 3. Click here.

Walnuts. Simply added the nuts to the batter. Flavor is vanilla essence.

Raisin. The color is due to the addition of the purple sweet potato powder you can see below. It seems the differences of PH influence the color (like for this soup vichyssoise grise).

As you can see, it’s grey-blue, but pinker around the raisins.

Purple powder

Sparkles…

Lost in rendition. They look very shiny in real but not on the photo.

Yum yum…

Kurogoma bakonut, unlike a donut

Today, call me Miss Do. Do you know “misdo” (mi-su-do) ? It’s the nickname for Mr Donut, the infamous and ubiquitous chain that poisons Japan with pretty but totally artificial and improbably flavored donuts. Well, it’s a convenient shop where you go to wait a train or someone. That looks very appetizing, and you always regret eating that. They have the kind of artificial taste I enjoyed when I was 7. Recently, they have tried to healthify their products. So you can see baked donuts, with flavors of Japanese sweets. They are better. But the really good ones are home-made.

You can buy a “baked donut maker”, which is simply a waffle-maker with the ring shape. OK to take that option if you needed it for waffles, moffles or croque-monsieurs, but it’s not worth the purchase. I use the small savarin mold.

The recipe is the same as ok’cakes (click to read more) :
1 egg, 1/2 cup of okara (if it’s dry + 1/2 cup water, 1 cup if it’s wet), a little sugar… and you bake about 10 minutes (180C).

To these I added black sesame (ground), a little vanilla and bitter almond essence (I add after baking). It’s better to let them cool totally before taking out of the molds as they are quite fragile. Maybe adding 1 tbs of flour would solve that, but they are nice without as you can see.