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.

Gâteau au yaourt d’Osaka – Osaka yoghurt cake

A bright idea… Many shops in Japan are famous in the whole country for one product that they have proposed unchanged for decades. Sometimes it’s not good at all, but it’s famous. So every year, new shops open and announce they have been famous for ages… That doesn’t matter. People make long queues to get some.
For instance : Osaka yogurt cake from Boston .
If you live in Japan, you can order one, frozen. It’s from Osaka. Boston is the shop’s name.

A fresh yogurt cake perfect for the season. That’s not the common yogurt cake “cakus yogurtus ordinarus” that everybody knows from kindergarten. It was usually burnt on the top. Well, at my grandma’s. That was a way to know it was the yogurt cake… Here, the yogurt is a topping :

That’s not a very complex cake. They show us how to make it :

Well, wait 30 years and I will make them perfect too. The recipe is given in brief. Génoise sponge cake, whipped cream, strawberries and on top yogurt bavarois.

génoise recipe

I mixed veg’ whip cream and drained yogurt for the cream.

For the bavarois, I mixed 1 cup of yogurt, sugar, vanilla essence and cooked agar-agar ( 1 ts with 1/2 cup of water), and I beat with a whisk. At the time I mixed it, the bavarois has the perfect creamy texture like in the video. Hurrah ! Gelatin would work too.

Then… ahem, preparing the bavarois before creaming the cake was a bad idea. It was stuck, so I have cream crumbles on the top. I’d need an assistant to bring stuff just when I need.
Well, unless you have taste for neo-Roccoco cake installations, you’d better order from the Sensei, and not ask me to decorate your birthday or wedding cakes.

Verdict : Mmmmmmm….

Eternel fraisier

Voila !
It’s not the season, but freezers make strawberries available year round. They don’t look so nice on the sides. But it’s really good !

It’s this month Daring Baker’s Challenge.
Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers.

Freshly baked genoise cake.
Click for my recipe (very simple).

It was easy to slice it in 2 and punch with a mix of water and raspberry liquor.

Closer ?

Here you are. The cream is creme mousseline :
standard custard creme patissiere (milk, egg, sugar, vanilla, cornstarch) + unsalted butter (softened with fork).
Proportion is 2:1.

La génoise apprivoisée (taming the genoise)

My first génoise ! YEAH !
It’s really silly but that took me decades to decide to make one. I was sure that sponge cake was very difficult to make without pro equipment and I don’t even have an electric egg beater.
I was wrong !

The shape is nice for a first try, I think. I didn’t even put paper in the mold. I only greased it with butter. No problem to get the cake out.

In addition as my kitchen scale is broken, I totally eyeballed ingredients.

1 egg (medium size)
3 tablespoons (very full) of flour
3 tbs of sugar (or vanilla sugar , or sugar + vanilla essence)
1 tbs of unsalted butter

Prepare the flour (sieve it). Put the butter in a cup. Break the egg in a metal bowl, add the sugar, beat.
-Bring a saucepan 2/3 full of water to boil, stop.
Bath the butter cup to melt it, set aside.
-Bath the metal in the water and beat till it triples of volume in a nice foam (10 minutes).
Get out of the water, keep beating a while (5 minutes).
-Add 2 tbs of egg to the butter, mix.
Add the flour to the rest of egg, stir carefully. Add in the butter. Pour in greased molds (2/3 of height).
-Bake at 180 degrees C. It’s done when the top is brown and a toothpick gets out dry. That took 20 minutes.
-Take out of the mold. Let cool on a grill.