This month, the Daring Bakers were asked to make chocolate éclairs. I was happy to do it because earlier this year I had made pâte à choux in the form of swans and that became one of my favorite desserts. This version of éclairs consists of three elements: pâte à choux (also known as choux pastry or cream puff dough), chocolate pastry cream, and a chocolate glaze. Instead of making traditional éclairs, I wanted to do something different so I made them into rings, like a Scandinavian wedding cake called Kransekage.

Kransekage

Kransekage (Denmark)
Kranssi (Finland)
Kransakaka (Iceland)
Kransekake (Norway)
Kranskaka (Sweden)
Kransekage cake, which some say dates back as far as the 1700's, is often served at Scandinavian wedding and anniversary celebrations. For wedding cakes, the bride and groom will sometimes put their hands together over the top pyramid of the cake and break off a number of rings. The number of rings broken off is said to indicate how many children they will produce. For anniversary celebrations, the number of rings on the cake may depict the number of years of marriage being commemorated.

A special pan is usually used to make this cake, but it can also be made with dough rolled into long "snakes" which are formed into circles of varying sizes and baked on a cookie sheet. {I was lucky enough to borrow Kransekage pans from a Scandinavian family friend, Mrs. G, who has used these pans at each of her children’s weddings.} The baked and cooled circles are then stacked to form a pyramid. The pyramid is drizzled and decorated with almond-flavored frosting. The rings are broken into bite-sized pieces for serving.

For this pâte à choux version of Kransekage, I made 12 rings. I wasn't too concerned about evenness as I piped the choux paste, and this had the unintended effect of causing the pyramid to lean as I built it up ring by ring. It seems a miss-shaped ring on the bottom will affect the entire pyramid above. So although it was a little on the crooked side, with practice and patience I'm sure it could look more professional!

Mrs. G's Recipe for Kransekage
(Norwegian Wedding Cake)

1 cup butter
1 cup icing sugar
2 egg yolks
1½ cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon almond flavoring
½ cup almond paste

Sift powdered sugar, and add to butter and cream thoroughly. Beat in egg yolks. Stir in flour, flavoring, and almond paste. Mix until very smooth.

Pipe into Kranse Kage pans. Bake at 350˚F until a delicate brown. Cool. Frost with almond flavored butter frosting or icing sugar frosting.

Chocolate Pastry Cream and Glaze
Back to the pâte à choux…The filling for the pâte à choux is usually a pastry cream (crème pâtissière in French), which is just a fancy name for pudding. It’s a very versatile cream that’s used as a filling in éclairs, tarts, pastries, cream puffs, cakes, and so on. This one has a delicious, rich chocolate flavor. And the chocolate glaze that's drizzled on top is the best I've ever tasted.

I used chocolate from Bernard Callebaut, who is internationally recognized for producing the best chocolate in Canada and throughout the world. When I was in Saskatchewan, I was able to pick up some Callebaut chocolate at one of his locations. After returning to Ottawa, I found out that my favorite local chocolatier, Truffle Treasures, uses Callebaut chocolate in her truffles, and I can buy Callebaut at her store too.

Recipe for Pierre Hermé’s Cream Puff Dough


from Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé

Makes 20-24 Éclairs or 12 rings for a Kransekage

To see the different éclairs, swans, cream puffs {and Kransekages!} cropping up all over the foodblogosphere, check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll. Thanks to Meeta of What’s for Lunch, Honey and Tony Tahhan who hosted this month’s Daring Bakers event.

To make the Pâte à Choux:
In a saucepan, stir together the milk, water, butter, and sugar over medium heat. Bring the mixture to a boil, uncovered. Stir to ensure that everything is mixed and the butter is all melted.
Remove the saucepan from the heat. Add the flour all at once. Stir to incorporate. Beat the mixture until it becomes a ball and pulls away from the sides of the saucepan. Return the saucepan to the heat and cook the paste, stirring continuously, over medium heat until it dries out, about 3 minutes. The paste is dry enough when it leaves a thin, dry film on the bottom of the saucepan.

Remove the saucepan from the heat and allow it to cool for 5 minutes or so. When the dough is cool, add the first egg. Stir the egg into the paste. Initially, the egg and paste will seem not to blend, but after a while they will start to combine. Stir until the paste is a pale yellow, smooth, moist, sticky, and slightly elastic.

Bake at 425˚F for the first 15-20 minutes. Then turn the oven down to about 350˚F and bake them until they are very dry and crisp and a deep golden color throughout. When the shells are done, turn the oven off and leave the door closed. The residual heat will dry and crisp the shells even more.

{Although my pâte à choux failed the first time, collapsing into a heavy dough of eggs and flour after pulling it out of the oven too early, I did a bit of googling and reading, and I was able to make it successfully.}

To make the Chocolate Pastry Cream:
In a small saucepan, bring the milk to a boil. Whisk together the eggs and sugar, then add the cornstarch and combine thoroughly until mixture has lightened in color. Temper in the warm milk and cook to a gentle boil over medium-low heat, whisking constantly until thickened. It should take about 1 minute to come to a boil. Then continue to simmer until smooth and thick, another 1-2 minutes. Stir in the melted chocolate and then remove the pan from the heat and let cool to 140˚F. Add the butter, stirring gently to combine. Once the pastry cream has been chilled, don’t whisk or it will break down the starch.

Need Help? Here’s a video showing how to make pastry cream. 

Sharp, briny, stinky. That’s anchovies and olives for me. I’ve tried to like these foods, but I still avoid them. This week, the curriculum that I’m following called for a discussion of compound butters, and the only recipe in Le Cordon Bleu at Home that contained a compound butter was Steak Mirabeau. The steak part was great, but the anchovy butter…not so good. So, I decided to make a bunch of other compound butters to have on hand and compare.

Chocolate and raspberries are a classic, indulgent and tasty combination. In this recipe, Dorie freezes them together in a delicious ice cream cake that appeals to the over 10 set!

Chocolate “Ganache”
The chocolate part of the dessert is basically an unbaked flourless chocolate cake: chocolate, butter, sugar, and eggs. Although it’s called a ganache in the cookbook, technically a ganache is just cream and chocolate (no eggs or butter).

{Warning: This dessert contains raw eggs, so you should be careful since there’s a chance the egg may be contaminated with Salmonella, a bacteria that can cause food poisoning. Use only properly refrigerated, clean, sound-shelled, fresh, grade AA or A eggs.}

As for the chocolate, I used Bernard Callebaut, who is internationally recognized for producing the best chocolate in Canada and throughout the world. When I was in Saskatchewan, I was able to pick up some Callebaut chocolate at one of his locations. After returning to Ottawa, I found out that my favorite local chocolatier, Truffle Treasures, uses Callebaut chocolate in her truffles, and I can buy Callebaut at her store too.

To make the chocolate ganache, first I melted the chocolate and butter and then added the sugar. After this mixture had cooled a bit, I added the eggs one at a time. {You don’t want the mixture to be too hot when you add the eggs or it will coagulate and you’ll have bits of scrambled eggs in the chocolate.}

Ice Cream
The ice cream step is easy. Using my food processor, I puréed raspberries and added my favorite vanilla ice cream. Then, I threw in a splash of framboise.

Playing Around
I tried freezing this dessert in popsicle molds, but I think it would be better to dip them in the chocolate after freezing the ice cream in the molds so that you have a bite of chocolate with each bite of raspberry ice cream.

Recipe

You can find the recipe for Chocolate-Banded Ice Cream Torte in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! 

Yield: This recipe made 10 popsicles and one 7-inch springform pan.


Tasting Notes
The reviews on this one were mixed from the under 10 set: one daughter liked the chocolate but not the raspberry ice cream, another liked the raspberry ice cream but not the chocolate, and the third liked both together. The adult set thought it was delicious!

Recipe for Next Week (September 2)
Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters on page 73 chosen by Stefany of Proceed with Caution.

Even though I live across the river from French Canada where pea soup (soupe aux pois) is a national dish, I've never ordered pea soup in a restaurant or tasted split peas before, so I wasn't too thrilled to make this soup, and neither was my family in Saskatchewan! My sister suggested I make it when I return to Ottawa, but she wasn't so lucky with the Whisk Wednesdays' schedule. The kids passed on having a bowl, but the others bravely accepted a small bowl of this funny-colored soup. We were all pleasantly surprised. In fact, my sister declared it the best split pea soup she's ever tasted!

Pease porridge is what we call split pea soup today.

Split Peas

Peas are an ancient vegetable, mentioned in the Bible and prized by the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Apicius, who was one of the first cookbook authors in the 4th or 5th century has nine recipes for cooking Ospreos (peas, beans, lentils, chickpeas).

Peas belong to the legume family, like beans and lentils, but they are spherical. A common name for this type of fruit is a "pod". Certain varieties are grown specifically for drying. When the yellow or green peapods are fully mature, they're harvested and dried in the pod. The skin around the pea dries and falls off, and they split naturally (like a peanut). After peas have been dried, they can survive the long, cold winter months. When puréed, they are a natural thickening agent in soups and stews. Vegies
After soaking the split peas overnight {although some websites suggest split peas don't need to be soaked overnight}, I tasted both the green and yellow ones and enjoyed their taste. The green ones were milder than the yellow ones, which had a more earthy flavor.

Then, I cooked the vegetables (carrot, onion, leek, and garlic) in some butter along with the bacon. After the vegetables were soft and translucent, I added the drained split peas and chicken stock. I brought the mixture to a boil, reduced the heat, and added the bouquet garni and let the flavors blend for about 40 minutes.

Rice
In a separate pot, I made a small batch of rice. I used basmati, since that's all we had in the pantry, but the recipe calls for short-grain rice. {I actually had to make it twice since the first time I added too much salt!} The rice gives this puréed soup a bit of texture.

Purée
Next, I puréed the soup in the blender. {Why did I so carefully cut the vegetables into a fine dice?! I guess "chopped fine" is different from "fine dice".} Then, I added the cream and brought the temperature of the soup back up. {I added some extra whole milk to make the soup more soupy and less thick.}

Garnish
The soup calls for a garnish of wilted sorrel and lettuce. I couldn't find sorrel anywhere, so, after looking it up online, decided to substitute baby spinach. I wilted both in some butter before serving the soup in a tortilla bowl.

Links
The Old Foodie has some insight into pease porridge that I found interesting. As well, you can watch a video on how to make French Canadian Pea Soup.

"Mess of Pottage"
The curriculum that I'm following called for Potage Esau, which is a very old soup that's mentioned in the Bible. It's in the story of Jacob and Esau, twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah. Although the boys were twins, Esau was the first-born. One day, when the boys were young, Esau returned from hunting very hungry. Jacob seized this opportunity and offered to give his brother some lentil soup if Esau would, in exchange, give up his birthright. Esau, faint with hunger, agreed and the deal was made. (Genesis 25:29-34)

Le Cordon Bleu at Home cookbook didn't contain a recipe for Potage Esau (lentil soup), so I substituted a split pea soup instead since split peas are in the same family as lentils.

Recipe
You can find the recipe for Potage Ambassadeur (Split Pea Soup with Bacon, Sorrel, and Lettuce) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home or here. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with this week's recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
This soup has a smooth, mild gentle flavor with a hint of a smoky bacon taste. Delicious {even though the color of the soup is unappealing}! Next time, I would like to add more ham or bacon or even some curry for extra flavor. I also used half green and half yellow split peas and wonder if using just green split peas would be more flavorful. I think I'll stick with fresh peas from the pod. That's still my favorite way to eat peas. However, I intend to try a taste test of fresh pea soup versus split pea soup, so stay tuned…

Update: Split Pea versus Fresh Pea Soup

Today I made both versions of this soup: one using split peas (only the green kind) and one using fresh peas. I preferred the taste of the soup made with fresh peas. It had a smoother, mellow taste. The one made with split peas had a more starchy, grainy, but brighter taste. My husband liked the split pea version, and I liked the fresh pea version, but we both agreed that they needed more ham or bacon flavor!


Soup Summary
This is the last in a series of soups. We've covered

• chunky vegetable soup (Potage cultivateur/Cut vegetable soup)
• puréed fresh vegetable soup (Julienne Darblay/Creamed Leek and Potato Soup with Julienned Vegetables)
• soup made with a liaison of cream and egg yolks (Velouté Agnès Sorel/Cream of Chicken Soup)
• shellfish bisque (Bisque de Homard/Lobster Bisque)
• cold consommé (Consommé Madrilène/Chilled Consommé with Red Peppers and Tomatoes)
• two regional soups (Billy Bi/Mussel Soup and Soupe à l'oignon gratinée/Onion soup)
• puréed soup of dried vegetables

I'm ready for an entrée now!

Next Week (August 27)
• Steak Mirabeau (Beef Tenderloin Steaks with Anchovy Butter) page 426-427

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $639.39 + $21.11 (chicken stock) + $8.88 = $669.38

Butter used so far: 7 pounds, 1 tablespoon

A healthy cookie that tastes good. I thought this would be impossible, but Dorie comes through again. I even had to stop my health-nut Dad from grabbing the cookie dough before it was even baked! He was excited to have something healthy to eat instead of all the chocolate desserts and pies I’ve been making lately.

To make them a little more fun, I baked them in the bottom part of an ice cream cone and topped them with a dollop of ice cream and sprinkles.

We were enjoying these outside on the front porch and the local squirrel must have smelled the peanuts and came within an arm’s reach hoping for his own cookie, I imagine!

Recipe


You can find the recipe for Granola Grabbers in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger!