The opera cake that trenae mentioned above is PERFECT. It's delicious and absolutely one of the best cakes iEVAR. D: And kandeegrlz is sototally on the right page with this !
I wanna enter this event with a recipe for
eclairs that I typically bake every Monday morning ( at 5 am, no less! ) before we open the bakery shop up to customers. I made it so many times, its memorized...
In case you missed my obnoxious diatribe on the '5 items you want in bakery story" thread, hopefully supplying a recipe for these yummy suckers will drive the point home !
We'll make pastry cream first. ( Most home bakers use vanilla pudding - but this is what sets our eclairs apart !) Separate
5 egg yolks into a large bowl. Pour
1 cup of milk and
1 cup half and half into a saucepan. Measure out a
heaping 1/3 cup of sugar separately in a small bowl, with
7 tbsp of cornstarch. Measure 1/4 cup of cold butter, and stick that baby back in the fridge! Now we're ready to start cooking ! Start heating up your milk, and when you see that its about to boil, pour the sugar/cornstarch into the egg yolks and whisk whisk whisk furiously ! Once the milk reaches a full boil ( careful here, you don't want it to burn or spill over ), pour a third of the milk into the egg mixture. Whisk away ! now pour another third of milk into the egg mix. Whisk again ! Then pour your egg mixture into the saucepan where the rest of the milk is. We'll turn this back on medium to low heat. Keep whisking until it thickens, and you seeing one or two bubbles rising to the surface. Quickly pull it off, whisk in the cold butter, strain it and let the cream cool. You can throw in
2 tsp of vanilla extract or paste.
You've just made a classic dessert staple !
If baking enthusiasts are still with me, we'll measure everything for the pastry shell first. Sift
Half a cup of flour ( all purpose if you must, but typically we use pastry and bread flour) with a
dash of salt in a bowl. Get out
two eggs. Pour
half a cup of water and
half a cup of milk into a saucepan. Heat up the water/milk mix until simmering and throw in the flour ! Put the heat on medium and with a wooden spoon, stir this doughy mixture! You basically wanna beat this up until you see two things: 1. The dough is pulling away from the sides and clinging to your spoon for dear life 2. The bottom of the pan is turning white from the dough sticking and cooking. When you see those telltale signs, pull it off the heat. Beat in your eggs. It'll look gross at first, but with a little muscle power ( who says baking was a leisure job ? ) it'll start looking like a pretty yellow and gooey dough. With a
pastry bag, pipe these guys into whatever odd shape your little heart desires! ( Normally, it's just an eclair shaped long strip ) Bake them off at
400 degrees for ten minutes. Then lower the heat to
325 degrees for another 20 minutes. You'll know you did it right, when they start puffing up like marshmallows! Let them cool.
Then, fill them up with cream via pastry bag ! Or slice 'em open and spoon pastry cream inside ! or just eat the whole bowl of pastry cream and throw the shells out ! Dip them in chocolate ! Drizzle them in chocolate !
OR GIVE THEM PASTRY CREAM EYES AND CHOCOLATE NOSES AND SHAPE THEM TO LOOK LIKE DISTURBING SESAME STREET REJECT CHARACTERS SO NO ONE WANTS TO EAT THEM AND YOU GET TO HAVE THEM ALL TO YOURSELF !!!
No, really that's what I did.
I named him Kermit and then ate his face off.
I still sleep pretty good at night too.