Le flan - Custard tart

Le flan.... so good when very cold, with this special consistency and the taste of sugar eggs

Step 1

 

Make a caramel and pour it in a dish that goes in the oven

Step 2

Bring to boil 1 liter-2.113 pt fl of whole milk with vanilla

Step 3

 

In a bowl, mix 6 eggs with 100 g-0.22 lb of sugar

Step 4

 

Mix the milk and the eggs mixture, stir

Step 5

 

 

Put in the dish covered with caramel and put in the oven for 45 minutes to 150°C-302°F to heat it in a bain-marie (place a big dish in the oven, fill it with water then depp your flan dish in it) . The flan should be shaky and golden.

Place it in the refrigerator overnight and enjoy!

Le caramel

How to succeed in making a caramel

Making a caramel can be tricky sometimes. It often gets hard and it's always annoying to waste a whole bunch of sugar just to make caramel that should be easy to make...

So, here is my recipe that has worked out not to bad for me:

Step 1

 

Take a very clean pan, add 100g/0.5 cup of very clean sugar and pour 30g/1.058oz/0.066lbs of water. Stir with a spoon as long as the mixture is cold then put it on medium heat and stop stirring.

Step 2

 

Wait for a few minutes (approx 10 min) until the caramel gets dark blonde, then serve. You can use it to make pudding, nougatine, on top of puff buns...

Le fondant - The icing

How to make super shiny fondant on puff pastries

Do you know what 'fondant' is ? It is the little shiny sugar icing on eclairs -these puff pastries filled with cream- that can have different colors: brown for coffee eclairs, white for vanilla eclairs... Usually professionnal pastry chefs buy fondant all done, ready in a box to heat up. But if you want to make beautiful eclairs at home, it is a pain to find out where to buy it so there is the recipe to shine up these delicious pastries and make them look like beautiful-enough-to sell eclairs.

Step 1

Put 300g/0.661lbs of white sugar in a pan and add 80g/0.176lbs of water. Mix gently with a spoon when it's cold

 

Step 2

Bring it to boil on medium heat (make sure the sides of the pan are clean not to darken your sirup) until it reaches 114°C/237°F. Never stir

Step 3

Then then put your pan on a salad bowl full of cold water and make the syrup cool down to 75°C/167°F (it's now to color it if you want so). The sirup gets thicker and sticky

 

Step 4

Put the sirup in a food processor and mix it to medium speed until it gets white and hard (it takes approx 5-10 minutes)

 

Step 5

Press it with your hand to make a ball and keep it in the refrigerator up to one year (in an airtight box)

To use it, you'll just have to gently heat them to 34°C/93°F

The Dolphin cake

My little girl turned 4 last December and she is very much into dolphins at the moment. So, she asked me to imagine a dolphin cake for her to bring to school.
I first thought about making a cake shaped like a dolphin but flat but then, it wasn't that impressive. I wanted her to be breathless when discovering her cake. So, I decided to make one with figurines.

I first baked a round cake with pears.

Then, I made fondant by mixing margarine, marshmallows and powdered sugar plus food coloring.

And I shaped a dolphin, a little killer whale and some little underwater figurines as well.

Here is the result: