I had quite a few bananas that were on their sad darkening way and needed to use them to avoid wasting. I remembered having absolutely loved the banana cupcakes and having had issues with the icing (mainly it was too sweet).

So, I made the cupcakes again, not changing anything in the recipe but looked for a different icing.

Frankly, my idea was to make a simple chocolate whipped cream topping, that I have done before. The purpose here was not to experiment but to avoid wasting bananas. But my daughter just begged for a banana icing again. So off I went on the look out for a banana whip cream.

The results:
TASTE -- Fantastic! Light, slightly sweet, with a good banana flavor.
TEXTURE -- smooth and nice in the mouth.
APPEARANCE -- not a problem here and for me but be aware that it does brown a little, to a light beige color.

Issues:

• I don't know if the banana is too heavy, if the proportions were off, if I didn't beat the mixture enough or if something was missing, but although I was able to pipe the topping onto the cupcakes, it was still a bit too runny to stay nice and firm. I usually put some vanilla pudding powder in my whip cream and maybe I should have done that, I don't know.
• One of the recipes was calling for the lemon juice to be poured over the bananas before smashing them. Others were adding it afterwards. I think I will try and use it to prevent the browning of the fruit next time.

Decoration:
Use chopped nuts, chocolate chips, chocolate shavings...

This week's experiment was a last minute decision. A friend of mine mentioned making this cake for her husband this week and it sounded so good, I just had to try it.

It was quick and easy to make and, fortunately, I had all the ingredients at home... well, almost, I didn't have 200g of 70% cocoa chocolate. I had one 60% bar (113g) and also used semi-sweet baking chocolate.

The result: first, you gotta love dark chocolate. The taste is powerful and, if you don't like dark chocolate, well, you won't like this. You can really feel it on the back of your tongue. The orange taste was also pretty strong (although my daughter says she couldn't taste it) but a good complement to the dark chocolate.

I do not like when recipes are not precise. In this case, the size of the pan was vague ("a large pan"). How big is a large pan? And is a large pan in France the equivalent of a small or medium pan in the US (you know, like fast-food portions)? So, I used a 10" pan...
Now, I knew from the comments on the recipe not to expect a high cake. However, this was really thin, as in between 1/2" and 3/4" thick. I understand that this was not a regular cake, there is no flour, but was the thickness due to the large pan or really all I could expect? If I used a smaller pan, would it make the cake higher or just prevent it from cooking thoroughly in the allocated time.

The texture of the cake was fantastic. It is very much like a mousse, light and fluffy. But, careful, the richness of the cake makes me wonder if having a thicker cake would really be a good idea or just become too overwhelming. I would suggest serving this maybe with a scoop of French vanilla ice cream, or at least whip cream.

Original recipe here.
Ingredients:

• 200g dark chocolate (70%)
• 1 orange (pick organic, since using the zest).
• 5 eggs, separated
  
• 50g butter
• 10g cornstarch
• 30g powdered sugar
• 2 pinches of cinnamon
  

Preparation:

1. Wash the orange thoroughly, zest it with a grater, squeeze the juice and keep everything aside.
2. Break the chocolate in small pieces and melt it in a double-boiler (bain-marie).
3. Melt the butter in the orange juice.
4. In a large bowl, mix the sugar, cinnamon and cornstarch. Then add the egg yolks one at a time.
5. Add the orange zest, then the chocolate, then the melted butter/orange juice.
6. Beat the whites with a pinch of salt. Incorporate them little by little into the chocolate batter.
7. Pour the batter in a buttered/floured large pan (see note above).
8. Bake it for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees.
9. Let it cool before removing it from the pan.
10. Decorate using powdered sugar, candied orange peels, grated chocolate...
    

Notes:

• The surface of the cake was beautiful! I went for the quick and easy powdered sugar to decorate, but really, it was a shame to hide the beautiful surface.
• I've mentioned the taste was very strong and not very sweet at all. If you prefer sweeter, try and modify the recipe to add more sugar OR

• Try the recipe with milk chocolate (omit the orange zest and replace the orange juice with milk and cocoa powder). I don't know what the result would be but since there is more sugar in milk chocolate...

When I made the king cake last week (see previous post), I was left with some puff pastry dough, so I decided to make these little palmiers cookies. I just love them! And they were so easy to make too.

Preparation:

1. Spread your dough in a long rectangle. The length doesn't matter but try to have about 8" in width. More than that and you end up with huge cookies (which might be what you want) but 8" gives you cookies that are about 2-3" big. Square the edges of your rectangle to make folding easier.
2. Lightly spread sugar all over the surface of your rectangle. I used regular sugar, but you could use cinnamon sugar, maple sugar or brown sugar. The taste will be different, of course, so experiment.
3. Now the folding. Fold length-wise. Fold both long edges so that they meet in the middle of the rectangle. You end up with a 4" wide rectangle.
4. Spread some sugar all along the surface.
5. Fold again length-wise, in the middle. You now have a 2" wide roll.
6. Cut slices in the roll, about 1/2" wide. The length of the roll determines how many cookies you end up with.
7. Roll the folded slices in sugar, then place flat on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet. The folding is what gives these cookies their heart shape.
8. Brush some beaten egg onto the slices.
9. Bake at 350 degree, about 20 minutes, until golden brown.
10. Remove from baking sheet and let it cool on racks.
    

Special thank you to Sonia for taking the pictures. :-)

It's tradition, on January 6th, we celebrate "Epiphany", the arrival of the three Wise Men to the Manger. We eat a special cake made with puff pastry and filled with almond cream or franchpane, a mix of almond cream and pastry cream. Inside the cake, a "fève", in my case a whole almond. Whoever gets it is king or queen for the day. It is a cute and fun celebration to do with friends or family.

This year, I had to make two "galettes", one for the family, of course, and one for a group of friends (French, Belgian and American). So, I decided to tackle the puff pastry from scratch instead of using the frozen stuff I've been using up until now. I was really afraid of that puff pastry, having heard it was so difficult and long to make.
The idea was to make both galettes from scratch, although I did have a pack of frozen puff pastry as a back up. Turns out, I made one of each.

First of all, for the puff pastry. I found this recipe for an easy puff pastry recipe and believe me, it was easy. Yes, a bit time consuming, but not as much as it normally is. And the result was a flaky puffy pastry, although not as puffy as the frozen ones. Most of the pictures (except one) on this post are of the frozen puff pastry one, I'll explain below.

For the almond cream recipe that I've been using for a few years, I use this recipe. Now, note that although the title of the recipe mentions franchpane, it is not actually franchpane. It is a very good almond cream and I think I will keep it for pie fillings (to use with fruits). It is a bit drier than the franchpane and not as sweet (although still sweet). It looked really good with the puff pastry, didn't it? It tasted good too.

For the franchpane, I used this recipe.  I discovered this blog at random and thought these individual galettes were just adorable. Please note that I made a HUGE rookie mistake while putting together my galette. Although the author of the recipe mentions that there will be more franchpane than needed, I thought it was because she was serving individual cakes. So, I used ALL the filling on my galette... I don't know what I was thinking but it resulted in lots of filling slipping out of the galette during baking (fortunately not the part with the whole almond), which in the end gave me a very lopsided and not very attractive galette. HENCE the lack of pictures. So, note for the future, there is enough cream here for TWO galettes. However, both the puff pastry AND the filling tasted fantastic!

When tasting both galettes together, the one made completely from scratch and with franchpane is the winner hands down. It is really THE one for me now...

In Belgium, it is the tradition to eat waffles on New Year's Day, a special kind of waffles. They are more cookie-like and are eaten as such, with no topping. The recipes vary from family to family but they are all very similar.
Although I make a double batch (about 80 waffles) and do give away a few (maybe a quarter), they never seem to last very long. Of course, I could make more but the beauty of tradition is to actually look forward to certain things only at certain times.

Please note that the recipe above is from "Typiquement belge: Gaufres, crepes et galettes. Recettes et Traditions" (Editions Labor - 2006). This is not the exact recipe I used as mine is a family recipe passed down in my stepmother's family. She was kind enough to share her family recipe with me and we are all grateful for that :-D