Mango Rose Tart.

Gloomy. 
I don't know why I'm feeling gloomy. Like the weather. 

Probably it's because my school is starting soon.

OMG.


I'm probably having pre-exam-school depression. 
I hated going to school since young. Actually I hate exams. I get the jitters all around because I know the moment I step in the exam hall my mind is all blank. SIGH. 


Actually I feel excited as well. Mix feelings.

Anyway, I'm not going to talk about this first. It's not important. 

I made this tart over the weekend. 
It's using my basic shortcrust pastry (kindly change all to plain flour) for the base and pastry cream for the filling. 
The toppings are mangos. I made a BIG flower. 


Does it look like a flower?!
If you say no I'm going to kill you.

I'm just saying. 

Oh yes, by the way Happy Birthday to everyone born in June.
And Happy Father's day.




Mango Tart
Yields: 9 inch tart

Tart Base :

200grams plain flour
2 teaspoon castor sugar
7 tablespoon - 100grams cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1 egg yolk + 3 tablespoon water
A pinch of salt
A little egg white for brushing the shell

Pastry Cream:

1 2/3 cup - 400ml full cream milk
1 teaspoon Vanilla Bean Paste
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup - 100grams sugar
2 tablespoon cake flour
2 tablespoon corn flour
100ml whipping cream

Topping: 

2 to 3 sweet ripe mangos

Method:

Tart Base:

In a large bowl, combine both flour, sugar and salt. Mix well.
Add in butter and using your finger tips or pastry cutter, rub until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Stir in the egg yolk mixture and combine using your hands to form into a dough.
Wrap the dough in a cling wrap and chill for about 1 to 2 hours. 
Remove the dough from fridge and roll out your dough in between baking paper
Roll out your dough to about 1/4 inch thickness and slightly larger then the tart pan.
Transfer the dough over to the tart pan and trim off the edges.
Chill again for another 15 minutes. 
Preheat oven to 350F/180C.
Prick your tart base with a fork and blind bake for 20 minutes. 
Remove from oven and brush with a layer of egg white on partially bake tart shells and bake another 15 minutes uncovered. 
Remove from oven and let set aside to let cool. 

Pastry Cream:

Pastry Cream:

In a medium pot, pour milk and turn fire on low heat.
When it begins to boil, turn off fire. (You will know when the side starts forming little bubbles)
In another medium heatproof bowl, light beat egg yolks and add in sugar. 
Using a balloon whisk or a normal whisk, beat the mixture together until light in colour.
Combine the cake flour and corn flour and sieve together. 
Add in to egg yolk mixture and combine.
Gradually add the slightly cooled milk in 3 to 4 addition to egg yolk mixture and stir thoroughly. 
(Add in slowly to avoid cooking the eggs!)
Strain the egg yolk mixture back to the pot.
Over low heat, stir quickly but slowly to let the mixture thicken. (It should take about 3 minutes)
**You have to stir very quickly as this is very important to not let the eggs be cooked or burn the bottom 
When it begins to form bubble at the sides, remove from heat and transfer to a flat tray beneath a ice bath.
Once cooled, cover the pastry cream with cling wrap touching the cream. 
The reason for doing this is to prevent a crust from forming. 
Store it in the fridge as soon as possible as pastry cream spoils fast. 
This pastry cream can be done a day in advance.

Assembly:

Whip the 100ml whipping cream to stiff peaks and fold into the pastry cream until combined.
Spread or pipe the pastry cream onto the cool tart shell. 
Slice mangos into thin strips. 
Starting from the inside of the tart, overlap your mangos each onto other to form a rose shape or you may decorate whatever you want. 
Place in the fridge for another hour and serve chill. 

Matcha Eclair.

Recently I'm having matcha fever. Matcha pound cake, tart, cheesecake.
Whatever you name it. 

Did I mention before my favourite drink was green tea? I love green tea. 
So to have green tea with my favourite dessert is double joy!

Life is short. Eat dessert.
I mean, really. Eat dessert. But do eat in moderation.

I love these matcha eclairs.
Every bite is filled with soft matcha taste on your tongue. And with the chocolate ganache.
Ummmm... Slurps.


I hope to create more unique eclair flavours. 

How I miss these.
I love the weather yesterday. Makes my photos look great.


Matcha Eclair
Makes about 20 to 25 eclairs

Ingredients:
Pate a choux:

9 tablespoons - 72grams all purpose flour or pastry flour
1/4 cup - 60grams milk
1/4 cup - 60grams water 
4 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon - 60grams butter
1/4 teaspoon salt**
1 teaspoon sugar 
2 eggs, at room temperature, light beaten
1 egg white, if needed**
Fine mist spray with some water


Matcha Custard Cream:

1 heapping tablespoon - 10 grams corn flour
1 tablespoon - 10 grams all purpose flour/pastry flour
3 teaspoon matcha powder
3/4 cup + 1 tablespoon - 200grams milk
3/4 teaspoon sugar 
8 teaspoons - 37grams unsalted butter 
Pinch of salt


3 small egg yolks - 45grams 
3 tablespoon - 45grams sugar
3 1/2 tablespoon - 50grams milk


Chocolate Ganache:
1/2 cup - 120grams heavy cream
4 oz - semi sweet chocolate


Directions:
Pate a choux:

In a small saucepan, combine milk, water, butter, salt and sugar.
Heat the milk mixture until the butter melts completely. 
Remove from stove and quickly add in flour and stir until mixture combines. 
Return the stove and over low heat, stir the mixture until a thin paste forms beneath the saucepan. 
Remove from heat and transfer mixture to a medium bowl. 
Using a rubber spatula, press and fold the mixture slightly to remove heat before adding in beat eggs, about 3 to 5 minutes. 
Slowly add in beaten egg in 4 portions, ensuring each addition is incorporated before adding next. 
Test the consistency of the batter when you finish adding the 3 eggs. 
Using your spatula, scoop some batter up and let it fall, if the batter can drop with 3 seconds and a v shape is left hanging beneath the spatula, you have reach the right consistency. 
Using a pastry bag or ziploc bag inserted with a plain tip, transfer batter and pipe out 3 inch long, leaving a 1 inch gap between the choux pastry as they will expand during baking on baking tray lined with baking paper/parchment paper.
Spray the choux with water to prevent drying. 
Bake in preheated oven 400F/200C for 10 minutes. 
Lower temperature to 350F/180C and bake for another 20 minutes. 
Remove from oven and let cool on wire rack.


Matcha Custard Cream:


Sieve corn flour, all purpose flour and matcha powder together. Set aside.
In a saucepan, simmer 200grams milk, 3/4 teaspoon sugar and butter over medium heat until butter and sugar is melted and dissolved. Set aside.
In a mixing bowl, whisk egg yolks with 3 tablespoon sugar until light and pale. 
Add in flour mixture and whisk until incorporated. 
Add 50grams milk and mix well. Add the mixture from saucepan slowly and stir well. Be careful not to cook the eggs. 
Strain mixture back into the same saucepan and place over medium low heat stirring and whisking vigorously until mixture is thickened. Be very careful and watch closely as you may burn the custard.
The mixture will bubble at the centre. Remove from heat and transfer to a baking pan or flat tray lined with cling wrap. 
**This is my new way of letting it cool faster.
Pour custard onto the baking tray lined with cling wrap and let it cool. 
Or you can choose the ice bath  method. 
Let it cool before placing in refrigerator to chill.


Chocolate Ganache:

Place chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl.
In a small pot, bring the heavy cream to a boil.
When it starts to boil, turn off heat and pour the cream into the bowl of chocolate.
Let it stand for 10 seconds before stirring the mixture until it becomes smooth.


Assembly:

1/2 cup - 120ml Heavy whipping cream

Whip heavy whipping cream to stiff peaks form and fold in to the matcha custard cream. 
Leave in the fridge to cool first before using.
Cut the choux pastry sideways or you can choose cut a hole on top of the choux puff for pipping in the pastry cream. 
Fill your pastry cream in a pastry bag filled with a small plain tip or open star pipping tip
Pipe filling into the empty pastry shell and dip chocolate ganache on top of the pastry shell. 
Place elcair on a tray and let it cool in the fridge for about 30 to 45 minutes before storing.


Notes:

**You can make the custard cream the night before as custard cream needs to be chilled before using.
**For pate a choux, if you are using salted butter, do omit the salt.
**Egg white for the pate a choux can be added a little at a time to achieve the right consistency. Do not over add the eggs. If it becomes too soft, you will need to discard the whole thing and redo again. 
**When lowering the oven temperature for pate a choux, do not be tempted to open the oven door as this will cause the puffs to sink.


Slightly adapted from Tanoshii

Chocolate Elcair.

Hey Guys. 
How was your weekend? 
Baked anything? 

Recently I'm having childhood reminiscing. 
I'm trying to find my favourite show to watch, and one of them is Pocahontas
But I can't seem to find this show any more.
The only way is through ITunes store. 

This isn't my first time doing elcairs.
Did it quite a few times. I don't have the chance to take a good photo of them.

I'm always rushing. 
To be short, I'm clumsy. 
I should have dust some icing sugar over them. Why didn't I think of that?!

Chocolate Elcairs
Makes 20 medium size elcairs.


Choux Pastry: 

3 fl oz + 1 tablespoon - 100ml water
4 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon - 60grams unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
60grams cake flour 
3 eggs, beaten

Pastry Cream:

1 2/3 cup - 400ml full cream milk
1 teaspoon Vanilla Bean Paste
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup - 100grams sugar
2 tablespoon cake flour
2 tablespoon corn flour
100ml whipping cream

Chocolate Gananche:

100ml heavy cream
4 oz - 113grams dark chocolate, chopped


Method:

Choux pastry:

Preheat oven to 400F/205C.
Sieve together your cake flour and corn flour, set aside.
In a medium pot, combine the water, butter and a pinch of salt.
On medium low heat, bring it to a boil to melt the butter.
Once butter is melted, turn off fire and quickly add in sieved flour and stir.
When the flour has absorb the butter mixture and turn gooey, turn fire on low and continue stirring until a thin paste is stick on the pot. 
Remove from heat and place the flour mixture onto a bowl.
Using a rubber spatula, press it flat and wait for about 3 minutes to cool down before adding eggs.
Gradually pour beaten egg into flour mixture in 4 to 5 times, adding in between each addition until mixture is fully incorporated.
The mixture might seem curdle but feared not, as you mixed it the mixture will come together. 
After the 3rd addition of the egg, you will come to see that the batter will be more smooth.
The reason of not adding the eggs at one go, is to test the consistency of the batter. 
You might not need to add all the three eggs. 
You can test the consistency by scooping up the batter using your spatula and gradually let it drop down.
If your batter forms a ''V'' shape beneath the spatula, that is the right consistency.
Using a pastry bag or ziploc bag inserted with a plain tip, transfer batter over to pipe out the choux puff.
On baking tray lined with baking/parchment paper, pipe out a straight line about 3 inches long leaving a 1 inch gap between the choux pastry as they will expand during baking. 
Using your fingers, dip a little water and damp the end part of the pastry to avoid drying. 
Place in preheated oven and bake for 30 minutes. 
Remove from oven and cool on cooling rack.  


Pastry Cream:

In a medium pot, pour milk and turn fire on low heat.
When it begins to boil, turn off fire. (You will know when the side starts forming little bubbles)
In another medium heatproof bowl, light beat egg yolks and add in sugar. 
Using a balloon whisk or a normal whisk, beat the mixture together until light in colour.
Combine the cake flour and corn flour and sieve together. 
Add in to egg yolk mixture and combine.
Gradually add the slightly cooled milk in 3 to 4 addition to egg yolk mixture and stir thoroughly. 
(Add in slowly to avoid cooking the eggs!)
Strain the egg yolk mixture back to the pot.
Over low heat, stir quickly but slowly to let the mixture thicken. (It should take about 3 minutes)
**You have to stir very quickly as this is very important to not let the eggs be cooked or burn the bottom 
When it begins to form bubble at the sides, remove from heat and transfer to a flat tray beneath a ice bath

Image source here

The reason for having a ice bath is to let the pastry cream cool faster because at a certain temperature, bacteria will start to form therefore it is very important to let the custard cream cool as soon as possible!
Once cooled, cover the pastry cream with cling wrap touching the cream. 
The reason for doing this is to prevent a crust from forming. 
Store it in the fridge as soon as possible as pastry cream spoils fast. 
This pastry cream can be done a day in advance.

Chocolate Ganache:

Place chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl.
In a small pot, bring the heavy cream to a boil.
When it starts to boil, turn off heat and pour the cream into the bowl of chocolate.
Let it stand for 10 seconds before stirring the mixture until it becomes smooth.


Assembly:

Cut the choux pastry sideways or you can choose cut a hole on top of the choux puff for pipping in the pastry cream. 
Fill your pastry cream in a pastry bag filled with a small plain tip or open star pipping tip
Pipe filling into the empty pastry shell and dip chocolate ganache on top of the pastry shell. 
Place elcair on a tray and let it cool in the fridge for about 30 to 45 minutes before storing.


Notes:
Elcair is best eaten within 3 days. 

Apple Crumble with Vanilla Sauce. A comforting food for your soul!

I have alot of comforting food on my mind. Especially when it rains. (Or even if it doesn't, but it does especially when it's raining.)

Cinnamon Rolls, Chocolate cake, Cheesecake, Ice cream..  My mind is corrupted by all this food. I can even smell it in the back of my mind ( Does that even sounds right???!)

Ok nevermind. Everyone have weird thoughts.

It's a Sunny day today. Looking out of the window, noticing how beautiful the place is, I snapped some photos.

The haze was quite bad over here actually.. But somehow it was quite good that day. 

This tree is going to be chopped off soon. It's going to be so bare.. There's good and bad.
Good because the view is unblocked, bad because... I don't know what's really bad actually. Just that the tree is coming down after sucha long time here. 


Ok, back to here. I love Vanilla sauce. Sweet and with a hinge of vanilla in your tongue. So tempting and delicious. And it goes so well with my Apple Crumble. I think I had too much of that I get bloated. 

So, this is quite easy.. You just prepare all the ingredients needed. Slice the apples, prepare the crumble. Coat your apple with some cinnamon sugar..

And cover the crumble over the apple. And off you go into the oven.

Bake in oven for 30 to 35 minutes or until golden brown.

Meanwhile, prepare your Vanilla Sauce. (I didn't have time to take photo for the Vanilla Sauce)

Violaaaa!!

You must be wondering why it's so flat. Because I was using a pie dish. 

Apple Crumble need to be eaten hot and fresh on that day itself. Because of the crumble. Wouldn't taste so nice on the next day of course. 

Yummy. Right after the photos, this goes into my tummy.
Yummified.

Satisfied.

Apple Crumble with Vanilla Sauce. 

Ingredients for the cumble:

1 cup plus 1 tablespoon - 100grams cake flour 
1/4 cup - 50grams granulated white sugar 
80grams unsalted butter
Pinch of salt

Ingredients for filling:

2 Apples (Peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch pieces)
1 1/2 - 2 tablespoon granulated white sugar
1/2 tsp cinnnamon powder

Ingredients for Vanilla Sauce:

1 Egg
3 tablespoon granulated white sugar
Pinch of salt

1 tablespoon all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon corn flour
1 cup - 250ml milk
Seed from 1/4 pod of vanilla
2 tablespoon - 28grams unsalted butter


Method:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F/180 degrees C.
Brush the pan with butter.
Make the crumble by rubbing the butter, flour, sugar and salt together until it resemble coarse crumbs.
Set aside.
Make the filling by mixing the 1 1/2 tablespoon sugar and cinnamon together.
Place the apple into the pan and sprinkle the sugar mixture over the apple.
Cover with the crumble. 
Bake in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes or until golden brown.
While waiting for the crumble, prepare the sauce.
Put the eggs, sugar, both of the flour into the saucepan, whisk till combine.
Heat the milk into the microwave for 1 - 1.30 minutes or until heated through. 
Pour into the egg mixture slowly, whisking all the time. (You do not want to have scramble eggs)
Place the sauce pan over low heat and let the mixture come to a boil (whisking all the time), until the mixture thicken abit.
Take off the heat and add the butter, whisking slowly until the butter melted. 
Pour sauce into a jug and now you are ready to serve!

Fruit Tart. Sweet and nice!

Seems like January is a birthday month to me. Have been doing 3 birthday bakes and one more coming along .. But I don't mind because I love to bake and I can learn alot of things.. hehehe. I hope everyday I can bake something everyday if I could. Anyway this fruit tart consist of pastry cream. This pastry cream is adapted from a cooking book by ....  I like pastry cream alot. You can use it in alot of bake goods like tarts, elcair, bread or cake.. It's sweet and taste like custard. Who doesn't love custard? 

18cm tart pan

(Serves 9)

Tart Base:

180g plain flour 

90g unsalted butter

pinch of salt

2 tsp sugar

2 to 3 tbsp water + one egg yolk 

1 tsp vanilla essence

Egg white for brushing

Pastry Cream:

10g pastry flour

10g corn flour

40grams butter

pinch of salt

15g sugar

200g milk

1/2 vanilla bean, scraped from vanilla bean pod

45g egg yolk (I use about 3)

70grams milk

50grams sugar

Some whipped cream

Topping:

Fresh fruits of your choice

Method:

Mix flour, salt and sugar together in a bowl. 

Rub in butter until it resembles fine crumbs. 

Add in egg yolk mixture and vanilla essence to form a dough. 

Wrap dough in cling wrap and chill for an hour.

Take dough our from fridge and roll out dough bigger then your tart pan.

Transfer to tart pan and cut out excess dough.

Chill again for another 15 minutes. Preheat your oven to 180C.

Blind bake the pastry for 20 minutes. Remove tart from oven and brush egg white over and bake for another 15 minutes till golden brown and leave to cool.

Pastry Cream (Custard cream):

Sift corn flour and pastry flour and set aside.

In a saucepan, mix together 200 grams of milk, butter, 20grams sugar, salt and vanilla bean and place saucepan over medium heat.

Stir till butter and sugar is dissolved.

Switch off fire and set aside. 

In a bowl, mix 50 grams sugar and egg yolk. 

Using a hand whisk, whisk till mixture is light in colour.

Add flour mixture and mix evenly. Add in 50 grams milk and mix together. 

Pour butter mixture into egg yolk mixture slowly.

Pour mixture using sieve into another saucepan.

Over medium heat, stir vigourously until mixture becomes thickened and custard like. You will notice bubble popping out from the saucepan. 

Pour custard into a clean bowl. Using ice bath, place custard mixture over the bowl and stir until custard becomes cold. Be careful not to let water get in as it will spoil the custard. 

Keep it refrigerated. Custard cream can be keep for two days in fridge.

Assemble:

Whip up some whipping cream till stiff peaks.

Take out custard cream from fridge and fold whipped cream together.

Pipe custard cream into tart base and decorate with fruits.

Enjoy!