Choux Pastries!

Hello and welcome to another Daring Baker's Challenge! Kat of The Bobwhites was our August 2012 Daring Baker hostess who inspired us to have fun in creating pate a choux shapes, filled with crème patisserie or Chantilly cream. We were encouraged to create swans or any shape we wanted and to go crazy with filling flavors allowing our creativity to go wild!

Choux Pastries with Peanut Butter Chocolate Crème Filling

Pastry adapted from: Steamy Kitchen 

Chantilly cream adapted from: Martha Stewart

Ingredients (Choux Pastry AKA Pâte à Choux):

• 1 cup water
• 1 stick butter
• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 4 eggs

Ingredients (Crème filling - Chantilly Cream):

• 1 cup whipping cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon PB2

This was a "fun shaped pastry" - I wasn't too creative, but it would be super fun to make different shapes!

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees
2. Mix water, salt and butter in pot over medium heat.
3. When mixture is just bubbling, add flour, turn off heat, and mix vigorously until a dough forms - about 1 minute.
4. Transfer dough to stand mixer, start the mixer to cool it down a bit. 
5. Add eggs, one at a time, making sure the each one is fully incorporated before adding the next (this is important - you don't want to cook the eggs!)
6. Once this is done, either pipe the dough onto a prepared sheet or spoon it on (this just depends on whether you want to have fun shapes, or regular cream puff shapes)
7. Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes.
8. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake for about 25 minutes. Start checking the dough around 18 minutes to see if it's done. It could take as long as 30 minutes, but mine only took about 25.
9. While the choux pastries are baking or cooling, make the Chantilly cream. This step is super simple - simply add everything in a stand mixer and mix until you have a whipped-cream like consistency!
10. Enjoy your pastries!

Bastille Day Muffins!

When I was in college, I took French. Not my brightest idea, since, after 7 years of Spanish, I tried to pronounce everything as if it were in Spanish. Oh, well. Anyways, since I was taking French, I tried to do French things. The extent of that included watching movies I already knew in French (it sort of helped) and making Bastille Day Muffins (it was no help at all, but fun!) My roommates at the time LOVED the muffins, so now it's become a tradition and I make them every year. They're super easy and delicious.

Bastille Day Muffins

Adapted From: All Recipes 

Ingredients:

MUFFINS

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

1/3 cup melted butter

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

TOPPING

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 cup melted butter 

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. Mix everything in bowl (seriously, these muffins could not be easier - just mix it all in, in whatever order you want - there can even be lumps and they will turn out great)

3. Place batter in greased muffin tin (this makes 12 muffins)

4. Bake for 20-25 minutes (check at 20)

5. Take muffins out, and let cool a bit so that they're warm, but easy to handle

6. Melt butter for topping and create sugar/cinnamon/nutmeg mixture

7. Roll muffins first in butter, then in sugar/cinnamon/nutmeg mixture

8. Serve and Enjoy!