Chouquettes

What do monkeys and pâte à choux have in common?

Not so much, I'll admit, besides the fact that they were both part of my week-long no-blogging stay back in Saint Dié. There's a mountain filled with monkeys and you can feed them and watch them jump around in the woods--really entertaining even though I'm no longer 10.

Back to my dough.

I was having a bit of a dough dilemma last week, when Maman reminded me that Mimi, my aunt, is pretty much a pâte à choux expert. When she got home from work, I asked her for a helping hand and watched the magic unfold.

The recipe is truly very simple, and the prospect of making chouquettes was pretty much all I needed to get all excited.

Chouquettes are a snack that you like when you're a child but love just as much when you get older. They're light, tiny puffs sprinkled with coarse sugar. You can eat one if you want, but you'll probably end up eating ten--at least.

Anyway, I can't say that I really did anything apart from piping the dough onto a baking sheet, putting sugar on the puffs, and eating handfulls of coarse sugar while doing all this. But I did acquire a recipe that will stay in my book for a long time, because I really don't know anyone who doesn't appreciate a few cute chouquettes when they're handed to you in a bowl.

I used to buy some once in a while from the boulangerie across the street from my school before my 5 o'clock class; now I think I should start selling them in the courtyard and making multicolored chouquettes. It's a really cheap snack to make and people get giddy when they see a chouquette.

I think they're sort of an excuse to eat all the coarse sugar that has dropped off the chouquettes and into the bottom of the paper bag you buy them in, but that doesn't keep them from being really delicious.

Chouquettes

1 cup water

1/3 cup (80g) butter

1 1/4 cup (125g) flour

4 eggs

salt

1 tbsp. sugar

coarse sugar

Preheat oven to 200°C / 400°F.

Bring water to a boil, add salt and sugar, then add butter.

Once the butter has melted, add all the flour at once and stir until you get a dry dough.

Remove the saucepan from heat, and add eggs one at a time, stirring (your arms might hurt a little) until you end up with a nice dough that's not too liquid.

Pipe dough onto a baking sheet, making little pyramids/cones for each. Sprinkle with coarse sugar.

Bake until golden--now they're all yours.

Raspberry-Ginger-Chocolate Sprinkle Cupcake

I guess I could also call these my everything-but-the-kitchen-sink cupcakes.

I finally decided to get back to baking this weekend. There's a recipe I've been wanting to try for a while for poppy-seed cakes, but I didn't have all the ingredients needed.

That's when I thought I would just make cupcakes. I didn't want to make plain vanilla cupcakes, although they sure are good, so I ended up using pretty much anything I could find. I had some fresh ginger root left, and the bottom of a small box of dehydrated raspberries. The chocolate sprinkles come from a very special "delivery" by my maman of cooking utensils: knives, graters, zesters, sprinkles, ice cream toppings, and...chocolate chips! So I'm all set now. I didn't feel like using my chocolate chips in cupcakes though, and would rather save them for cookies, brownies of blondies.

I also wanted to try my new heart-shaped cupcake molds, so I was all set with my new gear. I prepared a simple vanilla cupcake batter, and added everything I had to it at the end. That's when I realized that I had forgotten to add baking powder (I admit I wasn't at my peak of concentration yesterday)... Realizing my étourderie, I proceeded to add the baking powder without a teaspoon and I think I may have added a bit much. 

Anyway, they came out looking more like muffins than cupcakes, and basically made me forget about wanting to frost them at all--yesterday was a lazy day! They make a nice breakfast cupcake, because the ginger and raspberries make them slightly tangy and not overly sweet. And the chocolate sprinkles, well, I don't really know what they add. But who doesn't enjoy hearing about chocolate sprinkles?

Notice my new heart-shaped sprinkles! 

Raspberry-Ginger-Chocolate Sprinkle Cupcakes (makes 12)

1 stick (115g) butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup self-rising flour

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp milk

1 tbsp fresh ginger

dehydrated raspberries (I added around 2 tbsp)

chocolate sprinkles (why not?)

Cream butter and sugars, add eggs one at a time. Add flour, vanilla extract, and milk. Add the rest of the ingredients, and scoop into cupcake cups. Bake for around 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Not-So-Red Velvet Cupcakes

The day before my British friend Faye left us to go back home, I decided to bake the all-American treat that are Red Velvet Cupcakes.

The nice--but sort of frightening--red color and the deliciousness that is cream cheese frosting made me go ahead and try them, because I had never ever made Red Velvet Cupcakes before.

Without much hesitation, I settled on Chockylit's recipe because the pictures themselves looked so good, and got out my cutest cupcake wrappers to celebrate Faye's last day at work. 

As I started to make the cupcake batter, I got my little vial of red liquid food coloring out of the cupboard. All the recipes I had seen called for gel, and I was sort of afraid that my liquid food coloring would have a strange taste. The only thing is, gel food coloring is awfully hard to find in random supermarkets in Paris, and I wasn't really keen on running out to Mora just for food coloring. So I added about half of the vial and thought my batter was reddish... But they turned out as dark as chocolate can get (the cupcakes aren't really red, the strange light coming in through my kitchen window is to blame):

Oh well. My Not-So-Red Velvet cupcakes weren't red, but that didn't stop me from having one straight out of the oven. In my opinion, they had a strange bitter-like taste and were really dry. As for the cream cheese frosting, I used the same one as for my Carrot Cake (2nd try). 

The next afternoon, I had another one and--surprise!--they tasted great. Not too dry but not too moist, and the weird bitter taste had altogether disappeared. 

My maman got me the adorable silicone heart-shaped cupcake pans, and I can just imagine how good my N-S-RV cupcakes will look in those...

Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies

It all started with a fall in the middle of the road.

I was on my way home last week when, suddenly, I spotted a dress on the other side of the street. A really nice dress, actually. Oh, I had to get a look at it. So I ran—and slipped. In the middle of the road, nowhere near a crosswalk, and feeling extremely dumb about it. Apart from the fact that I vowed never to do that again, my tailbone really hurt.

The next day at work, I obviously had trouble with the whole sitting down and getting back up thing. My coworker Vanessa, understanding just how much of a child I am, bought me a really cute gift so I would feel better.

To thank her, I decided to bake something, and cookies was the final decision. The only thing is that she’s on a diet and didn’t want to feel bad about eating a couple cookies instead of one. I, on the other hand, had rolled oats and “chocolat patissier” ready for use. After looking at a couple oatmeal cookie recipes online, I did what I had never done before—I created my own recipe!

The recipe is pretty classic, apart from the fact that I used spread with only 10% fat instead of butter or margarine. The problem with doing this is that the cookies were great 5 minutes out of the oven, 5 hours, even 15 hours, but afterwards they became a little too moist and sticky. I'd definitely recommend eating the cookie dough, considering that I was dying to eat all of it. 

Straight out of the oven, though, they were stunning: the chocolate chunks were half-melted, and since I didn’t add much sugar, they weren’t overly sweet. Another weird thing, though: they were perfect after only 7 minutes in the oven at 350° (180°C)—another consequence of using spread instead of butter, I’m guessing.

In the end, if you’ve got an oatmeal cookie craving that won’t subside after a single bite, this recipe might just be what you’re looking for. You could even eat the whole batch…

Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies - makes 18 medium size cookies

1/2 cup low-fat margarine or spread

1/2 cup dark brown sugar (in France, it's called Vergeoise)

1 egg

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup chocolate chunks

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C. 

Cream butter/spread and sugar. Add egg, vanilla, and mix in dry ingredients.

Bake for about 7 (yes! 7!) minutes, and let cookies cool on a wire rack.

Note: If you're looking for the real, non fat non diet thing, I'd recommend using real butter, and perhaps adding more sugar. You'll be able to keep them longer!