Lessons Learned and Chocolate Cream Puffs

            Alrighty - new week, new motivation and new lessons learned! This week (especially while baking) was really full of lessons. I truly think we learn from our mistakes - at least, that's how I seem to learn the best. Keeping up with my "motivational direction" I went to the Farmers Market this Saturday and wandered around aimlessly trying to figure out what I wanted to pick up - and ended up at the Chocolate Cow. They are our local chocolate "factory" - call them the Willy Wonka's of Thunder Bay. They are a chocolate lovers paradise, offering all sorts of delicious truffles and chocolate-dipped-anythings. Since I wanted to make something myself - I picked up a couple of their single-origin chocolate bars:

          These scrumptious bars are of Ecuador origin. So what now, you ask? Well I thought the same thing too. What in the world was I going to do with this dark chocolate? I tried a piece after taking this picture and was quite surprised. It was very rich but had some serious floral undertones - made me want to go back to the Market and try all the other kinds offered just to taste the differences. After much debate about what to make, I came up with chocolate cream puffs.

          So off to the internets I went to find a recipe, seeing as I've never made anything like this before. I ended up finding two, one from Tastebook and one from Foodloversodyssey (whose story of her chocolate eclairs and her mum was quite touching, I might add), that I modified to come up with a recipe of my own.

           Here are the basic ingredients for the puffs, also known as a "Pâte à Choux".

 1/2 c. water

1/2 c. milk

1/2 c. butter, cubed

1 tbsp. granulated sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 heaping c. all-purpose flour

4 eggs, room temperature

1. Pre-heat the oven to 375F and get out two cookie sheets, lined with parchment paper.

2. Place the water, milk, butter, sugar and salt into a pot on the stove-top on high heat and bring to boil. Make sure to stay by it and keep an eye on it!

3. Immediately once it has started boiling, add the vanilla extract. Once it's at a rolling boil and has expanded and then fallen back in on it self, remove from heat.

4. Immediately after removing from heat, add all the flour at once while stirring. Once a dough ball has formed, place back on a medium-low heat to dry the dough out - make sure to constantly be stirring the mixture while it is on the heat. I did this for about 7 minutes. 

5. Remove from heat once again (and turn off stove - we don't need it anymore) and stir the ball around to cool it down slightly before adding the eggs. 

6. Add one egg at a time.*SEE SIDE NOTE AT BOTTOM* Each time you add a new egg, the mixture with break apart and then form back into a ball once the egg is incorporated. With the last egg, the mixture will NOT form back into a ball. Don't worry, this is OK!

 

This is what the dough looks like after incorporating an egg.

 

 

This is what the dough looks like after the 4th (last) egg was added.  

7. Once the dough looks like this, you have a couple of options. You can either just scoop out the dough into little balls onto the cookie sheets like I did or you can place them in a piping bag/zip-lock baggie and pipe out little balls. In hindsight, I think the next time I make these the latter approach is what I will do - much easier to control and make them look "pretty". Make sure to leave about 2 inches or so in-between each puff.

8. Bake at 375F for 20 minutes and then reduce the heat to 350F for another 20-25 minutes (until they are golden brown).

9. Turn off the oven and open the oven door slightly. Leave the puffs in the oven (with it off and the door open) for 20 or so minutes to dry them out. 

10. Remove from oven and allow to cool COMPLETELY before handling. Once cooled, take a knife and cut each puff in half carefully - make sure to remember which top goes with which bottom!

          Now came the fun parts, adding the filling and the chocolate! All I did  for the filling was whip up about 150 mL of whipping cream with 1/2 tsp. of vanilla and about 2 tbsp. of icing powdered sugar (I don't like my whip cream TOO sweet).

 Spoon the cream into the bottoms of each puff.

Next, I placed the tops back on each of the puffs and prepared the chocolate topping - this is where those beautiful chocolate bars above come in. Now let me say before I start off that I wanted to showcase this chocolate and the qualities and flavours within it so I did not add any sugar/vanilla/anything. If you're not a dark-chocolate kind of person (such as my other half) I would suggest using a lighter chocolate. With that being said, I poured about 1/2 c. of heavy cream into a pot on the stove and let it heat up - DO NOT LET IT BOIL. Once it has started to scald (bubbles start to form on the sides of the pot), remove from the heat and add the chocolate into the cream in little pieces, in my case it was 100 g. of 70% Dark Ecuador Chocolate and stir until the chocolate has melted. Once melted, add 1 tbsp. of butter and mix until incorporated.

 Immediately pour the chocolate onto the tops of the cream puffs and let cool. Ta-da, chocolate cream puffs:

*Try to ignore my horrific nails in this shot, I haven't exactly "kept up" with them*

*SIDE NOTE* This is where I learned my first lesson during this whole thing. I've always known the "crack your eggs into a bowl/glass/something else that DOES NOT have your other ingredients in it-just in case something is wrong with the egg" thing. I never do it. Let's just say, I will from now on. With the very first egg that I cracked directly into the dough, this is what I found: 

Eggs should NOT be red. Scratch that dough and start allllll over again - lesson learned. Might I add here that adding the eggs is a very, very, very LABOUR-INTENSIVE feat. You have to constantly be stirring and with each egg it gets harder and harder and harder and... well, you get the picture.

          So that was that for this weeks Farmers Market adventure. Til the next time!

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