Failed pots de creme still taste good

[Inez] We promised you we're use the ramekins, so a few days ago (yes, we're behind in posting) we set out to make raspberry pots de creme, like Ella and I made a few months ago. Except this time I had the genius idea to blend the raspberries (and blackberries) and incorporate them directly into the pots to creme, rather than leaving them whole.


I'm just going to ruin the ending for you and tell you that this was a terrible idea.


Oh, and also we bought chocolate bits, so there was no way to forget to chop the chocolate.


What you see above is the egg yolks with the blended blackberries and raspberries. It's kind of pretty, right? Pretty, but lethal to pots de creme everywhere. See, the texture turned out really grainy and weird, and the custard never quite set. My guess is that all the juice from the berries added way too much liquid to the recipe, not to mention way too much sugar. These babies were really sweet.



We used the exact same recipe as Ella and I used before, so I won't post it again. The only difference was that rather than putting whole raspberries in the bottom of the ramekin before pouring on the custard, we blended them and added them directly to the custard itself. Thus I can safely say that the only culprit for the weird texture can possibly be the blended berries.


Based on this failed experiment, I can make some recommendations.


First of all, if adding much fruit to a custard, use some unsweetened and some bittersweet chocolate, rather than all bittersweet.


Second of all, if you insist on blending fruit and then adding it to a custrd recipe, please strain off the juice or boil it down or something beforehand. Also, use a Vitamix if you have it, to pulvurize those little seeds. Getting berry seeds stuck in your teeth while eating custard really kind of sucks.


But really, if you want flavored pots de creme, I'd recommend adding a little bit of liqueur or extract or something highly concentrated like that. That way you can control just exactly how much liquid you're adding to the recipe. I think you'll be much more successful this way.


Elise and I are going to try to make time to re-do the pots de creme, only this time I suspect they will just be chocolate.

REUINTED

As you can see, we have been reunited!!! Yesterday afternoon Inez arrived in the rainy city of Copenhagen, and promptly slept for 5 hours as Elise finished writing her [theoretically] 14 page [we won't mention the realistic number] paper on Viticultural Soil Management. It was an exciting first day.


[Inez] Check it out, I got ramekins! Just about everything in Denmark is mad expensive, BUT I saw these ramekins in a grocery store for 5 kroner each (a little under a dollar). I got really excited because I have a set of Pyrex ramekins I got for about $5, but all the sets of ceramic ones I've seen run closer to $20. So I jumped at the opportunity to buy a nice set of ceramic ramekins for $4! "Why do I care?" you might be asking yourself. I'll tell you why: Elise and I promise to make something both beautiful and delicious in them before we leave Denmark. Okay? Cool.


[Elise] Mmm broccoli! With final papers and travel, my pantry and fridge shelves were pitifully empty. One of the key goals of today (aside from seeing pretty things like the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, in the background above) was to stock up on food. We bought lots of veggies for dinner then next few nights and lots of fruit for tomorrow morning.

On the menu for tonight. CURRY! I mainly just threw things together as I went along, and the end result, while delicious, still tasted like it was lacking something. Although the flavor was lacking, the texture of everything was excellent, so I'll give you a walkthrough of the process I tend to use when cooking curry.

First I (or in today's case, Inez) cut everything up, potatoes and carrots get cut up into bite sized chunks before boiling until tender (or just short of tender).





The ingredients. Today's curry: potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic, chicken (not pictured), broccoli, baby corn, corn (not pictured), pineapple, pineapple juice, coconut milk, curry powder, and plain yogurt (not pictured).

While the root veggies are boiling, I heated up a very large, deep, skillet, coat the bottom in oil, and begin to sautée the onions and garlic (today I used slightly lower heat than normal and didn't burn the garlic!)

Once the onions begin to get translucent, I added thawed chunks of chicken breast. I continued sautéing until the chicken was cooked through.

Raw meat is gross!

Next I added the broccoli and baby carrots then drizzled a bit more oil (I was using canola) over the topbefore mixing them in. While I did this Inez drained the carrots and then I added those as well.

After about a minute or two more of sautéing, I added what was quite a small can of coconut milk, and some curry powder. after this was all mixed together I added about half of the pineapple juice from the canned pineapple, which was too much for the small can of coconut milk. To even it out I added about a third of cup of plain yogurt. Other curries I've made, I've just used whole milk and some pineapple juice and it tastes fine.

Add more curry until it tastes right.

The last thing I added was the pineapple and the corn. I mixed up everything really well and let to corn sink into the liquid at the bottom. Then I covered the pan and let the whole thing simmer for 3-5 minutes.


[Inez] Elise is really good at waiting, even when she's weak with hunger.

After letting everything simmer for a bit, we served up. Elise is right, it was missing something. You know how sometimes your belly feels full on the top, but not on the bottom? It was kind of like a flavor equivalent of that-- the flavor lacked fullness, somehow. I think it wanted more cumin, but it might have been something else as well. What's the complementary color [flavor] for curry?

[Inez] Scones, my love

I woke up this morning wanting scones. I said to Ruby, "I really want to make scones. But I also want to eat something before the scones are done. Something yummy. Like scones." 

"That's a catch-22," she said. I made the scones.

In my house, we have two Joys of Cooking (Joy of Cookings?), an old one and a new one. I took the old one with me to college, on account of Ruby tried to throw it out when I was 12 or so and I wouldn't let her. The new Joy is good, but the old Joy is best. Of course, by the time it was time for me to head to Haverford, she had realized that, but it was too late. The Old Joy was mine. 

That said, the New Joy offers a variation on the "Classic Currant Scone" (the only one that matters, as far as I'm concerned) that I've never noticed in the Old Joy. It might be there, but I've never seen it. Anyway, it says that if you want flakier scones, you can omit the egg and instead put in 1 cup (rather than 1/2 cup) of cream. Keep the egg and you get cakier scones. Cakey is what I don't like about bakery scones, and flaky is what I love about homemade scones, so obviously I went with more cream, no egg. Plus, since I was doubling the recipe, I got to put in TWO CUPS OF CREAM. Whoa.

Yeah, baby. 

I should mention, before I go any farther (further?) that what you saw in the second picture were actually chopped dried cherries, because we don't have any currants, and I wasn't about to walk to Rainbow to get some at 8 am. 

The New Joy's scone recipe also says the knead the dough 5-10 times before rolling out. While it's entirely possible the Old Joy says the same thing and I've just never paid enough attention to notice, I have never kneaded my scones. Although I recently learned that puff pastry is made by repeatedly rolling dough out and folding it over and rolling it out again (why doesn't that just make it hard as a rock??), I found kneading my scone dough suspect. So I did an experiment. I split the dough in half (the double recipe was too big to knead in one bowl anyway), and I kneaded half of it. The other half I just kind of clumped together and rolled out, same as I always do.

Above you see my classic scone. Looks yummy, doesn't it?

Holy crap! The kneaded out scones are so much taller!

Check it out.

Obviously a taste test was in order. (Also, this was my breakfast. So of course I was going to have a couple. At least.)

I had the non-kneaded kind first. It was amazing. Toasty on the outside, soft and incredibly flaky on the inside. And Ruby was right, cherries are good in scones. Especially since I cut them up to sort of currant-size.

The kneaded scones were also delicious. There was noticeably more crunch (the good kind) to the outside, I think simply because there was more surface area to get toasty. That said, I think I preferred them slightly less than the non-kneaded kind. The butter was more overwhelming in this scone. Of course, that might be because this was my third scone in 10 minutes. The inside was also little bit less flaky and a little bit more doughy. I'm thinking I should have left these ones in for a couple more minutes. They looked done, but they also spent most of the time on the top rack of the oven, so that may have browned them quicker than the other scones. 

The differences were really very slight, but I think my conclusion is this: for aesthetics, I prefer the kneaded scones. They really are prettier and more impressive-looking. But for a balance of toasty outside and perfectly flaky inside, even though they're a little bit uglier, I like my non-kneaded scones.

Recipe (from The Joy of Cooking, 1997 edition -- with some slight modifications)

I'm giving you a single recipe. I doubled the recipe, but it's easier to manage a single recipe in terms of smushing together (and kneading, if you prefer) and also rolling out the scones.

Preheat oven to 425.

• 2 cups flour
  
• 1/4 cup sugar
  
• 1 tblspn baking powder (Can we just agree that T means tablespoon and t means teaspoon? Okay, great.)
  
• 1/2 t salt
• 6 T cold unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup (or more) currants or chopped dried cherries (unsweetened!)
• 1 cup heavy cream

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. (If in a climate with high humidity, please be extra sure to sift the baking powder and salt. Crunching into a clump of baking powder is a real downer.)

Drop in butter, cut into chunks. Using a pastry cutter, cut butter into the flour until the butter bits are quite small. (or if you don't have a pastry cutter I recommend freezing the butter and then grating it into the flour mixture). Stir in the fruit.

Add the cream, and stir just enough that the dry ingredients are moistened. Then:

• Gather dough into a ball in the bowl and form a disc on a lightly floured surface. Pat or roll the dough until it is about 3/4 inch thick.

OR

• Gather dough into a ball in the bowl. Knead it gently 5-10 times, incorporating any loose pieces of dough. Put on a lightly floured surface and pat or roll to 3/4 in thick.
  

Cut into triangles (or whatever) and put on an ungreased baking sheet. The Joy says to brush with milk or cream, but I prefer egg white. Separate an egg, and feed the yolk to your dog. Whisk the white until it's a little bit frothy (it will be easier to spread if it's a lightened up a bit). Using a pastry brush, put a thin coat on top of all the scones.

Bake at 425 for 12-15 minutes.

[Inez] Yes, it's been a while

Sorry it's been so long. After my laudable goal of making dessert for my roommates every week, I got sucked into thesis-land and didn't emerge for a while. I did actually make a blueberry pie for them, which turned out pretty well. I have pictures from that, too, but I'm having some camera troubles and I haven't gotten around to dealing with it (or the blog). But I borrowed my sister's camera to document my second experiment with pots de creme. If you'll recall, the first attempt was wildly successful aside from forgetting to chop the chocolate before adding it to the milk, resulting in some chocolate bits in the pudding -- great when fresh from the oven, a little less than ideal when cooled. Anyway, it was so easy and so delicious that I thought I'd give it another go here in cold rainy Minnesota. Oh hey by the way I graduated!

Anyway, it didn't turn out. I confess, I tweaked the recipe before trying it (I couldn't find the recipe I used before and, like an idiot, didn't think to look here on the blog for it. So I used a new one). Becca says her philosophy is to try a recipe as it stands once, and then tweak it when she can actually make judgments about it. In this, as in many things, Becca was probably right. Given that, I won't be giving you the recipe I used, but I will give you some pictures.

I chopped the chocolate really well this time.

I used my first vanilla bean! Jamie and I went to Costco to get some stuff, and they had these vials with vanilla beans in them -- two vials (10 vanilla beans) for $11. It was cool. Below is after I cut it in half and scraped all the seeds out (that's the dark lump next to the bean pod).





See, they look pretty good. They tasted good, too, they just didn't really pud. Yeah, that's a technical term.


Here's the really exciting part: in a few short days, Elise and I will be REUNITED! Maybe we'll do a joint post or two from Denmark!



[parenthetical remark] Becca and I made Guinness chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting a few days ago, but we couldn't find a camera with a charged battery to use so we didn't take any pictures. We agreed to do a do-over with pictures later on. Stop reading now for spoiler!

Verdict: they're yummy, very moist and fluffy. But it's like everyone says, they don't really taste like Guinness at all. [/parenthetical remark]