Bake Off with The Bake Off - Pastry!

Still playing catch up! This week is Pastry week! My challenge this week was to make something that I have never made before from the Pastry episode - Éclairs! The twist was that they had to be different than chocolate and cream and Gav had to like them!

Week 7 - Pastry Week!

White Chocolate and Raspberry Cheesecake Éclairs

Ingredients:
For the Choux Pastry:
65g Plain Flour
120ml Water
pinch of salt
50g Butter
2 Eggs (beaten)
For the Filling:
200g Cream Cheese
100g Icing Sugar
50g Raspberries
For the Icing:
150g White Chocolate (melted)

I decided to base these Eclairs on a cheesecake because Gav loves cheesecake and I wanted to mash the two things together to make a hybrid of awesome pastry cheesecake.

Firstly, I preheated the oven to 200C and lined a baking tray with foil. I would advise you to ensure that you have baking parchment in your cupboard before embarking on such a project, otherwise you may find yourself also using foil too, although to be fair, the foil worked fine, so use either! Anyway, I greased the foil and left it for later.

I put the water into a saucepan with the salt and butter and heated gently until the butter had melted. Bring the watery mixture tot he boil and add the flour, remove from the heat and beat until smooth. Putting the saucepan back on the heat to cook the dough slightly, so that it starts to come away from the sides - resembling PlayDough. Leave to cool.

Apologies this is a little wordier and less picture based than usual - it suddenly dawned on me half way through that I needed to be documenting this for The BaKerry! Talk about a dopey moment.

Once cooled, I added the beaten eggs to the mixture and whisked it in my mixer. The dough became very glossy looking. I then spooned it into my piping gun and piped them onto the baking tray

Hopefully yours will be less messy than mine

They were in the oven for around 15 minutes, at which point I reduced the temperature without opening the door and to 170C and left for another 10 minutes - A good tip from Mr H.

To avoid them going soggy with the steam trapped inside, I made small holes in the side of each Eclair, before returning them to the oven for another 5 minutes to make sure they were crisp. Leave to cool.

Meanwhile, playing with sugar...

Using the back of the a ladle, I created a basket. I filled some Raspberries with white chocolate too, just to pass some time

I filled some Raspberries with white chocolate too, just to pass some time and because the idea seemed delicious

Whilst the Éclairs cooled, I made the cheesecake filling. I creamed together the cream cheese and icing sugar and added the raspberries and squashed them in.

I piped the cheesecake filling into the Éclairs and spread the white chocolate on the top

Overall they tasted great, they were very messy to make though, as you can see from the picture! Needless to say, although I do not feel like rushing back into the kitchen to make another batch, I think I'll give them another whirl in the future :) 3 out of 5 points earned.

Bake Off with The Bake Off - European Cakes!

Well I'm terribly behind in writing up a few weeks worth of baking, so here I am, catching up again! This one was for the European cake week, my challenge for this week was to make a European cake, but the recipe had to include yeast and I had to have a go at spinning sugar because I had never done it before.

Week 6 - European Cakes!

Yeast Strudel with Walnuts

Ingredients:
For the Dough:
1 7g pack dried yeast
1/2 tsp Caster Sugar
1 tbsp Warm Water
310g Plain Flour
50g Caster Sugar
1 Pinch of Salt
1 Egg (beaten)
100ml Warm Water
40g Butter
For the Filling:
200g Ground Walnuts
100ml Milk
50g Caster Sugar
1/2tsp Vanilla Extract
1 tbsp Honey
1/2 tsp Ground Cinnamon

I started off by preparing the dough as it needed time to prove. I combined the yeast, 1/2 teaspoon of caster sugar and 1 tablespoon of warm water in a jug, left for a couple of minutes for it to activate and become foamy and yeast smelling. Whilst that was happening, I mixed together the flour, sugar and salt.

I made an indent in the flour and added the yeast mixture, along with the egg and gradually the water, mixing all the while. Before giving it one final blast in the mixer, I added the butter. 

I swapped out the mixing paddle for the dough blade and let it knead for 5 minutes. I then placed it in a bowl, covered with cling film and left to rise for around an hour for it to double in size.

Whilst it was proving, I cracked on with the filling. There were no ground walnuts at our local shop, hopefully you have more luck than I did, therefore, I had to finely chop them as best I could. I poured the milk into a pan and brought to the boil, I then threw in all of the other ingredients for the filling and stirred until it thickened, then left it to cool until the dough was ready.

When the dough had roughly doubled in size, I rolled it out into a rectangle measuring approximately 12 by 20 inches and spread the walnut mixture on top. I then rolled it up like a Swiss Roll and twisted it.

Happy that it was shaped and mildly concerned about parts of the mixture showing through, I left it to prove again for another hour. 

I baked it at 190°C for 10 minutes and then lowered the temperature to 175°C (without opening the oven) and baked for a further 30 minutes.Whilst it was baking. I made the spun sugar. I used about 100g sugar, I wasn't sure how much I would make an I wanted to play around with it.

I just tipped the sugar in the pan and heated on a low heat, gradually it started to melt around the sides and I used a spoon to gently prod it to help it along a bit. Suddenly it had all melted and I was ready to go. I had a couple of wooden spoons in the fridge as I had read that by refrigerating them helped if you wanted to make swirls. Over some baking parchment, I held the string of melting sugar gradually dripping off the spoon and when it became a little wiry looking, I held it over the wooden spoon and twisted it. I was pretty happy with the results.

I drizzled some icing on the top of the cooled yeast strudel and stuck some extra walnuts on top for added decoration and then lightly placed my spun sugar swirls. 

It tasted delicious. I was fairly happy with the results, although I would have liked a more even swirl on the inside, I was happy with the bake and the taste :) 4 out of 5 from the judges!