Way back in 2013, the hubby and I sat down and watched another episode of one of our favourite YouTube channels, Laura in the Kitchen. This particular episode was for a molten lava cake, but not chocolate in flavour as you might often see. Whilst the episode was still playing, the hubby searched the interweb to find the key ingredient, which isn’t readily available in Australia, to make the scrumptious looking Butterscotch Molten Lava Cakes.
Passionfruit Créme Brûlée
Passionfruit is yet another of my favourite flavours. I always loved drinking the Pasito soft drink growing up, and now the hubby makes a more adult drink by making passionfruit liqueur. If there is an option for something passionfruit, I will generally take it, including the fruit itself.
When we recently had friends over for dinner, I wanted to make something with passionfruit and given B said she liked créme brûlée it was decided I would make Passionfruit Créme Brûlée.
Éclairs
After making my first ever batch of crème pâtissière, I obviously needed something to use it for. My first thought was to make my own version of the toffee choux pastries from our local patisserie which is a favourite of the hubby and I, but I decided I didn’t want to play around with hot sugar on this particular occasion so that idea was scrapped. I did want to stick with making choux pastry as I haven’t made it for quite some time so I settled on making éclairs instead.
Crème Pâtissière (Pastry Cream)
I was watching an episode of the of the Great British Bake Off recently and one of the challenges was to make a Fraisier Cake chock full of crème pâtissière, or pastry cream as it can be known as. Not long before I saw this episode, I came across a recipe for crème pâtissière on The Little French Bakery so all signs were pointing to me making some.
Crème pâtissière is obviously French and features in a number of pastries such as profiteroles, Napoleons, éclairs and tarts and although it is usually vanilla in flavour, you can mix it up with addition of liquors, infusing the milk whilst it is heating with ingredients such as cinnamon, dried (culinary) lavender or coffee beans. If you are interested in a chocolate version, you can add some chocolate near the end of the cooking whisking until it is all melted.
Portuguese Tarts
Before I met my husband I had never eaten a Portuguese Tart. There is a woman at our local farmers market who sells different pastries, including these little beauties and he brought one home for me to try. Needless to say I absolutely loved it.
Jamie Oliver has a recipe for Quick Portuguese Tarts in his 30 Minute Meals cook book which we have made a couple of time that uses créme fraîche rather than making a custard and the hubby and I have made those a couple of times as they’re quite delicious. After a recent order of my Oreo Cookies and Cream Cupcakes, I had some leftover egg yolks so I thought I would make a more traditional Portuguese Tarts using a recipe from Bill Grainger.