Canelés/canneles – the next macarons (or cupcakes)

Canelés are small pastries originated in Bordeaux. They’re dark brown on the outside with a thin caramelized crust, and a custard-like texture inside.

According to bakers in Bordeaux, the original canelés recipe is a highly guarded secret. The only thing we know is it calls for chilling a batter for at least 24 hours, then bake them in copper molds at a very high temperature for a very long time, then let them cool down to harden the outer crust. And only those ones made strictly following the original recipe can be called canelés. Therefore, all the treats made using modified recipes, or those with other stuff (like fruits, flavours) added are called canneles instead.

We first tried canneles when we visited Bordeaux few years ago.  But we wanted to try making them only recently after we bought a high quality made-in-Europe mold in Montreal.  We adopted the recipe from Tartelette except for the rum, since we didn’t have it readily at home (yeah really), and we put a bit more vanilla extract.  The result….they were DELICIOUS~! The caramelized crust was thin enough to give the crunchy chew but wouldn't stick to the teeth. It crumbled with the melt-in-the-mouth moist centre when bite into it.  We tried one and rushed to get the pictures taken so we could enjoy the rest. 

Why we say they’re the next macarons? Because it’s a simple recipe with unlimited possibilities. You can add any flavour you can think of into these little devils, or put whatever garnish you like. We think sooner or later you will find these cuties in the patisseries.

We’re fine tuning the recipe and hopefully we can soon offer our taste of Bordeaux to you ^^

Osmanthus? What is it?

Osmantus (桂花) is one of my favourite flavours, from the traditional osmanthus jelly at dim sum to the osmantus sluch at bubble tea place.  So when we’re making macarons this flavour automatically came to my mind.


Osmanthus is also called “sweet tea olive”.  The name “osmanthus” is from the Greek words of “osme” (scent) and “anthos” (flower).  As its name suggests, it’s a very fragrant flower and it’s often used in Chinese cooking, particularly used in desserts and mixed in tea.  Unlike roses, which have a sweet scent, the fragrant of osmanthus is very dense but subtle.

Osmanthus blossoms in the 8^th month of the Lunar calendar (around September) so that is also called 桂月. But of course, with the dried flower this elegant taste can be enjoyed anytime of the year ^^

Quick and Easy Crepe Recipe

We love crepes with ice cream and this dish often shows up as our late night dessert. Our friends thought we made these with crepe pan and with some fancy crepe mix.  But guess what? We use regular pan and a simple recipe:

For 4 crepes

2 eggs

90g all purpose flour

30g sugar

250mL milk (I use skim milk but 2% is also fine. DO NOT use cream as the batter will be too thick)

Directions

1) Sieve the flour and sugar together

2) Add the milk and eggs in and mix well

Now here comes the answer to the biggest kitchen mystery for Asians. Like many Asians we wondered why we need an egg beater as we typically use chopsticks to beat the egg. Well to make crepes we found that the egg beater is the best tool to ensure all the dry ingredients dissolve completely and not sticking onto the tool (you will end up with crumbs sticking if you use a spoon or chopsticks).

If you don’t have an egg beater at home that’s also fine. Just sieve the batter through the strainer to make sure no crumbs in it.

3) Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

4) After 30 minutes, heat the pan and brush it with a little bit of butter.

5) Reduce to heat to low to medium, use a soup scoop and pour 1 scoop of batter into the pan. Move the pan in circular motion to spread the batter.

6) Use a spatula and start scrape from the edge. When one side is done, you can life the crepe and flip to cook the other side. Then how “burn” you want the crepe to be is your preference.

Because we’re using a regular pan and we don’t have that little “T” shape thing to spread the batter evenly on the pan (btw I saw that sold at the St. Lawrence market), the edge is a bit thinner and might get crispy.  Just tuck the edge in when wrapping the crepe with ice cream/fruits/cream.

You can make the crepes ahead of time and put in the fridge. Just warm it with the pan when serving.

Now with chocolate drizzle and blueberries as garnish (or whatever toppings you like), a simple delicious dessert can be enjoyed at home in pyjamas! ^^ 

Vienna Sacher Torte Experience

We’re back!

After a 2-week vacation in Europe, we’re finally back. This time we spent most of our time in Austria, including Vienna, Salzburg and Innsbruck.

One of the items on my agenda for this trip was to try the Sacher Torte, a Viennese chocolate cake.  You can get Sacher Torte in almost any restaurant in Austria, but we’re interested in two main places – Demel and Hotel Sacher.

Sacher Torte was first “invented” in Vienna.  Throughout the 30s and the 50s there had been legal battles between Hotel Sacher and Demel for the name “Original Sacher Torte”.  At the end they settled and Hotel Sacher got to use the name “Original Sacher Torte” while Demel got the right to decorate the torte with a triangular seal that says “Eduard-Sacher-Tort”

You can find the details on the Sacher Torte on Wikipedia. But here we just want to share our tasting experience of the torte.  As with all food it’s a personal taste so our comments not necessarily mean one is better than the other.

Our first stop was Demel.  Its Vienna location is on the high end shopping street of Vienna, and you can see the Hofburg Palace from the patio.

Inside you can see the working area for the pastry chefs. We were there late afternoon so I guess they’re off already.

So this is the much anticipated Sacher Torte from Demel.  I-LOVE-IT.

I’m not a big fan of chocolate cake because the ones in North America are typically overly sweet. Yet the Sacher Torte is not supposed to be too sweet (Austrian taste I guess?).  Even though with the chocolate icing on top and apricot jam in the middle the sweetness is just right.

We went to Hotel Sacher after a concert.  You can see the big sign “Original Sacher Torte” there.

The four of us had a light meal at Café Sacher and then shared a dessert set for two. It included (from the bottom): pancake with plum jam filling (which is another common Austrian dessert and one of Empress Sissi’s favourite), Sacher Torte, raspberry and chocolate mousse cake, petite four.

For the Sacher Torte, I found Hotel Sacher’s a bit heavier than Demel’s.  Demel’s cake was fluffier and Hotel Sacher’s cake was denser. Reading Wikipedia it’s supposed to be a dense sponge cake but I personally like fluffier cake.  The chocolate icing of Hotel Sacher’s was also a bit heavier, making the torte taste a bit sweeter than Demel’s.  Of course I’m no foodie so I can’t tell whether these differences were caused by having them in different time of the day (afternoon vs. late night).  But if you like light fluffy cake Demel would be your choice.  But if you like more richness of chocolate, Hotel Sacher’s “Original Sacher Torte” would disappoint you.

Mother's Day Special - Macaron Gift Box

Thinking of what to get your mother/wife or someone special for mother's day? Or need some desserts to bring to the mother's day celebration? How about a box of macaron?


We're offering mother's day special gift set - a "bouquet and tea combo".  In the gift box you will find 12 macarons of 2 flavours: a tea and flower. There are 2 kinds to choose from:


Oriental set - genmicha (roasted rice and tea) and osamthus (a kind of aromatic flower)


European set - earl grey tea and rose


The mother's day special gift set is $25 each and will be available for meet and pickup in Toronto downtown core and Markham before mother's day. If you're interested, you can email us at fumio.treats@gmail.com or send us a facebook message before May 4.


We also have other flavours available. Please contact us for the menu. ^^

Cookie manjyu – fusion cookies

Back in December we participated in a cookie exchange event.  We tried to make something different amongst all the gingerbread and chocolate chip cookies.  So we found this “fusion” cookie recipe from Cookpad.  “Manjyu” (まんじゅう) in Japanese means buns and these are called cookie manjyu because of their ball shape but with the outer shell is cookie instead of bread dough. 

Make 20 cookies

Cream cheese

Cake flour – 150g

Baking powder – 5g

Sugar – 50g

Cream – 50g

Butter – 50g

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350F.

2. Cut the cream cheese into small pieces and roll into 20 balls of about 1.5cm to 2cm.

3. Heat the cream in a pan and melt the sugar and butter in the cream.  While waiting, sift the flour and baking powder.

4. Pour the heated cream into the sifted flour and baking powder.  Mix well and divide the dough into 20 pieces. 

5.  Flatten each piece of dough and wrap the cream cheese inside.  Bake for 20 to 30 minutes.

Ta-da~

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Earl grey macaron – an experiment of flavour and colour

We came across this tea which has a very elegant fragrance and we decided to make some earl grey macaron. 

There’re many ways to add flavour into the macarons and the most common way is to infuse the flavour into the whipped cream used in the ganache, by putting the tea leaves in simmering cream.  We found this process didn’t yield the results we want to we tried another way – adding the tea leaves into the ganache.

Here comes the gadget we bought in the States. 

Yes, a marble mortar.  I know they’re also available in Canada but those are just not deep enough.  We bought this to make ground pistachios for the pistachio macarons.  A lot of the recipes tell you to use a coffee grinder or food processor to grind almond or other nuts but we found that will get the oil in the nuts out and make the thing too moist.  One of the solutions is to grind with powdered sugar but won’t work for macaron, which the balance of the ingredient is everything.   

And this is perfect if you just need to grind a little bit of tea leaves.  After grinding the tea leaves into a powder form, sift them to remove the bigger pieces.  We add the earl grey “powder” directly into the ganache.  Because they’re still tea leaves they won’t melt.  We got a blackish-coloured ganache just like those black sesame paste, which matched perfectly with the light purple macaron cookie. ^^ 

Ispahan bavarois – a simple recipe

If you read our previous post, you probably figured that we fell in love with “ispahan” flavour: rose+raspberry+lychee.  And we always wanted to use this formula to create some other desserts (as discussed, there is no such thing as intellectual property rights in the dessert world LOL).

We organized a dessert class at our house for a ladies’ gathering event.  Although requested by some, macaron was out of questions with our little kitchen and 10+ participants.  Hence we chose this mousse dessert as it was easy to make and they can replicate at home without worrying about oven temperatures.

Bavarois is also called Bavarian cream, and it’s basically a solid form of whipped cream.  It’s very easy to make and you can incorporate any flavour you like.

Ingredients (for 8 servings):

Powdered gelatine - 1.5 packets

Rose water - 1 tablespoon

Water - 3.5 tablespoons

Milk - 150 mL

Whipping cream - 300 mL

Raspberries - 75 g

Lychee - 12 pieces

Sugar - 4 tablespoons

I created this recipe based on traditional and easy-to-make recipes.  You might have noticed that traditional bavarois recipes contain egg yolk.  Since there were expecting moms in our group, I modified the recipe to make sure it’s raw egg-free.

Now let’s start.

1. In a bowl, mix powder gelatine with rose water and water. Put the mixture in the fridge for 10 to 15 min. 

2. Chop the raspberries or use a blender to make raspberry puree.

3. While waiting for the gelatin to set, cut lychee into small pieces.

4. Remove the rose water gelatine from the fridge. Cut the gelatine into small pieces. Pour the milk into the bowl. Set aside.

5. In a stand or hand-held mixer, whip the cream in medium speed until stiff peaks formed.

6. Put the bowl with rose water gelatine and milk in the microwave for 30 seconds under approx. 500W, or until the gelatine has dissolved.  Because we were using powder gelatine instead of sheet gelatine, we needed to make “gelatine jello” first before dissolving it to the mixture.

7. Put raspberry puree into the whipped cream and use folding motion to incorporate. 

8. Put the milk with dissolved gelatine into the cream and continue folding until the mixture looks like a thick batter.  We were trying to explain to the ladies what it would look like and they all got it when one said “oh you mean like baby food”. =)

9. Put the mixture in small plastic cups. The lychee can be put in as a layer or mixed in. Cover with plastic wrap.

10. Freeze for 30 to 45 min. for quick serving. Alternatively, leave in fridge overnight.

11. To serve on a plate, put the plastic cup in hot water for 15 seconds. Use a knife to scrape around the edge. The bavarois will come off easily.

12. Put decoration on top as desired.  For this one we put a little buttercream flower (no egg yolk).  Some put the leftover raspberries.  The choice is limitless!

Enjoy~

Let there be rose – Ispahan throwdown in Paris

We were in Paris last fall and one of our must-do was to try Pierre Hermé’s famous “Ispahan”.  Although there are numerous PE outlets in Paris this delicate pastry is only sold at the St. Germaine store.  There’s no seating in the store but there’s a park conveniently across the street. 

“Ispahan” is a species of rose so it goes without saying that this “Ispahan” dessert is of rose flavour.  It’s about the size of the palm so it’s like holding a burger when eating it (so much about elegance).  We read a lot about this before so we knew exactly what it is made of: rose flavour macaron, raspberry buttercream, lychee and fresh raspberries.  However, actually tasting it is a totally different experience – the complex aroma was just breathe-taking.  The subtle rose flavour mixed very well with the fruitiness of raspberries.  And the hint of lychee was just the perfect highlight of the dessert.  No wonder people say Pierre Hermé is a genius.

Pierre Hermé started off at another renowned patisserie Ladurée, where he created this gem.  Apparently there’s no such thing as intellectual property rights in the dessert world and there are many places in Paris you can get Ispahan, including Ladurée of course.  So our “try Pierre Hermé Ispahan” mission became an Ispahan throwdown.

Our second stop was Ladurée.  Unlike PE you can get Isaphan at all locations (unless they’re sold out).  This one tasted much like PE’s actually.  But we still like PE’s more, probably due to first mover advantage so this Ladurée one didn’t give us the wow factor anymore.

The other place we tried was Angelina.  We were there for the hot chocolate and Mont Blanc but we spotted it while waiting in line to be seated.  They’re not called Ispahan but some French name we couldn’t pronounce so we called it Ispahan anyway.  Hope they were not offended.

This one was our least favourite.  As you can see there were sprinkles of licorice and it did have taste of licorice.  We are not big fans of licorice so this Ispahan to us was an acquired taste.

The conclusion?  When we get the chance, make sure you try it and let the roses blossom in your mouth!

Grand Opening!

Welcome!  Here we will share our love of treats (sweet or savoury).  As our first post, why not having a little toast to celebrate the opening of our blog?

This is basically a drink of Japanese plum wine, sparkling water and raspberries.  We found this recipe on Cookpad, a Japanese cooking site.  With our limited Japanese literacy and the help of Google Translate we often get new ideas for our dinner and dessert tables. 

The ratio we used here was 1 part of plum wine to 4 parts of water.  The colour first came out just like champagne.  And guess what?  After a while the colour from the raspberries infused into the drink and it became pink!  So it’s like champagne and rosé in one drink ^^.

Cheers~