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Tag Archives: baked goods

I make! Dark chocolate éclairs edition

It’s another bakealong!  This one is from February and I actually did try it out in February.  I never posted because I didn’t get a good picture while I was making the éclairs back then.  I figured I’d make them again and just get a good shot then buuuut…I haven’t made éclairs since then.  Just haven’t felt like making éclairs.  So you get a terrible picture.

Anyway, this is maybe my fourth time working with choux pastry?  I think?  I’ve made éclairs and cream puffs before in the past.  And I think I’ve used a different recipe for choux pastry each time.  Some have been easier to work with, some have been more difficult.  One of them was just plain strange.  I would tell you to avoid that one but I don’t remember which one it is anymore.  The KAF recipe seems just fine and easy to work with.

This time I piped them with a star tip.  I forgot which size, but it wasn’t a huge one.  I think the first time I made éclairs I was doing it with the jr high girls and we just used ziploc bags with a corner cut off to make the éclair shape.  And then we piped pudding in, as I had no intention of making pastry cream and éclairs with jr highers in one night, using a ziploc with a bit of a straw taped to the corner of the bag.

Anyway, I piped the éclairs and filled them with chocolate pastry cream.  I didn’t slice and fill fill but instead used a smaller tip to poke a hole into the tops (one at each end in case there was a partition that didn’t clear in the middle) of the éclairs and fill that way.  Then I tipped the top into the glaze and tada! It’s like I never made a hole in the éclair at all!

Um, I didn’t really bother making the éclairs look that nice.  You’ll see that a lot of them are all wonky.  I baked them kind of late at night.  But they tasted good.  Of course, I am a huge fan of chocolate, so I might think anything heavy on the chocolate tastes good.  I made them for my last couple of weeks at clic (and they went really fast, so I think they really did taste good).  So yes…I’m free from clic!  On to client D (henceforth known as clid)!

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This really is a bad picture.

Obtw, one of the guys at clic came up to me afterward and asked me how I managed to bake the éclairs with the filling inside and also, how I even got the filling inside.  It…was a weird conversation.

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I make! Cinnamon streusel orange muffins

Another edition of trying to get rid of oranges.  This actually happened much more recently than the orange pound cake and I actually have a recipe!  Mostly because I used a single recipe and didn’t make a frankenrecipe for myself.

In my search for more orange flavored baked goods, I came across a recipe for cinnamon streusel orange muffins.  I thought that was an interesting combination.  I don’t often see cinnamon and orange together.  So, of course I tried it out.

WP_20170312_17_03_58_Rich_LIThey turned out pretty good.  Again, the orange flavor isn’t quite where I wanted it.  It was pretty faint.  It was more of an aftertaste…or after…flavor…after…scent?  Pretty subtle, not unpleasant, almost floral, but I really wanted the orange to be more prominent.  I had added zest to the batter along with the orange juice too.

The orange and cinnamon combination was rather nice.  I didn’t try and drown everything in cinnamon like I normally do.  So the cinnamon added a bit of sweetness and warmth to the flavor.  I rather liked it.  I think it would still work if the orange flavor were stronger.

What else…?  Oh, the texture was pretty good.  I like adding buttermilk (powder) to things.  Besides flavor, I think it improves texture.  Also, since this is a muffin recipe, it is pretty important not to overmix.  These muffins had a tender crumb and were a little springy in texture (a bit more than I would have expected in a muffin, but not unpleasant).

Muffins themselves were also pretty.  I like the crackly top of streusel and the swirl of cinnamon in the middle of the muffin.  I think the photo is from the first time I tried the muffins.  Subsequent batches had even cracklier tops.

If I were to make them again, I definitely would have to augment the orange flavor.  I saw that some people were trying orange juice concentrate.  I think that would definitely bring an “orange” flavor to the forefront, but I don’t particularly like the taste of orange juice concentrate.  Looks like another recipe in which I get to play with citrus oils.