Bonjour, Pate A Choux

The other day I was thinking what could I do for a topic, and I'm thinking 'What could I make that's going to be in line with trying things for the bakery?' and it hits me.  Eclairs.  Lately I've seen a number of people lamenting the lack of gluten free options in the area and so I think I can take it a step further and try gluten free eclairs.  Because, why not?  Of course, making eclairs and the like is intimidating to me.  I see a lot of people say how easy it is, but I've actually seen them made successfully.

Anyways, the thing I love about eclairs, and profiteroles, is the number of variations you can do...but so rarely see.  I mean, who wouldn't love a banana split eclair with a banana cream and garnished with chopped walnuts, whipped cream and a cherry?  I'm going off on a tangent, so focus, Eric.

Pate a choux is the name of the parent dough that is used to make eclairs, profiteroles and croquembouche (Note to self, try that sometime).  The dough is partially cooked in a pan, when the flour is added to the liquid ingredients and then later mixed with eggs.  The end result is an emulsion basically, a very "wet" dough that uses the moisture as a leavening agent.  When the dough is initially baked at a high temperature, the water turns to steam and puffs up the dough which is then set, the temperature is then lowered to dry out the dough.

 Pate a choux is a pretty simple dough to make, only requiring 6 ingredients.

Back to work...

So, after a brief hiatus due to work, events and some orders, I've finally got some time to get back to posting.  This week's posting hails back to one of my original goals, to blog while trying to find recipes for bakery items.

I figured I'd resume with a rather important item, the brownie.  I think these are one of those hard things because everyone has a different expectation for a brownie.  I personally like a fudgier brownie and in the past I had made the recipe Ina Garten has in one of her books.  I remember it being really good...very rich, chocolately and fudge like.  I did a quick search for recipes though, just to see if anything else caught my eye and nothing really stood out.

Now going into this recipe, she calls for a lot of coffee.  Ina is a big proponent of using coffee to enhance chocolate.  Normally I am in agreement with this, but the amount in this recipe almost overwhelms rather than compliment.  So, I used only a third of the amount.  I also decided to add in some blackstrap molasses, just to add in a bit of a deep caramel undertone.  I also changed up the chocolate amounts slightly, mostly because I didn't want to buy 10 ounces of chocolate just cause I needed 2 ounces.

It's also worth noting that these brownies are insanely rich, I wanted to eat more, but I couldn't do it.  It was just too much.  So, in the future I will look to find a way to tweak this recipe to cut through some of that richness.

But let's get to baking...