choux and chewbacca

Another entry in my extended research into procrastination.

Today JC came round to help my bake my own birthday cake. But not just any cake, croquembouche (french for 'crack in the mouth'. Not crack as in amphetamines sold in dodgy neighbourhoods, crack the verb, as in I cracked my favourite coffee cup). This was to be my first ever croquembouche.

Croquembouche is choux pastry, filled with custard (ours was chocolate) and then built into a conical shape around a metal mould, and held together with hard toffee, which is also spun around the resulting pyramid to make think web of strung toffee.

It was much easier than I thought (partly due to the gift of new, and expensive piping bags) and we only ended up with third degree burns to 75% of our bodies from the toffee.


We had about six pastries each before I went door knocking the neighbours with kids to off load the rest. I have hurt my jaw from all the toffee and am going to have to go an lie down in a minute, such is the sugar crash currently going on in my endocrine system.

However in a short web browse before my nap, I checked some emails and some new posts. Garrett at Vanilla Garlic who has also had a recent birthday was talking about the prices of cookware in some store I am not familiar with. Googling it to find out what he was talking about I found these:


I think it is fair to say that my life will never be complete until I own a set of Star Wars pancake moulds.

Also, France drew with Uruguay in the first set of Group A matches early this morning. All matches were draws. I got up early to watch France play. Found the game to be dreary beyond words and went back to bed. We're up against Mexico next I think. Hopefully this will be a better match.

birthday cake

Happy Birthday to JC from Dumpling Girl, who ticks over another year today.

To celebrate we had dinner last night at the well known China Town eatery Ying Chow. Snake beans with chili, BBC, aniseed duck and salt and pepper squid. JC said she thought the squid tasted of ammonia. Luckily I couldn't taste it so I tucked into that big time. and the beans. I love beans, they're one of my favourite vegetables.

Then we came back to my place to huddle around the heater and have desert. I nicked a recipe for individual gooey chocolate cakes from Joy The Baker's fabbo site.

Gooey Chocolate Cake
1/3 c plain flour
3 tblsn cocoa powder
pinch salt
120g roughly chopped chocolate
25g finely chopped chocolate
125g butter, cut into cubes
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
6 tblsn sugar

method
1. Heat oven to 220 degrees Celsius
2. Butter and flour 6 muffin tins
3. Sift cocoa, flour and salt
4. Place roughly chopped chocolate and butter over a double boiler until just melted
5. While chocolate is melting, whisk together the eggs and the yolks. Add sugar and whisk for approximately 2 minutes, to combine well
6. Add the dry ingredients to the eggs and stir together, but using a whisk, until just combined.
7. Little by little stir through the chocolate
8. Spoon this mixture into the greased muffin tins. Sprinkle with the finely chopped chocolate
9. Bake for 13 minutes. As they are soft in the middle there is no way to test them. Just trust your timer and take them out


10. Let cool for 3 minutes before carefully turning out and then lifting very, very gently onto serving plate.

We ate ours with praline icecream. They're very runny inside (as you can see from the leak in the photo. When I say carefully turn out and transfer them, I mean carefully!!!). Considering the amount of butter and egg for six cakes you can imagine how heavy they are. I just ate one of the left overs cold and that was pretty good too, but not as good as straight from the oven.

I feel I've earned a cake, as I've been weeding all morning. Lordy knows my garden needs it. I'd love to be a good gardener and grown my own vegetables, but so far the only thing I've had any success with at all is weeds. I guess you can't be a cook and a gardener too? Or maybe my thumb is just black. At the moment it's blue from digging around in a freezing wet garden. I can see a cup of tea and hot shower in my near future!