Croissants - My First Attempt

I've been wanting to try croissants for a long time now but have always been afraid to try. I searched and found a recipe on La Cerise. I was even more excited try these when I noticed that it was a recipe by Pierre Herme. I decided to give it a try and they didn't quite turn out the way I expected I was happy with the outcome.


Mixing the dough was easier than I expected. My dough was a tad bit sticky. I wasn't sure whether to add more flour or not but decided to leave it.


The first problem I encountered was with the butter which was too cold to work with. The recipe called for cold butter so I was afraid that if I worked it too much it would become too warm and soft. The butter was difficult to spread and it was pulling the dough as I tried to get it to cover all two thirds of the dough. I wished then that I had worked the butter some more to make spreading it easy.

Because the butter was a bit chunky I had problems with it when rolling the dough. It kept falling out. I wanted to give up at this point but considered the costs of the butter that would be wasted.

I enjoyed rolling these up cause they made me feel like I'd accomplished something huge even though the dough didn't turn out as great as I expected. You can see how the chunks of butter were falling out of the dough.

My idea of a perfect croissant is light, flaky, crisp on the outside. Mines didn't turn out that way. They were crisp but not flaky and a bit dense on the inside.

I will not give up though. I wasn't too disappointed since I didn't think that they they turned out all that bad for a first try. I will try these again and include more details and pictures. I will have to wait a while though otherwise my hips won't forgive me.

Decadent Chocolate Eclairs...

...from the great man himself

I was excited to become a member of the Daring Bakers and couldn't wait to start my first challenge.

When I finally saw what the challenge was, I was a bit disappointed because I have made eclairs so many times before and was looking forward to trying something new. My disappointment quickly changed though when I saw that the recipe was one of Pierre Hermé's. I love everything that Pierre Hermé stands for and am looking forward to trying more of his recipes.

I thoroughly enjoyed making these. The choux pastry was easy to work with and turned out quite well. I found that I had to bake mines slightly longer.

The pastry cream....OMG...what can I say about it other than I absolutely loved it. It was the first time that I made chocolate pastry cream and have discovered something else to crave. The chocolate really came through in this recipe so you want to make sure that you use good quality chocolate. It was smooth, silky, chocolate decadence. I'm going to use this as a base for lots of other recipes.

I wasn't too crazy about the glaze since I found the chocolate sauce unnecessary(and a waste for me since I just threw away the leftovers because I didn't know what to do with it). While I think it tasted great I thought that the chocolate sauce weakened the glaze somewhat - maybe it was something that I did wrong. I find a simple chocolate ganache (without the addition of the sauce) perfect for eclairs. I made two batches of these and for the second batch I used the glaze recipe without the sauce.

Overall I enjoyed making these and found them absolutely delicious and quite indulgent. Thanks Tony and Meeta for a lovely challenge. I can't wait until I can get a copy of the book so that I can try other recipes by Pierre Hermé.

Looking forward to the next challenge.