Recipes Thread

Baked Blueberry Stuffed French Toast
Category: Breakfast
Servings: 2

Description: I just threw this together one day on a whim and it turned out pretty good, so I wanted to throw the recipe online. It can probably be improved/perfected to suit your individual tastes, and works just as well substituting sliced strawberries for blueberries.

Ingredients:

• 2 Cups of Blueberries
• 1 and 1/2 Tbsp. of Cornstarch
• 3/8 Cup of Sgar
• 2 Large Eggs
• 3/4 Cup of Heavy Whipping Cream
• 2 Tbsp. Pure Vanilla Extract
• Pinch of Salt
• 1/4 Tsp. as well as a Dash of Cinnamon
• 8 Slices of Bread

Direction:

1. Preheat the oven to 400
2. Mix heaving whipping cream, eggs, vanilla, and dash of cinnamon together in a bowl large enough to dip bread in.
3. Mix sugar, cornstarch, salt, and tsp. of cinnamon together in a separate container.
4. Place foil in or grease a pan.
5. Cut and remove a circle from four slices of bread.
6. Form base of toast by dipping a slice of bread in the egg mixture and putting it on the pan.
7. Dip two of the slices with circles removed in the egg mixture and lay that on top of the base slice.
8. Fill the hole with blueberries.
9. Cover blueberries with sugar mixture.
10. Dip a slice of bed in the egg mixture and use it to cover the stuffed toast.
11. Repeat 7-10 for remaining slices of bread.
12. Bake for 30 min.

Creme Anglaise (base for ice cream or creme mousseline/mousse)
Category: dessert
Servings:
Difficulty: moderate
Tools needed: 3 medium bowls, 2 large bowls, whisk, large saucepan, ice cream maker/pacojet, 2 spatulas, cutting board, knife, weighing scale, fine strainer/chinois.
Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:
1L milk
500ml cream
300g sugar
3 vanilla bean pods (cut them length-wise down the middle and use the back of the knife to scrape the vanilla out of the pod)
300g egg yolks
1.5g salt (I only put in a quantity because "a pinch" is very subjective to how big the person's fingers are)

Procedure:
a.1. Prep the following:
-Separate the yolks from the whites
-Split the sugar 40-60 in two different containers
-Fill one large bowl 2/3 with ice and pour in a glass of water into the ice. This will serve as your "ice bath". put the other large bowl on top of the ice bath, then place your fine strainer in that bowl.
a.2. Mix the cream, milk, salt, vanilla, and 40% of the sugar together. Let this mixture heat up in the saucepan till it simmers (DO NOT BOIL THE MIXTURE!!!)
a.3. Beat the yolks and remaining sugar together in a bowl. Whisk the mixture till it turns pale and stiff.
a.4. Once the milk mixture starts to simmer, pour half of it into the egg mixture and beat it for about 5 seconds, then pour it back into the sauce pan, continuously whisking it till it stiffens and starts to resemble runny mashed potatoes. This cooking method is called Tempering.
a.5. Once the mixture thickens, strain it onto the bowl on top of the ice bath and continue whisking the mixture till it becomes cold.
a.6. Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker and turn it on. It normally takes mine 2 hours to finish the freezing process, but the time may vary between brands and climates.

Once the freezing process is done, make sure to transfer it into a freezer-safe container and let it freeze for at least 4 hours before serving. This gives it time to rest and firm up, and it'll ensure that you don't have runny ice cream.

*If you want flavor your ice cream with fruits (e.g. raspberry, orange, mango), you'll want to turn that into a "jam" first, before adding it in to your creme anglaise.

Spoiler show

Adding fruit
Ingredients:
Take the 300g of sugar in the anglaise recipe
lessen the milk by 300ml
250g fruit*
50g water*
*= if you're using canned fruit, then just use all the contents of a 275/350g can
2g salt

Procedure:
b.1. Dump everything into one saucepan and let it simmer till it becomes sticky and jam-like. keep on stirring this till it turns into jam.
b.2. Remember to brush the sides with a bit of water every 2mins or so, to prevent the sides from burning.
b.3. Once the jam is done, you'll need to mix it in with the anglaise at step a.5, then just follow through to step a.6.

*If you want to use chocolate to flavor your ice cream

Spoiler show

you'll need to use "couverture" chocolate, or "pure" chocolate for this recipe. This means that you'll need to read the label on the chocolate package, and if it contains ingredients other than "chocolate/cacao mass, cacao liquor, cacao butter" then you'll need to look for something else to flavor your ice cream with.

Adding Chocolate
Ingredients:
reduce the sugar on the anglaise recipe by 75g
300g dark chocolate couverture/ chocolate

Procedure:
c.1 Use a double boiler/ bain marie to melt the chocolate (you can do this by filling a pot with water and covering it with the butt-end of a stainless steel bowl and letting the water boil).
c.2. Add the chocolate at step a.5, then follow through to step a.6.

There is an easier method to adding chocolate, but this method requires high-quality couverture, that does not have a high melting point.

Procedure:
c.1.2 Just before you strain your anglaise, place the couverture pieces into the bowl (the one on top of the ice bath), ang whisk vigorously.

*If you want to use Nutella

Spoiler show

Adding Nutella
Ingredients:
reduce the milk and sugar of the anglaise recipe by 300g each
300g nutella

Procedure:
d.1. Add the nutella in at step a.4, right after you pour back your egg mixture into the saucepan.
d.2. Follow the anglaise procedure

*using nuts

Spoiler show

Let's face it, not all of us are willing to shell out tons of cash for a 1/4gal tub of wholesale nut paste (e.g. praline paste, pistachio paste, macadamia paste), but fear not, we can make these things ourselves. All you'll need are the raw nuts, sugar, and a really powerful food processor.

Ingredients:
take the 300g sugar from the anglaise recipe and reduce it to 250g
200g raw nuts (entirely up to you)
50g peanuts (this is to enhance the "nutty" flavor)

Procedure:
g.1. Place the nuts and sugar in a large saucepan and let it caramelize till it resembles light molasses or dark peanut brittle. Remember to keep on stirring as you make the "brittle"
g.2. Grease up a cookie sheet, then spread the nuts out on it. Let it cool for about 15mins
g.3. Place the brittle into your food processor, and let it rip. Do this till the brittle turns into a smooth paste.
g.4. Incorporate the paste into the anglaise at step a.5.

And if you whipp the eggs white you can make a floating island :-)
Also you can add a spoon a cornmeal like maizena to the yolk-sugar mix, it helps the 'tempering' process, but maybe it's not good if you want to make icecream with it.
It's also used for the crème brûlée, but i've never tried it. Professional use a torch

Adding "maza harina" will make the texture sandy...It'd be easier to use gelatine sheets or corn starch if the cook isn't too confident about tempering.

*using gelatine sheets

Spoiler show

Gelatine sheets are pretty strong, so you'll only need about eight sheets for one batch of ice cream. This roughly translates to one package of Knox powdered/granulated gelatine (Knox offers the best consistency out of all the commercial brands, so this makes for the best choice)

Ingredients:
8 sheets of gelatine OR 1 package of Knox

Procedure:
e.1. Individually soak the gelatine sheets in the ice bath (don't dump them in all at once, do what you can to make sure that the sheets don't touch each other) till you're just about ready to start step a.5.
e.2. Squeeze the excess water from the gelatine sheets, then place them onto the hot anglaise mixture.
e.2.2. If you're using powdered gelatine, you can dump the packet into the hot mixture now.
e.3. whisk (incorporate) the gelatine into the anglaise mixture as it cools.

*using corn starch

Spoiler show

Fast food restaurants/ QSRs use corn starch as an inexpensive way to thicken their ice cream. This is because, unlike flour, corn starch does not leave a "starchy" aftertaste.

Ingredients:
remove 50g of yolks
65g corn starch

Procedure:
f.1. Whisk the cornstarch in with the yolks in step a.3.
f.2. follow as the original recipe says.

Yeah, you can make merigues out of the whites, or you can do and dilute them with a bit of milk, and soak croissant slices in them to make "pre-workout french toast"... mainly since the whites have lots of proteins and the croissants have tons of fat.