Do you know the french dessert eclair or the profiterolles
Here is the recipe to make the pastry and make your friends believe you are a 3 stars chef
Ingredients :
1/4l water
150g flour
75g butter
4 eggs
Put the butter cut in small pieces with the water in a saucepan. Let melt the butter until the watter boil then stop the fire
Put the flour in the mix all at once. Turn with a wood spoon until it is homogeneous
Put the mix on a small fire to dry it (continue to mix it with the spoon). The mix shall stop attached to the spoon or the saucespan
Put out of the fire
Add 1 egg to the mix. At first it does not mix well but after a few effort you have a nice homogeneous pastry
Do the same with the other eggs ( one by one )
With a spoon ( cofee spoon for small ones, sup spoon for big ones), set small amount of the mix on a floured plate. Put in the oven for 25 minutes at 200C ( the choux shall have a nice brown color )
Here is a site with pictures of the different steps
http://chefsimon.com/pate-a-chou.html
Now you just have to fill the choux with whatever you like. The traditional is a chocolate or cafe cream but the easiest and favorite one are the profiterolles
You put vanilla ice cream in the choux and serve them with melted chocolate.
Trust me it's a really simple dessert always wonderfully appreciated.
And here is another great dessert to make your friend believe you can compete in Master Chef : The macarons
Theory :
Ingredients for chocolate macarons :
biscuits
360g of ice sugar (if you don't have ice sugar, put standard sugar into a blender)
20g of chocolate powder (van houten or equivalent)
140g of almand powder
5 white eggs
cream :
40 g of Cream
400g of dessert chocolate
Recipes :
Mix the almand powder, 300g of sugar and the powder cacao
Mount the white eggs (sorry I don't know the expression in english : you whisk them until it's all fluffy). Add the rest of the sugar meanwhile
Mix the eggs with almand/sugar mix. After a while the egg should incorporate well to the preparation.
Heat the oven at 180°C. Put half of the pastry on a flat plate recovered with cooking paper (well the type of paper that will make the pastry easy to remove). Spread the pastry with a wood spoon so that you have a big square of ~1cm heigh
Put in the oven for 15-20 minutes. The pastry shall be still soft.
Do the same with the other half. Then you should have the 2 part of the biscuit.
Meanwhile prepare the cream by melting the chocolate with the cream in a saucepan. Turn and let it cool.
Once everything is cold. Put one of the half biscuit on a plate, spread the chocolate cream on it (if the cream is to soft put it in the fridge). Put the other half biscuit and here you have your giant macaron.
If you are patient enough you can make little ones like for the choux but it's much more easy this way an it tastes the same.
Now instead of chocolate you can add any flavor and change the cream but the chocolate one is the easiest to do.