best birthday/graduation everrrrrr

Nothing needs to be said, written, or anything. Just look at it. It's beautiful.
Even the color is so perfect and nice... :] Can you tell I'm really happy?! Because I am and I'm super super lucky. Thank you m and mommy and daddy. You guys know me well.
Thanks to Jen and Peter for mixes to bake delicious goodies...
But wait?! MORE PRESENTS?!
ICE CREAM MAKER!! Thank you jwoo.

Only downside is that I feel PRESSURED to make something super amazingly dericious. WHAT TO MAKE?! Suggestions?

Anyways, I'm so lucky and blessed to have family and friends who love me. Thank you for making my graduation and my birthday (which isn't even here yet) super amazing and special!

:]

cream puffs

Cream puffs. I really like these and actually, they're kinda scary to make. But before I talk about that, let me introduce you to something...
Meet my first cookbook. Is it beautiful?! It's from Jess for my graduation present. I'm really excited to bake from this book, and this is my first!
Profiteroles is just the fancier way of saying cream puff. Maybe there's a difference, but to me, it's all the same. So I followed the recipe for the puff itself, but did not use the filling or the sauce.
After making the batter on top of the stove, I piped out about 1-inch mounds of dough. With a moistened fingers, I smoothed the tops. Then I baked them!
After they finished baking, I had to slit a hole into each of them and put it back into the oven, with the oven off and the door open, so the puffs would remain puffed and not deflate.
Cooled and ready to be filled! I made my custard which is the same recipe I use for fruit tarts! Very easy.
That's the tip I used, it's just so much easier and made it so that I didn't have to cut the puff in half to fill it.
A neat trick to fill the pastry bag is to put it in a cup and fold the sides of the pastry bag down. Then fill the pastry bag with your filling and that's it! So easy and makes your hands free.
Pipe it through the hole you punctured in it earlier. And there you have it, your cream puff!
Cream puff recipe (I halved the recipe and made about 26 cream puffs):

makes 4 dozen

Ingredients:

1 cup water

1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick)

1 cup unbleached all purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

4 eggs

Directions:

Bring 1 cup water and 1 stick butter to boil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring until butter is melted. Turn heat to low, add flour and salt all at once. Stir vigorously until mixture is smooth and dough pulls away from the edges and forms a ball, and leaves a thin film on pan bottom (about 2 minutes). Transfer to large bowl. Using a handheld mixer (I did it by hand! My workout), add eggs one at a time, blending well after each addition. Cover dough loosely with plastic wrap. Let dough stand and cool for about an hour.

Preheat over to 425°F. Lightly butter (I used parchment paper) 2 large rimmed baking sheets. Spoon dough into pastry bag fitted with 1/2 inch plain tip. Pipe 1-inch rounds on prepared baking sheets, spacing 2 inches apart (mine was more like 1-inch). Using moistened fingertips, smooth tops.

Bake puffs until golden brown and puffed, about 23 minutes. Remove from oven and turn off the heat. Pierce side of each puff with tip of small knife. Return the puffs to hot oven; let stand for 10 minutes with door ajar. Remove from oven and cool completely.

*Can be made one day ahead. Store in airtight container.

Pastry cream - kind of like a vanilla custard :]

You can find the recipe here at the fruit tart post. I halved this as well, but ran out of filling, so maybe be less generous or make the entire amount and be more generous (I'd go for the latter option).

Fill the pastry cream into pastry bag with 1/4 inch plain tip (I used star, I don't think it matters). Insert tip into cut on each puff and pipe in filling.

*Can be made 8 hours in advance. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

eggs en cocotte

Jess has this Martha Stewart cookbook that I covet intensely. It teaches all the basics of all kinds of cooking, from baking to braising to stir fry, steaming, and more. Much, much more. I've flipped through it many times when we lived together, oohing and ahhing at the different pictures, until I found an egg recipe that I couldn't resist trying. You see, I can ooh and ahh all I want at the book (this applies to food blogs also), but it doesn't mean that I'm going to try every single recipe that I find appetizing. In fact, it would take me forever to go through everything if I did that. But this egg recipe, called an egg cocotte, is a French style way of cooking eggs that's elegant but simple. If that doesn't please you, just think about it--it's egg. Enough said.


I made this for CORE for our breakfast meeting, and I hope they liked it! At least, they said they did.


Ingredients

• Shallots
• Mushrooms
• Milk
• Eggs
• French baguette

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Cut up slices of the French baguette.
2. Break an egg into an oven safe ramekin (or however many eggs and ramekins you have, but 1 egg per ramekin! You don't want sky-high levels of cholesterol do you?).
3. Saute the shallots and mushrooms until desired softness. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Turn off the heat and add milk slowly.
5. When the milk is heated, pour mixture over the eggs. Be careful to not break the yolk!
6. Put ramekins in the oven. Let it bake until the whites are set, but the yolk is not cooked.
7. Toast the slices of baguette. Serve with the ramekins!

I dip the bread in the milk mixture first to taste, then I break the yolk with the bread. There's something magical about runny yolk with toasted bread. Mmm. Do try this method of cooking eggs! So easy.