Jam

Strawberry and Cream Profiteroles

The weather has finally started to pick up, so why not enjoy a batch of homemade strawberry and cream profiteroles?

This recipe and flavour combination will hit the spot, strawberry and cream is a match made in heaven combination, that’s for sure.

The base is a choux bun, many people get put off by making it from scratch as it’s pretty easy to go wrong but if you use my recipe, you’ll get the perfect choux every time (I promise)!

The strawberry jam used as a filling is homemade (a video will be coming soon on how to make a couple types of jam and other sauces/preserves) and the whipped cream is sweetened to make it taste even better.

As with all my recipes, before you get started, you’ll want to do some prep work. Get your ingredients measured/weighed up, prepare your baking tray (if you want to, I didn’t line mine with greaseproof paper but feel free to do with yours)and get any equipment you may need ready. Taking these few extra steps can lower the chance of making a mistake.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Ingredients:

Choux Pastry:

300ml Water.

125g Butter.

150g Plain flour.

4 Eggs.

Pinch of salt

Filling & Topping:

500ml Double cream.

50g Icing sugar.

1 tsp Vanilla extract.

300g Strawberry jam (homemade or shop bought).

Large strawberries, halved (as many as you need).

Method:

Before you get into making the choux pastry, you’ll want to do some prep. Preheat your oven to 200˚c/390˚f, weigh/measure up your ingredients and prepare your baking trays (as well as any other equipment you’ll need) and get ready to start.

To make the choux pastry, place the water, butter and salt into a medium saucepan and place over a medium heat until its melted, stirring them together well.

Remove from the heat and add in the flour, mixing in the flour in until its full incorporated. Return to the heat and continuously stir it to cook the flour out. You’ll know once the flour is cooked out as the bottom of your pan will have a layer of the flour/pastry there, once you’ve achieved this, take it off the heat and transfer to a mixing bowl.

Mix the choux pastry on a high speed to cool it down. This takes a couple of minutes to achieve.

Once you can touch the bottom of you bowl, start to add your eggs. A little at a time until you reach a stage where the pastry takes between 3-5 seconds to fall from the beater – the amount of egg you need may depend, you may need more or less.

You will notice the pastry become looser as you add your eggs, this is normal, it should be a nice pipe-able consistency. Place the pastry into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm plain tip piping nozzle.

Place the pastry into a piping bag with a 1cm plain tip nozzle and pipe out small amounts on the prepared baking tray, you should be able to get about 15 onto a standard tray. Press down any peaks using your finger which has been dipped into some water, then egg wash each of the choux buns to get a perfect golden brown on top.

Place in the oven at 200˚c/390˚f and bake for 20 minutes, then open the oven door to remove the steam that’s built up, then place back in the oven and bake for a further 10 minutes then remove from the oven.

Allow the choux buns to cool for a few minutes on the baking tray before transferring to a cooling rack to cool down completely.

Once your choux buns are cooled, you can fill them with your whipped cream and strawberry jam then pipe an amount of whipped cream onto the top of each profiterole and once you have done that, top each of them with a strawberry halve. If possible, add the whipped cream and strawberry finishing before serving (purely for freshness).

That’s all for this week guys, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, don’t forget to share this recipe with your family and friends and enjoy it. I’ll be back next week with another blog post and YouTube video, so join me then. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to check out my Instagram and Twitter. The YouTube video will be linked down below!

Cherry Bakewell Blondies

by bakingwithelliott Leave a Comment

This weeks recipe is for cherry bakewell blondies. If you are unsure or don’t think you’ll like these, trust me. Add these to your list of things to do this weekend, they’ll go down a real treat.

This recipe has been one I’ve worked on for a while, who’d have thought that white chocolate would be so hard, huh? The one thing I did learn in college was about how temperamental white chocolate is. It isn’t really chocolate as it doesn’t contain cocoa solids but we are using it anyway.

The moral of the story, take extra care with white chocolate. It’s super temperamental.

Another thing to remember is, these aren’t brownies. The ratio of butter to sugar is completely different, so they will have different texture/mouthfeel. To be honest, these blondies are more on the cakey side, slightly dense but more cakey, for sure.

I’m using store bought cherry Bakewell’s as they are pretty readily available here in the UK but if you’re outside of the UK you may have a hard time getting these. Feel free to use the next best thing, something like individual frangipane tarts would work pretty well.

As with all my recipes, before you get started, you’ll want to do some prep work. Get your ingredients measured/weighed up, prepare your tin (if you want to, I didn’t but you know your tin) and get any equipment you may need ready. Taking these few extra steps can lower the chance of making a mistake.

Let’s get started shall we?

Ingredients:

200g White chocolate (bars of chocolate if possible, not chocolate chips).

130g Butter.

160g Granulated sugar.

190g Plain flour.

½ tsp Salt.

3 Eggs.

2 tsp Vanilla extract.

60g Cherry jam.

Sliced almonds (as many or as few as you’d like).

Method:

Before you get into making the blondies, you’ll want to do some prep work. Start by weighing up all of your ingredients, line your 8 inch square tin and preheat your oven to 180˚c/350˚f and get any equipment you intend on using.

Into a bowl, place your butter and white chocolate and melt them over a bain-marie, keep the heat at a medium and no higher (you can also use a microwave on 15 second burst, this isn’t the best method as it can get the chocolate too hot, which isn’t ideal), take extra effort not to get the mixture too hot.

Once the butter and chocolate are melted, add in your sugar straight away and whisk it in until fully incorporated.

Then you can add in your eggs, one at a time. Beating well in-between each addition, the mixture shouldn’t scramble (if this happens, start over).

Next you can add in the plain flour and salt, you’re best to incorporate them using a silicon spatula, this is what I find the best to work with. Once you can’t see a trace of the flour/salt, stop mixing, you don’t want to overmix the batter.

Finally, before you’re done, add in the vanilla and stir that in until fully incorporated.

Pour the blondie batter into your lined 8 inch square cake tin and level it out using your silicon spatula.

Get your cherry jam and add around 5 dollops and swirl it around the tin using a butter knife (you can add a few more dollops if you feel it needs it, I did).

Sprinkle over some sliced almonds, the amount depends on your preference, I went with a fair few but alter it to suit you.

Place into your preheated oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, before removing from the oven to add in the cherry Bakewell’s (I used 5 which had been chopped into quarters), you may need to push them in towards the edge. Place it back in the oven and bake for a further 10-15 minutes or until a tester when inserted comes out clean.

Once baked and out of the oven, allow to cool fully before you try to cut them.

Now they are fully cooled, you can cut them into slices. From this I get 8 generous portions. From the one side, I cut it 4 equal times, then once down the centre, so I get 8 portions. You can cut them however you like, so you get more or less portions, it’s up to you.

Custard Filled Doughnuts

by bakingwithelliott Leave a Comment

If you like filled doughnuts, this is the perfect recipe for you. Today I’m going to be showing you how to make custard filled doughnuts.

This recipe is one of my favourite thing’s I’ve made this year, by far. You get a soft and fluffy doughnut which is filled with a smooth and rich vanilla custard, what’s not to love about them seriously?

If custard isn’t your thing, I have a recipe for jam doughnuts.

These aren’t exactly hard to make, to be honest. They take a little time but they are totally worth it compared to the ones you can buy in the supermarkets or shops (I know of a local shop that sells a basic doughnut like this one for £4.50/$5.70… I think not). As with most bread goods, they require time because they must prove, this is where the gases can build up in the dough and make the bread lighter and taste better.

The custard filling can be made in advance, so if you want to make the custard the day/night before, that’s fine. If you haven’t made pastry cream before, don’t worry at all. The recipe I share for it is super simple to follow and it’s yet to fail me.

Anyway, let’s get on with the baking shall we?

Ingredients:

Doughnuts:

450g Strong white bread flour (not plain flour).

1 tsp Salt.

7g Dried yeast.

60g Butter.

1 Egg.

60g Granulated sugar.

150ml Milk, slightly warmed.

100ml Water, slightly warmed.

Custard filling:

500ml Whole milk.

1 tsp vanilla extract.

120g Egg yolks.

100g Granulated sugar.

60g Plain flour.

Methods:

Doughnuts:

Before you get into making your doughnuts or custard filling, you’ll want to do some prep work. Weigh up all your ingredients, get your deep fryer ready and get any equipment you intend on using ready.

To start on the doughnuts, you’ll want to get yourself a mixing bowl (I’m using my stand mixer, but you can use whatever you’d like to). Into the bowl, you’ll want to place the flour and salt, then give it all a good mix until its incorporated.

After that you can add the remailing ingredients, which are; dried yeast, butter, egg, granulated sugar, milk and water, then give it a good mix on a low speed. Once a dough starts to form, you’ll notice the dough is quite soft and may be a little sticky to the touch (this is okay, it’s an enriched dough).

Briefly knead the dough on a floured surface until its smooth and elasticated (this is a good sign that the gluten is working).

Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, I used vegetable oil but you can use any flavourless oil you have. Cover the bowl with cling film and allow to sit for around an hour or until its doubled in size (this is the first proof, allowing the yeast to do its thing and for the gluten to relax).

Once the dough has doubled in size, remove it from the bowl and knock it back on a lightly floured surface. The process of knocking the dough back is where you remove the gases that have built up in the dough while it was proving the first time around.

Weigh your dough and divide that amount by 10, this was you get a more accurate measurement per doughnut. You can eyeball it, but I prefer to be more accurate, so use digital scales if possible.

Round off your balls of dough and set them on individual pieces of greaseproof paper (which can go in the fryer), it makes them easier to move around later on. Place the dough balls onto a baking tray and loosely cover with cling film, you can then leave these for 30 -45 minutes or until they have gotten a little bigger (this is the second proof).

Now would be the ideal time to make your custard filling and have a clean down.

While you wait for the doughnut to proof, preheat your oil to 180˚c/350˚f. I recommend using a thermometer to ensure that the oil temperature is correct.

Once the doughnuts have proved and are ready, take two doughnuts and place them into the oil and fry off for around 60 seconds each side or until they are golden brown and baked through. Once removed from the fryer, place on kitchen roll to absorb some of the excess oil.

Custard:

To make the custard filling, get yourself a saucepan and pour in the milk and vanilla extract. Give it all a good mix then place on the heat on a medium heat until it almost reaches a boil.

Into a separate bowl, add in the egg yolks and granulated sugar and whisk the two together until they are lighter in colour and consistency. Once that’s achieved, add in the flour (I didn’t do this in the video but it still worked out and didn’t have much of an effect on the consistency or mouthfeel).

Once the milk mixture comes to almost a boil, take off the heat and add around 1/3 of the milk mixture and pour it over the egg/sugar mix, then whisk until combined (this is to temper the mixture, so it doesn’t curdle when we add the rest of the milk mix.

Add the remaining milk, whisking well. Then pour back into the saucepan and place back on the heat and whisk continuously until the mixture is thicker. You should be able to notice a difference as you whisk the mixture, the amount of time this takes depends on the heat you have it on really.

Once the custard is thick and ready, pour it into a shallow sided baking tray or bowl and cover with cling film to prevent a skin forming on top of the custard (the more you can spread out the custard, the quicker it will cool down).

Finishing:

Now that you have your doughnuts fried off and fully cooled down and your custard is fully cooled down, you can finish the doughnuts off.

Take the custard and place into a small bowl and whisk it up to help loosen the mixture a little, then place it into a piping bag fitted with a small piping tip.

Take your doughnuts and make a hole in the side using some like a skewer or a cake decorating tool (like I did), this makes a hole in the middle and on the side, so you can get the most custard filling on the inside, because who doesn’t want more filling?

Into a medium sized bowl, pour a generous amount of granulated while sugar (I have a 500g container which is purely for sugar that I roll the doughnuts in), then roll the doughnuts in, giving them a good coating of the sugar. For extra flavour, you could use vanilla sugar on the outside but that is being pretty extra.

Viennese Whirls

by bakingwithelliott Leave a Comment

I have the the best and most straightforward recipe for viennese whirls you could possibly need.

If you’re from the UK then you probably recognise these from a well known cake brand, which is available in in most supermarkets. Forget about those, once you make a batch of these up for yourself, you will not look back!

The biscuits themselves only require 4 ingredients, so they are cheap, quick and easy to make. They can be enjoyed on their own or with the vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam fillings, which compliment the biscuits pretty nicely and the other thing to know about theses that they are fairly bigger than the ones you’d get in the box from the supermarket (I’m a greedy git), so feel free to lower the amount of filling compared to what I used.

The mixing process is easy, it doesn’t matter if you’re using a wooden spoon, electric hand mixer or a stand mixer. It’s the piping that can be a bit difficult and this is because of the amount of flour which is used in these biscuits, it’s a lot. The dough can easily be handled with your hands but to get the signature piped look on top you need to use a piping bag and star tip nozzle, I recommend using a open/wide star tip as to a closed star. If you find your dough hard to pipe out, use the warmth from your hands to warm the dough through the bag (if you try and pipe the dough while it’s too stiff then you will be pushing too much pressure towards the bottom of the bag and it will more than likely split open plop a good amount of the dough out of the bag).

So to get started, you’ll always want to prepare your baking tray, I drew around a circle cutter so my biscuits would be roughly accurate in size to one another, this is ideal if you’re not sure on sizing them. Also, don’t forget to weigh up your ingredients and preheat the oven to 190˚c/375˚f. Now you can start by placing the butter and icing sugar into your mixing bowl of choice and beat the two together until well combined. Then add in your first weight of flour and mix that until well combined, scrape down the sides and bottom of your bowl, then add in the second weight of flour and mix it in until well combined and thats the dough done. Place a open star nozzle into a piping bag and add around about a handful or so of the biscuit dough. If the dough isn’t piping well, use the heat of your hands to warm it up just enough to pipe out your rosettes. These don’t really spread in the open so feel free to pip quite a few onto one tray and place them in your preheated oven and bake for around 18-20 minutes (or until they start to colour around the edge.

As for the filling, I have recommended using vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam but feel free to replace those if you don’t like my choice. Make your buttercream while your biscuits are baking, start by placing the butter into a bowl and beating until lighter in colour and consistency. Scrape down the sides and bottom of your bowl and place roughly half the amount of icing sugar and beat until fully incorporated, repeat this stage with the remaining icing sugar. Once all the icing sugar is fully incorporated, add in the vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste an mix until well combined, if your buttercream is a little too thick, add a splash of milk just to get it to a more spreadable consistency. As for the jam, feel free to use whatever you’ve got, homemade or shop bought will work well here.

For the assembly of these biscuits, pair your biscuits up and onto one half of them, pipe on a good amount (or a generous amount if you have a sweet tooth) and then pipe on a small amount of jam in the centre of the buttercream and gently place the other biscuit on top of the filling, sandwiching them together. Just before you tuck into one, you’ll want to give them a justing of icing sugar to finish them off, now sit back and enjoy one of these.

Ingredients:

Biscuits:
225g Butter.
45g Icing sugar.
115g Plain flour (1).
145g Plain flour (2).

Bake them in your preheated 190˚c/375˚f for 18-20 minutes.

Filling:

Buttercream:
150g Butter.
300g Icing sugar.
1 tsp Vanilla extract/bean paste.
(optional – milk).

Strawberry jam (but feel free to switch this to a jam or spread you might prefer).

Method:

Biscuits:

Weigh up all of your ingredients, preheat your oven to 190˚c/375˚f and line your baking trays with greaseproof/parchment paper.
Start the biscuits by placing the butter and icing sugar into your mixing bowl of choice and beat them together until well combined and lighter in colour.
Scrape down the sides and bottom of your bowl, to incorporate any bits from earlier on. Then add in your first weight of flour in and mix that in until just combined.
Scrape down the bowl again to incorporate any bits that have worked up the bowl. Add in the second weight of flour and just mix that in until its just combined.
Prepare a piping bag by placing a 12mm open star nozzle at the end and place a good amount of the dough into the piping bag.
Pipe out the dough onto your lined tray (draw some templates if you want to get your biscuits more uniform), these don’t spread very much while in the oven so leave a small space in-between each biscuit. Place the tray in your preheated oven and bake for 18-20 minutes (or until they start to colour around the edges).
Once fully baked, remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes on the baking tray, then transfer them over to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Buttercream:

Weigh up your ingredients in advance.
Place the butter into a mixing bowl an beat it over a medium-high speed until lighter in colour and consistency.
Once lighter, you’ll want to add in around half of your icing sugar (make sure you’ve sifted it first, to remove any big lumps) and beat that on a low speed working it up to a high speed, scrape down the bowl and repeat this stage for the other half of the icing sugar.
Add in the vanilla (and milk if the buttercream is too stiff, this will help loosen the buttercream down) and mix until well incorporated.
Place the buttercream into a piping bag with a 12mm star nozzle and set aside until its needed.

Assembly:Pair your biscuits up with

Jam

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