Pithiviers

Pithiviers…how is that pronounced you ask?  No idea.  I made up my own way when describing it to my tasters…one of them said, that just doesn’t roll off the tongue very well haha!

It didn’t seem to matter that none of us could pronounce the name, it was loved by all!  We are told in our recipe that it is a forgotten French Pastry.  This dessert is basically a double crusted puff pastry with an almond cream and jam filling.  We are given instructions to make a prune jam, but I opted to use a blackberry jam…which my tasters thanked me for…we are not the prune eating bunch so much.

I thought this recipe came together quite nicely…there are some waiting periods for chilling and resting but nothing to overly involved. I actually liked the precision of creating the cream disc that would fit precisely into the calculated circles of the puff pastry…had my ruler out and everything.  I used Dorie’s suggestion of gently wrapping the pastry around the interior disc as we were completing the dessert.  I scored my top, chilled, and then baked.

Having not too much experience with puff pastry, I was thinking it was a good thing mine “puffed” so much.  I am not sure that was so great.  It was so strange, once I cut into it to hand off to some of my tasters, I saw that inside the cream/jam disc had somewhat shifted and there was a giant air bubble of puff pastry.  Ugh.  I am not even sure how that happened and thankfully this was for my tasters and we just managed and spread the jam out a bit, BUT this would have been very embarrassing if I had taken it somewhere.

I guess next time I would just press harder on the pastry surrounding the cream disc but honestly I don’t even know if that was the problem.  I do think I will be making this again though as it seemed to be such a hit and I couldn’t freeze a piece for my husband and I for after Easter.

Embarrassing is what this is…but I can’t show only the pretty pictures haha…this is the reality of what I cut into.  Ugh!  So weird.  I will be curious to see if any other bakers had this happen to them. 🙂

Happy Baking!

Black and White Madeleines

These were fun, easy, and delicious…or so I’ve heard.  My husband and I gave us sweets for Lent again this year so we have two in the freezer waiting for us. :). The only issue I would have with this recipe, is that you can only make 12 at time…unless you have multiple Madeleine pans.   It would be hard to manage all the chilling if you were making multiple batches, but if you only needed a dozen of something, these were terrific.  Everyone loved them and were really excited about the chocolate center.  I didn’t have any milk chocolate I could melt, so I used the dark I had on hand.  I don’t know if it made a difference, but everyone said how they loved that they weren’t overly sweet….that they were the perfect combination.  I thought they looked plain, so I added the powdered sugar…made it look more festive. 🙂

 

I have a fun story to share!  I am out on my morning hike and I get a text from my mom.  It has a picture and she says, “you made the Register this morning.  This could be at your house!”  Now where I live the Register is the Orange County Register…our newspaper.  I look at the picture she sent and I am like, WHAT?!!  You see it was very confusing because we had JUST made beignets and my last name is Ramos.  I just couldn’t figure it out at first…I mean what are the chances haha!…I thought someone was using my blog info.   I sent the picture around to family and my tasters and everyone had the same initial reaction.  It was worth quite a few laughs.  We decided we will be making a trip down to San Juan Capistrano to give this place a try. 🙂