Montblanc financier

Montblanc or Mont-blauc aux marrons was originally a desert made in Italy and has gained its popularity throughout Italy, France and even as far as Japan. It is typically made with a meringue base and served with puréed chestnut topped with cream, giving it a snowy mountain top appearance, very much resembles Monte-Bianco, where it got its name from. Today, many cakes use chestnut puree and are no longer restricted to the use of a meringue base.

The montblancs in this recipe uses the financier base, a light french sponge that contains grounded almond and brown butter. The brown butter gives the sponge a caramelised fragrance and the almond just gives the montblanc an extra nuttiness I think.

I will divide the recipe into 3 main parts, the chocolate ganache, the financier base, and finally, the cream and chestnut topping. The ingredients in this recipe should be enough for 12 montblancs. Please made the cake in the following order, as it will make your life a lot simpler.

Financier base (makes 12):

• 220g butter
• 6 egg whites
• 60g plain flour
• 110g ground almond
• 140g caster sugar

1. Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees C
2. Melt and heat butter over medium heat and contain heating until butter turns slightly golden to brown colour
3. Remove butter from heat and sift off lumpy bits and leave it in a bowl to cool down to room temperature
4. Mix the dry ingredients together
5. Whisk to break up the egg white, no need to form any peaks
6. Mix in egg white and butter to dry ingredients and mix until smooth
7. Add equal amount of mixture to each case of a 12 well muffin tins
8. Bake for 25-30 minutes (the edge should start to turn golden brown and middle remain a lighter colour than edges)
9. Take it out of oven to cool down in the tin. Due to the high butter content in the financier, it doesn't require greasing

 Creme aux marrons (chestnut cream)

• 200ml double cream
• 180g cooked and peeled chestnut 
• 25g caster sugar 

1. Put all the ingredients together and put it on medium heat, stir occasionally
2. Once chestnut has softened, roughly break up the chestnut with a wooden spoon
3. Puree the chestnut and sift out the lumps
4. Leave it to cool to room temperature

To assemble  

1. Whisk double cream until stiff peaks
2. Pipe a dome of cream on the financiers
3. Pipe chestnut cream in a swirling pattern on the cream dome
4. Lightly dust with icing sugar 

Voila! Here is your lovely montblanc!

Lemon and honey souffle (version 2.0)

Ok, this could look nicer. But I promise it tastes very nice! But this is not something that can keep though. As soon as it comes out of the oven, it really should be served and eaten pretty much straightaway!

Ingredients (4 medium souffles):

• 150ml milk
• 20g butter
• 35g plain flour
• 2 large eggs
• 30g caster sugar
• 1 and a half lemon
• 2 tbsp honey 

1. Grease 4 medium sized ramekins with unsalted butter and use a sift and dust the inside of ramekins with plain flour and 
2. Tip ramekins upside down and tap from the outside to remove excess flour
3. Put butter and milk together and put it over low-medium heat until butter has melted 
4. Add honey to the milk and heat until it simmers again
5. Add 1 tbsp of hot milk to flour and mix with spoon, add another and mix etc until you've added half of milk to flour, or until the flour resembles a thin and runny paste (If you added all the flour to milk or vice versa in one go, then it's VERY difficult to get the flour incorporated into the liquid)
6. Pour the flour and milk mix into the other half of milk and stir 
7. Add lemon juice from a whole lemon to the hot milk mixture and heat until the mixture starts to simmer and thicken
8. When it gets to a runny puree/paste like consistency, add finely grated zest from a whole lemon at this stage
9. Take it off the heat and let it cool down. This can take 30-40 minutes
10. When the batter feels warm, but not hot (should be ok, if you can keep your finger on it and feels comfortable with the heat), pre-heat oven to 200 degrees C 
11. Separate the yolks and whites of 2 large eggs and add one yolk at a time to the batter and mix until smooth and combined
12. Whisk egg white with electric whisk until foamy and then add 1 tbsp of sugar to it at a time, keep whisking until it forms soft peaks
13. Add batter to the egg white and gently fold it in, avoid beating out the air trapped in the egg whites
14. Pour the batter into 4 ramekins, fill them 3/4 of the way as it will rise A LOT 
15. Bake for 20-25 minutes, and you should see a "hat" like structure over the top, serve asap, as it is most delicious and light when it comes out of the oven. It has the tendency to collapse quite quickly. So, you can prepare the batter, but don't bake it until you are ready to serve it!

Tips

It seems that higher temperature you heat it and the faster it rises, the quicker it will collapse. So some would suggest bake at 180 degrees instead for longer as that will delay the collapse. Not sure how true this is, but I baked mine at 200 and it collapsed but still looks ok after 15 minutes. So, the general rule is, serve it quick!

This recipe is entered to classic french challenge at http://bluekitchenbakes.blogspot.co.uk

Chocolate génoise (with raspberries and mini macaroons)

It's my FIRST ever attempt at making the genoise cake. In my opinion, an extremely difficult sponge to bake. The genoise is an italian sponge cake that does not use any chemical raising agents. So its rise is purely dependent on the air that is mixed and trapped into the batter during preparation.

Ingredients (for the sponge):

• 4 large eggs (or 6 medium)
• 100g plain flour
• 50g coco powder
• 110g caster sugar

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C
2. Line a 9 inch baking tin with parchment paper
3. Beat the eggs and sugar together over simmering water with an electric whisk until the mixture is slightly warm and continue beating until it leaves a trail behind when you lift the mixer out. The mixture should have more than doubled in volume
4. Sift in the flour and coco powder
5. Fold in the dry ingredients VERY gently and avoid losing any air until it is well mixed 
6. Put mixture into baking tin and bake for 25-30 minutes

For the filling I used chocolate mousse (yes I do love chocolate mousse)

1. 1 large egg white
2. 90g milk chocolate
3. 150ml double cream

• Melt chocolate over simmering water and leave it to cool at room temperature for 15-20 minutes
• Whisk egg white until very firm peaks and glossy
• Whisk double cream until firm peaks
• Mix chocolate with egg white and cream until completely mixed
• Cool in the fridge for at least 2 hours at least

I also used some macaroons I had left over from yesterday and used that as part of the decoration. So check out the macaroon recipe if you are interested. 

Chocolate ganache (for the shiny surface)

1. 90g dark chocolate
2. 30g muscovado sugar
3. 100ml double cream

• Chop chocolate into small pieces and put in a heatproof bowl
• Heat double cream and sugar in saucepan until sugar has dissolved and it JUST boils
• Cool cream for 2 minutes
• Pour hot cream into chocolate and make sure the chocolate is completely submerged
• Mix with spoon until all the chocolate has melted and you get a shiny chocolate sauce
• You now have a bowl of shiny and runny melted chocolate ganache
• Pour over your cake and the ganache should spread out across the surface, giving you a smooth AND shiny surface to the cake

Macaroons (attempt god I lost count)

After my first incredible failure at making macaroons, I have tried again and again and again, once a day after work to make macaroons. At last after about a week, my mixtures began to rise in the oven, though still not as much as I had hoped for and I just can't get the shine and smooth surface on the macaroons no matter what recipe I followed! 

This is the ingredients and recipe I used for my most recent and successful (and stressful) batch. I hope this helps some of the people out there struggling with making macaroons by learning my mistakes. Apparently better results can be achieved using the italian meringue instead of the french one, maybe I'll give that a go next.

Ingredients (makes about 40 shells, so about 20 macaroon sandwiches):

1. 2 large eggs separated
2. 110g ground almonds
3. 100g icing sugar
4. 1 tsp vanilla extract
5. 4 tbsps caster sugar
6. Colouring (I used pink because it just somehow looks more pleasant when I had chocolate fillings)

• Whisk egg whites until soft peaks and mixed in vanilla extract, colouring and caster sugar, 1 tbsp at a time
• Continue whisking until firm peaks have formed and the meringue is very thick and stays on whisk when it is lifted off the bowl
• Mix ground almonds and icing sugar in a separate bowl and sift the mixture. 
• Add half of almond/icing sugar to meringue and gently fold in the dry ingredients until mixture is smooth
• Fold in the other half of the dry ingredients, again until mixture is smooth and avoid knocking the air out of the meringue
• Pipe the mixture onto baking tray lined with baking parchment and tap out the air trapped under mixture by knocking the baking tray against the table 3-4 times
• Leave the mixture to stand at room temperature for at least 30 minutes
• Now switch on oven and pre-heat it to 150 degrees C
• Put in mixture and bake for 20-30 minutes
• When the macaroons are done, the surface should be crisp and should gently lift off from the baking parchment. 

For the filling

1. 40g dark chocolate
2. 60g icing sugar
3. 60g unsalted butter
4. 10ml double cream

• Melt the chocolate over simmering water, I hate doing this in the microwave, I always burn it. Leave it at room temperature to cool down
• Whisk butter, cream and icing sugar together until mixture goes very smooth and light
• Mix in the chocolate and put it in the fridge for an hour
• Put the fillings into the macaroon shells

If anyone can offer any help on how to make macaroon tops smooth and shiny, please please PLEASE share your techniques here. Thank you!

What not to do: 

• Whisk egg whites until firm peaks, add caster 1 tbsp at a time to the egg white, until it is VERY firm, some recipes will say soft peaks, but I have never achieved the same rise using soft peaks
• It's easier to make the filling in advance, either before or during the bake, this just makes sure that your filling is ready for piping and not too soft when you put it on your macaroons
• This actually applies to all the recipes, if you are using sifted flour or sugar, make sure you weigh the sifted product, not beforehand, otherwise this will affect your weighing, surprise surprise!

Butter and cocoa melting moment biscuits (improved recipe 3)

Melting moments, what a fancy name they've given the biscuit!
Ingredients (for 30-35 biscuits):

1. 200g butter, softened
2. 50g icing sugar
3. 1 tbsp of vanilla extract
4. 185g plain flour
5. 50g cornflour
6. extra cocoa powder and icing sugar for finish

• Take the butter out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature and become VERY soft, this is important! 
• Beat the butter and sugar and vanilla together until smooth
• Sift the plain and cornflour and mix all together until smooth again (N.B. don't beat too hard and over mix)
• If you are feeling fancy and want a nicely shaped biscuit, pipe it into shapes of desire (I was never very good with my piping, hence the shape of my products) onto a piece of baking parchment 
• Put the piped mixture into the freezer for 20-30 minutes, meanwhile, pre-heat oven to 200 degrees
• Bake for 15-18 minutes, or until the sides start to go is golden brown
• I sprinkled some cocoa powder and icing sugar on top for decorations

This is a very simple and easy to follow recipe. Adults love them, children love them and it's just a nice little treat when you have a couple of hours to spare in the afternoon/evening.

Apple pound cake

Many of you will be familiar with a pound cake. In the olden days, when people care less about their size and health (or simply less aware of them), this cake was made with a pound of flour, sugar, eggs and butter. However, the modern versions are generally lighter and healthier.

Ingredients (note, all ingredients should be at room temperature):

• 140g butter

• 110g caster sugar
• 110g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons milk (whole or semi-skimmed)
• 2 granny smith apples 

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C and line the loaf tin with baking paper
2. Mix the flour, sugar and baking powder and then mix in the butter. If you have an electric whisk, use it, it will make your life a lot easier. 
3. Thoroughly beat the eggs and milk together and pour in half of the egg/milk mix into the dry ingredients (yes yes, I know butter is technically not dry) and beat the mix until the ingredients have incoporated
4. Mix in rest of the egg and beat again for 3-4 minutes or until the mixture is smooth and drops off the spoon 
5. Skin one apple and chop up it up into medium sized cubes/slices (preferably up to 3cm in any direction, otherwise your sponge will remain wet even when the cake is done. Too small and you won't taste the apple). Place the apple into the cake mixture
6. Put cake mix into the oven and bake for 20 minutes, when the top of the cake appears almost golden in colour. Skin and core the other apple 
7. Slice each half of the apple into 4 equal slices and place them on the cake. The cake should be relatively firm on the surface and prevent the apple slices from sinking to far into the cake. Bake the cake with apple on top for another 25-30 minutes
8. It is quite a large and thick cake, so make sure it has cooked through with a skewer. Sprinkle some icing sugar on top to finish.