Roopa I’m a little behind on my blogging. I actually made these back in May! The first month of Covid was around 3 years long, and then the next six months disappeared. One of my baking challenges was to make something involving choux pastry, so I made little profiteroles and eclair like things. I initially … More Choux Pastry with Passionfruit Pastry Cream
Roopa I woke up to an earthquake and the Canadian border officially closing in the midst of a pandemic. It’s really reinforced that death by pastry is the way to go. Pop tarts were one of my favourite treats growing up. I tried them again as an adult and realized they mostly taste like processed … More Strawberry Pop Tarts
Roopa I made a cake for a friend who said he likes chocolate, and pecan pie, so I figured I’d combine the two! I decided to make this chocolate honey pecan pie from Sprinklebakes. I used the filling from that recipe and one of my favourite pie crust recipes. I hadn’t really baked a pie … More Chocolate Honey Pecan Pie
Roopa I reference sweet pastry (or sweet paste) in a bunch of other posts, so I felt it deserved its own post! It’s a really versatile pastry that can be used in both sweet and savoury dishes, and works very well as a stable and delicious base for cheesecakes. I don’t have a great photo … More Sweet Pastry
Roopa I’ve gone back to pastry school! This time, my friend Marcus came down from Edmonton to do a one week German baking course at the Vancouver Pastry Training Center. I knew very little about German baking going in, so this was very educational in a few different ways! This schwarzwälder kirschtorte or black forest cake … More Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest Cake)
Team Shambles Frangipane is basically a sweet almond cream that gets baked into things. We didn’t actually make this in pastry class, but we did fill some brioche dough with it and it was thoroughly delicious. It was also “home-made” (at the home of a professional pastry chef) so that presumably added to the flavour. … More Frangipane
Team Shambles For our annual trip – twice makes it annual right? – we decided to hit up NYC and go on a full pastry tour. This included eating an obscene number of pastries, but also taking a Croissant and Brioche course at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE). We made plain croissants, almond croissants, … More Croissants
Team Shambles As mentioned in the previous post on croissants, the other thing we made in our pastry course was Brioche. Brioche is a viennoiserie, or a “baked good from a yeast-leavened dough in a manner similar to bread, but with added ingredients …and approaching pastry” (Wikipedia, 2018). In case it wasn’t obvious, that is code … More Brioche
Alana My family had a bit of a last minute Easter this year, so on Saturday I offered to bring some dessert. I decided it would be a good idea to practice one of the recipes from pastry school. The choux pastry with vanilla pastry creme seemed like a good choice because it’s nice and … More Paris-Brest
Team Shambles We’ve all had apple pie at some point in our lives, but this pie takes the cake! (Insert giggle for questionable baking joke?) The filling isn’t runny at all, and the pie crust is nice and flaky. Chef Marco also gave us some really helpful tips to judge how well the dough needs … More Apple Pie
Chateau Gateau 