Archive for May, 2009
If you’re not planning a trip to Paris in the near future, there is no reason to miss out on all the delicious pastries that the city has to offer – and let’s face it, the pastries are a big part of the draw of Paris (that, the art and the Eiffel Tower, n’est pas?)! In Dorie Greenspan’s book, Paris Sweets: Great Desserts From the City’s Best Pastry Shops you’ll find some great recipes for some of the most popular sweets at some of the most popular bakeries in the city.
The appealing thing about this book – aside from the little notes about the bakeries and bakers themselves – is that the recipes have been converted by Greenspan for an American audience. This means that the recipes are given by volume, not by weight, and you don’t need to have extensive baking experience to have success with the recipes, as they are all well-explained in great detail. Shortcuts, such as using the food processor for mixing, are given when applicable. The recipes generally range from easier to more difficult and the book starts out with a chapter on cookies, saving the more involved pastries and cakes for later chapters.
This is probably not the ideal book if your goal is to become a champion pastry chef, as this book does not focus primarily on traditional techniques in the way that a pastry school textbook might. It will, however, turn out some delicious pastries and might even make you feel like you’ve taken a little trip away from home and to the City of Lights for the afternoon. There are no photos in the book, so if you feel like you want to get an idea of what something is supposed to look like before trying it out, you might want to google the names of the french pastries (some can have unusual names or shapes). That might inspire you to want to take a trip, too!
In a perfect world, with unlimited resources and where I would never be full (or need to jog off a dozen extra pastries), I would have liked to try everything they had for sale at the L’Atelier Boulanger du Marais, a very cute bakery near the Place de Vosges in Paris. It all looked spectacular, and the prices seemed very reasonable. In this world, however, I could only try a few things. I opted for a croissant, a brioche au sucre and a Paris Brest. A brioche au sucre is a rich, buttery brioche dough that has coarse sugar sprinkled on top to give it some sweetness and some crunch. It’s simple, but good. The Paris Brest is a ring of choux pastry, the same as you would use for a cream puff, that is filled with a whipped cream or mousse filling. This one was palm-sized (although there are versions the size of cakes) and had a coffee filling.
Everything was outstanding, but the croissant was particularly good. I’m no expert on croissants, but this was certainly the best I’ve had. It was light and flaky, almost crumbly, and it tasted like browned butter because the bottom seemed to have caramelized slightly during baking. Amazing.
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One of the best known ice creams in Paris is Berthillon. And, according to many residents, tour guides and guide books, it is the best ice cream in the city, if not the world. This is quite the statement to make, and it is obvious that people take it to heart because there are lines around the block for this ice cream shop. It is made at one small store on the Ile-St. Louis in the center of Paris, but is (luckily) available at just about every other shop on that island if you want to avoid the line. I’ve been told that it is not available anywhere else in the city. The flavors range from the basic to the inventive, change daily, and all of the ice creams and sorbets are made from scratch.
I opted for coconut and white chocolate (noix de coco et chocolate blanc), one scoop of each in a waffle cone. I don’t know if it’s the best in the city or elsewhere, but the ice cream was excellent and was served at the perfect temperature, where it was just soft all over. You could tell that it was fresh and had never seen a deep freeze. The coconut tasted like coconut macaroons, packed with bite of coconut, and the white chocolate tastes like a cold white chocolate truffle.
Berthillon Ice Cream
29-31 rue Saint Louis en l’ile
75004 Paris
I have always been a big fan of marble cakes. They satisfy cravings for both chocolate and vanilla cake, and always please everyone if you need to serve a crowd. They’re also not difficult to make, even though they make for a really beautiful presentation when you slice into them. All you really need to do is add some chocolate – either cocoa powder or melted chocolate – to half of a vanilla cake batter and swirl everything together.
These marble cupcakes work the same way as full sized marble cakes, just in a smaller package. The only drawback to making them this way is that you can’t really swirl them as much as you can swirl a large cake with a large amount of batter. You could try to swirl the batter in the bowl before portioning it out into the cupcake cups, but this generally leads to over-combing the chocolate and vanilla and you don’t end up with a distinct marble pattern. I prefer to measure out the chocolate and vanilla into each cupcake cup, then give the batter a quick single swirl with a knife before baking. Every cupcake ends up with the right amount of chocolate and vanilla this way, and the very distinct black-and-white swirling layers make for a beautiful contrast.
The cake is the same basic recipe that I used for my Rainbow cupcakes, except that instead of dividing it up into many small portions for food coloring, I simply added some melted chocolate to half the batter. One ounce of dark chocolate (semisweet will work, too) adds just the right amount of chocolate flavor to the mix. I used a similar technique on the icing, dividing a basic recipe and adding cocoa powder to half. I put both icings into the same piping bag so that the frosting would have a marble look to it. The wider your pastry tip is, the clearer the effect will be.
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My mom always reminded me to pack a few granola bars or some similar treats with me when I traveled because, according to her, you never know when you’re going to need a snack. The plane might be late and all the restaurants will be closed when you land. You might end up spending 2 hours waiting in an unavoidably long ticket line. She was right. I pretty much always pack a granola bar or two just in case. I think I may have found a snack that could replace my granola bars, though: Nutella To Go.
I’ve seen small, snack-sized packages of Nutella before, but these combination biscuit and Nutella packs are a little handier because they include a way of easily delivering the Nutella without having to stop and pick up some bread or crackers to go with. They fit easily in a pocket or purse, plus they’re only about 250 calories and 4 grams of protein. The little biscuit sticks are a little bland on their own, but the generous amount of Nutella makes up for it.
I found these packs on my trip to Paris, so I’m not sure if you can buy them in the US, but keep an eye out. You could always put together your own snack-sized packs with homemade Nutella!
