hey, everybody. thanks for tuning in to "cooking with class". i'm emily fowler, with the jccc foundation. it's good to see you all, today. i'm here in the kitchen, with our guest chef for the day, frank willis. frank, how are you? good, how are you doing, today? i'm doing fine. frank is a recent graduate of the pastry baking certificate program, here at the college, which is part of our culinary program, and i think you're going to be making some pretty wonderful pastry for us, today? that's right. today, i'm going to be making some chocolate eclairs. we're going to be starting out with a pate choux base, which is just the creampuff shell, and that's baked.
we're also going to make some pastry creme. vanilla pastry creme is the filling, and also some chocolate glaze, for the top of it. that sounds like one of my favorite things. all right. i'm excited. let's get started. we're going to start off, with two cups of water. also, one stick, plus 2 1/2 tablespoons of butter, and we're going to bring this to a boil. we'll let that sit. we also have two cups of all-purpose flour, and a pinch of salt. what we're going to do is let this boil. we're going to add the flour, all at once, as well as the salt. let's throw in the salt with the flour, now. once this boils, we're going to to throw all of the flour and salt in, and mix it into a kind of paste. then the paste will go into the mixer, and let it cool off, and add the eggs, and we'll start piping off some stuff, from there.
ok, now this is for the pate choux you mentioned? right, right. now, that's the pastry part of the eclair, the breading part? that's the shell, yeah. ok, so what does "pate choux" mean? i don't know the english translation for it. it's a french term. it's just the shell, the paste... ...that holds all the good stuff? ok, good. good deal. so, once this boils, we throw in the flour and salt, then you mix it, and get it going. and you said you'd let it cool, before you actually start to work with it?
right. we're going to add ten whole eggs, over here. we're letting these come up to room temperature. they're just going to add in even more easily, they're also going to make the dough puff more. so, once we pipe that into the shells, or onto the sheet pan, rather, were going to put them into the over, and they're going to puff up, really tall. you'll see it, after i pipe them out. they'll be just a mound on the pan, but the steam from the water will make those puff up and create the hollow shell, where we'll fill them with pastry creme, and top with the glaze. ok. you said you'd bring the eggs to room temperature, before you add them to your pastry mixture? right. so, if you were to be setting this up at home, you'd want to crack your eggs into a bowl, first, and let them sit, while you assemble all your other ingredients, while your water's boiling, things like that. ok. so, if you add cold eggs, is that going to shock your dough?
no, it's not going to be bad, but you'll get more volume and a better product from a room-temperature egg. everything in baking is going to be better, with a room-temperature egg. ok, that's good to know. let's take a look, here. one trick, also, is when you've got butter, and you're trying to melt it, just to cut it into smaller pieces. obviously, it's gonna melt faster, if there's less butter. you said this was two cups of water, and one stick, plus two tablespoons of butter? two and a half tablespoons. two and a half tablespoons.
so, if you can't remember that folks, you can go to the web site, and look at the recipe that frank is doing for us, today. that's www.jccc.edu. search for "culinary", and you'll go to the hospitality management - culinary web site. and a link to the recipes will be available for you. also, if you'd just like to just watch frank do this again, sometime in your kitchen, you can order a dvd online, at the same address, or you can watch it online at (new address) www.youtube.com/user/jcccvideo . watch it online, any time, 24/7. if you can't sleep at night, you can watch frank make wonderful eclairs, for us. while the water's boiling, just give it a stir, every now and then, to make sure all thje heat's distributed, evenly. another thing you're going to need with eclairs, and this is also the same base for cream puffs, is a pastry bag. you can buy these at a grocery story, in the cake decorating aisle, disposable pastry bags.
you'll need one of those, or something similar, in order to pipe put the shells. ok. this sounds complicated. it's a lot easier than people may think. it is. maybe, there's a lot of steps, more than people are used to, but to make an eclair is a lot easier than people may think. that's great. it's pretty easy to do at home, and certainly an impressive thing for the home cook to do for a party, or a get-together of some sort. sounds good. we mentioned that you're a graduate of the pasrty baking program, here at the college. is there something you learned in the program that you use every day, that you can tell us about? definitely efficiency. that's one thing you're taught in culinary school in general, is how to work effeciently,
and constantly thinking about your steps in the kitchen, where you're going, and how to get the things you need, kind of in a circular motion, so you're not wandering all over the kitchen, wasting time and steps. everything in the culinary world is very much based upon time, how quickly you can produce an item, or turn out a product. so, kind of have all your ingredients ready to go, before you start the process? that's a great tip for everybody. plus, if you're in the middle of making something important, and you don't have an ingredient, then you need to go to the store, or to another part of the kitchen to get it, you're wasting a bit of time, which isn't the worst thing at home, but, especially if you're out of an ingredient at home, it makes things very difficult. if you don't have somebody to go, "hey, get into the car, and go get salt!" exactly. so, we got our water and butter boiling. we're gonna add the two cups of flour and the pinch of salt, all at once.
i'm going to stir this, constantly, now. this is going to form a rough paste at first, them it will all come together, and smooth out. so, stir it constantly. don't let it sit, right? right. once you've got the flour in there, you can see it coming together, and soem of the lumps of flour are starting to come out. oh yeah, that's really starting to become pasty. now, you can see it's starting to pull away from the sides of the pan. it's pretty much ready, at that point. all right, that's it for the base itself, the water. we're going to take this off, and turn the burner off. we're going to put this in the mixer. this is now going to cool down, and we'll mix this on low speed, until we're ready to add the eggs.
ok. put this on one or two, and you'll see the steam kinda come out of there. that actually helps to cool it, is to mix it? right, and this will also help to develop some of the structure. the gluten in the flour will become more developed, and kind of give you a crusty shell, for the base itself. we can see the steam coming off here. especially with the metal bowl, you can feel the heat you just want it to cool down, maybe two or three minutes, cool enough so you can add an egg, without worrying about it being cooked. if the bowl's too hot for your hand, the chances are too that it's probably too hot for the egg. that's kind of a good way to measure that. sounds good.the eggs are very sensitve to that heat?
sure, sure.so, while this is colling down, we can go ahead, and start with our pastry cream. right here, i've got three cups of whole milk, eight egg yolks, one cup of sugar, and 1/2 cup of flour. these are egg yolks that i separated earlier, so they'd be at room temperature as well. we'll go ahead and turn this on high, get our milk going. you're using whole milk, not skim, not one percent. that's good. no "low-fat", here. i'm just going to whisk this around. if we just let the milk sit and boil, it'd scald on the bottom, and burn. we don't want that in our pastry cream. the burned part will come off the bottom of the pan, when we add the rest fo the ingredients, and we'll have brown chunks in our pastry cream. that's bad.
that's not something we want. just kind of stir that around, a little bit. you don't have to be constantly on it. you're going to want to whip up your egg yolks. just kind of mix them up, so they're not solid egg yolks, anymore. add all of your sugar, all at once. you need to stir this immediately after you add sugar to eggs, because sugar will cook raw egg yolks, you don't want that, as it won't turn out right. so, it's just a chemical reaction of some kind? exactly. get it all mixed in, make it nice and smooth? exactly. it's kind of light and ribbony.we're going to add the half cup of flour, all at once, as well.
kind of mix this in... and once the milk boils, we're going to a process called "tempering". we're going to take our hot ingredient, and we're going to add it to the cold, a little bit at a time. that's so we don't just take all the hot, and put it into the cold, all at once, and in this case, we have eggs, and we don't want to cook the eggs. so, we're going to temper all that, together. those are really great tips too. because if you add things in the wrong proportion, the wrong time, or the wrong temperature, you'd basically be done, and have to start all over again. if you were to take all of your hot milk all at once and add it to the eggs, you would cook them. that's not something you'd want right now. you want to wait until they're all combined, and everything is ready to go. i'm going to use the same whisk, just to keep the milk going.
cause we're going to mix this all together, eventually? ok. getting nice and frothy, there. yeah. how's the dough coming? it's starting to cool, if you wanted to see what it feels like. not too bad. it's just kind of warm at this point, not too hot. so, we'll just keep this going, on speed one. then, well add the eggs in, one or two at a time, not too many at once. we'll let that mix, and we're not going to add any more eggs, until the first two are combined. it's going to look kind of funny at first. the egg yolks will be all over the paste,
but then, it will all come together, and start to smooth out, and then we'll continue to add the eggs, two at a time. also, keeping an eye on the milk, because we don't want it to scald. so, this is multitasking. that's what this is. that's right. that's a great lesson. that's another lesson you learn is culinary school, is how to multitask. that sounds good. all right. so, our first two eggs are combined. now, we'll add the next two. so, at first, you've got egg yolks, kind of all over the dough, and it's all going to mix together, eventually? exactly. and you can see that the rough paste we first put in here is starting to smooth ou, and take on a more creamy consistency. so, how did you know you wanted to be a pastry chef?
well, i started off in regular college, at a couple different universities, and never really enjoyed the lecture classes. i always did better in the lab classes, and the hands-on stuff. i'd grown up cooking, and decided to pursue it. once i got in it, it was a great experience, i really enjoyed it. with the amount of time the pastry program takes, it was perfect for where i am. i had just about finished a degree, and i needed something where i could get experience, so i could get a job going. it's worked out really well. and, the pastry program here on campus actually bakes every week, every day. and, on friday afternoons, we have a pastry sale. so, if you're out there near college and quivira around 3:00 on friday afternoons, during the regular semesters, so that's september through april, you can buy fresh pastries that were made by the college's culinary students, right here at the college. we actually only do the baking on thursdays.
oh, really? so, there's not stuff that's there from monday? ok, that makes sense. yeah, just two days, thursday and friday. we do most of the baking on thursday, and all the finishing and the rest of the baking on friday. then, we open up at 3 o'clock. that's great. you guys have such a wide variety of things that you make. we do. we make everything, breads and pastries, and all kinds of different things. this is getting really frothy, so we're boiling, aren't we? yeah, that's boiling, so we're going to pour this milk in here. we're going to leave the heat on, because we're going to need that, still. so, add a little bit. mix that up... i'm going to get a little milk facial, here.
that's such a great color. nice pastel yellow, very restful. we'll add the rest of our milk, now that this is tempered. so, that first addition, really helps to bring the temperature up, gradually? exactly. it brings the two to an equal temperature. so, once we put this back on the heat, we can't ever stop stirring it, because we don't want to cook the eggs on the bottom or on the side, from whatever heat source you're using. so, we're going to pour all of this mixture back into the same pan that we were just using. then back on the heat, and now we have to always stir this, we always have to be aware of what's going on. if you've got rowdy teenagers at home, this may be a good time to get them into the kitchen and have them help,
because this is going to take just a little bit. we want to bring this to the very first boil, you're gonna be here for a little bit, so make sure you're always scraping the edges of the pan, or the bowl. make sure you're scraping the side, so you don't have any small pieces of cooked egg, in there. ok. you want me to take the role of the rowdy teenager, and stir this for you? ok. sure, you got it. i'm gonna keep stirring this. it's like "hands-on" pastry making. we're going to add the last two eggs to the pate choux. as soon as those are combined, we'll be ready to go with that. how am i doing?
you're doing great. you can see that's starting to get a lot thicker, than when you started. it's probably getting a little more difficult to stir. mmhm. i can feel that. all right, so, our pate choux is now ready. you can see its real thick consistency. oh, that's really creamy looking, yeah. how's the pastry cream coming? it's really becoming much thicker, now. has it boiled, yet? uhh, not quite. we're almost there. ok.
wow, i haven't been a rowdy teenager, for a long time! all right. so, now we have our pate choux base ready. we got all our eggs incorporated. we're just going to scrape the bowl, and make sure all the little last pieces that may have stuck to the side are ready. ok, and we're boiling over here, now. ok, we can now pull that off the heat. all right. i'll turn that off. this is one thing you've got to make sure to stir, constantly, so none of the eggs get cooked, at this point, what you want to do is put it into a container, and put it into the fridge.
you want to make sure you put some saran wrap on top of it, because this will form a skin. so, i've got some of that, right here. right, you've done that, already. this has been refrigerated, overnight. this is cold, ready to go. so, you can make that a day ahead of time, if you really wanted to? absolutely, yeah. this is something you could eat as pudding, if you wanted. no big deal on that. so, here's our pastry cream, ready. we're going to pipe out our shells. so, we've got our pastry bag. fill up the pastry bag, a little bit, just a smuch as you feel comfortable,with. then, we're going to bake these at 400 degrees for about twenty-five minutes. you really need to pay attention to not open the oven.
once you've got them in there, the moisture content from the water and the butter is really going to help to puff these up. you can't be checking on them, every few minutes? you really need to stay faithful, and just let that thing sit in there for a little bit, and puff up. you can check it after about twenty minutes, or so. you'll probably start to smell it. so, we use a sheet pan with parchment. you can also use butter, or a little non-stick spray. whatever you feel comfortable with. let's pipe these out. you can't pipe them too close together, because, obviously, when they puff up, they'll touch, together. they do expand, ok.oh, you make that look so easy! you want to try a couple? uhh, let's just let you do it!
one thing, when you're filling up the pastry bag, it's good to give it a squeeze, and make sure there are no air bubbles in there. make sure that when you're piping things out, you don't get a big air bubble pop, and makes your product not come out so nice. so, now we're going to stick these into the 400 degree oven. all righty. i've got some shells prepared.so, what were going to do is take a paring knife... so, this is what they look like, after they're baked. right. this is after the 400 degree oven, and they've come out, and they're puffed up, as you can see. instead of being the consistency like this, they've puffed up quite a bit. we're going to take a paring knife, turn them over on the bottom, insert it a little bit, give it a couple of twists, and make a little hole on both ends. this is where we'll fill them with the pastry cream.
while the pastry cream is cooling down, you'd be making your chocolate glaze. this is a double boiler, with just water in the pan. nothing fancy. turn that on high. what we have here is one pound of chocolate, and a half-pound of butter. that's going to make the chocolate glaze. we're going to dip the eclairs in it, after we'v egot them filled up. that's going to be my favorite part. i'll just tell you that, right now. this is something you want to be watchful of. chocolate will burn very easily. just give it a couple stirs, now and then, and pay attention to what's going on. can you use any kind of chocolate here? are these semisweet, or milk chocolate? this is semisweet, yeah. certainly, you can use whatever you're comfortable with. there's quite a few gourmet chocolates you can get. grocery store chocolate is fine. whatever you feel comfortable using.
ok. that's just gonna melt down. i'll fill these up. that's why we were drilling the holes in the back. right. you can use a vegetable peeler, if you want to. whatever utentil you have around, in the kitchen. let me grab a pastry bag. ok. one more pastry bag? yeah. this is going to be for the pastry cream. we're going to cut that off, really small. that way, we can fill these things up.
ok. so, this is going to be a smaller hole, than what you used for the pate choux? for the pate choux base, correct.let me grab a spoon, here. this pastry cream can also be flavored with anything you want: vanilla, cocoa powder works really well, hazelnut extract, almond extract. whatever you want to. just take a tablespoon or two, at a time, and mix it in, with a whip. all right, so now we've got our pastry bag, all full. ok, wonderful. wipe that on the edge, and come over to our shells. insert the pastry bag, just a little bit into there. you can start to feel it expand a bit, and you should see some of the pastry cream start to come out the other side,
where you made your other hole. ok. cause you want to get it as full as possible? that's exaclty right. becuase this is the good stuff. this is going to be your filling. if you have a pastry tip at home, certainly, you can use that, whatever you feel comfortable with. you don't have to have one, so that's nice. but, certainly it'll make it just as easy. does that make it a little easier to control, maybe? right. it does make it easier to have the pastry bag go inside of the eclair shell.
all right. i'm still continuing to keep an eye on our chocolate. multitasking, as always. that's right.i'll grab a towel, here. i want to remind everyone, one more time, if you'd like to see the recipe frank's doing today, or if you'd like to order a dvd copy, so you can watch him in the kitchen, it's www.jccc.edu , search for 'culinary', and that willl take you to the hospitality management culinary website, where you can find a link to that information. all right, so our chocolate glaze is coming together. excuse me for just a moment.
as soon as all the chocolate melts out, and all the butter melts out, it'll combine really nicely. it'll be a very smooth glaze. this can also be poured over cakes, or whatever sort of pastry you have, at home. whatever you feel comfortable putting it over. you can dip pretzels in it, or anything like that. very useful. marshmallows, cakes... sure. strawberries... definitely.let's fill up our pastry bag, a little bit more. today, we're just using the vanilla pastry cream. nothing special today. i think it looks pretty special. i'm getting anxious to taste it.
you said, with the pastry cream, you can make it ahead of time, and you want to refrigerate it, with that saran wrap over the top. and, that makes it a little easier to work with? is it not quite as runny, or as thin? you mean to put it in, overnight? to put it in, overnight, yeah. because it's cooked, you just want it to cool down. it'll be pretty hot, as obviously, it's jsut boiled, so you just want to make sure it's not warm. you don't have to have it cold, by any means, but it does taste a little bit better, cold. but you don't have to. but the consistency's going to be like this? ok. depending on the recipe of pastry cream you use, it'll be a little more thick, or a little more loose, depending on the style you've used.
ok.the chocolate's getting really melty. i'm making sure all the chunks come out. if anybody out there's interested in the pastry baking certificate program, if you're already somebody that likes bake at home, and you think you'd like to make a career of it, again, go to that web site at the college, at www.jccc.edu . search for "culinary", and information about the program is also on our web site. we also have financial aid available, and scholarships that you can apply for. so, if you think you're a nontraditional student, and you'd like to get into it, you can check it out, and find out on line. this is coming together, pretty well. this is what we'll dip the tops of the eclairs in. i can smell the chocolate, now. that's like one of my favorite smells.
chocolate and butter. oh, yeah. can't beat it. that must be a good part of your job, too. you get to smell all those wonderful smells. absolutely. after a while, though, you don't want any more sweets, after being around it, six days a week. i can imagine.that's why i'm not a pastry chef. i always want to eat pastry. i'll bet. -- so, you can see that's coming together, very nicely. it's very smooth, no more chunks of butter or chocolate. all right, so we'll take this off, and turn the heat off. make sure we've got everything mixed.
ok. and, we're gonna dip these in. this will only take a little bit to set. kind of shake them off, and make sure you get al lthe drips off. oh wow, that looks so nice. those are pretty much ready. those look beautiful! it's so shiny. yeah! those look absolutely beautiful. ok. now, you may have had enough sweets for the week, but not me. so, may i have a taste of these? you may. enjoy!
which one do you recommend? that one looks pretty good. ok, i want to take this first one that you did, right here. that chocolate's going to be really soft, right now, but it's going to be very good. i have no doubt it's going to be excellent. mmm! good? very good. thank you so much! you're welcome.
oh wow, that is wonderful. thank you frank willis, for being with us, today. thank you very much. i'm emily fowler, with chocolate on my lips. thanks for tuning in to "cooking with class".
0 comments:
Post a Comment