nomnomnomnomnom

Happy Lobster/Mother’s Day

Bright and early sunday morning I went to the grocery store for some fresh lobster - to make what I thought would be an amazing Mother’s Day dinner: lobster bisque, lobster tails and cheese stuffed mushrooms.

There are several ways to cook lobster - steaming or boiling it is the easiest method. It is best to cook with salt to keep the flavour and texture of the lobster. Now, cooking a lobster alive is quite inhumane - you can numb the lobster first by putting it in the freezer for 5-10 minutes.

For the lobster bisque I used only the claws - with celery, onions and potatoes, seasoned with paprika, garlic, salt and pepper and topped off with puff pastry. For the lobster tails, I seasoned with paprika, salt and pepper and threw them in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Cheese stuffed mushrooms are pretty self-explanatory - stuff chunks  of cheese into the middle of the mushroom and bake for 15 minutes.

Yum!

Strawberry Short Cake

If you know me, then you know I have a crazy obsession with strawberries. Strawberries are actually part of the rose family and were originally called strewberry - and only changed to strawberry later on because farmers used to bring them to the market on beds of straw.

Strawberries not only have nutritional value and an abundance of antioxidants, but they are dee-licious, especially dipped in chocolate :) AND of course, the best are local ontario strawberries - peak season is June - July. 

Today’s class, we made strawberry short cake - 3 layers of sponge cake divided by thinly sliced strawberries and cream, masked with more cream and topped with chocolate dipped strawberries and white chocolate chips. <3 nom nom nom

Fruit Flans

Not many people think fruit flan when they want dessert. Nor do people gravitate towards them at buffet dessert tables. But fruit flans are actually quite yummy - a light and fluffy tart, vanilla pudding, topped with all your favourite fruits. I used strawberries, kiwis, peaches and tangerines on mine, but you could also put raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, or really, any fruit(s) you want.

I put a layer of chocolate in between the tart and pudding, and glazed the top with apriocot glaze. If you choose to go with berries instead, rather than glazing the top, dust it with some icing sugar. It will look much prettier.

Swiss Rolls

You’d think that swiss rolls originated from Switzerland, but nope. Invented in the 19th century in central Europe, swiss rolls are made from a thin layer of sponge cake, rolled up with jam and covered with cream.

I made raspberry and lemon swiss rolls and topped them both off with toasted almonds.

Black Forest Cake

Or Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte - which is german for “black forest cherry torte”. 

Chocolate + maraschino cherries + whipped cream + rum.

Spritz Cookies

What are spritz cookies? They are basically short bread cookies or also known as Scandinavian butter cookies. 

Spritz cookies only contain a few ingredients: eggs, butter (or shortening, or you can do half of each), salt, vanilla, icing sugar, milk and flour. It is fairly simple to make - nothing tricky, just blend all the ingredients together. No, not all at once of course. Blend butter, salt, vanilla and sugar together. Make sure you do this at a low speed (unless you like to be covered in icing sugar). When all these ingredients are incorporated, you can add ONE egg at a time (this is important- keeps the dough fluffy). This can be done at a medium speed. Lastly, add the flour and pour in the milk at a steady pace. Do not over blend. Once all the ingredients start to come together, you can turn off the mixer and blend the rest with a spatula or wooden spoon.

Then comes the fun part - piping! You can do whatever shapes you like - lady fingers, rosettes, hearts. If you do rosettes, create a little hole in the middle of the cookie and add jam. Strawberry is best.

After baking, you can dip/drizzle them in chocolate or cover them in icing sugar and voila! Pretty spritz cookies :)

*if you want, you can throw the cookies in the freezer for up to 4 weeks (baked, but not dipped in chocolate or covered with icing sugar)

Cream puffs

Cream puff - a hollow round of crisp choux pastry that is split in half, filled with cream (or custard) and dusted with powdered sugar.

Profiterole - pretty much a cream puff, except instead of slicing the pastry in half for the filling, you pipe the filling into the pastry.

Making cream puffs is a lot of work (way harder to make than it is to eat them!)- the pastry itself requires several steps. Then you have to pipe them for the oven. Once they are out, you have to slice them all in half; make and pipe the filling, and dust. I made regular, strawberry and chocolate cream puffs.

I also made eclairs (but somehow don’t have a picture of). They are pretty much made the same way. Just one extra step: dipping the tops in chocolate fondant :)