Puff Pastry And Vols-au-vent Filled With Cinnamon Pastry Cream

Puff Pastry And Vols-au-vent Filled With Cinnamon Pastry Cream

Get out your rolling pins, it's Daring Bakers time again. This month we've made puff pastry!

The September 2009 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

I love puff pastry and I use it quite a bit for both sweet and savoury dishes. It always make an impressive looking dish. I, however, have never even thought of making my own puff pastry. I've heard chef after chef saying don't bother making your own puff pastry, just buy it at the store. It left me thinking puff pastry was impossible to make. So thank you Steph for "forcing" me to try it. :)

Puff pastry does take a lot of time to make but the steps are fairly easy. I won't lie to you, there is an awful lot of butter in this recipe. OMG - the butter, but what you end up with is layers and layers of flaky melt in your mouth goodness. As Julia Child used to say, "Everything in moderation, including moderation."

The puff pastry is used to create vols-au-vent, which are little puff pastry cases designed to hold a filling. I decided to create a sweet filling for my vols-au-vent as I was taking them to share at a birthday party. I filled them with a cinnamon pastry cream. I topped the luscious cream with sliced peaches, mint and a dusting of cinnamon. Sweet, sophisticated and oh so good.

The recipes for the puff pastry and vols-au-vent are a little long, here’s a printable link to the recipe for both. Steph was also able to find an online video from the PBS show “Baking with Julia”. In it, Michel Richard and Julia Child demonstrate making puff pastry dough. It's quite entertaining.

Thank you Steph for a great challenge and I encourage all of you to give it a try. Be daring!

Cinnamon Pastry Cream
Adapted from the Titanic Kitchen

Ingredients:
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup granulated sugar
5 tablespoons all purpose flour
2 cups whole milk
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup whipping cream

Directions:
1. In a bowl, whisk together egg yolks and 1/4 cup of the sugar for 2 minutes or until pale yellow. Adding flour in 3 additions, stir until well mixed.

2. In a saucepan, heat the milk, remaining sugar and cinnamon sticks over medium heat, stiring often until the sugar is dissolved and small bubbles begin to form around the edges of the pot. Stiring constantly, pour about 1/3 of the milk mixture into egg mixture and stir until thoroughly combined. Pour egg mixture into remaining milk and cook, stiring, for 3 to 4 minutes or until mixture begins to bubble. Reduce the heat to low and continue cooking, stiring, until mixture begins to mound and hold its shape; remove from heat.

3. Stir in butter and remove the cinnamon sticks. Transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap touching the surface of the custard and cool to room temperature.

4. Beat whipping cream until stiff; add a large dollop of cream to the cooled pastry cream and fold in; add remaning whipped cream and fold in until almost combined. Place in the refrigerator until completely chilled.