Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Loose in Le Gnome and midnight Choux

Yesterday Zed and I made the trek to West Ed where I was set slightly loose in Le Gnome and the kitchen wares department at the Bay in celebration of my birthday today.

I ended up with two medium sized stainless steel mixing bowls, an instant read thermometer for new adventures with meat, a Salter Aquatronic baking scale (to go with my new Peter Reinhardt, "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" book), a dough cutter/scraper, a piping bag complete with various tips, many of which I will probably never use, and some longing looks at stand mixers and Le Creuset dutch ovens that I'm hoping to acquire in my non-student future.

I had been thinking about making Laura Calder's Choux Pastry recipe for quite awhile, so last night at 10pm, now equipped with the new piping bag and mixing bowls, Zed and I began to make cream puffs. We finished the "puff" part and the pastry cream will come later tonight. All in all it went well for our first Choux attempt, but the dough was a little too heavy and we quickly realized while piping the puffs that we didn't use enough of the eggs.

But Zed managed to eat several of the puffs on their own despite their slight heaviness, and at midnight I filled a few with ice cream as a birthday treat.

3 comments:

Isabelle said...

I also have given kitchenaid mixers and cuisinart food processors many a longing look. I'm not a student anymore but I still can't afford one! Maybe someday ...

The Choux sounds like fun. I've been wanting to make profiteroles for a while and I think the batter/dough is somewhat similar.

Anonymous said...

I picked up a "seconds" 5 qt Le Creuset dutch oven for $150 back in January at Homesense. They may still have some....

Maki said...

Happy belated birthday Marianne!

I have a kitchenaid mixer, that I got from airmiles after doing extensive renovations to our house, (suh-weet!) and I HEART it. But they are dang expensive. I've seen that Costco has them on sale once or twice a year so when you are in the market for one, that's the place to look :)