Read Paris Pastry Club: A collection of cakes, tarts, pastries and other indulgent recipes Online
Authors: Fanny Zanotti
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Paris Pastry Club: A collection of cakes, tarts, pastries and other indulgent recipes (2 page)
VANILLA ICE-CREAM
WITH OLIVE OIL
THERE ARE ONLY so many things I know.
Getting lost, of the make-believe kind, in the Marais; the beauty of sunsets pretending to be rainbows.
Watching – and, more importantly, hearing – waves crash into the sand. And then see them disappear with the low tide, the sun sparkling in cloudy puddles the water has left behind. The flavour of vanilla ice-cream when our fingers still tasted of the ocean. The miniature merry-go-round of sand fleas jumping from one sandcastle to another. My
grand-mère
making madeleines and cakes, and clafoutis too. And me, sat on the kitchen counter.
Yes, I learnt how to bake during the summers I spent with my grandmother. On the weekends, she would knead butter into flour and add water. And tarts would be made throughout the week. Apricots and plums, golden and plump with sun. And on Wednesdays she would teach me how to make waffles. With beer in the batter.
Nowadays her words still sound like music to me. We discuss what we’re going to bake over a breakfast of French coffee and thick slices of baguette toasted until barely warm and spread with salted butter and honey. For lunch, she cracks open a few almonds (the ones in the green shells) with a hammer.
And then the oven gets turned on and we laugh and we try to make the cakes we dreamed about.
Yes, there are only so many things I know. For the unknown, I rely on magic and wishful thinking.
And my
grand-mère
. She’s the most beautiful person in my world. And when we bake together magic happens. Or perhaps it’s the boxed rosé wine we sip as soon as the clock hits five o’clock.
Taking a tray of madeleines from the oven feels like pressing the shutter of a Polaroid camera. Boom, instant gratification.
The batter is made in advance – up to 3 days – because it makes for plump little cakes with the fat domes we’ve all come to love. And by the time you bake them, you’ve forgotten the effort you put into making the batter. Effort is somewhat misleading though. Eggs and sugar get whisked together until fluffy. And flour gets folded. The only tricky step is to incorporate the butter without deflating the batter. But I’ve come up with a little trick to make that stage easier after the commis-of-my-life tried to turn madeleines into pancakes: the butter is creamed with a tablespoon of sugar until very soft and light. It’s then mixed with a part of the batter before getting folded back into the rest. Ever so gently.
Makes 24 madeleines
80 g (2¾ oz) butter, really soft
100 g (3½ oz) caster (superfine) sugar
2 eggs
zest from 2 lemons
a pinch of sea salt
100 g (3½ oz) plain (all-purpose) flour
½ teaspoon baking powder (baking soda)
a punnet of blueberries
Cream the butter with a tablespoon of the sugar. Whisk the remaining sugar with the eggs, lemon zest and the pinch of salt in a separate bowl until light and fluffy.
Gently fold in the flour and baking powder until just combined.
Scoop out a third of the batter into the butter and mix vigorously. Transfer into the remaining batter and fold in very gently.
Scrape the batter into a plastic piping bag and chill for at least 3 hours (or up to 3 days).
Preheat the oven to 220°C (430°F). Butter and flour a madeleine pan.
Snip a small 8 mm (⅓ in) hole from the tip of the piping bag and pipe the batter three-quarters of the way up the prepared moulds. Stick two blueberries in each madeleine. Reduce the oven temperature to 180°C (350°F) and bake for 14 minutes or until the edges are a deep-golden brown and the domes are just beginning to brown.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool for a few minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a wire rack.
VANILLA
ICE-CREAM WITH
OLIVE OIL
Not unlike the memory of licking melted ice-cream off my fingers made salty with the ocean, this has become a summer favourite over the years.
It is more of an idea, rather than a recipe. In fact, you could use store-bought ice-cream or make your own. However I would strongly advise you to try this one which is so loaded with vanilla seeds it’s almost grey.
Makes 2 litres
FOR THE ICE-CREAM
850 g (1 pint/12¾ fl oz) whole milk
175 g (6 oz) whipping cream
80 g (2¾ oz) skimmed milk powder
3 Tahitian vanilla pods
3 Madagascan vanilla pods
120 g (4 oz) caster (superfine) sugar
80 g (2¾ oz) dehydrated glucose
6 g
ice-cream stabiliser
TO SERVE
extra-virgin olive oil
a sprinkle of sea salt
Pour the milk, cream and milk powder into a large saucepan. Slice open the vanilla pods and scrape the seeds into the milk, then roughly chop the pods into 5 mm (¼ in) long segments and add to these milk as well. Set the pan over a medium heat and stir with a whisk every now and then until the temperature reaches 50°C (120°F) – use a probe to measure it. In the meantime, place all of the remaining ingredients in a bowl and whisk really well to combine.
When the milk reaches temperature, slowly add the powders, whisking as you go, and bring to a rolling boil.
Remove from the heat and blitz using a stick-blender for 3 minutes.
Pour into a plastic container, lay clingfilm over the top so it touches the surface (to prevent a skin forming) and chill for at least 5 hours or, even better, overnight.
Once chilled, strain the ice-cream mixture through a fine-mesh sieve and churn according to the instructions of your ice-cream maker.
Scrape the ice-cream into a 1 litre (34 fl oz) plastic container and cover with a piece of baking parchment the size of your container and freeze for a couple of hours before serving.
Scoop into small bowls or serving glasses and drizzle with olive oil. Top with a pinch of sea salt and a sprinkle of crushed nougatine.
I love nougatine so much that I might have dipped my finger in caramel when my great-grandma,
Mémé
, was making some, or that’s how the story goes.
She would toast almonds just until light golden and deeply aromatic, then mix them into a light amber caramel made creamy with a touch of butter. Of course, a fat pinch of fleur de sel was added. And the giant slab was left to cool down before being broken into bite-size pieces.
Nougatine will keep well for up to a fortnight in an airtight container. And please, don’t take after me – be supercareful with the hot caramel!
Makes 1 small slab
150 g (5 oz) blanched almonds
100 g (3½ oz) water
120 g (4 oz) caster (superfine) sugar