This post is dedicated to my two grandmothers because this Pastry-Monday we made Créme Caramel and Mousse au Chocolat, both are one of their specialties. We also made Pot au créme and Créme Brulee so all together we had 4 recipes this day.

Started off with Créme Caramel (like Flan).

Making caramel from sugar and water

Caramelizing

Glaze the bottom of the Créme Caramel Mold

Beat whole eggs with sugar. Mix slowly with milk boiled with a vanilla bean. Poured to the mold and put in the oven in a bain marrie.

Next thing we did was the Pot au créme which are almost the same as the caramel only using just the yolks and we added flavors to it.

Yolks instead of whole eggs

The mixture was cut to three and flavored. One was coffee-chocolate

The other two were Pistachio and Praline

Inside the pots, tried to remove the foam quite unsuccessfully

These also went to the oven inside bain marrie

Chocolate mousse:

Chocolate grated thinly

Melted over a double boiler. Added yolks and then butter

Whipping the whites of the eggs

carefully folding the whites to the chocolate

...

Adding a dash of whipped cream as well

In glass

Decorated. This is the chef's mousse, I don't have my own mousse close up picture 🙁 Very sad, I forgot

The Créme Brulee, made similar to the pots au créme, with yolks, only this time using cream instead of milk boiled with double amount of vanilla bean. Then poured into Créme brulee plates.

Cooked on a low temp, until the border is set but the middle is still soft

Made two big ones and three baby

After chilled down, brown sugar sprinkled evenly

baby créme brulee

The family together

Cracked open, tasted superb!

Chef's testing of our créme to see if it's the right consistency. It sure was!

In the meantime our créme caramel finished cooking and chilling and we flipped it over

Was yummy but there's room to improve, the caramel changed color on top (why?) and the liquid caramel we made last second wasn't clear, even flipping wasn't perfect.

The poor pots were over cooked for most of the people in class. Overcooking things like that is causing a separation of the eggs and liquids and makes it pretty horrible. The pistachio paste flavor wasn't as good as I hoped for, tasted too artificial and we can call it the worst dish of the day 🙁 Next time has to be carefully monitored in the oven!

The whole bunch together.

The winner of the day was definatly the Créme brulee. I had tasted many créme brulees before but this one was awesome. Classic but very very very good! Even two days later it was still so awesome. Chef says that the reason is that we used the convection oven in low temp instead of bain marrie in the baker’s oven in higher temp. Maybe it was the yolks with cream and burnt sugar on top? I don’t know. Next one, on second place, was the Créme caramel which was very good but not perfect. Also the fact that I tool it home in a plastic Tupperware and when I got home it was already a soup mooshed together. Not nice at all!! The third place goes to the chocolate mousse and too bad it got just third place because I’m a chocolate mousse fan, so how can that happen? The reason is that something was not that good with our preparation (Rob and I worked together this day). Not sure what and chef couldn’t explain as well. The mousse was very heavy and taste wise lacked something. Later on I checked Jean’s recipe to see the differences, found out it was pretty much similar except for putting some Brandy that we didn’t add and could improve the flavor a lot. Probably we made some other mistake, has to be repeated and improved. The last place took pots au créme because they were overcooked, lost the right consistency and  flavors we added were a bit artificial.

 

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7 Responses to A Tribute To My Grandmothers

  1. Ema Irit says:

    הקרם קרמל נראה נהדר
    אז האם את יודעת מה ההבדל בין קרם כרמל לפלאן שהצרפתים עושים?
    איך בעצם עושים את הפלאן המופלא שלהם?

    • Mashav says:

      לא, לא יודעת באמת. זה משהו אחר לגמרי, השם הדומה הוא צירוף מקרים. כמו שלצרפתים יש מרמייט אבל זה ממש לא קשור למרמייט של האוסטרלים

    • Mashav says:

      flan issue was checked. What you love (Tarte au flan) is made with cornflour or regular flour inside, as an addition to the base of tart it sits on. Other than that, it’s pretty much the same ingredients and cooking in a bain marrie in the oven. It makes it a lot more sustainable and easy to store and sell than creme caramel

  2. Elisheva says:

    הפלאן הצרפתי הוא עם ג’לטין ועשוי קר אני חושבת.

    • Nachman says:

      you are talking about the instant french flan that you get in packets – this is what Lia uses to make her great tasing flan. but Irit is asking about the flan that you get in the patisseries in paris that is baked…

  3. Neta says:

    אפשר מתכון? מתכונים ז”א? של הקרם ברולה במיוחד
    (:

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