Focaccia alla genovese

Focaccia is a wonderful, classic Italian bread eaten for breakfast and as snack.  It's moist and chewy, flavored with olive oil and rosemary, smells great and tastes even better. And the big sea salt adds a crunchy side to it that I love.

Focaccia is very easy to make but takes a lot of timing because of all the leavening times. But be patient it's worth it. Try it for yourself!

Recipe for an oven plate-sized focaccia

600 g flour
0.5 dl olive oil
7 g dried yeast (or 25 g fresh yeast)
15 g salt
2 tsp sugar
3.5 dl water (tepid)

Topping:
rosemary
70 g water (tepid)
70 g olive oil
big sea salt

In a big bowl dissolve the yeast with some tepid water. Add the remaining water, olive oil, salt, sugar, and almost all flour. Mix with a wooden spoon and finally work it on a floured table until obtaining a soft dough. Let it leaven for 30 min under a cloth.

Cover an oven plate with olive oil transfer the dough there and flatten it with your hands and with a rolling pin, gently so as not to break up air bubbles too much. Pain the surface with some olive oil and let it leaven for another hour under cloth.

Mix oil, water and salt in a bowl making an emulsion. Make deep holes in the dough with your fingers and cover the dough with your oil emulsion (all of it), the holes should be full of oil now. Sprinkle some rosemary on top and let it sit for another 20 min.

Bake in the oven approx. 20 min at 200 C until golden. Enjoy it warm right away or cold for a later snack!

Eclairs au chocolat, basic and delicious

Eclairs au chocolat are one of my favorite desserts in the category "I cannot make them and have to buy them". I only like the éclairs filled with chocolate pastry cream and I have tried many in Lausanne's bakery shops and abroad - in the US I stopped trying them after finding out that they were often filled with custard or whipped cream, I felt too deceived :-)

After taking the pastry course at Benoit Violier I had decided to practice and replicate what I had learned there, among other things pâte à choux. This weekend I finally went on to try and make this and fill my little choux with chocolate cream to obtain éclairs au chocolat. It was my first time using a piping bag, my first time making pâte à choux (which is unlike other doughs more tricky), and my first time making chocolate cream... I failed a few things on the first round, like making my choux fall after rising, undercooking them, and burning my chocolate cream. But in the second round, I succeeded and made excellent éclairs (and mini-éclairs) au chocolat that disappeared within 10 minutes :-p

Eclairs au chocolat, a French dessert par excellence, can be made within 1 hour if you are well organized. Don't be discouraged by the number of steps in the recipe, every component can be made quite quickly, and the reward at the end is totally worth the effort. Enjoy!

Recipe for many éclairs au chocolat (12 big ones)

Pâte à choux (choux pastry dough)

1.25 dl milk
1.25 dl water
2.5 g salt
5 g sugar
112.5 g butter
137.5 g flour
5 eggs, room T

In a saucepan heat up milk, water, salt, sugar and butter. When butter is melted bring to a boil and remove from the heat. Add flour all at once and mix fast with a wooden spoon. Put back on the fire and continue mixing until the dough is compact and detaches from the sides (this step is to dry or dehydrate the dough).

Transfer dough to a cold bowl and wait 5 min for the dough to cool down a bit. Add eggs one by one, mixing vigorously in between each with a wooden spoon.

Transfer dough to a piping/pastry bag with a round nozzle and lay down éclairs or puffs (as you prefer) on an oven plate lined with parchment paper. For éclairs I suggest making 3 x 10 cm shapes and for puffs something around 3-5 cm.

Bake in the oven 25-30 min at 180 C, until golden brown.

Chocolate pastry cream

30 g corn starch (maizena)
40 g powder sugar
4 dl milk
4 egg yolks
40 g powder sugar
200 g dark chocolate

Chop up or grate chocolate and transfer to a bowl.
Beat up egg yolks and powder sugar until whitish and fluffy. In a saucepan heat up milk, corn starch and powder sugar while mixing with a whisk. Bring it to a boil and then remove from heat. Add some of the milk mix to the egg mix and whisk. Add back to the sauce pan and put back on the fire. Whisk and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and pour on top of the chocolate in a bowl. Mix until the chocolate is melted. Cover the cream with plastic foil and refrigerate for 20 min.

Poke a hole in the puffs or 2 wholes in the éclairs (on the bottom surface). Transfer the pastry cream to a piping bag with a small nozzle and fill the puffs/éclairs via the hole(s) you just made.

Chocolate icing

75 g dark chocolate
75 g liquid cream

Heat up the cream and add to the chocolate. Mix until the chocolate has melted. Dip the upper surface of the éclairs in the glacage and let it dry. Now you can enjoy your éclair au chocolat!

Laura's Gourmandises on Amazon!

Laura's Gourmandises just got published on Createspace and you can find it on Amazon as well!

In this first recipe book, I put together my favorite recipes posted on this blog in 2013 and improved the text and images. The book is available as hard copy or as Kindle edition and you can find it here.

If you like it, share the word!
And stay tuned for a second book with recipes from 2014!

Moist pistachio cake with glazed Bronte pistachios

A few months ago I went to Sicily, where I discovered cannoli, ricotta, granita, but also pistachios from Bronte. Bronte is a tiny village on the southwest slopes of the Etna volcano and is known for its green pistachios. Because they're so good, they're used in almost every dessert in Sicily :-)

Before leaving, I bought a kilo of Bronte pistachios to bring back home for baking. This week I finally used them and made a pistachio cake which was moist and rich in pistachio flavor, with ground pistachios in the cake and glazed pistachios as "icing". The cake is wonderful, I highly recommend you try it if you like pistachios. Enjoy!

Recipe for a 30 cm-long pistachio cake:

For the cake:
250 g butter, room T
200 g sugar
4 eggs
100 g Bronte pistachios*
100 g blanched + ground almonds**
65 g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

For the glaze:
1 dl water
1 dl powder sugar
50 g pistachios

Grind pistachios finely (use a mixer if you have one, I did it by hand with a knife).
Cream butter and sugar (whip them together). Add eggs one by one, whipping in between each egg to make sure each egg gets incorporated. Add ground almonds, ground pistachios, flour and baking powder, incorporate gently and do not overmix. Transfer dough to a buttered and floured cake pan (30 cm long) and bake in the oven 45 min at 175 C. Let the cake cool down for a few minutes and then flip it upside down.

Once the cake is cool, put powder sugar and water in a saucepan. Bring it to a boil, let some water evaporate to obtain a syrup and then turn off the heat. Add pistachios and swirl a bit. Decorate the pistachio cake with the glazed pistachios and the syrup.

*I kept the thin red skin on the pistachios, but if you want and have the energy you can peel them; also pistachios used her don't have to come from Bronte, they just taste better and sound fancier :-)
** if you want a finer cake you can use almond meal/flour instead of ground almonds

Multigrain spelt bread without yeast

Since a while now I have been looking to making wholegrain bread. But rather a quick bread than a slow sourdough-based bread that needs 1 or 2 full days to leaven and bake. I remember eating excellent bread in Sweden during the Summer and I found similar cakepan-baked breads in Iceland last year so I set on to make my own fresh baked bread.

This quick bread recipe is a rough mix of spelt flour and flax seeds, but also contains sunflower seeds and pecan nuts. The liquids are yoghurt, olive oil and honey, which gives it a little sweet touch. Finally the leavening agent is baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), which allowed me to make the bread loaf in 1 hour but doesn't give the bread that bready consistency with holes (rather a crumbly cakey consistency which is wonderful). Enjoy the bread with some butter and you'll love it!

Recipe for a loaf of spelt bread

2 dl oats
5 dl spelt flour (dinkel wheat flour)
1 dl flax seeds
1 dl roughly chopped pecan nuts
1/2 dl sunflower seeds
2 tsp baking soda
2 pinches of salt
0.4 dl honey
4 dl plain yoghurt
2 tbsp olive oil
Extra: some flax and sunflower seeds for decoration

Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl. Add wet ingredients and mix into a sticky dough. Transfer dough to a 30 cm-long cake pan lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle some flax and sunflower seeds over. Bake in oven 50-60 min at 175 C. Remove bread from pan and let it cool on a wire rack.

Fondant chocolate cake... gluten-free!

The other day a friend asked if I had a recipe for a good basic chocolate cake and I realized I didn't have one. I set out to come up with one by searching and reading different recipes and also by getting inspired by a family recipe of dark and moist chocolate cake. I found a recipe based on buckwheat flour that seemed interesting and sounded very good (plus I was curious to make a chocolate cake without standard flour).

This chocolate cake tastes like chocolate and nothing else (you cannot taste the buckwheat or almond flour). Furthermore, this light chocolate fondant, as its name suggests, melts in your mouth when you eat it and yet is not heavy like classical brownies or classical fondants that contain much more chocolate and butter. The cake is quick and easy to prepare and you can enjoy it straight out of the oven with some fresh whipped cream or cold with some powder sugar. Enjoy!

Fondant chocolate cake:

100 g dark chocolate (over 70% cocoa)
100 g butter
4 eggs
100 g sugar
a pinch of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
35 g buckwheat flour
30 g almond flour
Extra: powder sugar for decoration

Melt chocolate and butter in a saucepan (very low temperature) or in a bain-marie. Whip up eggs, sugar and salt to obtain a white and very fluffy mix. Add the chocolate mix and vanilla extract to egg mix and mix carefully. Add buckwheat and almond flour and incorporate gently. Transfer batter to a buttered + almond floured springform. Bake 15-17 min at 180C (the cake should still be somewhat wet if you prick it with a toothpick). Let the cake cool down and decorate with some powder sugar.

Chocolate pecan pie bars

While searching for other recipes of healthy bars (like the energy cereal bars and quinoa bars that I recently made and posted), I found a recipe for chocolate pecan pie bars which sounded absolutely delicious to my ears and to my belly. After baking these "energy bars" (but already while baking them) I realized they couldn't be classified as "energy" bars in the sporty or nutritious sense, but rather in the sweet calorie bomb category.

These bars taste like a maple pecan pie with the added goodness of chocolate. It is not a light dessert so I recommend you eat it when very hungry or serve small portions. The chocolate pecan pie bars are truly delicious: if you love any and all ingredients in them, you should try them :-)

Chocolate pecan pie bars (16x25cm or 20x20cm or 8x8in pan)

Dough:
3.6 dl flour
112 g butter
0.6 dl brown sugar
57 g cream cheese, room T
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt

Mix all ingredients until incorporated and obtaining a rough dough. Line a baking pan with parchment paper. Transfer dough and flatten with hands. Bake in oven at 180C for about 10-12min, until starting to become golden.

Pecan filling:
1.8 dl neutral honey (I recommend maple syrup however)
1.8 dl brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp bourbon (or other)
6 dl chopped toasted pecan nuts
113 g roughly chopped dark chocolate

While the dough is baking, mix all ingredients (except for pecans and chocolate. Mix pecans and chopped chocolate and sprinkle on the baked dough. Add the egg-sugar mix and spread evenly. Bake for 40 min at 180C. Cover with aluminum foil if it starts getting brown to early.
Let the cake cool entirely in the fridge for a few hours before cutting out into small bars.