First, this blog has been dead for too long. So here is the eye candy of my last Daring Baker challenge that I’ve owed you since forever.
Not the most photogenic cookies, but they were tasty, so that’s good.
And introducing this month’s challenge: Vols au vent!
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.
This was my first time making puff pastry, though I have made Danish dough for the June 2008 challenge. Danish dough is pretty similar to puff pastry. The main difference is that the Danish dough had yeast in it, and the puff pastry dough relies only on the layers of butter to make the dough rise. The actual making of the dough was really similar, and I didn’t have any issues. Because I made this at the beginning of the month it was still pretty humid and hot, so I made generous use of my air conditioner and sent the dough on many trips to my fridge in between turns.
I’m glad I made the full batch of dough. I’ve already used 2/3 of the dough and have another 1/3 in my freezer that I can’t wait to break out again later and marvel at how quickly I’ll be able to have fresh puff pastry treats.
And for the eye candy:
After cutting out shapes for the vols au vents
assembly
the caps, baked
Mmmm flaky
Could have gotten more rise, but it came out nicely
Cooling on the tray
Dressed for success. Banana cream and banana slices.
Another beautiful vol au vent
Yummmmm
The vols au vents were delicious, light and flaky. The banana cream filling only slightly sucked because Korean dairy is so bad that it tastes like plastic. I had used imported butter, but not imported cream, and I could really taste the difference. The banana in the cream at least hid some of that.
After this first batch I made a second batch for my teachers/fellow students at my Saturday Korean class. It was really well received.
I am already thinking of other ideas of what I can do with this dough. I still have a third of it left in my fridge. Hmmmmm…😉
Thanks for the great challenge! Don’t forget to check out the other Daring Baker blogs here.
Next month’s challenge will finish up my second year as a Daring Baker. Can you believe it’s been almost two years now? Time flies!
