Well there are so many things I don’t know about… that I am never surprised to discover a new name or a new recipe. As simple as it can be.
A. had a bottle of Balthus 2019 to drink (we could have kept it though… but why wait…) and after a short search, it seemed that chocolate would be a good pairing. Fine… but what chocolate patisserie could I prepare… so I browsed a little bit more searching for recipes that use cocoa powder, as it is the only thing I had. And I came across the “millasson”, a name I’ve never heard of before and a recipe I had never seen before. But its simplicity and the few ingredients needed immediately attracted me. It is basically something in between a flan and a clafoutis, but with egg whites beaten to get fluffiness (but honestly I wonder if that is really necessary).
So all you need is flour, sugar, cocoa powder, eggs and milk. And I can even guess that it could be baked in a pan if you don’t have an oven.
My millasson was good, rich in cocoa flavor, as I like, but I think I slightly overcook it, so I think I’ll try again this weekend, just be sure I have it right!!! 😋 and because it is really good!!!
I topped my millasson with cocoa powder and cocoa nibs.
The day has come again, faster and in a busier moment than usual, my parents being with us. It’s A.’s birthday. The weather has been bad enough to be remembered, A. always says it’s usually sunny on that. Today was not, and after drizzling now it’s pouring. That gave me plenty of time for preparing A.’s birthday cake, or rather tart. He originally wanted a strawberry tart, the classic one, but after stopping at three different places I couldn’t find proper local strawberries with the correct size. So we agreed on a chocolate tart. Last year one was a big hit!
But you know me… I like to try new recipes rather than doing over and over the same things. So I made a classic dark chocolate tart using my recipe from last year, but I also improvised a new one with A’s favorite white chocolate, coconut and cardamom. And though I am not a fan of white chocolate, it was surprisingly not as rich I thought it would be and I enjoyed it a lot. So here is my recipe.
White chocolate tart (4 servings)
Flour, sugar, butter and a bit of water for the dough.
110g of white chocolate
100ml of coconut cream
2tsp of ground cardamom
1tbsp of brown caster sugar
4tbs of ground coconut
1 egg
Prepare the dough and bake it, until still soft and about to golden.
In a pan heated at low heat stir together the chocolate, coconut cream, add the sugar, the ground coconut and the cardamom. Let cool then add the egg. Stir well and pour in the baked pie crust. Bake for 10-15min at 150deg. Let cool a bit and enjoy!
Times like this one happen more then often… when we are so busy with “other things” that cooking comes last… it also synchronizes with lack in novel ingredients and a total blank in terms of inspiration. So I am back in autopilot mode. Cooking simple, ultra simple things that we love and that don’t take much time. I think also the technical issues I am facing with WordPress recurrently are not helping, as most of the pleasure of sharing a recipe or an experience here is destroyed by the “error uploading” message that pops again and again.
My morning and afternoon tools…
So, food has been nourishing so that a morning in the ocean can be followed by an afternoon in the garden. Spring brings a lot of work in the garden. Everything suddenly grows so quickly. And this year plums may be 2 to 3 weeks earlier than usual, so better be ready…
A simple chick peas and tomatoes spicy raggu with a generous slice of sourdough bread
But probably my most “creative” recipe of the past 10 days is a revised version of the cocoa cream for a vegan coconut all white dessert. This recipe of the cocoa cream really got me into making desserts, and it is so easy to make variations of it (I have a few others in mind). So while I’m trying to find new ideas, or rediscover old ones (which the original reason for which I started this blog), let me share this super easy one.
Coconut cream (4 servings)
200ml of coconut cream
20g of corn starch
30g of sugar
50ml of water
In a pan, warm the coconut cream, add the all the ingredients and stir until it starts thickening. Serve ib bowl, let cool down before eating.
Last Sunday, late afternoon, after surfing in the morning and gardening the whole afternoon I remembered that it’s been two days we have had no chocolate… well that is a HUGE problem for us, or for A.. We both do indulge in a bitter sweet treat after dinner. Indeed, unless we have guests or we celebrate we never have dessert, just a piece of chocolate… so when we forgot to refill our chocolate stock… there’s a bit of drama in the air! 😉
That’s when the magic of Instagram happen! While browsing my feed I stopped on @dans_ma_boite_a_biscuits post: a quick chocolate cream, with 4 ingredients that I always have (or almost… because her recipe uses dark chocolate, I used cacao) and that is so simple I couldn’t help trying!!! I never found it so easy to make a dessert. It takes 10min and then time to cool down, and it was so delicious that I will forget to buy chocolate more often!!! Because I slightly modified the original recipe (in French) I share mine with you… A. was so pleased with the result that he asked for more this weekend!!
In a pan, put all the ingredients, stir well, then start cooking at low heat while stirring. Increase to medium heat and stir well. It should start thickening, don’t over cook or you’ll get something too stiff. Once the consistency is creamy serve in 4 ramekins. Let cool down in the fridge for one hour or two and enjoy. I personally prefer eating them at room temperature rather than cool from the fridge…
Every year, for more than 20 years I have made a strawberry tart for A.’s birthday. With a birthday in the prime of spring I always thought it was a great moment to celebrate strawberries and A.. Many times waiting for the cherry trees to bloom. This year, the cherry trees are in full bloom already and I always thought traditions are meant to be changed or twisted when opportunities are there.
Two weeks ago I received a little package from France, from my childhood friend M. with a little cookbook and some bean to bar chocolate from a shop in our old neighborhood in Paris: Plaq. M. knows very well how much we love chocolate and well sourced products, together with a delicious bar of chocolate there was also some cocoa to cook. A.’s birthday strawberry tarts was all forgotten and it would be chocolate tart instead.
The plan was, and I browsed a few recipes online to get an idea of how to make the chocolate filling. The whole thing is very simple and requires fresh cream, so since the morning I had on my mind to buy some, except that we went grocery shopping we were on a rush, a bit more traffic than expected on the road, and A. was about to be late for a meeting. So fresh cream I forgot… damn… Hopefully I had some coconut cream so I decided to replace the fresh cream with it, and it added a very gentle twist in the taste, without being overwhelming. So met me share my recipe, I hope you’ll like it, we did, and it is soooo simple that I wonder why I never tried earlier!
Tarte au chocolat (makes 6 servings)
Flour-butter-sugar for the dough
150g of chocolate, dark, for cooking or of cacao powder
200ml of coconut cream
A bit of milk (if you use cocoa)
1 egg
Prepare the sable dough the way you like it. I made mine very buttery and rather sweet as my cocoa was bitter and unsweetened. Set in individual shapes or a larger one also as you wish. With the cut parts I made sakura shaped little sablés. Cook at 180deg until just golden. Let cool a bit and remove from the pie dish if the bottom of the dish is not removable. Other with you may struggle once it if filled. Set on a baking sheet, as you’ll need to cook them again once filled.
In a pan warm the coconut cream and the chocolate or cocoa and stir until creamy. If you use cocoa you may want to add a bit of milk to make it creamier as it may bit a bit dry. But really just a bit. Stir well. Let
cool a bit and add the egg and stir again very well. Pour in the pie crust(s) you just baked. Decorate with the little sablés if you made any. Cook at 140 deg for about 15min, but this will depend on the size of your tarts. Best is to check visually: no bubbles on the side or very few, and when gently shaken it should look like an egg pudding (flan) and gently move. Serve warm or at room temperature. And enjoy!
Why while the recipe is always a lot simpler than I remember, I prepare eclair only once every 2 or 3 years???… These and millefeuilles are probably my favorite French traditional patisseries, with strawberry tart. (I don’t count simple fruit tarts, cobblers, and crumbles… they do not really count!!! 😉 What the three have in common is a delicious custard, and I love custard… with vanilla, cocoa, macha…
While my puff pastry is never really good, I have never been presumptuous enough to make an attempt at baking millefeuilles, but eclairs, choux are perfectly at the level of my abilities. And each time I am decided to make some, each time I prepare myself for a tedious task, and each time I am surprised by how quick and easy it was!!! And wonder why really I don’t make some more often!!!
I always use the same recipe that I wrote sometime ago here, beware that the custard ingredients quantities fill about 2/3 of the choux, so if you want to fill all of them, you need to multiply by 1.3 the custard quantities or use 2/3 of the pate a choux ingredients. I use these quantities because sometime a choux doesn’t bake with the perfect shape, and because A. and I like to test the choux out of the oven! And I realized it is always almost at the same time of year I make it and only when we have friends visiting!!! The recipe makes quite a lot of them actually so that may explain the second point… as it is better not to keep them more than 24h!!! They are so much better fresh!
It is really not something that I cook often… maybe it’s been 5 or 10 years since I last baked a proper chocolate cake… Usually for A.’s birthday I bake a strawberry tart but as I already baked one two weeks ago, I decided to surprise him with very very rich brownies. So for the first time in a while I went through the recipe without actually reducing the amount of sugar or butter. I chose a recipe that was using cocoa powder as it is easier to find organic cocoa powder rather than delicious chocolate to cook here in Japan. The result was a nice piece of brownies, but you know what, I thought they would be even richer (may be the baking powder was too powerful, or it could be my oven that bakes too quick and I slightly overcooked it, or using cocoa powder rather than creamy melted chocolate…)… I topped them with a sugar and cocoa frosting. A. was really happy with the surprise cake, and it was even better the following day.
So the recipe went that way:
Chocolate brownies
– 2 eggs
– 1/2 cup of flour
– 1/2 cup of melted butter
– 1 cup of sugar
– 1/3 cup of cocoa powder
– 1/4 tsp of baking powder
– 1/4 tsp of salt
– vanilla
Melt the butter in a large pan. Off the heat, add the sugar, the eggs, the vanilla. Stir and add the cocoa, the flour, salt and baking powder. Pour in a greased rectangular pie dish or squared pan.
Bake at 170 for 25min.
For the frosting I used cocoa powder, confectioner’s sugar (ice sugar) and a bit of water, to obtain a kind of cream. I spread on the cake while it is still hot, it helps a lot, and let cool down before removing from the pan.
When I find beautiful, naturally grown local lemons I want to make many different things with them. The first lemons I harvested in our garden on are newly planted lemon tree were a little small. But when I can find large and juicy, one thing I love is lemon curd, and lemon tarts. Using up all the juice and the zest, lemon curd is quite easy to make. When it comes to British recipes I like to use the BBC website as they always have good recipes for the British basics. I started with this recipe and slightly changed it to adjust to my habit of not using half of an ingredient, in particular an egg, and because I didn’t to make meringues to top the tarts.
So here is my recipe of lemon curd. I love how the lemon flavor is not overly compensated by the sweetness and the perfect creamy texture it has.
Lemon curd (makes about 500g, good for 2 medium size tarts)
– 4 lemons, untreated, nor waxed or whatsoever
– 100g of salted butter
– 3 eggs
– 200g of brown natural cane sugar
Take the zests and juice of the lemon. Put in a pan with the sugar and butter and heat until the butter is melted. Remove from the fire and add the eggs. Stir well and put back on a very low fire and stir regularly. Keep cooking and steering once in a while for 15-20min, until very creamy. That’s it.
You can now use directly in your tarts, in cakes or put in glass jars and use as jam…
If you to make a tart, prepare a sablé dough, bake it and then add the lemon curd. Keep refrigerated.
Lemon curd keeps a few days if not jarred. But in both cases in the fridge.
I was planning plenty of posts these days to compensate for the fewer coming in the end of the month due to traveling… but in the end I didn’t manage to get as many as I wanted to… I’m still cooking steadily and trying new combinations but it’s been hot these days and I’ve had little appetite, searching for simple things… so when we had friends over for dinner the other night and I was thinking of desserts… poached peaches immediately were a winner! I love them because they are so simple to make, so delicious and light. I usually prepare them with a verbena syrup but this time I chose to add no sugar to it, so just infused verbena leaves in the water to poach the peaches. A really simple recipe I have from my mother.
Poached peaches in verbena
– peaches (count 1/2 to one peach per person), not to ripen not to hard so that you can remove the stem
– water
– a handful of verbena leaves dry or fresh
Peel and half or quater the peaches. Bring a large pan (where you can put all your peaches) to a boil. Add the verbena leaves and the peaches. Cook until peaches are soft. Keep at room temperature or refrigerated before serving. Yes! That’s it!!!!
