Blueberry Pancake Choux-Macas

Before I claim this as my own, I'd like to credit this recipe to Adriano Zumbo. I found it in his latest book 'The Zumbo Files'. I decided to make this dessert to kick off my holiday cooking. This dessert both looks and tastes good and I would recommend that anyone who has this cookbook should definitely give this recipe a go! 

This small dessert contains 6 different elements which create flavour and texture. I completed this dish over 3 half days however it could easily be done in 1 day.
The first part I made was the purple macaron shells. As this recipe only uses a few of the macaron shells, I made a redskin ganache to fill the spare ones with.

The next components I made were the vanilla crumble, blueberry gel and the pancake creme. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of these.
After that I made the most important part of this dessert - the choux buns. I piped mine into 4-5cm rounds.

 Once the choux mixture was piped, I topped each one with a thin disk of sable that was cut to the same size as the choux mixture.

When cooked, the sable forms a cracked surface on top of the choux puff and helps to keep them perfectly round while cooking.

 The last component that needed to made before assembling the dessert was the creme fraiche chantilly cream.

To assemble this dessert, first a small hole needed to be cut into the top of the choux puff. Then using a piping bag, I filled the puff 1/3 full with the pancake creme. This element established the pancake flavour in the dessert. Next was the blueberry gel, I also added a fresh blueberry into each one to add more texture as well as the base blueberry flavour. This component adds sweetness and freshness to the dessert and adds a slightly tangy flavour. The last component that filled the choux puff was the vanilla crumble, this added crunch to the dessert which balanced against all of the smooth fillings.
The bun was then topped with the creme fraiche chantilly. This was piped on top using a star tip and it added height to the dish. The sourness from the creme fraiche helped to lighten the dessert and cut through some of the sweetness. Lastly it was topped with the purple macaron shell for decoration.
Here are the images of the final product!

Pictures

Pictures of food I have made recently...

Chocolate Cake with Fresh Strawberries 

 Raspberry Friands

 A Rainbow of Macarons ready for Sandwiching

 S'mores Macarons

 Two Tone Oreo Macaron

 Shortbread, Macarons and Friands

Black Forest Cake

 Vanilla Berry Mini Bundt Cakes

 Caramel Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes

 Homemade Caramels

 Honeycomb Chocolate Blocks

 Marshmallow Filled Chocolates

Ice Cream Accident Cake

 Tuxedo Strawberries

 Chocolate Tim Tam Cake

 Pink Marble Cake with Nerds

 Chocolate Molten Pudding with Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream and Raspberry Coulis

 Mini Donuts

 Caramel Mud Cake with White Icing and Gold Macarons

 Mini Vanilla Cakes

 Hazelnut Cake

 Caramel Mud Cake with Honeycomb

 Caramel Mud Cake

 Dog Cupcakes

 White Chocolate Raspberry Mini Cake

 Chocolate Cupcakes for World Teachers Day

 Watercolour Fondant Cookies

Week of Wonders

This week as I was in my school holidays, I spent 3 of the 5 days cooking and managed to knock over a fair amount of food while making a little bit of money on the way. My new business is getting off to a great start and I completed a few orders during the week, you can see the facebook page here or the instagram account here. I began the week by making a trial version of some blue blueberry macarons which I have been asked to make for a Jeans for Genes day fundraiser next month. I packaged them up into some small gift bags and gave them to family and friends, you can see the pictures on my last blog post. On Tuesday and Wednesday I baked and iced some cakes:

4-inch vanilla and Oreo cake

8-inch blueberry and vanilla cake

mini vanilla and Oreo cupcakes

4-inch vanilla cake
no photo :(

On the Wednesday, I used up the egg yolks which were left over from making the swiss meringue buttercream icing by making some vanilla bean ice cream which I was going to use on Friday.
On Friday I completed an order of macaron gift packs and the flavour was pink marshmallow.

Later in the day I made dessert of poached pears. I had been contemplating the concept for some time now and thought that when plated, looked very good, so I got to creating a dish for dessert and this was the final product.

It was raspberry poached pears along with shortbread crumble, homemade vanilla ice cream, almond praline and freeze dried raspberries. I was really pleased with the way the flavours came together because I had used components from many different recipes and brought them together to create a dessert which wasn't too bad. I was however disappointed with my ice cream quenelle but I suppose I will just have to keep practicing...

Blueberry

Today I trialed some blue macarons which I have been asked to make for Jeans for Genes Day morning tea next month. I thought I would try a new flavour and that was blueberry. I got the recipe from my Adriano Zumbo cookbook. The recipe was for Blueberry and Lavender however I chose to leave the lavender out and adapt the recipe that way because I haven't found anywhere that sells culinary lavender yet (although I must admit I haven't really looked). I was really pleased with the way they turned out and can't wait to make them again for such a good cause.