Recent Blog Posts
Salted Caramel Chocolate Bonbons with flaky Sea Salt
These chocolate bonbons are made from caramel that is deglazed with cream and butter and combined with dark chocolate and sea salt. Because the sea salt is added at the end of the preparation it does not melt and the crystals add a nice additional consistency. Once...
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Succès Chocolate Hazelnut Praliné Cake
The cake consists of two disks of Dacquoise sponge filled with a Chocolate Hazelnut Praliné Mousseline. For the Mousseline you need three components: Chocolate Pastry Cream, Hazelnut Praliné and butter. To make a Praliné you have to prepare a Caramel, let it set and...
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Craquelin for Choux Pastry (Choux au Craquelin)
Craquelin is a simple dough of 3 ingredients that gets rolled out, frozen, cut out and placed onto the Choux Pastry (Pâte à choux) before baking, and Voilà! An impressive result with very little effort! Craquelin adds another layer of texture. It gives a nice crunchy...
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Madeleines
Madeleines are classic French little cakes that originated from Commercy and Liverdun, two communes of the Lorraine region in northeastern France. They are baked in shell-shaped molds which creates a flat bottom and the very characteristic bump. The shape makes a...
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Pear Charlotte
The classic Pear Charlotte (Charlotte aux poires) consists of Ladyfinger Sponge (Biscuit Cuillère) and Vanilla Bavarian Cream (Bavaroise vanille) with pieces of poached pear folded in. The borders of sponge go all the way up the cake and for decoration more poached...
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Almond Tuile Biscuits
Tuiles are one of the classic French biscuits. They are made from 4 simple ingredients: egg white, sugar, flour, and butter. In this version, there are sliced almonds added. To bake them evenly and for them to become nice and crunchy, it is easiest to make a template...
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Ladyfinger Sponge (Biscuit Cuillère)
Ladyfinger Sponge (Biscuit Cuillère) is mostly known for the preparation of a Charlotte Cake. It has a very nice consistency and compared to other sponge recipes, it is, because of the additional egg yolks, less dry and still very airly and light. The general secret...
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Langue de Chat Biscuits
"Langue de chat" biscuits, translated "Cat tongue" are made with ingredients that everybody most of the time has at home and they are very quickly made. It needs egg white, butter, caster sugar, and flour. It is also great for practicing piping skills! In the original...
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Chouquettes / Puffs with Pearl Sugar
This is a very fun recipe because you get to prepare Choux Pastry, pipe it, cover it completely with pearl sugar and then flip the whole thing upside down to remove any access sugar. Because you do not only sprinkle the pearl sugar on top, the choux pastry is covered...
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St. Honoré Cream Puff Cakes with Diplomat Cream & Caramel
Gâteau St.Honoré is a French classic. It is a combination of some fundamental basic recipes and its techniques in Pâtisserie, being buttery and flaky Sweet French Pastry Crust (Pâte Sucrée), Choux Pastry (Pâte à choux), rich Vanilla Diplomat Cream (Crème diplomate),...
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How to prepare a Dessert for a Special Event in Advance
This feeling, when 4 hours before a wedding the fondant slips off your tiered wedding cake and you know you do not really have enough time to do cover it again. This is only one reason to be better prepared. It allows you better Time Management. You can ideally...
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“Käsekuchen” Classic German Cheesecake with Curd Cheese and Tangerine
This classic German cheesecake "Käsekuchen" is definitely one of the main representative German cakes. While the Black Forest cake for example nowadays faded from most bakeries, this cake is still a common standard. The most difficult part about developing this recipe...
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Lemon Meringue Tart
Before going to pastry school I made many lemon tarts and just could not figure out why it would always seep. I would spend a lot of time to research it until I bumped into an article that scientifically analyzed the cooking process. It did not answer my question. The...
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German Ginger Bread Cookie Busses
Years ago I made two Ginger Bread Houses for my niece and nephew. They were very excited and according to their mother, after they snacked off the candy, nuts, and chocolates I used for decoration, they put the remainings of the house into a plastic container and had...
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Sacher Torte with Chocolate Mousse and Apricot Confit
The original Sacher Torte was created in 1832 at the famous Hotel Sacher and still today gets shipped all over the world. There are rumors that the recipe is locked in a safe at the hotel. It consists of 2 layers of chocolate biscuit, some apricot jam, and a dark...
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Lemon Ganache, Dark Chocolate & Roasted Cocoa Nibs Lollipops
This recipe for lemon ganache lollipops pairs the rich taste of chocolate with the freshness of citrus. The lollipops are perfect served with a coffee after a special dinner. Lemon ganache lollipops Adapted from a lemon ganache recipe by Jérôme Landrieu published in...
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How to make Salted Caramel Sauce
At pastry school we prepared everything in small batches and it basically only mattered to yourself if you prepared something that did not work out. Once I started my first job in pastry reality kicked in. I needed to make a salted caramel sauce for their ice cream...
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Grapefruit Sorbet
During culinary school I tasted many different and very often surprising preparations. Being used to more common flavours like raspberry or lemon, I tasted my first grapefruit sorbet. It tasted like nothing before and opened up my mind to the variation of ingredients....
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Chocolate Mousse with Chocolate Crunch, Vanilla Whipped Cream & Tuile
The French TV show "Qui sera le prochain grand pâtissier" is a competition for the best professional pastry chef in France. It exists for years by now and when I started watching it in 2014 one episode on a Tuesday at prime time lasted full 4 hours. The challenges the...
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