A pastry by any other name...

In her vain attempt to justify shaking up with one of her families' mortal enemies Shakespeare's Juliet utters that immortal line

  ' What's in a name? that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet'

As futile as her balcony mutterings may have been the lass had a point. Substance wins every time over words...in which case we can forgive the French for their questionably titled cabbage pastry. Probably more familiar to you as choux pastry, cabbage is indeed the literal translation. Perhaps a step up from it's orginal moniker (from when it had just been imported along with it's chef from Italy) as pâte à popelini... roughly translated to breast paste. The elegance of the french language makes it perfectly ok to refer to these as little cabage puffs... and indeed it would seem you're lover too as the endearing mon petit chou is translated to my little cabbage.. or perhaps the franks are just really big fans of cabbages. My point being call it what you like but when made well desserts from this pastry are divine little puffs of heaven...

Petit Fails

I would venture that there is no food more beautiful than petit fours. Even the my beloved cupcakes must stand aside for these exquisite little cakes. So having always been an admirer from afar I decide to have a play in the kitchen and see if I could make some. Admittedly I didn't quite have the right ingredients to have a proper go at it but I am sad to say I ended up with rather pathetic little petit fails. 

Macaroons..why do you hate me so?

I know it's a little cliche but macaroons really are like France... when done right they are chic beautiful little pieces of art with just that hint of culinary arrogance. However if one deigns to not speak their language impeccably they will laugh in your face. Instead of perfect pastel disks joined harmoniously with lavishes of ganache you often end up with dull misshaped blobs unevenly united with oozy filling, it's tragic really.

Try as I may to learn the subtleties of the language of the macaroon my pronunciation is never quite perfect...

For a long time now I've been trawling the annuls of the internet to find the ultimate 'fool proof' macaroon recipe. I'm not the only one it would seem. In fact I stumbled upon my latest culinary hero in Ms Humble in my search. She has tried at lengths to find a recipe that works beautifully for us mere mortals in the kitchen but alas her skills outdo mine and try as I may to reproduce her script faithfully...well the proof is in the pictures.