Fancy Desserts, Here I Come!!!

Fancy Desserts, Here I Come!!!

So, I'm not usually a fan of sweets.  I don't get sad and eat cookies, I don't always want something sweet after dinner. But sometimes, I crave MAKING sweets. I don't care if I eat them; usually, I just want a taste, and that's it. It's really the act of making the dessert that I like.  Weird, huh?

I make a mean baklava. I use a million (or maybe more, if I'm in the mood) sheets of tissue thin phyllo dough; brushing each and every single one with butter during the layering process.  After layering a third of the sheets, I add a layer of freshly chopped walnuts, sugar, and cinnamon. A third more of the sheets go down, and then another layer of the walnut mixture.  After the last of the phyllo dough is in place, I cut the dessert in the traditional diamond shapes, and then I bake it.

While it's baking, I make a syrup of sugar, water, honey, and a cinnamon stick;  when the baklava is pulled out of the oven, the syrup is drizzled over the top, and the whole mess is set aside to cool. It is the best baklava I have ever had.  I've also only had one piece of baklava in my entire life that *I* didn't make, so you have to take that statement with a big fat grain of salt.

Anyhow, I digress.  I've been on the Julia Child kick for several months now; now that I've gotten the hang of french sauces and cooking methods, I'm beginning to get interested in the sweets.  I origionally looked at the Napoleons, but really, it seems kind of boring... It's just puff pastry layered with a pastry cream, and it's  built at the last minute, so it has no lastability.  I looked of pate a choux, the pastry dough for profiteroles and eclairs, and that's when I decided... what is better than a soft, fluffy pastry, filled with a heavenly vanilla custard, and topped with a chocolate ganache?  I picked up the extra eggs I needed to make the eclairs, and Saturday is the day.  I'd attempt them on a weeknight, but the dough itself is made on the stove top, the custard has to be made in advance and cooled, and the ganache can't be made until the rest of the eclair is done, so this seems like a good Saturday project.

And, once I settled on eclairs, I stumbled across a Bon Appetit recipe card for strawberry tiramisu that I had previously (and unceremoniously) set aside. I flipped it over to the picture side, and it is a pretty dessert. Layers of ladyfingers, soft fluffy white mascarpone and whipped cream, and the fresh strawberries.  Now that I've picked up the card, I can't stop looking at it. Although, it goes against my grain to use store bought lady fingers, and I just happen to have a recipe for homemade lady fingers. And, of course, opposite that page in that baking cookbook is a recipe for the original tiramisu. So we'll see what I end up doing. But the strawberry tiramisu is definitely on the up-and-coming list. Because, seriously, what will I DO with a mess of eclairs and an entire pan of tiramisu? : )

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