Ingredients:
Pastry -
1/4 C white rice flour
1/4 C brown rice flour
1/3 C tapioca flour
enough to make the total 1 cup of quinoa flour
1/2 Tsp xantham gum
1/2 C milk
1/2 C water
1 stick butter cut into tbs. pieces
1 Tsp sugar
pinch salt
3 eggs and 1 beaten egg
Pastry Cream -
1/4 vanilla bean – yes, use a real bean. It is leagues better!
2 C milk
2 eggs
2 yolks
3/4 C sugar
1/4 C flour (I used my GF flour mix from the puff pastry recipe)
1/4 C cornstarch, though I used arrowroot powder
Chocolate Glaze or Ganache -
1 C cream
8-9 oz. semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tsp light corn syrup
Directions:
Pastry -
1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Mix flours and xantham gum together in a small bowl.
2. In a medium saucepan heat milk, water, butter, sugar and salt to a simmer. Do this on no higher than medium heat! This is important when heating milk/dairy products, you don’t want to burn it. Stir with a wooden spoon every now and then to keep that film from forming on the top.
3. Once simmering, add in your flour mixture all at once, stirring constantly. Then turn the heat down to med-low, and keep stirring until the dough comes together and is smooth, and then stir for one more minute. Remove pan from heat and let sit 5 minutes, not more.
4. Use a sturdy whisk or an electric mixer, and add in each egg one at a time. If needed, add in some of the beaten egg too. Then keep mixing for a little bit more until it all comes together. It will be a sticky gooey mess.
5. Fill piping bag with the dough/batter, and the original cook (o.c.) didn’t use any tip here. The o.c. just used the open fitting, because every reference the o.c. could find said you wanted to pipe the batter out at 1/2″ thick. Pipe out about 4″ long and 3/4″ wide for elcairs, or make round swirls for profiteroles onto a well buttered baking sheet.
6. Next, take the rest of the beaten egg, and very gently brush on an egg wash. This is what is going to give the pastry that nice golden brown color. Just be careful to not overdo it or squish your pastry too much.
7. Bake in preheated 375°F oven for around 25 min. But start checking them every 5 min at around the 15 min mark. Also, do NOT use a dark colored baking sheet. You will burn them. You want to make sure that when they are baked, that they are fully cooked too. So it’s ok to let them brown a bit, just don’t let them burn.
8. Let them cool while you make the custard and the ganache.
Pastry Cream -
1. Cut bean in half and scrape out seeds. Add seeds and pod to a medium pan. Add in milk. On med to med-high, bring milk to a simmer, stirring occasionally for the same reasons as in the puff pastry.
2. While milk is heating, beat the rest of the ingredients together with a whisk. Once milk is simmering, add half of it to the egg mixture and stir until fully incorporated and smooth with the whisk. Then add the entire egg mixture back to the pan with the rest of the milk.
3. Stir constantly with the whisk, but bring it back to a simmer. Then reduce heat and keep simmering for a couple of minutes. Strain with a sieve, but if you do not have one, just pull the seed pods out and make sure mixture is smooth.
4. Remove from heat and let cool to room temp. Give it a stir with the whisk every few minutes so that you don’t get a film forming on the top.
Chocolate Ganache -
Place the chocolate in a bowl and heat the cream in a small saucepan until it simmers to a low boil. Pour that over the chocolate and leave it alone for a minute. Then begin stirring until the cream and chocolate are totally smooth. Add the butter and the light corn syrup and stir until incorporated.
Let the mixture sit for a minute or two until still warm but not hot. Using a spoon pour chocolate over each pastry. Let them set for a few minutes.Assembly:
Slice each pastry in half with a serrated knife so that you don’t squish it. Then hollow them out, fill with cream, add the top, and cover with ganache. Since some of the o.c.'s collapsed, she went the “sandwich” route, and used one for the top and one for the bottom.
