French Fridays with Dorie: Holiday card and recipe exchange 2014

For this week’s French Fridays with Dorie post we’re doing something a little different. Every year for the past three years, we’ve had a French Fridays with Dorie holiday card exchange (organized by the fabulous Alice) and this year we were asked to include a special recipe in with each card.  Today, many of the Doristas will be posting the recipes they received from others (edit: check out what Cher did with my recipe!) and I had every intention of doing so as well…

Since I tend to receive the majority of my cards after the holidays (I’m never home during the holidays!), I was careful to make a neat pile on my desk at work of the handful that arrived, planning on making sure they got first dibs in my luggage. On my way out on the last day of school, my arms were laden with all sorts of other things (indoor shoes, work I probably won’t get done but it makes me feel better that I have it “if I feel like it” 😉  and seemingly an entire store of Tupperware… and somehow the neat pile of cards stayed put 🙁 Still, I’m looking on the bright side and thinking what a lovely treat it will be to come back to that in the New Year.

Which brings me to today’s post. And my own recipe – coeur à la crème. Specifically, the chocolate version.  Whilst it might not seem very Christmas-y, this is, indeed, the dessert that I know my mum would be making if both my sister and I were home for the holidays (actually, anytime my sister is home or at my house, this is the dessert we make!).  My mum used to make regular coeur à la crème when my sister and I were in high school (yes we were very fancy!) and then discovered chocolate made them even better (welcome to my family!).  My sister instantly fell in love with the chocolate version, in fact, so much so that she would beg my mum not to use  the pretty heart molds and just leave the mix in a giant bowl. From which she would eat.

Everyone else’ serving size:

and my sister’s portion:

I’ve written about these before (and actually written about coeur à la crème many times before too) so I wanted to do something a little different with the recipe.

And since apparently you can take me out of my kitchen but you can’t take the baker out of me, I had this crazy idea that I would make profiteroles and stuff them with the coeur à la crème. Sounds good right?  “But wait, aren’t you in South West France in rental kitchen right now?” I hear you ask… Why yes I am but profiteroles really just need a hot oven and some elbow grease to get the eggs mixed in properly and as soon as I saw the oven in the place we are staying (new!), I knew it would be ok.  We celebrated Christmas Day yesterday at Camont with dear friends Kate, her sister Steph and their mum Phyllis, and Monica – I was in charge of bringing some desserts while Mr Neil was in charge of the wine pairings for the epic multi-hour meal.  I thought these would elevate the coeur à la crème to something a little special (since I wasn’t going to buy the heart-shaped molds to leave here – I don’t even think *I* would use them in a rental property, i.e. ours!).

I’ve been a little obsessed with all things choux-pastry recently (remember when I taught the Petits Chefs to make profiteroles – including a batch in a toaster oven? It’s giving me ideas for next week when I will only have access to a toaster oven…) and, ahem, if you search my blog for “choux pastry”, you’ll find all this:

The first time I made choux pastry, when I was so surprised how easy it is!
That time we made a savoury, goat cheese-filled puff version
Then there were these espresso profiteroles…
A fancy Paris-Brest for French Fridays with Dorie
My choux version of a lamington…
That time I took a class and made a bounty of éclairs…
That time where I taught three kids how to make Dorie’s savoury goat cheese puffs…
More profiteroles…
And a chocolate version of profiteroles from Baking Chez Moi…
I mean, I’ve even written a tutorial about how to make choux pastry…
And the Petits Chefs visited The Gallery Grill one time and Chef Suzanne taught them how to make éclairs and profiteroles…

I love making choux – it’s so easy and so rewarding!

So on Christmas Eve after a long day waiting for deliveries at the new house, furniture shopping, measuring, putting together furniture, food and wine shopping and apéros with our neighbour, I came back to the rental kitchen and made choux puffs. I used Charmian Christie’s recipe because I happen to have it printed out and tucked into my “book” (a notebook which basically contains plans and notes about recipes, blog posts etc… one I would hate to misplace) and we’ve had a terrible time with the internet in our rental property this week so I didn’t want to wait ages to maybe be able to pull up Dorie’s recipe, maybe not (although hers is my “go to”).

Et voilà:

The coeur à la crème, I adapted slightly because I wanted it to be a little softer than it normally is. I used a mixture of fromage frais and cream cheese and crème fraîche instead of whipping cream to give it some tang. Though I apparently didn’t wait long enough for the chocolate to cool because it started to harden as soon as it hit the cream mixture…

I didn’t really think anyone would complain though – I mean it was going to be tucked away inside choux puffs!

I nearly didn’t get a picture of the finished product – when the company, food and wine is as good as it was yesterday, things like photos and blog posts are so not important….. Fortunately for this post, the profiteroles are better when they’ve been filled and sit in the fridge for a while so I managed to snap a pic of some of the finished ones just as the light was fading…

These, I am pleased to say, were a huge hit. So fancy. But – sssh – so easy too!

Get my recipe for chocolate coeur à la crème here.

To see what everyone else made from either the holiday card and recipe exchange or as a make up recipe, check out the French Fridays with Dorie site.

 

Canadians – win a copy of Baking Chez Moi!  Contest closes January 4th 2015. Details here.

 

___________

I’m in France for the holidays! Keep up with me on Instagram, Flickr and Twitter!