Those Frenchies may know their pastry, but you can't beat a bit of British cheese.
When you think about French pastry, one of the most classic traditional pastries is the eclair. An eclair is like a blank canvas that can be easily adapted to any environment. Ingredients are the most important aspect of a perfect eclair, and they need to be used at their peak.
You can't beat a good millefeuille, which is basically a posh custard slice. Yum!
Pate a choux is a mixture of simple ingredients - flour, water, milk, eggs - but the proper technique is essential. Unlike other doughs, the pastry is pre-cooked on the stovetop before being enriched with eggs, piped, and baked.
I made my first Yule Log as a culinary student in Paris, complete with the traditional chestnut filling, silky chocolate buttercream, and almost-too-adorable mushrooms. Since then, I've tweaked and updated both the recipe and the process - and I've definitely learned tips and tricks to make it easier.
"Croissant": However you choose to pronounce it at home, it is perhaps worth nothing that outside the United States, the closer you can come to saying "kwass-ohn," the sooner you can expect to be presented with one.
But compared with the task of selecting a piece of French pastry held by an impatient waiter a move in chess is like reaching for a salary check in its demand on the contemplative faculties.
I'd like to be reincarnated as a French tart. They're so beautiful and delicate - they're like my opposite. I'm more of a comfort food: goat cheese with garlic.
Brioches are a light, pale yellow, faintly sweet kind of muffin with a characteristic blob on top, rather like a mushroom just pushing crookedly through the ground. Once eaten in Paris, they never taste as good anywhere else.
I love having a croissant and a great cup of coffee. Just one cup.
Most canele recipes begin with an instruction to brush $30 copper molds with melted beeswax. Unsurprisingly, I've never made it past the Internet search for 'used canele molds' before giving up.
