Cheddar, Almond & Bacon Coins

Today we made a little snack. Cheddar, Almond, Bacon Coins is a perfect snack for a busy day because it is small and helps you not to feel hungry anymore for pretty long.
This tome we used prepared dough and focused on the filling. We used pork bacon for the meat. Some people used chicken bacon and had to add a little oil to make them crispy because they contain no fat. For frying the classic bacon you do not need any oil. The fat will melt very fast and make the bacon crispy. Because there is so much fat, we put the bacon strips on to a paper towel. The paper towel absorbed the spare fat. To absorb even more fat we pet the bacon dry. Then we cut the crispy bacon into small strips.
After that we sprinkles the prepared bacon, the cheese, the almonds and pepper over the dough.
We rolled it the longer way but does not matter which way you roll it but we wanted to have the biggest coins possible. Then we put the roll into the freezer for fifteen minutes so it is easier to cut.
After that we cut one centimeter thick coins.
Finally we brushed a little of the mixed egg on top of the coins and put it into the 375F hot oven for sixteen minutes.
I really liked these coins because the mix of bacon, cheese and the pastry is very nice. I almost did not taste the almonds so I can definitely not complain about them.

 
 






















 

Choux Pastry Cream Puffs

The Choux Pastry Cream Puffs are really easy to make. I already knew the first step of making there batter because at home we start like this when we want to make a sauce.
We started melting margarine in water and brought it to boil. Then we added the flour and salt gradually to prevent chunks. We stirred the mixture until everything was combined in a big ball and let it cool before we added the eggs. Because it is a drop batter we used spoons to drop the mixture in about goofball size on the cookie sheet. It is very important to leave enough space between the dough.
The baking process is pretty complicated. For the first ten minutes the oven must be 450F hot. After the ten minutes we had to turn down the temperature to 375F for about twenty minutes. It is important not to open the oven in the first twenty minutes of baking because the loss of heat will have a big effect on the shape of the Choux pastry puffs. After cutting in the slit into the middle of the puff to be able to fill in the filling later, you put them back into the turned off, but still hot, oven for about ten minutes. This helps to make sure that the puff is also baked properly in the inside.

We chose to make a chocolate filling. So we started to mix the sugar, cornstarch, cocoa and salt and added the milk gradually, again to prevent chunks. We heated up the mixture at medium heat until it was thick.
To prevent the eggs from stocking we first added a little of the heated mixture to them and after that we added the eggs. After this we heated the mixture again until it had the favoured thickness. Then we added the margarine and vanilla and let it cool.

On the next day we filled the cream puffs and poured melted chocolate chips over them. As a beautiful finish we sprinkled a little icing sugar, with help of a sieve, over the filled cream puffs.

To be honest the Choux Pastry Cream Puffs are not really my favoured. Because I have made bad experiences with chocolate pudding, and that is how the filling tastes like, so I really do not like it anymore. And the Choux pastry contains no sugar or other sweetener at all so the pastry alone does not really taste good without the filling. But this is a nice pastry recipe for people who love pudding. And it is easy to make and impresses other people by the surprising filling and look.

Appetizer

Today every group in the class made a different type of appetizer. A few were sweet, some were savory. We made an awesome chocolate appetizer.
After mixing a glass of nougat cream with hazelnuts we formed 24 small balls.
All appetizers were made out of phyllo pastry. This is a very thin type of pastry that gets flaky and crispy when you bake it. Because phyllo is so thin it dries out in seconds, so we always made sure that the part of the pastry we did not use was wrapped in plastic wrap.
To make the triangles we took two layers of the phyllo pastry, applied a thin film of melted butter on the one side of one layer and put the other one on top. By applying the butter the layers connect better and do not dry out so fast. After this we but the big piece in four long stripes and put one ball of the chocolate on the end. Then we folded them in form of a triangle. To understand that better please have a look at the
pictures. Often the boxes where the phyllo is stored in have instructions for many different ways of folding the pastry. Before we put them into the oven we spread a little bit melted butter on top, what provides colour and crispness. We baked the appetizer for about fifteen minutes in a 375F hot oven.
They were delicious! This appetizer can be served warm or cold. I think it is better to use this recipe as a dessert because it is very sweat. Any form of ice cream and fruit would go perfect with it!

 

 

Spanish Tortilla Tarts

 

For the Spanish Tortilla Tarts we used the recipe of the usual double crust pie we did before. That's is enough dough for about nine tortilla tarts.

I began with cutting the vegetables and sausages. First we had do sauté the cooled potatoes to make them precooked, so they were eatable after baking with the tarts in the oven. Then we put a little bit oil into a frying pan, and added onion, the green pepper and garlic. We let this mixture cook for about four minutes. We put all the ingredients that had to be cooked together and did not fry them separately from the potatoes because the potatoes were not mentioned to be cook. After frying the ingredients we separated the potatoes from all the other ingredients because my teacher mentioned that we want to have different layers. But for the taste it does not matter whether you separate the potatoes or not. With the dough we prepared on Thursday we made mini tortillas that fit into muffin forms. Then we first put in the onion, green pepper and garlic mixture in the tortillas and second the dried tomatoes and potatoes. On top we sprinkled the sausage.
It was tome to prepare the sauce. For that we mixed eggs, milk, cream and spices and stirred in the cheese. We poured this mixture evenly into every tart. Make sure not to overfill the tarts to prevent a huge mess in your oven! This sauce will thicken in the heat and will hold all the ingredients together.
After twenty minutes in a 350F hot oven we checked the tarts with a knife. Even tough the recipe says that the tarts are ready when the knife comes out clean, that is kind of wrong. Because of the Cheese inside and on top the knife will never come out clean if you have not forgotten the cheese. We looked at it and tried to make sure that there is no sauce sticking to it.

I really liked this snack. It was spicy and very savoury so you are full after two of them. I would put a little bit more green pepper or red pepper in the tarts because I think give a great flavour.