5 Showstopping Holiday Desserts From All Around The World

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with chocolate yule log that's right i don't think i'm going out on a limb when i say many home cooks would not attempt something like this because they assume it involves many components lots of steps and super advanced culinary skills to make well i'm very happy to tell you that only two out of those three things are true because while this does require a little bit of time and effort the techniques involved in making this bush to noel are actually quite simple especially if you have a video that shows you how to do them so with that let's go ahead and get started with our filling and by filling i mean very simple buttercream frosting before that we're going to combine some powdered sugar with a little bit of butter as well as a touch of cocoa powder which is high quality and unsweetened by the way then we'll also add a pinch of salt as well as a splash of coffee liqueur and or extract and what we'll do is take that over to our mixer and whip it up until it's very light and fluffy and if your butter's nice and soft this is going to happen very quickly and easily but if it's still kind of firm and cold like mine it's not it's going to stick in the middle of the whisk and really do nothing and you'll have to stop and work it with your spatula and do that a few times until it starts to soften up which i won't make you watch but either way we're going to whip that on high speed until like i said it's very very light and fluffy and hopefully looks a little something like this and while we could certainly use this as is i'm going to go ahead and transfer this into a bowl and add one more ingredient a nice big spoon of mascarpone cheese which is a wonderfully rich italian style of cream cheese and we'll go ahead and use our spatula to mix that in and that's going to add a really nice little bit of tanginess in the background as well as sort of lighten this up a little and by the way you know your frosting is pretty decadent when you're lightening it up with mascarpone but anyway we'll go ahead and stir that in and then simply set that aside until we need it at which point we'll move on to one more thing we need to do ahead of time and that would be to line a baking sheet with some parchment paper and brush it generously with melted butter and i didn't show it but a little tip put a little butter on the pan before you put the paper down which will sort of hold it in place while you brush it and then once our pan is prepped we can move on to this very simple chocolate sponge cake recipe which we will start by combining our dry ingredients which includes cocoa powder some salt and just a little bit of all-purpose flour and what we'll do is go ahead and take a whisk and give that a good mix even though technically we really should sift this okay and the reason is sometimes you get little clumps or lumps of cocoa that you really want to have broken up before you add it to the wet stuff and while whisking this together for a minute generally does break those up i would say sifting does do a better job but either way once that's been accomplished we can move on to our wet ingredients which are exactly five large eggs that are room temperature very important you do not use cold eggs for this and then to the eggs we'll add a little touch of sugar and what we're gonna do here is whip these on high speed for a few minutes until they turn very very pale very thick and very fluffy which is why if possible you really do want to use an electric mixer for this i mean sure you can do it by hand but it's going to take a long time and a lot of effort although the good news is you'll probably burn more calories than the average serving of cake but either way we're going to whip those eggs in sugar until they get really thick and fluffy and look exactly like this alright you see that do not stop before it looks like this and then what we'll do at this point is add our dry ingredients in two additions okay we'll transfer in about half in this first edition we're just going to mix for a few seconds all right not on high speed on one of your lower settings just until it starts to mix in oh and if you're going to forget to put in your vanilla extract this would be the point you would forget to do that so yes i should added that here and i'll mention that in the blog post but anyway as i was saying we're going to mix that first half in for a few seconds and even though it's not totally mixed in we're going to stop and add the rest and then we'll start that on low for a few seconds before turning it up to a higher speed for a few more seconds at which point we're gonna stop and it's still not all mixed in but again that's not a problem because we're gonna finish this by hand okay just pull off that whisk and give that a few stirs manually and then give it a check and it was close but i decided to give it a few more stirs in this way we can make sure we're incorporating everything around the edges and along the bottom without knocking out too much of that foaminess which could possibly happen if we mix this all the way with the machine and then once that's set we'll go ahead and transfer that onto our baking sheet and we'll use a spatula to spread that out as even as we can and please note i'm not going all the way out to the edges and you can if you want it's not really a problem but i actually prefer to leave a little space on either end and while those edges will be a little thinner once it bakes i think that works out in our favor later on but bottom line we'll go ahead and transfer our batter on and spread it out at which point we have to give this thing the whole tabatappa because while we do want all the millions and millions of little bubbles in there we want to knock out the few hundred big bubbles so we'll go ahead and bang that on the table a few times before we transfer into the center of a 400 degree oven for just 8 to 10 minutes or until it looks like what you're going to see in a few seconds and while that's baking we're going to have just enough time to take a clean kitchen towel and cover it with a nice dusting of powdered sugar and you don't have to do the whole thing just an area slightly bigger than a sheet pan and you're going to see why in just a minute and we'll go ahead and pull out our cake which after about 8 to 10 minutes should look like this and what we'll want to do is let this cool down for a couple minutes while we do a few things one would be to go around with a knife making sure it's not stuck to the pan and if it is just cut it loose and the other would be to dust the top of this with a little bit of powdered sugar and what the powder sugar's doing on the cake and the towel is preventing this very sticky sponge from sticking and by the way you can if you want to use cocoa but that's more expensive than powdered sugar so i'm going with this and once that's set we'll go ahead and give this one last check with a spatula to make sure it's not sticking anywhere because the next step is to flop this over onto our towel which is my preferred method right some people like to cover with a towel and then flip it over but as long as you have this lined up and you do it quick it's going to be fine and then we'll remove the pan and carefully peel off our parchment paper and hopefully none of it sticks even though almost always a little bit does but that's fine because you get to scrape that off with your fingernail and eat it and get a little sneak preview and then before we roll this up in our towel we want to give it one more dusting of powdered sugar because i can't stress enough how much this stuff loves to stick to anything plastic metal wood even a towel so we'll go ahead and dust that again and then very carefully very gently roll this up and because this is such a delicate sponge we don't want to be pressing down as we do this okay so use a very light touch and we'll go ahead and roll that all the way and then all we're going to do is let this cool down rolled up like this for 15 minutes and by doing this the sponge is going to have the memory of this roll so that when we unroll it and spread our filling on we can roll it back up without it cracking so this is a very key step and as you can see some of the sugar actually stuck to the towel but none of the cake did so mission accomplished and at this point we can go ahead and transfer on our filling and spread it out evenly and to make that a little easier what we like to do is dollop our filling here and there so that it's equally distributed before we start spreading it around okay versus dumping it all in one spot and then trying to spread it all out evenly and by the way i thought i was being really judicious with the buttercream here but as it turned out i put on a lot more than i realized as you'll see in the final shots which is great if you're one of these frosting people but i'm more of a cake guy anyway the point is you spread on as much as you want i mean you are after all the me of this edible tree so we will leave this cake defrosting ratio up to you and then once we have that all spread out we can go ahead and carefully start to roll this up and the first few inches are the hardest and if you need to use the towel to kind of help you along go ahead but once you get it started you should be fine and because our sponge has that quote unquote memory of being rolled you shouldn't really have a problem with it cracking and just like the first time you rolled it don't press down too hard okay use a nice light touch and once we're happy with how that's rolled and shaped we'll go ahead and dust the top with a little more sugar because why not and then once that's dusted we'll go ahead and wrap it in plastic and please accept my apologies for speeding this up which i hate to do but i didn't have enough interesting things to say to fill up the time but anyway we're gonna go ahead and wrap that in plastic and i'm doing two layers even though i'm only showing one and once wrapped we're gonna transfer that into the fridge for a few hours or until it's completely chilled before we apply our bark so we'll go ahead and pop that in the fridge and while it's in there i'm going to go ahead and make my chocolate ganache which is nothing more than dark chocolate chips with hot boiling cream poured over it and we'll let that sit like that for about a minute before stirring it together and as usual with chocolate ganache it looks terrible but then you keep stirring and eventually it looks awesome and as that cools it's going to thicken up as you can see right here with a little bit i had left over from a different batch and to me that makes one of the great chocolate frostings of all time and as you're about to see makes a very beautiful bark and then assuming our chocolate u-log is completely chilled we'll go ahead and pull that out and unwrap it and we'll cut a little piece off the end officially to kind of clean it up but unofficially because i wanted to taste it and it was amazing and by the way i didn't like what that serrated edge was doing so i switched to a straight edge knife and what we want to do is make an angled cut about three inches or so from the end because what's going to happen once we transfer the main log to a parchment-lined sheet pan is that we're going to apply a little bit of buttercream to that cup piece and sort of stick or press that onto the side to make it look like there's another branch coming off our log and while this steps optional i think it really does make for a much more impressive presentation and then once that was said i took the rest of my leftover ganache and used that to cover where that branch attached and as far as working with the ganache you can let it get really stiff like this and as long as it's still spreadable it's fine but as you can see as i continue covering this with the fresh ganache i find this looser runnier stuff a little easier to work with all right as long as it's not too runny okay we don't want this running all over our pan but either way we're gonna go ahead and apply a nice layer of our ganache over the entire log all right all the way down to the bottom but of course we will leave the front side uncovered so we can see our beautiful swirl and people can see that our log is roughly five to six years old and just by spreading the ganache over like this you're going to get a fairly bark-like appearance but for our final bark details what we want to do is pop this in the fridge for about 15 or 20 minutes until that stuff firms up a little bit and then using the tip of the knife we can really give this thing the texture of actual bark okay just drag that tip through all over and since real bark is kind of rough and irregular there's really no way to screw this up but personally i think the rougher and more irregular the better and yes this is exactly as fun as it looks which is super fun and then once we have those final details done what we have to do again is chill this thoroughly before serving so we'll pop that back into the fridge until we're ready to serve at which point we'll transfer that onto some kind of attractive serving platter or a gorgeous piece of marble and proceed to dust atop a little bit of cocoa as well as a little powdered sugar to make it look even more like an old log that has a little bit of frost and while your guests will be very very impressed if you serve it just like this if you wanted to you could also add some gingerbread dirt as well as some meringue mushrooms which are super easy to make and maybe i'll show you how to do those and for a final touch maybe we'll add a few rosemary sprigs here and there to complete the scene and that's it our chocolate ulog is done and it totally looks like we knew what we were doing i mean if this doesn't impress your friends and family i'm sorry but your friends and family are too hard to impress but just looking amazing is not enough this also should taste incredible so i went ahead and cut a slice to try it out and i plated that up next to some meringue mushrooms which are never not adorable and despite it having a little too much buttercream for my taste it really was fantastic right that almost flourless chocolate sponge is just sweet enough and still very moist and paired perfectly with that very simple mocha buttercream so above and beyond his show-stopping appearance i really did enjoy the taste and texture of this as well oh and i should mention before this gets rolled up you can actually soak the sponge with a little bit of liqueur or liquor just like i'm doing here with some kahlua so if you did want to adult this up you can brush or drizzle that onto the sponge itself or just add some on when you slice and serve it like this so just a little bonus tip for how to help achieve those rosy santa clause like cheeks but anyway i'll finish the rest of this slice off later right now i have to take a little mushroom break make that a mushrooms break but anyway that's it my method for making the classic holiday bushed and noel like i said in the intro not really that hard to make although it does take a fair amount of time and effort but when you're done it looks like it takes a lot of time and effort which really is the point of a special holiday dessert so i really do hope you give this a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and is always enjoy [Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with panatone that's right i'm very excited to show you my very first attempt ever at making panettone and i'll admit to being a little bit intimidated because from what i read this is supposed to be one of the hardest breads in the world to make in fact one article compared it to climbing mount everest which sounds a little dramatic i mean i don't think there's dozens of people that die each year making this bread or at least not suddenly but anyway as you'll see this came out really well so this is either easier than people say or i had a good amount of beginner's luck but either way let's go ahead and get started by starting the starter which we're going to need to make the day before and we'll do that by mixing some flour and water together to which we're going to add some of our already made sourdough starter and we'll go ahead and stir that together and i hope you have some of that in your fridge but if you don't in the blog post i'm going to tell you how to make it without it and what we'll do once that's mixed is go ahead and cover it and just leave it out at room temp overnight and not only is this mixture going to add some volume and flavor to our dough it's also believe it or not going to help the finished loaf stay fresher longer and then once that's that we should move on to the other thing we should do the day before and that would be to soak some chopped up dried fruit and some type of liquor okay i'm using white rum and as far as my fruit selection i went with pineapple cherry and golden raisin but there are so many other things you could use so feel free to investigate other options you are after all the james comey of your panettone but anyway we'll go ahead and mix that up the night before and let that fruit absorb the booze stirring occasionally and then once those two things are set the next day we can actually move on to making the dough which will begin by dissolving a package of yeast and some very warm but not too hot water and as usual we'll let that sit for about 10 minutes before adding the following ingredients all right to that we're going to add a couple eggs as well as some white sugar we'll also toss in a spoon of pure vanilla extract as well as some freshly grated orange and lemon zest and then for whatever reason i decided to take a whisk and give this a mix before adding our starter and flour you probably don't have to but it's too late now and once i had done that i went ahead and grabbed my starter from the day before which looked beautifully bubbly and smelled amazing and what we'll do is give that a stir and dump it into our mixing bowl and like i said if you don't have some sourdough starter don't worry i'll tell you in the blog post how to make a cheater version but anyway we'll go ahead and dump that in at which point we'll go ahead and finish this off by adding our flour and i'm just using all-purpose here although some recipes do call for bread flour at this point we'll grab our dough hook and start kneading this in our stand mixer although as soon as i lowered that hook in i realized i forgot the salt so i stopped and added it because you never ever want to forget the salt and then what we're going to do is let this knead for a long time like for 10 minutes or so until we've achieved a very very smooth very very elastic dough and early on if you need to stop it and scrape down the sides go ahead but like i said we'll let this need for about 10 minutes until we've created something that looks like this all right like i said very smooth and very elastic and if we pull that dough with our spatula it should sort of snap back into place and then once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead and add our room temperature butter okay ice cold is not gonna work here make sure it's room temp and we're gonna need that for another five minutes or so or until that butter is completely mixed in and we've created once again a very smooth very elastic somewhat shiny dough and once again you might have to turn off the machine a couple times and scrape down the sides until it all starts to come together so this is what mine looked like about five minutes later so yes we are talking about a very very soft somewhat sticky dough here which is probably one of the reasons people say this is a hard bread to make alright generally people are scared of really soft dose but don't be you'll be fine but anyway let me go ahead and transfer that onto my work surface so you can get a better look and then what i did using some slightly damp fingers as well as the help of my bench scraper sort of wrestle and fold that a few times into some sort of dough ball shape and by the way one way you can tell if you've developed enough gluten is you can stretch it so thin you can see light through it without it tearing which they call the window pane test because you're supposed to stretch it out between two fingers in front of a window but i'm not going to because i can tell just by pinching and stretching like this and then what i did is transfer that back into my bowl that i didn't even bother cleaning out i usually do but i didn't feel like it and then what we'll do is cover that and let it rise until doubled which is going to take a while okay these rich does rise pretty slowly so mine actually took about three hours which was totally worth the wait if for no other reason just the feeling you get when you punch it down man that feels good and what we'll want to do at this point is transfer that back onto our table and then once deflated again using some damn fingers in our bench scraper we will fold that back into some kind of ballast shape because what we're going to need to do is transfer this into a plastic bag and refrigerate it overnight oh yeah we're talking about a three-day bread here all right so if you want this bread today you have to start it two days ago but anyway trust me it'll be worth the wait so i went ahead and transfer that into a plastic bag and popped it in the fridge overnight and by the way we're not just doing this step to make you wait for nothing right this overnight fermentation in the fridge really does improve the flavor and probably texture so i did pop mine in the fridge overnight and then pulled it out the next morning at which point it looked like this and what we'll do is go ahead and remove the bag i just rip it open i know some of you would wash this and reuse it but i don't swing that way and then what we'll do is go ahead and press this out into some sort of square rectangle shape and because the dough is nice and cold and that butter is stiffened up it's a little easier to work with and then once i get it to about this flatness i'll sprinkle it with a little bit of flour and then roll it out a little thinner with my rolling pin and the whole reason we're doing this is so we can scatter over our boozy dried fruit and then roll this up and theoretically that way all our fruit will be evenly distributed so i went ahead and applied my dried fruit to the surface which by now had absorbed all that rum but i ended up not using it all because as i was doing this i was thinking man this is like way too much fruit so i actually only ended up using about three quarters of it which as you'll see in the final shots probably wasn't the best idea i probably should have used it all but anyway once that was spread out like i said we'll go ahead and roll the dough up nice and tight and please accept my apologies for the blurriness so that's one of the reasons i've never won an oscar so let's fast forward and then once that's been rolled up i went ahead and rolled both ends up towards the middle attempting somehow to get it back into some kind of round shape and if at all possible try to end up with a good amount of dough on the top okay so i sort of worked that around until like i said i ended up with some kind of smooth dough over the top and then once that's been accomplished what we need to do is transfer this into a paper panettone mold which come in this shape the shorter wider one as well as a tall skinny version and yes of course in the blog post i'm going to tell you where to find those and then what we'll need to do is cover this and let it rise until it's at least two-thirds of the way up the sides which because we're starting with cold dough it's gonna take like three or four hours but don't go by time go until it looks like this and by the way a few hours in i took off the plastic because it was touching the top it was kind of sticking and i got scared you can see the market left right there but anyway the point is let your dough proof in this mold until it looks like this at which point we will carefully brush the surface with an egg wash which is one egg beaten with a splash of water and then once that's been applied to the entire surface we will take a razor or a sharp knife and cut across into the top about a quarter to a half inch down which is not just done to make this look really cool although that's a big part of it we actually need to do that so it rises properly and we achieve that beautiful signature dome shape so we'll go ahead and slice the top just like that and then our last official act before this goes in the oven is to place a small piece of butter right in the middle which is probably more traditional than practical since i doubt that's going to make much of a difference but do it anyway and that's it we are finally ready to bake so we will go ahead and transfer that into the center of a 350 degree oven for about 40 to 45 minutes or until it looks like this which would be beautifully browned and spectacularly gorgeous i mean look at that that was so beautiful i didn't even really care how this tasted and then if you're thinking hey this is probably ready right now well unfortunately you could not be more wrong we actually need to let this cool for two hours upside down oh yeah you heard me which is why i'm going to poke in two skewers on either side and then flip this over onto a panettone cooling hole which i had cut into my table but if you don't happen to have access to a panettone cooling hole you can just flip this over on top of a dutch oven or a stockpot something like that and by cooling this upside down there's not going to be any collapsing and it's going to help us retain a beautiful light texture so take that gravity and then after somehow waiting for a couple hours for this to fully cool we will go ahead and pull out those skewers and finally be able to cut in and see how we did so i went ahead and sliced out a wedge and like i said this looks so magnificent i really didn't care how it tasted but i'm very happy to report for a first attempt it tasted really good which didn't really surprise me what did surprise me was how amazing the texture was for her first attempt okay it was rich and buttery but it was just impossibly light and airy the only major surprise was where the heck did all that fruit go i thought i had way too much and ended up thinking i didn't have enough but anyway besides that i was extremely happy and went ahead and cut another piece so i could try some with butter which is even a better way to enjoy this and for whatever reason i found this shape to be more enjoyable than the wedge so i'm going to suggest you cut yours in half and then down into slices and while this bread was great plain and even better spread with butter i'm going to show you a third and what i consider ultimate way to enjoy this and that would be lightly toasted with butter okay that really is the ultimate way to enjoy this bread preferably with a nice hot cup of coffee but anyway that's it my first attempt at panatone yes it took three days and many hours but as far as actual work involved there really wasn't that much and like i said i was really happy with how this came out although next time i am going to add all the fruit and maybe make a few tweaks which you'll read about on the blog post but bottom line this was not even close to as hard as people made it out to be so for that reason and many others i really do hope you give this a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes.com with salted caramel custard that's right say hello to your new favorite dessert and of course i'm basing that statement on the assumption that you like beautiful easy to make and extraordinarily delicious desserts but if that is the case i feel pretty confident about my prediction and by the way if you're a fan of the creme carmel this is like having an entire ramekin full of the best parts of that dessert so i'm very much looking forward to showing you how to put this together and we're going to start off by separating some eggs because for this we're going to need 9 large egg yolks and when i'm doing this many my favorite method is to simply crack the egg into my hand and letting the white drip between my fingers into a bowl below and of course you could use the standard shell to shell method but like i said when i'm doing a bunch of them i do prefer this method plus if someone's watching it looks super cool and almost as if you know what you're doing but anyway one way or another we're gonna separate nine large egg yolks and of course we're gonna save those whites for another recipe quite possibly involving a meringue and then once our eggs are set we can head over to the stove to start our caramel so we're going to put some white granulated sugar in a heavy bottom saucepan and place that over medium heat and cook it until we have a nice dark amber caramel and the method we're using here is called a dry caramel so we're not going to add any water and we're definitely not going to stir it we're simply going to leave it on the heat observing carefully and eventually you'll see the sugar starting to melt around the edges and start to turn color and it is going to be tempting to stir it but don't just let it go until it starts to darken and bubble around the outside like this and at that point we'll start to shake and swirl the pan until all that sugar is dissolved or is it melted i think it's melted but anyway the point is not to stir it just keep moving it like this until eventually we have a beautiful clear dark amber caramel and by the way i told you to use medium heat but i'll be honest i use about medium high and that's because i made like a thousand of these and the medium high will accomplish this a little faster so if you do want to try this with a little higher heat go ahead sugar's pretty cheap so if you do go too far and burn it you could always start over but anyway like i said we're not going to stir we're just going to keep swirling the pan like that and eventually all that sugar is going to melt and your mixture should look like this and then as soon as this has been accomplished we're going to very quickly and very carefully whisk in two cups of cream and be careful it's going to bubble up but you should be fine just keep pouring and stirring and what's going to happen is you're going to think you wreck this because that caramel we just made is gonna seize up and basically turn into strands of hard rock candy but fear not just keep stirring and as that cream heats up all that stuff's gonna melt off your whisk and dissolve into the cream and not to pat myself in the back but one of the major advantages of a video is that you're able to see everything's going to turn out all right if people were following a written recipe only and saw something that looked like this they would probably stop and throw it away and make something else but as you can see if you just keep stirring that mixture is going to come back up to temperature and that sugar is going to dissolve right into the cream and one thing i wanted to mention a lot of chefs throw a chunk of butter into this but i don't the cream here is like 35 butter fat so i don't think it's necessary said the man who just posted a sausage recipe finished with the butter sauce but regardless and as soon as that sugar dissolves fully into the mixture we're going to turn off the heat and add the final ingredients so we will turn off the flame and we'll toss in a half a teaspoon of kosher salt which by the way is definitely not the same thing as a half a teaspoon of fine salt that would be too salty in fact i really need to do that video explaining the different types of salt but anyway we're going to whisk in a touch of salt as well as some pure vanilla extract and then last but not least one cup of cold milk and while this mixture is still very hot by adding that cup of cold milk we've cooled that down enough so our egg yolks don't scramble when we add this in which by the way is the next step so we will go ahead and add this hot mixture to our egg yolks but to play it safe we'll start off slow so we will add one ladle and whisk that in and once that's been incorporated we can add another and then after a couple ladles full we are safe to add the rest and i should mention a lot of recipes say to strain this in case there's any little particles of sugar or whatever but you know what i like much less than tiny particles of sugar cleaning a strainer so i don't strain and don't think you need to either and as soon as we have everything mixed together we are ready to fill our ramekins so i have six ramekins placed in a baking dish and we'll go ahead and we'll divide our mixture evenly among them and no you do not need to butter those ramekins in fact don't butter those ramekins totally unnecessary and then once those are evenly filled we have to do one very important thing before this goes in the oven we want to pour in enough water to go halfway up the ramekin and i'm just using hot tap water by the way so i'm going to pour that in and make sure it's coming up like i said about halfway and at that point these are ready to bake so let's go ahead and pop those in the center of a 300 degree oven for about 45 to 60 minutes or until they look like this and the custard is just set and what i mean by just that is this if we give that ramekin a little wiggle everything should jiggle as one mass okay if the center's kind of jiggling at a different rate than the outsides and it still seems a little loose put it back in for a couple more minutes but assuming your custards have been cooked perfectly what we'll do is carefully remove those from the baking dish and let those cool completely on a rack and what we want to do is cool these down to room temp before we wrap them up and chill them thoroughly do not under any circumstances eat two of them at room temperature because they're just not as good so let them cool down to room temp and then we'll wrap those in plastic and then chill those for at least an hour until ice cold okay the colder the better and then once those are fully chilled we can go ahead and serve those up with the traditional sprinkling of large flaky sea salts and our salted caramel custards are done and just looking fantastic i think the top of a cook salted caramel custard is maybe my favorite color in the world it's kind of like a combo between camel hair and pumpkin and by the way camel hair pumpkin worst custard flavor ever but anyway just absolutely stunning to look at and even more delicious to eat so let me grab a spoon and dig in and as far as the texture goes we do want something soft smooth and custardy but we do want it firm enough to hold those nice sharp lines when we dig in with the spoon all right there's a very old culinary saying that i just made up when it comes to a big custard they shouldn't droop when you scoop so i thought this was spot on and then as far as the taste you've heard me say a million times before i'm not a big dessert person and that's mostly because i don't like really sweet things but this really isn't overly sweet okay when you caramelize sugar it does take some of the sweetness away so to summarize i love everything about this recipe and i know a lot of home cooks get flustered by custard but hopefully as you saw in this video it's really not that hard and the results are well you saw the results incredible so i really do hope you give this a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with portuguese custard tarts that's right i'm going to show you how to make pastas donata which are truly one of the world's most amazing pastries and believe it or not invented by portuguese monks many many centuries ago which kind of makes sense i mean if you're going to take a vow of poverty and a vow of chastity that is going to free up a lot of time to practice your pastry skills and man did they perfect this recipe so with a very sincere thank you to the hiranomites let's go ahead and get started with what is basically the simplest dough you can make which consists of nothing more than flour some salt and some water and then what we'll do is grab a wooden spoon and give this a mix until it just comes together and pulls away from the bowl and fair warning this is going to be a very wet and sticky dough and once those three ingredients come together and look a little something like this we'll go ahead and transfer that onto a very well floured surface and we'll dust a little more flour over the top and then we're just going to give it a few seconds of kneading and circular rubbing until we get that into some kind of semi-rounded shape and once that's been accomplished we will dust on a little more flour and then we'll cover that with our bowl and let it rest about 15 or 20 minutes and no peeking and all we're doing is letting the dough relax a little bit so it's a little easier to work with and then what we'll do after about 15 or 20 minutes is uncover it and then using as much flour as necessary we're going to press roll and stretch this into a square about an eighth of an inch thick and yes this would be a lot easier to work with if the dough is dryer but you're just not going to get that same final effect so even though it's going to be a little annoying to work with we really do want to start with a very sticky dough and then what we're going to do once we have that rolled and stretched out into a square is apply the only other ingredient here some very very soft spreadable butter and what we want to do is apply exactly one-third of our butter to exactly two-thirds of this square and as we're spreading this we're going to try to leave about an inch of the outside edge unbuttered and by the way if you try doing this with butter that's not super soft it won't work or you're going to end up tearing and pulling your dough so make sure it's very very soft and spreadable and then what we'll do once we have two thirds covered is take the third that's not buttered and flip that over and then we will flip that other side over to complete our letter fold and yes i did flip that first side over too far so i kind of had to stretch just to make it fit and toward a little but don't worry it's all going to be fine i just went ahead and squared that up the best i could and then with the help of our bench scraper we'll go ahead and turn the dough and we will sprinkle on even more flour and then we'll give that a flip and then apply even more flour did i mention this was sticky so do not be shy with the flour and then once we do have that turned and flowered we'll go ahead and roll that out into a rectangular shape about an eighth of an inch thick and if you're really good at this you're not going to have any bubbles inside which is why i have bubbles but as i kept rolling those eventually got pressed out but anyway like i said we'll go ahead and roll that out into a rectangle and if you have to give it a little stretch here and there don't be afraid and then once that's set we're going to repeat the thing we just did okay we're going to take another third of our butter and spread it over two thirds of our surface and then repeat the letter fold by taking the unbuttered third and folding that over and then the opposite third over the top of that and then we'll square it up and even it out the best we can and then once that's been accomplished before we apply the last of our butter i'm going to go ahead and transfer this onto a baking sheet and pop this in the fridge for just about 10 minutes to chill that butter just a little bit but i wouldn't go too much longer because we don't want it to get hard so i popped it in there for about 10 minutes before pulling it back out for the final rolling and good news this is the last step so we'll go ahead and flour that generously and roll that out into a square about an eighth of an inch thick maybe a touch thicker all right let's say 3 16. and then what we'll do once that's been rolled out is apply the last third of our soft butter and this time we can spread our butter all the way to the edges except on the top edge right at the top we're going to leave about an inch to an inch and a half unbuttered because that's where we're going to seal our dough after we roll it and what we'll do once that's all buttered is take a wet finger and ever so slightly moisten that unbuttered edge and then to finish this up instead of folding it what we're going to do is slowly but surely roll this up from the bottom all right nice and tight attempting to get this as uniformly shaped as possible and while i'm doing this i should mention once we roll this up we're going to have to wrap it and refrigerate it for a few hours preferably overnight before we can start using it so just a little time management heads up and i actually did this exact recipe last night so i'd have one to work with so yes i did two of these rolls well actually technically three since i tested one of these rolls using pre-made puff pastry which was a dismal failure and i'll talk about that in the blog post but anyway we're going to continue rolling that all the way up to our unbuttered slightly damp edge which should hopefully seal this tube nicely and then if we want we can sprinkle on a little more flour and do some final shaping and evening out but mine was pretty uniform so i'm going to go ahead and wrap that in plastic and like i said pop that in the fridge preferably overnight and yes in case you're wondering you can absolutely freeze this dough just wrap it up nice and tight and then let it thaw overnight in the fridge when you're ready to use it but anyway once our dough is set we can move on to the custard which is going to start with a simple syrup so to the pan we're going to add some white sugar a splash of water one cinnamon stick and the peeled zest from one lemon and make sure you wash your lemon in hot water first in case it has any weird wax on the outside and then once we have that all together we're going to head to the stove and we'll place that over medium heat and we're going to want to bring this up to a boil and by the way you're not supposed to stir this i do because i can't help myself but it is totally unnecessary and you probably shouldn't but anyway all we need to do here is boil this until it reaches a temperature of 210 to 215 degrees fahrenheit or as a portuguese monk would call it 100 degrees celsius and as soon as that happens we will turn it off and there i go again stirring it for no apparent reason but anyway we'll simply turn that off and reserve it until our final component is done and that's going to be our custard base which is going to consist of some flour some salt and some cold milk which we're going to whisk for a few minutes before heading to the stove and then what we're going to do once we've whisked that all together very very thoroughly is place that over medium heat and cook it stirring until it thickens up oh and i should mention i've actually streamlined this part of the recipe since classically the flour is mixed with a small amount of milk and then the rest of the milk is heated or tempered as we say and then everything is whisked together but i figured since we're going to strain it anyway let's just take a chance and it actually worked out fine so yes i guess i am sort of saying they've been doing it wrong for centuries in portugal but hey at least now they know but anyway like i said we're going to cook this over medium whisking pretty much the whole time until our mixture thickens up at which point you should have something that looks very similar to this and then what we're going to want to do is turn off the heat and let this sit for at least 10 minutes before whisking in our egg yolks or if you're a super fast whisker you could probably mix them in right away but to play safe it's not a bad idea to wait about 10 minutes and we'll go ahead and whisk those yolks in and once we have those incorporated we'll go ahead and finish this off by adding our sugar syrup plus we will also add a spoon of vanilla extract and i should mention the vanilla cinnamon and lemon should all be considered optional all right a lot of the so-called authentic recipes don't call for those so you decide i mean you are after all the hyuronomite of what tastes right but i like them so i put them and we'll give that all one final mix and then like i said we are gonna strain this which is gonna catch our lemon peel cinnamon stick and any undissolved lumps or chunks of flour which i didn't really have any of and the reason we're straining this into a measuring cup is because that's going to make it a lot easier to pour into our pastry shells and forming those is going to be the next step so we'll simply set our custard aside and i'm going to go ahead and pull out the dough i made last night which because i wasn't filming came out a little neater but the exact same recipe and we'll go ahead and unwrap that and cut a little bit off both ends but don't discard that in case we have to do a little bit of patching and then we'll take our knife and score this into exactly 12 even pieces and then let me go ahead and cut a couple of these so you can get a good look at what's going on here okay right here you should be able to see that swirl of dough and butter and don't forget in the dough layer there's actually layers of butter from the two folds we did earlier so that's exactly what we wanted to look like and then to shape the dough what we'll do is place one of these rolls at the bottom of each muffin cup and we'll dip our thumb into some cold water and then we'll push that right down into the center of that roll and then we'll slowly but surely spread that out across the bottom and then eventually up the sides and it might not seem like you have enough dough but you do okay we really want to get this stuff nice and thin and dipping your fingers in cold water really is key here since that's going to make it way easier to push and spread that dough up the sides and one huge tip here make sure you go at least an eighth of an inch up past the top okay because what will happen if you don't get these high enough is your custard is going to bake up over the top and run down the sides and it will burn and look black so again using wet fingers make sure you smear and spread that stuff all the way up not only to get it nice and thin but like i said so we have at least an eighth of an inch popping up above the edge and if you want you can do this step a little bit ahead and then just refrigerate that pan as is and fill it with the custard later and then what we're gonna do once our tart shells have been formed is go ahead and pour in our custard batter but not all the way up we only want to go about three quarters all right this custard is going to kind of puff up as it bakes and if you fill them up too high as i touched on earlier it's going to spill over and get between the dough and the pan and it definitely will burn since this is going to go in such a hot oven so like i said we'll just go three quarters of the way and that's it once we have those filled we will carefully transfer that into the center of a super hot 550 degree oven or whatever your highest setting is and we will bake those for about 12 to 14 minutes or until our pastry is well browned and bubbling in butter and our custard is just barely set so for ones done in a home oven those are looking pretty nice all right in portugal the ovens are even hotter so the top of the custards get even more caramelized and blistered but you know what these were looking just fine and right here you can get a great look at all that lamination which is that layer of butter between the pastry and while admittedly that took a little bit of work to do that really is the secret behind these incredible tarts and we're definitely going to want to let these cool a little bit before we try to pull one out although they are supposed to be served warm so don't wait too long so i waited a little bit and went ahead and popped one out and as you can see our pastry got beautifully browned and if you look close you can actually see the spiral from our rolled dough but anyway let me go ahead and bite in so i can taste and hear how we did and yes it really was that crispy and the perfect delivery system for that rich creamy custard although it should have cooled a little bit more since these really should be served warm and not hot so i finished eating that one while i transferred the rest onto a rack to cool a little bit more and after about 10 minutes i plated one up so i could take some pictures but more importantly eat another one and the contrast here between that ultra crispy flaky buttery crust and that soft creamy custard subtly scented with cinnamon and lemon there's nothing like i've ever experienced eating any other pastry i mean it really is truly remarkable and yes there was a little bit of work involved in making that pastry but when you finally get around to enjoy these you will regret nothing except maybe not making a double batch okay you should probably make 24 of these but anyway that's it how i do portuguese custard tarts i'm not sure whether you have a bucket list or not and if you do whether it has a section for pastries but if it does stop whatever you're doing and add these to that list so needless to say i really do hope you give these a try soon and you should definitely head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with russian honey cake that's right there are basically three different ways you can make this amazing cake the hard way the harder way and the way we're going to do it the hardest way but it's all going to be worth it because once you're finished you're going to be enjoying one of the most beautiful and delicious cakes of all time so with that let's go ahead and get started and the first thing we're going to need to do here comrades is burn some honey so let's go ahead and transfer some honey into a saucepan that we will place over medium heat and in case you're keeping score at home i'm using a wildflower honey but i have to think pretty much any honey is going to work in this and i know i just said we're going to burn the honey but that's not really true all right all we're really going to do is cook this until it's like one shade darker and sort of takes on the aroma of caramel or as i've pronounced it all my life caramel and yes it is insane i'm using a pan this small because it is probably going to foam up and you do not want this boiling over on your stove so you go ahead and use something a little deeper but anyway i went ahead and cooked mine for about 10 minutes or so until like i said it kind of darkened up a bit and i started smelling that distinct aroma of caramelized sugar and then once we've pushed that as far as we want to go what we'll do is turn off the heat and whisk in a little splash of cold fresh water which will immediately stop this from cooking any further plus make the texture a little bit thinner once it cools and then once that set we'll push it to the back of the stove and we'll place a large metal bowl over our lowest heat setting into which we will toss a whole bunch of butter and for the record this bowl is supposed to be placed over simmering water and not directly on the flame but just like when i make hollandaise i like to live dangerously and as long as we have a really really low heat setting this will be fine and then to the butter we will also add a touch of white sugar as well as some of our recently burned honey plus some regular honey and then what we'll do to this is absolutely nothing we will simply let it sit there until our butter melts and while we're waiting what we should do is take some baking soda not powder baking soda and add some salt to it as well as some cinnamon because we're going to be tossing that in in a few minutes and then what we'll do once our butter melts or almost melts is go ahead and give this a whisk and leave it over the heat until it's very warm to the touch are you not super hot and not just barely warm and then what we'll do once that is very warm to the touch is go ahead and add six cold eggs and we'll go ahead and whisk those in and relax this is not so hot that it's gonna scramble those eggs which reminds me if your eggs scramble it was too hot and what we'll do once our eggs have been mixed in is simply keep this over that very low heat setting until the entire mixture comes back to that very warm temperature ensure a temperature would help here but you're not getting one you have to learn to use the force and your fingertips and then what we'll do as soon as that mixture does feel very warm again is go ahead and stir in our baking soda cinnamon mixture and you'll see just after a few minutes of stirring the mixture is going to change color and get much lighter and will sort of look thick and foamy and that's because of all those little tiny bubbles that the baking soda is producing and then once that's been stirred in and our mixture is hopefully looking a little something like this we will remove that from the heat into some better light and we'll go ahead and finish this up by sifting in some all-purpose flour which we generally don't want to do all at once so what we'll do is sift this in two or three editions and as soon as one addition has been stirred in we will add the next and once all that flour has been added and stirred in we should be looking at a somewhat thick but still fairly runny and easily spreadable batter so that is looking just about perfect right there and then what we'll do to form our layers of honey cake is transfer just shy of about half a cup onto the silpat lime baking sheet and then using ideally an offset spatula we want to spread this out into about an eight or nine inch circle and since i have like zero cake making utensils and tools i just spread mine out using a rubber spatula but if you google offset spatula you'll see what you're supposed to use and yes as you can tell from the dirty silpat i actually did a few before i filmed this one but don't worry this one came out just as bad and then what we'll do once that set is give it a quick shake and then the old tapitappa to knock out any big air bubbles at which point we're going to cook this at 375 for about six to seven minutes or until it looks like this and that's it we only have to do that seven more times which is why it's an advantage to have more than one pan and one silpat and no my oven didn't magically clean that silpat while was baking this was a shot from the other pan i was using and the shot just happened to be a lot better but anyway what we want to do as soon as that comes out of the oven is very carefully slide it off the pan and onto the table which is going to allow it to cool a lot faster and then after about six or seven minutes it should be cool enough and firm enough to remove from the mat and by the way even though the surface looks pretty smooth you'll see as i flip this upside down onto this piece of parchment underneath you will have some spots where bubbles have formed but do not worry about those as you'll see that's not going to cause any problem and you should be pretty shocked if each layer does not have a few of those but anyway i went ahead and did seven more of those stacking them up with parchment paper between the layers as i went but i stopped stacking at three because as you can see in this shot those first few i piled up sort of stuck to the paper because this is a relatively sticky cake because of the honey so i stopped stacking those and just ended up spreading them out on the table like this and then once all your layers are totally cooled we can take a plate in my case a paper plate and trim around them making sure they're all the same size and not to brag but all mine were really close but even so i did grab my pizza wheel and i went around so they all had a beautiful nice clean edge but anyway that's optional although if you do it save the scraps since we can actually add those to the crumb mixture with which we're going to coat our cake and if you're wondering what crumb mixture well the crumb mixture we're going to make with the extra batter since if everything goes according to plan after you've done your eight layers you should have just about this much batter left which we will just spread out onto our baking sheet and we will cook that for about 10 minutes at which point we'll go ahead and cut this up into smaller pieces and the whole reason for this is if we left it whole i think those outside edges might get too dark and possibly burnt and not burnt honey burnt like actually burnt so by making what's basically cake croutons i think this is all going to cook a lot more evenly so we will cut toss and go ahead and pop that back in for about maybe seven to ten minutes more or until fairly well browned and by the way we can also do that with any of our trimmings from earlier and that's it once that's all cooled we can go ahead and give it the old bag and bash until we have some fairly fine crumbs and then once that's set we can move on to the last major components our creamy filling slash frosting which we're going to make in a very cold bowl with a very cold whisk all right keep those in the fridge until you're ready to use them and then into that we will pour two pints of very cold heavy cream okay we need whipped cream it has to be very cold especially if you're going to do by hand like i do and of course go ahead and use your electric beaters if you want but by doing this by hand i'm going to burn off the exact same amount of calories as one slice of cake give or take 300 calories or so and what we want to do here is whip this until we have soft peaks or what would be a more accurate name floppy peaks and then what we'll do once we've achieved those is go ahead and add the rest of our burnt honey as well as a couple nice big spoons of sour cream and of course the regular sour cream to cream ratio is going to be up to you but i'm going for a fairly light filling so i have like four parts creamed to one part sour cream but anyway we'll go ahead and add that and then continue whisking until we have fairly stiff peaks all right we don't want to go too far and make butter here but we do want this mixture getting fairly stiff because it has to hold up all those layers and when i reached that stage it looked like this and that's it once our cream's done we can start to assemble and for this first layer i went around and trimmed off the parchment right up to the cake which is going to give us something to slide our spatulas under and then we'll go ahead and transfer on a generous cup at least of our whipped cream and spread that out as evenly as we can almost up to the edge we don't have to go all the way because the next layer is going to press it down and speaking of the next layer you want to place a side that has the divots from the air bubbles facing up that way when we spread on the cream it's going to fill in and of course as you're putting these on you're giving them a nice gentle press but anyway we'll continue creaming and caking until we have one layer of cake left and unlike the other ones this last layer i like to put with the nice side up so maybe save your smoothest best one for last and that's it we'll go ahead and frost the top and if everything goes according to plan you should have just enough whipped cream to go around the sides as well which i barely did and if you don't don't worry about it just tell people you're doing the rustic version and you know there are so many activities involved with cooking that i find very therapeutic and frosting the cake is way up that list alright it just feels really good and it makes you feel really good and because of that while you're doing this that cake is absorbing all those good feels which is why when your guests eat this they feel good or at least that's what i assume happens but anyway we'll go ahead and spread over the rest of our whipped cream and then to finish our cake off we're going to cover it with our crumbs and for that i'm going to use the old ricochet method where we let the crumbs fall against like a bench scraper or a piece of paper like this and they basically bounce onto the cake and stick onto the whipped cream and personally i like to go for full coverage although you do see a lot of versions where just the top is crumbed or just the sides are covered and the top is left white but anyway presentation's up to you i mean you are for all the vladimir of your crumb veneer and it's up to you to decide how you should be putting these on but anyway like i said i like to cover the whole thing at which point we can do a little bit of cleanup around the base and then i have some horrible news we have to refrigerate this overnight or longer to enjoy it in all its glory and during that time that whipped cream is going to kind of soak into the layers and they're going to get even moister and more luscious so do not try to eat this as soon as you make it although if you did it probably would still be really good but i did go ahead and pop mine in the fridge overnight and by the way i actually did cover in plastic i just didn't film that since this video is so long and then a day later i went ahead and pulled it out at which point i performed the always terrifying maneuver of trying to transfer it onto a kickstand with two wobbly spatulas but as you can see that went pretty well and speaking of things going well cutting a nice neat first slice out one of these big cakes is not the easiest thing to do but much to my surprise that also worked out better than expected so i grabbed a fork to go in for a taste and please note those toasted crumbs are just not for a garnish they really do help accentuate that caramelized honey flavor in the cake and then as far as the cake itself goes it really is shockingly light in texture but with a very profound deep deep honey flavor right that tiny little amount of bitterness we get from the burnt honey step really is the secret here and then that slightly tangy whipped cream frosting is just absolutely perfect for this since not only does it provide a little bit of acidity and of course a lovely light texture but unlike most frostings it is not too sweet right the only thing we used to sweeten that was that little bit of burnt honey so to summarize i was very happy with how this came out and i celebrated by cutting another slice so i could do a fully food style plate and then take some pictures and more importantly eat some more but anyway that's it my take on russian honey cake and no it's not easy to make and it does take a lot of time and effort but it is so so worth it and that's coming from someone that doesn't even like cake so whether you're making this honey cake for your honey's sake or you're just in the mood for a challenging bake i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below to get the ingredient amounts the written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 143,928

Keywords: holiday, bake, baking, cook, cooking, dessert, dessert recipes, easy dessert recipes, easy dinner recipes, easy recipes, holiday recipes, how to, how to bake, how to cook, how to make, recipe, recipes, tasty, tasty recipes, Chef John, food wishes, allrecipes, yule log, buche de noel, panettone recipe, panettone, yule log recipe, pot de creme, christmas, hannukah, new year's, thanksgiving, salted caramel custard, portuguese custard tarts, pasteis de nata, russian honey cake

Id: IKcA0DNVau0

Length: 57min 45sec (3465 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 28 2021