Julia and Paul Child
Did you just say that in your best Julia Child voice? Today was Julia Child’s 100 birthday, to celebrate I thought I would try to make something out of her first cookbook. I know Julia’s gotten quite a bit of play over the last few years, largely in part to the movie, Julie and Julia. I did like the movie, and I had previously read both books that inspired the movie. Did you know it is based on two books? The first is, My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’Homme, is a wonderful story detailing much of Julia and Paul Child’s life overseas and in France. Basically all the Julia parts in the movie were based on this book. I highly recommend reading it! The other book is, Julie and Julia by Julie Powell, detailing Julie’s year cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about it. An o.k. book, but I think I’m just cheesed off that I didn’t think of it first. For me I found Julie Powell a little unsavory as a person, thus I didn’t like her book as much. Then they have Amy Adams play her character in the movie and she’s adorable so it’s hard to not like her. I did read Julie Powell’s second book, Cleaving, and I’m a little ashamed to say that I wrote such a scathing review on Goodreads about it, I feel just a little guilty. Then again, I had to waste my time reading the book.
I digress, I’m here to celebrate Julia, so I used her pate choux recipe and made cream puffs. I used a filling recipe from Flour by Joanne Chang, what she uses in her eclairs and cream puffs. Then I topped it with a simple chocolate ganache, 1 part cream to 2 parts chocolate. The whole project left me a little harried because I decided to bake on the same day I had to clean the whole house and it was 100 degrees outside. Yikes, but I really shouldn’t complain, I got to eat a cream puff.
The things I do for you Julia!
Making the custard base for the filling.
I have to be honest here, I have made this filling before, but this time I found that it turned out very gummy. It tasted good and it wasn’t grainy. It was very firm after it chilled, so I ended up throwing it in my mixer and adding some cream to loosen it up a bit. It had to be soft enough to fold in with whipped cream. Luckily the fix worked.
Making the pate choux. Easier than you think!
The puffs, before and after baking. Success!
This is the filling, the custard mixed with whipped cream, then piped in the into the puffs.
Bon appetit and happy birthday to a wonderful lady!
One of my girls, licking her plate clean.
In my last post I may have mentioned that I was going to attempt to have a garage sale with only 3 days to prep. I have since seen reason and decided to have it in September. I’m not totally crazy! Next post I’m sharing a chili recipe with you that has finally gotten my husband’s approval. It only took ten years to find it!
wholalahoots 