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Bavarian Cream Is Like Riding Your Bike

In which you have not ridden your Bavarian Cream bike in a long time, but once you get going, you think, Hey! I remember this!  This is fun!  This is easy! Wheeeee!  And then you make a teeny little mistake, miss that teeny little rock in the road, and suddenly you've wiped out, big time.

I don't think I've mentioned it here, but a friend of mine asked me to do the food-providing for her small-group business holiday party next week, and of course, I've been testing and pairing recipes like madcap.

I'm in the shower this morning, and I realize I have the ingredients on hand for Bavarian creams.  And even better, I'm going to divide the creams out, so I can play with flavors.

But, first...a creme anglaise.  So far, so good.

This right here is what is referred to by pastry chefs as "nappé" (nap-pay).  I wanted my egg-sugar-cream mixture to cook at a low temp long enough to get thick enough to coat a spoon...and then hold the line I drew through it.


And everything else was going swimmingly...I'd divided out my warm anglaise out and one was chocolate-and-coffee flavored and the other was porter-and-chocolate flavored.

And here, things go a bit south.  I set both mixtures in the freezer to chill slightly before adding the whipped cream.


The bowl on the left is the porter and chocolate, which set up EXACTLY like I wanted it.  The mocha, though, overchilled and I did not get my smoothness when I folded in the cream.  Meh.  I can't pour that into cups!

Then.  I finished folding the cream into the porter mixture, and I soon realized I'd overbeat my cream.  The extra agitation during the folding rendered my porter not very pourable either, and in the end, the porter mix was so stuff that I had to pipe it into serving cups.  Not a horrible thing, honestly, but not what I wanted.  Fortunately, it tastes great, so it wasn't a total loss.

While I did not end up with a final product I would be comfortable serving to my friend, I feel pretty good about the fact that a.) the FP tasted pretty damn good and b.) I know exactly what to do differently for next time!

Edited to add the picture of the final product.  That's a chocolate-porter ganache on top.  I've got beer on the brain, as you can probably tell!

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