The Bostini

Since I missed out on making the Bostini a couple weeks ago while I was recovering from foot surgery and because it got such rave reviews I decided I had to make it for the free choice week. The only problem was there were a few other recipes I wanted to try and not enough time for them. I actually had the ingredients for 5 different recipes that I thought about making. I probably would have made the pumpkin cheesecake as well, but I went to a puff pastry class on Saturday and spent part of the rest of the weekend turning my dough from the class. (Hopefully I'll have a post up on that in the next couple days.)

I started with the Orange Glow Chiffon Cupcake batter Saturday evening. It was pretty simple. The only parts that were at all difficult were trying to squeeze the juice out of the stupid oranges and having to clean the mixing bowl and beater part way through making the batter. With the orange I remembered that if you roll the orange between your hand and the counter prior to cutting it will be easier to squeeze.

First you mix the dry ingredients and then make a well in the center to pour most of the wet ingredients.

Then you mix those together and pour in another bowl if you don't have two mixer bowls. I've considered buying another mixer bowl, but I can't decide if I would rather just ask for the 6 quart Kitchen Aid mixer for Christmas (it's between that and a new camera for taking better blog pictures). I currently have the 5 quart, but I've been told that anyone who bakes a lot should really get the larger, more powerful one. I told my husband that Alton Brown said that in his baking book.

Once you have that bowl cleaned you beat the egg whites, sugar, and cream of tartar to a stiff meringue and then fold the that with the batter. And then it goes into the muffin pan.

I guess I got a little greedy when filling my pans because I overfilled them a little. Oh, well. They still tasted good.

On Sunday evening I finally got around the finishing the Bostini. I got everything out to make the cream. I was a little nervous about this part because I had never made a custard or cream like this before. For some reason my large organic eggs just aren't very large. I had to use an entire extra yolk to equal the weight we were supposed to have. My husband went to the store earlier that day and accidentally bought jumbo eggs instead of large ones so I wonder if those yolks would actually be the right size. Also, I decided to use vanilla bean paste instead of the seeds from the vanilla bean, but I did use a previously used vanilla bean pod when cooking the cream.

First you mix the sugar salt and vanilla seeds (or paste in my case), and then you scald the cream, sugar mix, and vanilla pod. This part seemed to take forever. Maybe my pan was too big, but I was scared to have too small of a pan after what happened the last time I made caramel.

Then you add some cream to the eggs before adding the egg mixture to the cream. Then you whisk the cream until it thickens. It sure is starting to look good now.

Then you pour it through a strainer and into a bowl. I didn't even notice all of the steam at the time. I think I was too busy trying to get every last drop from the pan into the bowl.

Then you whisk the cream to allow it to cool and pour it into the cups. I guess my espresso glasses were bigger than the ones in the book because I only ended up with enough cream to fill 4 of them. That's all I had so it worked out okay. Plus, there are only two of us so we certainly didn't need 8 Bostinis.

This chocolate sauce was super easy to make - just chocolate and butter. The recipe called for dark chocolate, but since my husband's only requirement for the cake choice was no bittersweet chocolate I used the semi-sweet Callebaut chocolate I got at Central Market. Funny thing was when he ate the Bostini he said it would have been okay with a more bitter chocolate.

Daniel and I both really loved this one. The cream was definitely my favorite part of this one. It certainly lived up to the rave reviews. After making this I feel like trying to make other custard desserts.