With it being winter in Winnipeg and all, our highs for a while there were dropping all the way down to -45°C (with the windchill, that is). Well one of the pipes in the kitchen decided it was going to freeze, crack and gush water all over the place. Long story short, the kitchen flooded and it was raining down in the basement over the hot water tank. The tank now needs to be replaced and you can't run a restaurant without hot water. The hope is that we'll be back to work this weekend.
Well naturally the first thing I gravitate towards when I'm bored is the fridge. Ben is starting to get mad at me because he's going to the gym and trying to watch what he eats, and instead I'm doing nothing but baking! So far I've made banana, oat and walnut muffins, chocolate terrine, orange puff pastry rolls, cracker jack cookies, chocolate cherry cupcakes...I know I'm forgetting something. I should have taken more pictures, haha
Well tonights challenge was to make Boston cream pie, which as far as I'm concerned is one of the most underrated desserts of all time. A tasty combination of sweet yellow cake, vanilla custard and chocolate ganache...HOW can you go wrong?! Well as always, I have to miniaturize any dessert I possibly can, so I made mini Boston cream pies!
I couldn't find any recipe I liked, or any that didn't have reviews claiming that the cake was too dense or the ganache was too bitter...so I just put together my own combination of cake, custard and ganache.
This yellow cake recipe made some of the best cake I think I've ever had. It's sweet and rich but it's still light. Then I made the standard dessert custard as found on the side of the Bird's Custard can but I added a vanilla bean to the boil, and then made a sweetened dark chocolate ganache using heavy cream, butter, unsweetened cocoa powder and icing sugar. Using a mini cheesecake pan I bought AGES ago and had been meaning to use, I baked 24 little cakes, which after cooling I leveled and assembled 12 mini BCP's.
They're soo cute, yummy and just the perfect size! I was very pleased with how they turned out!!
