Culinary Hotline Valentines Day Edition

It’s the week before Valentines Day and it’s time to prep what you’ll be baking for your significant other or just for treats for your family!

All recipes by Lameez Abrahams – @justtbaked

Ingredients:

  • A large heart shape cookie cutter
  • 1 roll of puff pastry
  • A large baking tray
  • For the crème patisserie:
  • 10 grams of cake flour
  • 10 grams of maizena
  • 3 egg yolks
  • 1 tablespoon of castor sugar
  • 1 cup of milk
  • 1 vanilla pod

How To Make Heart Shaped Pastries

  1. To make the crème patisserie; place milk and vanilla in a sauce pan, bring to a boil, then remove from heat.
  2. Mix the sugar and dry ingredients with egg yolks to form a paste.
  3. Pour a third of the warm milk over the egg mixture and whisk vigorously.
  4. Pour the egg mixture into the sauce pan with the milk and continue to whisk on a low heat.
  5. Cook until mixture boils and thickens.
  6. Remove from the heat, cover and allow to cool.

Ingredients:

For the cookie:

  • 220 grams of soft butter
  • ¼ Cup of castor sugar (1/
  • 4 cup extra for sprinkling)
  • ½ Cup of brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
  • 1 large egg
  • ¼ teaspoon of salt
  • 2 Cups of cake flour
  • ½ Cup of cocoa
  • 1 teaspoon of instant coffee
  • 1 tablespoon of maizena

For the ganache:

  • 160 grams of milk chocolate
  • 1/3 Cup of fresh cream

How To Make Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies

  1. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
  2. Place butter and sugar into an electric mixer, cream until light and fluffy.
  3. Add the egg, vanilla, mix, then add the flour, coffee, salt, cocoa and maizena and mix until well combined.
  4. Use approximately 1 tablespoon of dough and roll into a ball then sprinkle with castor sugar, using the back of a 1 teaspoon measuring spoon, press the middle of the dough. (Repeat this with every cookie rather than rolling and then doing the indent after as the dough will
    become hard and have more cracks )
    This will create an indent into the cookie.
  5. Preheat oven 180 degrees
  6. Refrigerate for 30 mins, then bake for 10 minutes, rotating the tray after 5 mins to ensure even baking.

For the ganache:

  1. Place cream in a small saucepan on medium heat, once warm pour on top of chopped chocolate, let this sit for a minute, mix until smooth.
  2. Once the cookies are cooled fill with the ganache and enjoy.