dimanche 20 mai 2007
I decided to try cooking again, which is always good for a hoot. I brought out my mom's yummy Abricot Bars recipe (which has no calories whatsoever). It helped that she also gave me a set of American measuring spoons. Sugar? Check. Flour? Check. Abricot jelly? Check. Egg? Check.
Vanilla extract? Uh oh. I went to the store and tried to find it. In the cooking aisle, I found something "nappage" in a medium sized bottle. They had various flavors: caramel, vanilla, orange. I realized that this was not vanilla extract, but read the packaging "pour apporter une touche caramélisée aux gâteau de semoule ou de riz." To bring a touch (hint) of caramel to cakes of semoule (whatever that is) or rice. Hmm, okay why not?
I grabbed what I thought to be a vanilla one and headed home.
When it actually came to cooking, I realized that this was Caramel with a hint of vanilla, and a thick syrop. Sigh. Perhaps it isn't that important.
The abricot "bars" actually turned out okay, but more of a crumble than a bar. Also, I didn't help that I had to dump everything last minute into a non-greased round pan instead of a greased square one (which I didn't have).
This morning I tried making Chocolate-raspberry croissants. I had bought nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread, for those uninitiated few), a jar of raspberry jam, and a roll of flaky crust (no way was I making the crust too). I unrolled the round crust, cut into eight wedges like a pie, spread on the nutella then raspberry, rolled them up, and popped them in the oven. The first thing that Alain said when he woke up is "What is that funny smell?" Thanks dear! They turned out okay actually, but not great and you couldn't really tell what the flavor was. It wasn't chocolaty or raspberry-y. Next time perhaps I will break out the peanut butter.
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4 commentaires:
Semoule is semolina...the stuff that pasta and couscous are made from. I cannot imagine wanting a hint of caramel in my pasta or couscous, so it's funny that they would suggest using it for that (blech!).
My dictionary says vanilla extract is extrait de vanille...but I've heard several times before that there's no such thing as vanilla extract in France. :0(
You might like this website for cooking goodies (including French goodies!). I'm including a post he wrote about buying vanilla extract...it seems most people mail order it from other countries.
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2006/01/the_soontobeext_1.html
I also love this website for learning to cook French sweets:
http://eggsandmouillettes.blogspot.com/
She's a sweetie and her posts are mostly for yummy goodies, too. I'll be using this in France to make nice French treats for Olivier. :0l
Hi Megan, I think it's not important if you didn't put vanilla extract as long as you followed the recipe! Looks yummylicious ! My frenchie called our kitchen "LABORATORY" co'z everything is experimented!
Originally Bloghopping from Negrito and Mlle Smith! Likewise adapting the french life too ! BTW, I live in Marseille! Interesting blog so then I will keep coming back ;) ! Have a nice day !
when i lived in france and needed vanille, they have little packages of vanilla flavored sugar stuff. so we used that and it seemed to work just fine. if it called for a teaspoon, we just dumped the whole thing in. can't have too much vanilla right??? just look in the flour/sugar section at your local supermarche. even lidl has it, probably cheaper than carrefour or something like that.
If you are ever back in my town, you can get vanilla extract at our Casino grocery store :)