Tuesdays with Dorie - Peppermint Cream Puff Ring

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie was a Peppermint Cream Puff Ring. This is a beautiful dessert - the photograph in the book is elegant and just makes you want to put it on the dinner table at the end of a fancy dinner party. It was one of the desserts that really attracted me to the book in the first place so I really wanted to make it...but I didn't. I just didn't have a place to serve this ultra-elegant dessert this week and its not the type of thing that lasts long in the fridge.

Instead I took parts of the dessert and made some miniature variations that were easier to give away. I made the paté choux (cream puff pastry) and piped some tiny cream puffs and eclairs. Then I filled them with either lemon cream or a milk chocolate peppermint pastry cream. The little lemon puffs were topped with a white chocolate glaze (the yellow colour is from food colouring) and the peppermint ones got a milk chocolate glaze. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out and hopefully they will go over well at hubbies work tomorrow.

Let me just say that pastry cream is da bomb! I've never made it before but it was lovely to prepare and beautifully smooth and creamy. The lemon cream was more cumbersome to make, involving several steps but its got a wonderful, tart flavour. Both recipes can be found in Dorie's book - Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Check out the other wonderful creations for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie at the blog. The recipe for the Peppermint Cream Puff Ring can be found at A Consuming Passion's blog.