My Life in Valencia

It’s been another long hiatus for me since my last post. Unexpected and interrupted travel plans to the US, moving into my new apartment, a super busy Summer Performance Program at Berklee and COVID, all kept me on my toes this summer. Hopefully this fall I will be able to settle in a little more and will find more of a routine. August did bring me back to the US but COVID disrupted my vacation and prevented me from visiting lots of friends. Despite that, I did get to spend some quality time with my family going to the beach, kayaking, biking, and swimming. All fun summer activities! Tomorrow I head back to Valencia and will resume blogging about my life there. This blog post however will be about baking with my niece Caroline….our favorite pastime together. See you all soon!

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Since my niece Caroline was very little, the two of us have always loved baking together. We are a good duo-Caroline would choose what she wanted to bake, I would choose the recipe and then we would bake the chosen dessert together. Mostly we would make cakes as Caroline is an excellent cake decorator as well. Our most famous Duo Dessert however, is our Bûche de Noel that we make every Christmas.

As she has gotten older we have branched out and tried more ambitious creations. Being home for the first time in almost 6 months we both were looking forward to getting back in the kitchen. The chosen dessert? Profiteroles and cream puffs! We chose them in honor of my dad as they were one of his very favorite desserts. While we have made them once before, it has been a while so we needed to relearn how to make them. The base for both profiteroles and cream puffs are a pâte à choux-which is a French puff pastry filled with cream or ice cream and then topped with a delicious chocolate ganache. The recipe is courtesy of Sally’s Baking Addiction-one of my favorite baking blogs. Everything was homemade-from the pastry, to the chocolate and even the ice cream and whipped cream-all thanks to Caroline! While the end result was DELICIOUS, we did hit some stumbling blocks along the way and it took us 2 1/2 times to get the recipe for the pâte à choux correct. Although a little frustrating, it was also a great learning experience and I’m convinced we will become even better pâte à choux chefs the next time around. The first time we made the dough we didn’t let the butter, sugar, water and milk simmer enough on the stove so the butter didn’t not get completely incorporated into the flour. The result was a very liquidy mess so we decided to scrap it and start all over. The second attempt we ended up adding too much sugar. Luckily we realized it before we got too far in and started it a third and final time. Third time was a charm and the end result was delicious. Here are some pictures of our process from start to finish!