Crème Plombières au Chocolat et aux Fraises

When my friend Martha invited a few friends over for a girls’ night, I knew this was going to be the chance to spend a week focusing on desserts exclusively. Wine, games, dancing, ice cream, AND French desserts? What could be more fun?! I selected two variations of crème plombières listed in MAFC, one with chocolate and one with strawberries. The authors describe the dessert as “…a custard filling into which beaten egg whites and a flavoring or fresh fruits are folded. It is spooned over lady fingers or sponge-cake, then chilled.” 

To begin, I followed the recipe for ladyfingers, or biscuits à la cuiller. The batter is comprised of beaten egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla with beaten egg whites and flour folded into it. While this sounds simple enough, a number of steps happened simultaneously and required switching between ingredients several times as the egg whites and sifted flour were incorporated. The batter results in a lovely, airy mixture. The batter was then transferred to a pastry bag and squeezed onto buttered and floured baking sheets. I do not have much experience working with pastry bags and did not have a tip quite as large as the recommended half-inch diameter. While it was a little bit of a messy process, I was able to form the four inch “fingers” without too much hassle. Then, a layer of powdered sugar was applied and they baked for 20 minutes. The little cakes had a light crust and were flakey on the outside but had a tender chewiness to the inside. Due to my novice piping skills, some ended up wider and flatter than they were supposed to be but this may also have been the result of insufficient beating of the components or deflation in the combining process. I thought that I had done a good job of preparing the baking sheets, but a number of the ladyfingers stuck to the pans and crumbled quite a bit when I tried to remove them with a spatula. Not to worry too much as they were still delicate and delicious and were to be covered in cream anyway!

Imperfect looking but perfectly delectable ladyfingers!

The basic recipe for crème pâtissière was similar to the process for making the ladyfingers (and the mousse recipe from a previous post) by beating egg yolks and whites separately then combining. This time, the yolks and sugar mixture also included a little flour and a couple cups of boiling milk beaten as it was slowly poured into the batter. The cream was then poured into a saucepan and boiled and whisked for a few minutes before adding a bit of rum, vanilla, and butter. Since I was doing two variations, I decided not to double the cream recipe as it sounded like it would produce quite a bit. I’m glad I didn’t as there was plenty of cream for both dishes. I split the batch and added melted chocolate mixed with rum to one and sliced strawberries in sugar to the other. Then beaten egg whites and sugar were folded into each mixture.

The dishes were assembled by lining two serving dishes with ladyfingers. The ladyfingers that would have the chocolate were sprinkled with rum (it was also supposed to have a little coffee but I didn’t have any available) and the ladyfingers to be topped with strawberries were sprinkled with orange liquor (a substitute I had on hand for kirsch or cognac). The dishes were covered with their respective cream mixtures which formed about a one inch layer. Then both were refrigerated for two hours and decorated with shaved chocolate and strawberry slices, respectively.

Crème Plombières au Chocolat

Crème Plombières aux Fraises

The authors warn that if the ladyfingers are not stale, they will become too soggy with the cream on top. Since mine were freshly baked and I did not have time to dry them in the oven as instructed, I had to risk the sogginess. I didn’t mind so much that the cakes took on a little of the moisture; they still maintained their airiness as the cream thickened in the refrigerator. Of the two, I preferred the chocolate in part because it was reminiscent of the mousse from a few weeks ago that I loved so much. Also, the custard with the strawberries did not take on as much of the strawberry flavor as I would have expected, so while the fruit pieces were nice, the cream itself was less impressive. I’m also not sure that the orange liquor was an appropriate substitute for the recommended liquors as it was rather potent. The other girls seemed to enjoy both variations and the extra shot of alcohol helped kick off a truly pleasurable evening. 

Served with vanilla ice cream. YUM!

Unfortunately, all photography this week was done with artificial lighting although the photos seem alright. However, the strawberry decorations did not survive the travel well and sank some. There were extra ladyfingers leftover which the authors of MAFC say are good for at least 10 days, so they may make an appearance at next week’s dinner…