CHOUX EASY! NO-FAIL CHOUX PASTRY

Easy Tips for No-Fail Pate a Choux Pastry.  You can make almost anything with this versatile french dough!

Get it, like "too easy"!?  *dadum tss* It's been a long week...  Anyhow, these look so good and are so versatile, everyone is always impressed when you bring these to the table.  It can just be our little secret that they are so easy and not nearly as fussy as they look!

Cream Puffs are my dad's favorite dessert, so over the years my mom has perfected the art of making choux pastry.  She can tell when they are done just by how they smell while baking (an art that I hope to master someday- I think maybe women get that when you get the all-moms-have-eyes-on-the-back-of-their-head skill and other womanly superhero tricks).  Someday...

In the meantime, you can use my tips below to make the perfect pastry!  No fussing, no fancy tools, no crying.  I promise you'll like making them and we will all be friends when it's over!

KRINGLA, OR: NOT REALLY KRINGLA BUT THAT'S WHAT WE CALL IT

 Easy Choux Pastry Brunch Recipe- crisp, chocolate-y, egg goodness!
Kringla usually means a pretzel-shaped soft cookie usually reserved for Christmas time, but growing up in my family it meant something much different.  Well, we still had Kringla at Christmas, but on regular Saturdays or Sunday mornings, we had the other "Kringla".  It's an amazing hybrid of choux pastry puffs, french crullers, and something else I'm not sure of.  Crisp brown peaks of choux pastry give way to valleys flowing with little rivers of chocolate or vanilla glaze with an airy, eggy base to hold it all up.  This is the breakfast of champions.  And people who don't have a lot of time but want to make something impressive.  You can make all sorts of twists and variations of this, too.  Make it savory if you want- that's something I've never tried.  Hmm, maybe another post on that experiment will be coming soon.

In the meantime, give this recipe a try.  It's also a good place to start if you're intimidated by choux pastry and it's airy puffs- this one is foolproof.

Breakfast, brunch, brinner, or dessert- it's easy, fast, and flexible.

  Easy Choux Pastry Brunch Recipe- crisp, chocolate-y, egg goodness!

BEDROOM BEFORE AND AFTER

We've been pretty slow-moving on renovating and redecorating this house.  We're going on three years at this place and all I've done is remove wallpaper, add wallpaper, and paint.  I'm still in the painting stage for most of our rooms, but we've just torn into our upstairs bath- I'll post that update when we get to it (and how we did it for so little money!).

My amazing sister over at Young Branch puts our podunk painting jobs to shame with the whole-house renovation that they've done.  If you need a little kick in the pants inspiration for starting in on your own home renovation projects, hop on over to her blog and check out their amazing house transformation.

In the meantime, I have a little before and after eye candy for you.  Because it's Friday and because before and after pictures are my favorite kind of feature.  I present to you the old pictures of our guest bedroom.  Don't let that lovely light fool you, those walls are green, baby.  Sage-y nineties green.  Ugh.  I always forget to take "before" shots, so I had to use the ones from our walk-through.  It's kind of nice to see how differently a room can be decorated and used, though.

  Before the Bedroom Transformation: a little paint can go a long way!  Light, bright, and white!  by oilandblue

Dover White walls, white bed, white bedspread...getting a theme, here?  Living with an architect means there are two acceptable colors: white and gray.  I'm not complaining, though- those colors are workhorses and make everything look better.  And here is the "After":

  Before and After Bedroom Transformation: a little paint can go a long way!  Light, bright, and white!  by oilandblue

DARK CHOCOLATE GANACHE

http://oilandblue.blogspot.com/2016/02/dark-chocolate-ganache.html

Oh, ganache, you amazingly decadent creation, you.  Perfect combination of two of my favorite foods: chocolate and cream.  And also the reason that hostess cupcakes exist- a treat denied to me in my childhood because my parents worried about things like childhood diabetes and didn't enjoy the sugar-fueled destruction that followed the eating of excess sugar (the equivalent of a hair band's cocaine-fueled trashing of a hotel room, to give you an idea).  

Now that I'm an adult, I can buy my own and enjoy the roller coaster ride that is a massive spike in blood sugar that somehow crashes on my hips.  Someday I'll make my own, but until I have more self control, I'll stick to my once-a-month drug store checkout line impulse buys.  Ganache, you can do no wrong.  


It's really great to have an easy recipe like this filed away in your mind- it's so simple, but can elevate even a plain old cupcake to cult-love status.  Just two ingredients is all you need to make heavenly cakes, cupcakes, cheesecakes, and anything else that could be made better with a gooey chocolate shell.  Which is everything.

http://oilandblue.blogspot.com/2016/02/dark-chocolate-ganache.html