Recipes
Looking for quick-and-easy desserts you can make at home? Click the links below for a few of Pastry Chef Jean-Yves Charon’s outstanding recipes.
Crème Fraiche
1 cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons buttermilk
- Add 2 tablespoons buttermilk to 1 cup whipping cream in a glass container
- Cover and let stand at roo° temp. (~70°F) from 8-24 hours, or until it thickens
- Mix or stir well before covering and refrigerate up to 10 days.
Triple Mousse Cake
Bittersweet chocolate: 160g
Cream: 300g
Milk Chocolate: 160g
Cream: 300g
White chocolate: 160g
Cream: 300g
- Melt the chocolate using a double boiler.
- Mix the cream until soft peaks.
- Add 1/3 of the cream to the melted chocolate and whisk.
- Fold the rest of the cream into the chocolate.
- Repeat this step for every chocolate.
Egg yolk: 3
Oil: 50g
Water: 55g
Cake Flour: 75g
Granulated Sugar: 65g
Baking Powder: 4g
Salt: 2g
Cocoa powder: 10g
Egg Whites: 3
- Mix the egg yolk, oil and water together.
- Sift the dry ingredients and mix with the liquids.
- Whip the egg whites until soft peaks. Add the granulated sugar.
- Pipe the batter on silicone molds. Bake for approximately 20 minutes at 195 C.
- Make a syrup with 150 g of sugar and 110 g of water.
- Place one sponge on a plastic ring. Humidify the sponge with the syrup.
- Pipe the dark chocolate mousse.
- Place in the freezer for 30 minutes
- Pipe the milk chocolate mousse.
- Place in the freezer for 30 minutes
- Pipe the white chocolate mousse
- Place in the freezer for 30 minutes
- Decorate with white chocolate shavings
Chocolate/White Chocolate Shavings
One of the quickest ways to decorate any dessert. All you need is a bar of chocolate (milk, dark or any flavor of your choosing). Take any metal cookie cutter (circle [shaped] cutter works best) or a vegetable peeler.
- Take the bar of chocolate and with your palm, rub the surface to soften.
- Take your peeler or cookie cutter and start shaving through the length of the bar, or where you have softened the bar.
- As you scrape with your cutter, it will produce a curlier shaving, whereas, the peeler will result in smaller, jagged shavings.
- Top any cake or mousse with shavings and it'll add a great touch to your sweet treat!
Pâte à Choux
This recipe was recently featured on The Nibble. To read more about pâte à choux,
click here.
1 cup milk
1 stick butter (8 TBSP)
2 tsp granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup bread flour*
5 eggs
Yield: 1.7 lbs. of pâte à choux dough
*Bread flour is a high-gluten flour that has small amounts of malted barley flour and vitamin C or potassium bromate added. The barley flour helps the yeast work, and the other additive increases the elasticity of the gluten, which helps the dough rise and retain a better texture.
- Preheat oven to 400° F.
- Measure all ingredients. Melt the butter, add milk, sugar if sweet (for savory, leave the sugar out) and salt and bring to a boil.
- When the butter is melted and the milk comes to a full boil, remove the pot from the stove and add the flour, all at once, and stir vigorously with a wooden spatula.
- Continue to stir until mixture forms a ball.
- Return the pot to the stove and dry the mixture for a few minutes while stirring constantly. Remove from the heat.
- Mix with a spatula and allow to cool for a few minutes. Add the eggs one by one while stirring vigorously after each addition. You do not want the egg to cook in the mixture.
- When you have added all the eggs you mixture should be shiny, smooth and elastic.
- Now you are ready to pipe your mixture onto parchment paper. Fill a pastry bag with the pâte à choux and pipe small round puffs onto the paper. For éclairs you will pipe log shapes. Keep in mind that the items will expand about 1.5 to 2 times their size.
- Cream puffs are piped round, the size depending on what finished size you'd like. Profiteroles, which are cut in half, filled with ice cream and served with chocolate sauce, are usually piped about the size of a quarter, since several are served per person. Éclairs are piped into log shapes, baked, filled with flavored pastry cream and topped with flavored fondant icing. The most common flavors are vanilla topped with chocolate fondant and coffee topped with coffee fondant. Salambos are piped more oval, then filled with orange pastry cream and topped with pink or green fondant.
Optional: for a shinier look, you can brush the pâte à choux with an egg wash. Simply whisk 3 eggs in a bowl and brush on.
- Savory choux puffs are generally served as appetizers so they will be piped small enough to be one or two bites when filled.
When baking, it is crucial to pre-heat the oven at a high temperature such as 400°F so that the pâte à choux rises. Once you put the pâte à choux in the oven, it should be turned down to 375°F degrees to bake. It is important to NOT open the oven door until the choux has turned golden brown or the puffs may fall. It is also important to bake until the entire puff is golden brown. If under baked you'll notice a white ring around the middle or towards the bottom of the puff, and if removed from the oven at this time, the puffs will fall.
Double Chocolate Mousse in a Martini Glass
Mousse is one of our specialties here at Galaxy Desserts - especially chocolate mousses! We make 4 different types of mousse for our various mousse cakes depending on the consistency we want to achieve, ranging from the dense Chocolate Truffle Marquise mousse to our light-as-air mousse for our Triple Mousse Cake. This recipe is our lightest and is sure to please all chocolate lovers. To watch a demo of the recipe prepared by our own Jean-Yves Charon on ABC's "A View to The Bay," click here.
8 oz. of semi-sweet dark chocolate (we recommend about a 60% - 70% cacao)
8 oz. of milk chocolate
2 16 oz. cartons of heavy whipping cream
White chocolate bar/block (for shavings)
Edible decorations of your choosing such as chocolate straws, chocolate moons, edible flowers, or fresh fruit
- Melt the dark chocolate in a double boiler so that the chocolate does not burn. Heat the chocolate slowly until it's pretty hot, approximately 120°F - 130°F degrees measured by a candy thermometer. You can also heat the chocolate in a glass bowl in the microwave on medium power, stirring every minute until you reach desired temperature.
- Whip 1 carton of 16oz. heavy whipping cream to a soft peak.
Note: You know you've reached "soft peak" when you pull out the mixer and the cream will pull straight up, and then gently fall over a bit forming a curl. You've reached "stiff peak" if the peaks stand up straight and stiff with out any curl. - Fold approximately 1/3 of the whipped cream into the melted dark chocolate and mix very quickly with a whisk (use the same pot or bowl that you heated the chocolate in).
- Then fold the mixture of chocolate and whipped cream into the remaining whipped cream (use the same bowl that the whipped cream was in). Fold just enough until well blended.
- Pipe the dark chocolate mousse into a martini glass, filling it about 1/4 of the way. (I recommend an 8 oz. martini glass).
- Melt the milk chocolate in a double boiler so that the chocolate does not burn. Heat the chocolate slowly until it's pretty hot, approximately 120°F - 130°F degrees measured by a candy thermometer. You can also heat the chocolate in a glass bowl in the microwave on medium power, stirring every minute until you reach desired temperature.
- Whip 1 carton of 16oz. heavy whipping cream to a soft peak.
Note: You know you've reached "soft peak" when you pull out the mixer and the cream will pull straight up, and then gently fall over a bit forming a curl. You've reached "stiff peak" if the peaks stand up straight and stiff with out any curl. - Fold approximately 1/3 of the whipped cream into the melted milk chocolate and mix very quickly with a whisk (use the same pot or bowl that you heated the chocolate in).
- Then fold the mixture of chocolate and whipped cream into the remaining whipped cream (use the same bowl that the whipped cream was in). Fold just enough until well blended.
- Pipe the milk chocolate mousse into a martini glass on top of the dark chocolate mousse, to about the 1/2 way mark of the glass.
Using a chocolate shaver or sharp knife, shave the white chocolate into very thin curls. Gently place on top of the milk chocolate. Place the desserts in the refrigerator for 1 hour or more in order to allow them to "set" (become firm).
When ready to serve, decorate the desserts with chocolate straws, chocolate moons, or other edible garnishes such as flowers or a fresh fruit.
Makes approximately 12 8oz. martini glasses.
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Raspberry Coulis
Decorate and compliment the flavor of your favorite desserts with a fruit coulis. This delicious raspberry sauce is one of the most popular flavors and pairs very well with chocolate!
2 12-ounce bags frozen unsweetened raspberries, thawed
½ cup sugar
¼ cup raspberry jam
- Purée all ingredients in a food processor.
- Strain through fine strainer. Keep refrigerated.
Makes about 3 ½ cups.
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French Crêpes
Crêpes are one of the most well-known and versatile French foods. This delicious French staple originates from Brittany in northwest France, and can be served with either sweet or savory toppings as a main dish or a dessert.
2 cups flour
3 cups whole milk
5 eggs
2 tbsp melted butter
Pinch of salt
Pinch of sugar
Expeller pressed, high-heat cooking oil (for greasing pan)
such as Canola or Grapeseed
- Sift flour and mix with salt and sugar in a bowl.
- Pour in eggs and stir well.
- Slowly pour in milk while stirring. Keep stirring batter until small bubbles
form on the surface. - Stir in butter.
- Place a non-stick skillet over medium heat.
- Lightly grease skillet with oil.
- Pour in enough batter to cover the surface of the pan (about ¼ cup).
- Cook until golden brown, about 1 minute, then flip crêpe over and cook
other side for about 45 seconds. - Continue making crêpes until all the batter has been used. Keep warm
by covering with a dish cloth.
Makes about 15 crêpes.
As a dessert company, we love desserts so it's no wonder that we have lots of sweet ideas for filling crêpes. Try melted chocolate, jam, ice cream, Nutella, nuts, cinnamon and sugar, and fruits such as berries and bananas. For a fun and elegant presentation, drizzle a fruit coulis on top of the crêpe and serve with a dollop of whipped cream.
For savory crêpes, experiment with fillings such as cheese, asparagus, ham, spinach, eggs, mushrooms, and artichoke. Adding a touch of crème fraîche is always a good idea too!
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