September 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge: Vols-au-Vent

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan. These are basically small puff pastry cups, filled with whatever your heart (or mine) desires.  Both the pastry and fillings were made by hand from scratch.

And oh my, what an experience! First, rolling out my own puff pastry was an  ordeal; because my food processor is so small, I had to halve the recipe and make two batches of dough that I would then combine.  After two failed attempts, I just decided to use my stand mixer with the whisk attachment, which worked perfectly.  Then, when rolling it out to get the flaky layers, I had to refrigerate after each turn because the house was too warm and the butter oozed.  It's not a big deal; it just added some additional time. My final (small) hurdle was that I didn't have cookie cutters; luckily, I have a smorgasbord of differently-sized  cups and glasses. 

I decided to do both savory and sweet Vols-au-vent. My savory ones are filled with the mushrooms with cream sauce I previously put atop steaks.  I also sauteed some asparagus in butter, then placed the uppermost spears in the vols-au-vent.  These were divine; even my sister who hates mushrooms thought they were delicious.

I had a few ideas for the sweet ones. An obvious idea would be strawberries with cream, drizzled with chocolate. Then, the first day of autumn hit. And autumn means apples. Apples and caramel. OMG caramel pastry cream topped with apples! YES. I then drizzled them with caramel sauce (you know, like for a sundae), and they were amazing. Sweet cream paired with the tart apples. Perfection. When I have a bakery, these will be sold. 

Now, the recipe is QUITE lengthy, as we first made the puff pastry and then formed and baked the vols-au-vents. Because of this, I'll link to the recipe provided by Steph.