Luxurious peanut butter buttercream sandwiched between crispy, chewy peanut butter oatmeal cookies with peanut chunks…these are a peanut lover’s dream cookie!

The cookie dough is easy to make but softens very quickly and needs to be refrigerated until firm before you can hope to roll it out. The cookies are then baked from a frozen state so there’s a fair bit of waiting time with this recipe. Because of the oatmeal and chopped nuts, the cookies don’t cut cleanly but they do spread during baking so the rough edges smooth out a little. I used a 2 ¼” cookie cutter so my cookies were much smaller and the yield higher than the recipe states – 18 sandwiches instead of 6.

The cookies are not very sweet but delicious enough to stand on their own; filling them definitely takes them to another level. They were filled with this basic buttercream flavoured with peanut butter.

Taste and texture…excellent! Appearance…..not so much. These were so light, moist, and delicious, I forgot I was eating a bran muffin. However, every muffin had a crater in the centre.

I was meticulous in weighing all of the ingredients (including baking soda and powder) - and there are a lot of them - but I did make some substitutions: I used regular instead of toasted bran and germ, orange flower instead of clover honey, and fancy molasses instead of blackstrap. I also made 12 regular muffins instead of 6 jumbo. Craters are often a sign of over-leavening…..were the honey and molasses I used that much lower in acid content than the original ingredients that there was too much soda? Or was it the change in muffin size?

I liked these enough that I’ll make them again but I’ll have to find a substitute for the 28g of poached pear (~1/8 of a whole)….I included it this time as I had leftover from a dessert I made, but it’s not something I would normally have.

The authors recommend you start with something easy before progressing to more challenging recipes in this book…..if I can’t even make a muffin, then I’m in big trouble ;!

This caramel contains the usual ingredients of sugar, butter and cream but also calls for glucose, a product I’d never worked with before. Because of this ingredient, the method for making the caramel differs from the norm. The first step is to boil the glucose and add the sugar gradually. There were a few moments there when I thought I’d end up with a crystallized mess and have to start over but the sugar eventually dissolved. Once the butter and cream are added, the mixture must be brought to a temperature of 248F while being stirred constantly. The recipe stresses the importance of reaching this temperature and I know now that that’s to encourage the cook to keep at it because this step takes a loooong time. The “jam” is lightened with a little extra cream for use in the caramel nut tart.

The caramel ended up a beautiful dark amber colour but didn't have a deep, rich flavour to match. It tasted good, not as sweet as some, but I’ve made better and I didn’t care for the stick-to-your-teeth quality that I think was caused by the glucose.

Being a newbie at candy making, though there was ample warning in the recipe, I still wasn’t prepared for the reality of how quickly things happen. The instructions have you prepare a mise en place which includes a hot, oiled bowl (in which to mix the hot caramel and popcorn), oiled spoons for mixing (which were actually quite ineffective….my gloved hands were far more efficient) and hot peanuts.

The caramel started to cool and harden as soon as it was removed from the heat. In the few seconds it took to stir in the soda and salt and add the roasted peanuts, it became too firm to pour over the popcorn. I returned the pot to the burner and the residual heat did soften it somewhat but by that time, the mixing bowl had cooled to room temperature, ~18C. The result of all this was popcorn that wasn’t evenly coated with the candy.

I’m not a fan of caramel corn but it was a huge hit with those that are…they particularly liked that the coating was a salted caramel.

Just a final note….weigh your ingredients! In making the recipes from this book, I’ve been comparing volume against weight measurements, using the weight as the final measurement where possible; I haven’t come across any major discrepancies until this recipe, which calls for a substantial amount of kosher salt. Clearly there are huge variations in crystal size among brands….had I gone with the volume listed in this recipe of the brand I use, I would have added twice the weight of salt required and this treat would have been inedible!

The instructions are excellent and the photographs provide a helpful visual of the process, and if all goes well, you’re rewarded with buttery pastries with crisp outer layers and light, tender interiors.

This recipe starts with a poolish preferment; it takes just a few minutes to put together but must rest for 12-15 hours – perfect timing for making it the night before and continuing with the dough the next morning.

The dough (détrempe) also comes together easily and uses the authors’ low and slow kneading technique ie kneading at the machine’s lowest power setting for a long period of time.

After the dough has fermented and chilled, the lamination process begins. I used a European-style butter with a higher fat content as recommended which seemed to be more malleable and less prone to cracking than my usual lower fat brand. Envelope folds and 3 turns are required before the dough is rolled and chilled for the last time before shaping. With only 20 minute rests in the freezer and just a few minutes needed to roll the dough each time, this can be done in less than 2 hours. However, if you need to stretch it out as I did when I had to step out unexpectedly, leaving it in the fridge for an hour instead of the freezer works well and you can pick up where you left off. My kitchen was very cool so I had ideal conditions for rolling the dough….everything remained cold so there was no sticking or risk of butter melting and the authors’ “fluffing” technique helped relax the gluten making it easier to roll.

Though the instructions expect you to continue with the shaping, proofing and baking on the same day, I didn’t want to be baking at midnight so I refrigerated the dough overnight after the 3rd turn and continued the next morning, making a half batch each of croissants and pains au chocolate.

This is not so much a recipe as it is instructions for shaping and baking this brioche dough after it has been refrigerated overnight.

The dough is divided into small portions, rolled into balls and placed in greased loaf pans, 6 pieces per pan. As with other brioche doughs, it’s very easy to work with while still chilled from the fridge but it does soften and become slightly sticky as it warms up.

After a long proofing time and a relatively quick baking time, you are rewarded with 2 beautiful golden brown loaves. The bread is light and airy, yet buttery and rich tasting. I’ve decided that I prefer the less buttery Ottolenghi recipe but this is still an excellent loaf.

This is a silky egg yolk-rich pastry cream with a lovely colour and good vanilla flavour.

The method is quite different from the standard in that all of the ingredients are combined at the start and heated together. The recipe calls for custard powder or flour as thickener; I went the flour route and it gave me a bit of difficulty….though my mixture looked well blended and smooth when it went into the pot, the flour did clump a little. Vigorous whisking eliminated most lumps and sieving the custard kept the final few out of the finished product.

The flavour and texture were good but not particularly different from other pastry cream recipes that don’t require a stand mixer and use cornstarch, which dissolves more easily than flour. I made this to fill the tropézienne.

This all-butter crust is made in the stand mixer with very basic pantry ingredients. It takes only a few minutes, starting with mixing the butter with some of the flour until well blended. The remaining flour is added and finally, the water. This is not a typical pie dough where visible streaks of fat are desirable….in fact, you’re instructed to mix it further if you find distinct pieces of butter in the dough.

The chilled dough is an absolute dream to work with…..it doesn’t stick at all even with only the lightest dusting of flour. You’re asked to roll it out to just under ¼” thickness, much thicker than I normally would do. As a result, the crust takes over an hour to bake.

The baked crust is buttery and melt-in-your-mouth tender, and is suitable for savoury as well as sweet tarts as there’s no sugar in the dough. I used it for the caramel nut tart.

Cream puffs are one of my sister’s favourite treats so I decided to make a more special version of them for her birthday in lieu of a cake.

Using this pâte à choux recipe, the heads and bodies are piped and baked. The instructions for piping/shaping are clear but I did find drawing the swan’s beak out with a toothpick worked better for me. I used all of the tips mentioned (chilling the dough, misting piped dough with water) and followed the baking instructions and times given for a conventional oven and they worked perfectly – though I had a moment of panic when all of the head/necks deflated when I opened the oven door to turn them over (they did re-inflate) – resulting in crisp pastries with dry, hollow interiors…..perfect for filling.

The filling is a light, silky, ethereal blend of pastry cream and Italian meringue buttercream topped with lightly sweetened vanilla whipped cream…..I find the book’s versions of these recipes too complicated and/or sweet so used this vanilla pastry cream and this vanilla buttercream instead.

The recipe says it makes 8 swans but mentions that there will be leftover batter; it’s actually enough to make another 8 swans….so I did. There’s enough of the pastry cream/buttercream mixture to fill all 16 birds if you don’t mound it too high but I did need a double batch of the whipped cream.

My sister loved them, as did the rest of the family. Like most of the recipes in this book, they aren’t difficult to make but they’ve been relegated to very special occasions only as they are very time consuming.

This dessert will forever be remembered by family and friends not as la Tarte Tropézienne, but as the Ginormous Nutella Sandwich!

The bread portion is made by rolling this brioche dough into a thin circle and proofing, then baking it in a 9” cake ring – or in my case, the ring from a 9” springform pan. I made, shaped then froze the dough days in advance of baking it. The dough rose unevenly during proofing and ultimately baked up that way as well….not sure if it had something to do with the freezing or the way I rolled out the dough.

The filling, a blend of this pastry cream and nutella, tasted primarily of the spread but had the silky consistency of pastry cream and went very well with the brioche.

It was delicious but it was a lot of time and effort for what was, in essence, a nutella sandwich, even if it was the best one anyone had ever had! I think I’ll make the orange diplomat cream filling next time ; )