This month our group is making Chocolate Beignets with Crème Anglaise chosen by Julia of Leave Room For Dessert.
Found on page 55 of the book “Chocolate Epiphany” by Francois Payard, is Francois’ version of the American doughnut.
The batter is beer-based with just an angels breath of sweetness consisting of yeast, warm water, BEER (of course I used the local “Utica Club”), flour and sugar.
The delicious center is a chocolate ganache, simply dark chocolate and cream. The process here is to freeze the ganache after rolling it into balls, and once frozen, dip it into a beaten egg, coat with bread crumbs, encase in the beer batter and fry. Amazing! But don’t forget the sauce.
Crème Anglaise. This is where I cheated. I had to admit to cheating because Peggy made me feel guilty. Otherwise, I would have never fessed up. Let it be known that I’ll never tell the truth again. I swear! I made a vanilla mousse since these were made during the week and I was getting a bit pressed for time.
Even though I cut corners and probably missed a beautiful experience of homemade crème anglaise, these were delightful treats.
I restrained myself and only ate one….
That was very difficult with the warm chocolaty center and the delicate fried batter topped with the smooth vanilla cream….
Ted on the other hand, indulged in two beignets. He offered no excuse for his over indulgence only muttering something like “Mmmmm….mmmmoooorrreee”.
One word of caution if you want to make these yourself after checking out the recipe on Julie’s site, don’t use a dark stout in the batter. Francois warns it would make the batter too strong.
Great choice, Julie and thanks to Payard for knowing how to put beer and chocolate together!
Joanne
These look delicious! Love the addition of the vanilla ice cream.
thank you, Julie.
Oh..my…these look heavenly (or should I say sinful?)! Fried chocolate beer?!?! How can you go wrong? Thanks for sharing!
Can’t go wrong with a chocolate filled donut. 🙂
Amazing where do you come up with these awesome idea’s these sound awesome heard of the regular ones from New orleans but these are quite intriguing will have to try for sure~`
Wow – these look AMAZING. Feel free to send any extras my way!!
I can only imagine how light and yeasty these beignets must taste…the beer makes huge difference, I’m sure. I would probably have a hard time not eating the entire plate. And don’t worry about cheating, sometimes life is too crazy to make homemade creme anglaise 🙂
At your suggestion, I removed the admission from my blog that I made pudding instead of anglaise and now I see you fessed up! We are certainly a pair aren’t we? 🙂 Yours do look just like mine. That makes me feel so proud that mine sort of measured up to yours!! I’m so glad we are cooking buddies. Gosh I hope no one is reading these comments and realizing we teamed up on that pudding thing.! Sssssssh. . . . ..
Great JOB! Here it is August ( i host) …and i have yet to make these..!! Thanks for sharing they look soo good 🙂