The Perils of Finals

We only have one more week of school here.

For my pupils, the anticipation is building, the adrenaline is rushing, and the excitement is bubbling over, but that makes the final push more agonizing than ever. Frankly, preparing students for finals is almost as rough as taking them myself (almost).

Consequently, this may or may not have happened today:

Image credit: William Edward Millner (1849-1895), The Afternoon Nap

Cream Puffs, Éclairs, and Profiteroles, Oh My!

I wanted a "wow" dessert for my husband for Easter week. But I didn't want to invest two days of my life for a few moments of eating (read: homemade puff pastry). Really, it looks like a barracuda feeding frenzy around here on the few occasions we have dessert -- several hours of work can be devoured in a few seconds.

So I set my bar a bit lower and decided on cream puffs. My Better Homes & Gardens cookbook claimed they could be made in about an hour. Perfect.

Then I learned, cream puffs, éclairs, and profiteroles all use the same pastry. Three desserts for the price of one!

What are the differences?

Cream Puffs:
Round (big or small). Filled with sweetened whipped cream and dusted with powdered sugar.

Éclairs:
Oblong (big or small). Filled with sweetened whipped cream or vanilla custard and top-coated with a chocolate glaze. My experimental variation: Filled with mocha cream cheese.

Profiteroles:
Round (big or small). Filled with ice cream (any flavor) and served with hot fudge sauce for drizzling.

As you can see, they don't need to be perfectly rounded, but they bake up beautifully.

To make the éclair shape, I squeezed them out of a quart sized ziplock with a 1/2 inch snip out of a bottom corner.

Now, for the good stuff...

Cream puffs.

Happy yum.

Eclairs. Why go the graham crackers, canned chocolate frosting, and vanilla instant pudding route when these bakery quality delights can be had for a little extra effort??

And you can even fill them with mocha (chocolate coffee) cream!

I thought it would be a bit too gluttonous (even for Easter week) to make profiteroles too, but imagine these babies with ice cream in them, drizzled with hot fudge sauce.

Actually I think I felt my middle jelly roll expand when I thought about that. Think broccoli thoughts instead.

Cream Puffs
Source: Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (David Lebovitz of  "The Perfect Scoop" fame has another recipe for them that someday I will try. It might be better, but for now these are delicious!).

1 cup water
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/8 tsp (pinch) salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 400°. Grease a baking sheet (or use a Silpat). In a medium saucepan combine the water, butter, and salt. Bring to a boil. As soon as the butter melts, add flour all at once, stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon. Cook and stir until mixture forms a ball. Remove from heat. Cool for 10 minutes (seriously wait 10 minutes, set a timer). Add eggs 1 at a time, beating until smooth with a wooden spoon after each addition. (FCW note: this is the hardest part. The eggs don't exactly want to get friendly with the dough, but if you persist and show it who is boss, you'll get them to join the party and form a nice smooth shiny dough).

2. For cream puffs and profiteroles: Drop 12 heaping tablespoons of dough (for big rounds) or 30 rounded teaspoons (for mini puffs) onto prepared baking sheet. For éclairs: Pipe 12 (for large) or 24 (for mini) strips of dough 3 inches apart (about 4" long, 1" wide and 3/4" high) onto prepared baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes, turn the oven off and leave them in for 5 more minutes (total of 35 minutes). The puffs should be golden brown and firm. Cool (doesn't take long).

3. Cut tops from puffs, fill with filling. Replace tops (it's easier to chocolate glaze the éclairs before you put the tops back on). If desired for cream puffs dust with powdered sugar and for éclairs coat with chocolate glaze.

These are definitely best eaten the day you make them, but they may be frozen (after being filled) for up to 2 months.

Fillings:

The sky is the limit. Butterscotch, chocolate, banana, coconut, vanilla or lemon pudding, homemade custard, any flavor of ice cream. You can even fill them with chicken or tuna salad for a dainty and elegant brunch, tea, or shower dish.

But I used....

CWCL's Fluffy Filling

1 can marshmallow creme
1 8 oz. package softened cream cheese
about 2 cups sweetened whipped cream (3/4 to 1 cup heavy cream, 3 Tbsp sugar, 1 tsp. vanilla, beat until stiff peaks form)

Mix marshmallow creme and softened cream cheese together. Fold in sweetened whipped cream.

Variations: to make mocha creme, add 1/2-1 tsp. instant coffee granules (careful, too much will make it really bitter) and a big tbsp. of chocolate glaze (see below).

Chocolate Glaze: (this recipe is okay, but if you have a chocolate glaze you like better, use it!)

4 oz. (about 1/2 cup) semisweet chocolate chips
3 Tbsp. butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 1/2 Tbsp. hot water

Melt chocolate and butter slowly in microwave, stirring after each 20 seconds until melted.
Beat in the rest of the ingredients and whip until smooth (add more hot water until you reach the consistency you want).

You're welcome.

Guest Post: Where Do I Sign Up?

I started to type up a post and my wrists wigged out. I'm two-finger typing this little intro, but am so grateful to KLB who is sharing her great story with us today. Please welcome her to CWCL!

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The most common question I’ve been asked in the past year is a variation on, “What made you decide to become Catholic?” The tone has differed, depending on the asker. I’ve dealt with excitement, curiosity, hostility, confusion, warmth, happiness, surprise, and disrespect.

I’ve also asked the question of others. It’s not so surprising to hear the myriad conversion stories when you think about the universality of the Catholic Church, and sometimes I’ve been a little embarrassed that I didn’t have an exciting adventure of religious epiphany to relate. My answer to the question is, in short, “I went to Mass and I liked it.”

Of course it took a lot to get me to Mass in the first place.

When I was a freshman at one of the most Catholic colleges in the country, my brother and I were invited to sing with the choir at the United Methodist church in our hometown. We began to attend Sunday services regularly. By the time I was a senior, I had become a Sunday School teacher, I had been baptized in the Methodist Church, I was a member of the Pastor-Parishioner Relations Committee, a regular deliverer of children’s sermons, the new director of Vacation Bible School, and I shared Choir Director/Accompanist duties with my brother.

I took theology classes and had philosophical discussions at school, but I never went to Mass. I had respect for my Catholic friends’ beliefs, but I never went to Mass. It didn’t matter to me whether someone was Methodist or Presbyterian or Catholic or Russian Orthodox: we were all Christian, so what difference did it make?

That began to change. I don’t know when, exactly, but little niggling thoughts began to curl around the back of my mind. I spent most of my free time during my senior year with three very close friends. Suffice to say it’s hard to hang out with two seminarians and a young woman who lives her faith without entertaining a few Catholic thoughts. When my Sunday School students asked difficult questions, my answers usually came from my theology classes at school. When I had difficult questions, my Catholic friends always had an answer for me. I thought perhaps I’d raise my future children in The Church, even if I didn’t convert. Then when a friend from my Methodist church mentioned he’d once been Catholic, I thought to myself, “If you’re already Catholic, why would you leave?” This thought brought me up short. At that point, I thought perhaps I should go to Mass.

An opportunity arrived after my church purchased a projector. Methodists place a lot of emphasis on music as worship. John and Charles Wesley were two of the greatest hymnists in the world, and my brother and I were in charge of the music in our church. We took our jobs seriously. I was staunchly against the projector purchase, but I was in the minority. With the projector came a hookup for a laptop. With the laptop came poorly made youtube videos set to poorly written contemporary Christian music. Our traditional hymns and live music were summarily replaced.

I lamented to my three friends at lunch one day. Palm Sunday was the following weekend. “I don’t want projector music to ruin Palm Sunday,” I whined.

One of the guys, E., offered a solution. “Come to Mass with us,” he said.

I was nervous at first, but my friend T. sat with me and coached me through it. He explained what was going on when he could and he helped me follow along in the missal. And so it happened that after four years at a charismatic Catholic university without ever attending Mass, I found myself at the cathedral downtown. I went to Mass and I liked it.

I had been discouraged at my own church because with the projector music, no one knew the songs and no one was singing along. We were becoming passive observers in our own worship services. There was something participatory and together in the Mass. Even though I didn’t know the music or the words or the responses, I still felt included. I was fascinated by the Liturgy. I wanted to know what the priests were doing during the Liturgy of the Eucharist and why. I wanted to know why the Bishop took his miter off sometimes and why the bells were rung.

I couldn’t deny that the Catholic Church seemed to have the answers to all my nagging questions. They had the history, they had the crazy stories of Eucharistic miracles and incorruptible saints, they had the scripture references to back up their theology, they had freedom within their spirituality.

On Tuesday during Holy Week, I sent a facebook message to the three friends who’d gotten me to Mass. “I think I want to be Catholic.”

We met for lunch the next day. When I brought up my missive, T. and E., the future priests, smiled knowingly. T. said, “What are you doing tonight?” That night I skipped my night class and sat with T. for the Tenebrae service. Afterward, we left the church in silence as the choir sang Were You There. Outside, T. turned to me and said, “So what did you think?”

I wiped the tears from my eyes and replied, “Where do I sign up?”

“Let’s go talk to Father,” he said....

KLB came into the Catholic Church this Easter! She recently started a blog to chronicle her adventures as a new Catholic. You can read more of her beautiful conversion story, and her experiences about entering the Church at her new blog: Walking Shoes.

Planning a House: Square Footage?

Yesterday I went out to "The Property," the five acres we are in the process of buying. As we try to get various county tests done on it before signing the dotted line, it's becoming more and more apparent that we need to plan out (roughly) where the future house will be, how many bedrooms and bathrooms it will have, and how much square footage.

I grew up in a three (tiny) bedroom 1 1/2 bathroom house. There were six of us living (I thought) quite comfortably in the house and apart from a few years as a teenager longing for my own room, I never thought our house was very small. Now I realize it was so comfy because my parents had given up their master bedroom (with two closets and a bathroom) for three of us kids to share. Until planning my own house, I didn't realize how selfless and generous that was!

I bring this up because we're beginning to plot but I, at least, have no idea what I'm doing. Any advice on how many bedrooms and bathrooms would be ideal (if this is our "forever" house, not just a starter), how much square footage, floorplan features, general dos and don'ts? What is your house like, and do you like it? What would you change?

I don't want more house than we can handle (for cleaning and heating!), but I don't want to be ruing the day I thought we could live in tiny quarters, either. Sage advice in the planning stages would be grand.

Musings of a Monday in May

Right now...it is 4pm and I'm about to head out to our prospective property to take a look at a possible future homesite. Does it get any more tentative than that, and yet does it get any cooler? I can't wait!

This weekend... seriously? Divine Mercy Sunday. St. Thomas Sunday. Feast of St. Joseph. Second Sunday of Easter. White Sunday. Low Sunday. End of a 54 day Rosary novena. End of the Divine Mercy novena. The Month of Mary. Beatification of Pope John Paul the Great. Can you possibly get more grace cranked into one day? I submit that you cannot. I felt the graces all day and am still riding high on them.

Oh, on Friday I listened to a Prince Caspian Audiobook. Good gravy it was awesome. Now I want to hear the rest of them. Lynn Redgrave does an amazing job narrating (except her Aslan voice, which is a little creepy).


Some plans for the week: re-lose all of the weight I lost during Lent and promptly regained the first week of Easter. Oh, but the Octave of Easter was a merry one!

If I find some time for myself, I want to... finish planting green beans. I did all of the green ones, but I've been dreaming of golden wax beans for three years now and have never done it. This year, by golly, I'm going to try to grow them!

Special prayer intentions for this week: for mercy upon Osama bin Laden's soul. For my dear sister-in-law and her due-in-six-weeks little baby, as they try to postpone the grand debut at least a few more weeks. And for my hands/wrists, which are still acting really funny as soon as I start typing.

Something that makes me smile: my husband when he wears his orange shirt. Don't tell him, but he looks really sharp in it.

Monday Musings are hosted by Nadja at Patch O' Dirt Farm.