The Julie/Julia Project

Inspired by the Julie/Julia project, I decided to create my own cooking challenge. What is the Julie/Julia project, you ask? A crazy New Yorker, owner of a small kitchen and great ambition, set out to cook all of Julia Child's 524 recipes from her Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. She recorded her culinary failures and successes on her blog. Witty, entertaining and inspiring.

So now it's my turn.

With a bigger kitchen and lower ambitions, I'm challenging myself to cook one new recipe every 1.5 weeks until...well, we'll see. Instead of sticking exclusively to Julia Child recipes, I'll be picking recipes from our personal library. In addition, Diesel will be weighing in on how good/bad each recipe turns out. Other friends and family will be enlisted as tasters as well.

First up, cream puffs from the traditional Betty Crocker cookbook.

The recipe for the pate a choux is pretty simple. What's not as simple is trying not to burn the cream filling. I had to strain it to get rid of the burnt bits. Another thing I noticed (and was pissed at) was that the recipe called for 35-40 min in the oven for the little puffs. The timer barely showed 35 minutes when I did a first check, and I found out that the puffs were overdone. Also, I think I should have used non-baking chocolate for the chocolate glaze; it would have tasted better. Please note that that because of my inability to follow directions, I shaped the dough into puffs instead of eclairs.

Diesel's rating: 7 (out of 10)
*readjusted from an original 8, as Diesel wants to leave room for a REALLY good recipe