The chocolate dessert you can't miss

It is chocolate time and today I'm going to be sharing with you my favorite which is called the chocolatier joie. It's a simple dessert you can make at home and it's based on a custard that we're going to flavor with fresh pieces of chocolate. When the mix is done we're going to leave it to set in the fridge and when it's ready we're going to pour it into glasses, cocktail glasses, anything that looks good and have a big swirl of whipped cream on there, a bit of topping and you're good to go. This is super delicious, super addictive. So in this lesson we're going to be learning two things. First how to make the sweet custard from scratch and then how to transform the sweet custard into a chocolaty dessert. Let's go. Now if I have to confess I would say that this is really my type of dessert or recipe. Why? Because it's simple to make and it brings a lot on the table. It gives you a dessert that everybody will like, it's based on chocolate but there's a lot of useful technique in here. So we've been talking about the custard. What is a custard? It is a simple mixture of egg yolks, sugar that is then mixed with typically a flavored milk. So typically it's only milk, a bit of vanilla in there and that's it. Then it's cooked on the stove and thickened a little bit and you've got a vanilla sauce. In this example it's a dessert. So we have a mixture of milk and cream to make it more luscious etc etc. But that is the custard. The rest it's only this, okay? Chocolate pieces, that's it. Nothing else, there's no complication, whatever. You make your custard, you put the chocolate in, boom, you've got a dessert. Let's begin the recipe. We're going to be starting on the stove in a saucepan and we're going to make the custard. So I've got all my milk in here. So I'm using 300 ml of milk with about 200 ml of cream. Take a spoon, mix the whole lot. Once this is done, I'm splitting my vanilla beans in two, okay? And I've scrapped the seeds and I'm going to put everything in there. So I've done half, I'm going to do the other half. The second half of my vanilla pod is now in. I'm going to put my heat here on medium. Medium or a little bit more. And we're going to gently warm this up. So we're not really bringing it to the boil but almost, okay? But we're going to do that slowly because on the side we're going to mix the egg yolks with the sugar. Now I did mention there was a lot of nice little things to learn about this recipe and here for instance it's a recipe, a custard that only uses the egg yolks. And you may wonder what on earth am I going to do with the egg whites. With the egg whites, I've got them in a bowl. I'm going to put them in an airtight container and I'm going to put them in the fridge because aged egg whites are the best for meringue. So anytime you've got a dessert that calls for just egg yolks, keep your egg white in your fridge for some time for something else. If you're making soufflés or meringue, aged egg whites are the best. For the rest, very simple. We've got our bowl. I'm taking all of my egg yolks on here, all the sugar, and we're just going to mix everything and keep on whisking for a minute and so on until it becomes a little bit paler. We're trying to dissolve the sugar a bit. Okay, so you see that color in there? That's what we want. That's about it, about a minute and we're done. Now back to the milk. You can see it's fuming. It's not boiling yet but almost. I'm going to pour this over the egg and sugar mixture. Now when you put your milk over, it's going to be very hot and the one thing you have to be careful when you're making a custard and anything based on egg yolks is that the egg yolks can cook and scramble. So like when you're making an omelette. So you don't want to put too much super hot liquid at once because your eggs could kind of start to have that scramble egg effect. So what we're doing first, take a sieve, you pour a little bit first, a bit of the warm milk and then you dilute. So it brings the temperature down. Okay, just mix a little bit and then you can pour the rest. Okay, so you're doing it two times. You can discard the vanilla beans if you want. So once you've got all the milk, I put everything in a jug. It's easy to use and I'm gonna put this back straight into the pan that we've just used. Okay, so everything back in. Finally, we need to cook the custard. This is the step that nobody likes. So how do you get it right all the time? First off, you use a medium to medium low heat. That's the place number one. When to know when it's cooked, you use a food thermometer. When you read about 80 degrees Celsius, I put the increment finite on the screen, it is ready but 80 or 82. Like this, you're not going to overcook it and end up with a scrambled egg. And if you don't have a food thermometer, you can look at the foam that sits on here because when the temperature is right, you will see the foam will disappear. So let's see this in practice. Let's go. So heat on. You see medium, medium, a bit, you know, a bit more than medium to start with. And there you have to be patient. So it's a patient game. You have to start to warm this up slowly and we're going to check the temperature. So you need to stir kind of sort of regularly and make sure that nothing starts to stick at the bottom. This is your worst enemy is the bottom of the pan, really. If the heat is too high, it's going to start to cook the eggs at the bottom of the pan. But if you kind of stir the whole thing like this all the time, you'll be fine. Okay. So let's be patient. All right. So it's just been a few minutes. I'm going to stop. I'm going to put my food thermometer. I'm not touching the bottom of the pan and I'm going to try to read the temperature. I've got, you see, 69. So it goes fast, just a few minutes. And this is where you're going to have to be vigilant. So start the stirring regularly from here because things go from nothing happening to really, really fast. Okay. So keep an eye on the temperature and that foam. Remember the foam? You see it's still there. It's still a bit foamy. It means it's not ready yet. The foam is now totally gone. I'm going to be checking the temperature and you will see what I'm telling you. I've reduced my heat to very, very low. 78, 79, 80. We're good to go. I'm turning my heat off and the foam technique is perfect. All right. So heat off and then we're going to mix this with the chocolate immediately. So there we have it. My heat is off. I'm cooling it down a little bit. And if it's your first time, congratulations, you've made a custard. As you can see, it is nice and thick. Okay. It's not liquid anymore. It coats the spoon. It's perfect. And now for the transformation. So we've got the custard. How do we make a chocolate custard? Well, I put all the chocolate bars in small pieces on here and I'm going to be pouring my custard. I like to put a sieve because there's always pieces of cooked egg, always a little bit. I put just maybe just half of it, something like that, of the very hot custard on here. You see the pieces of eggs in there. It always happens, don't worry. And now we're slowly going to let this melt. So we're melting the chocolate into the custard and with a spatula, mixing the whole lot. Oh, look at this chocolatey mixture. It's all happening. So very thick on the first part. And now I'm going to add the rest. Boom, boom, boom, boom. That's going to be good. And we keep on mixing. Give me some chocolate. And I think we are done, everyone. Look at this. Our chocolate cream or pudding, whatever you call it, is done. Can I try this? Because, wow, that's good. Cheese. Now that, that's if you like chocolate. Oh, okay. So let's transfer this into another cold container. So there we have it. This is the base of the chocolate. So you have that luscious, thick chocolate mixture. And that is going to set in the fridge. So I'm going to cover it with plastic wrap and we need to leave this to set at least three hours in the fridge until it thickens even more. Most important, you want that mixture to be really, really cold because then it's going to be spoonful of it with the whipped cream and stuff. But that's next. But before that, cooling time, three hours minimum. Now, once the time has passed, three hours or more, your chocolate custard is ready. It has set. And to answer the question, everybody's going to ask me, can you do this the day before and leave this for 24 hours plus in the fridge? Yes, is what I've done. And that's the reason it's messy like this, because it gets really kind of quite set. So you want to kind of mix it a little bit to go back to that consistency. So 10, 15 minutes at room temperature, and we get that consistency. You see, it's just about creamy, very luscious, and it's very cool. You want to keep it cold. Okay. So when it's done, all what we need to do is to pour this into the glass and then make the whipped cream. Now, to put this into glasses, the best way is to use a simple piping bag because a spoon can be messy. It's going to go everywhere. So what you do in here, you're just going to be piping all the chocolate in here. All right. That's a big serve. If you want, you can tap the glass and that's it. Now, if you've got some little line, like you've seen before, it was not totally full of chocolate. You can use a little spoon like this, plant it inside and kind of turn things around is what I've done. And I've got a very neat chocolate layer here now. Okay. Not a problem. And now for the whipped cream. So making a whipped cream, it's very easy, but there's still some little things you need to pay attention to, to make it really nice. So the first thing, your bowl and your whisk has to be in the freezer before. It has to be nice and cool. The cream, same thing. It has to be also in the fridge and be ready so that everything is cool. The amount of sugar you put, I've got 200 mil in here. It's about 10%. So I've got 20 grams of icing sugar in there and that's it. And then you go and you start slowly. Okay. Don't go too fast at first. Once the sugar on the side is all incorporated, if you want, you can use a spatula. You can accelerate, but you don't want to whip your cream in the stand mixer until it is totally done because there's a big chance you're going to over whip it. So I'm going to show you when to stop. All right. So if you want to be safe, when you start to see some streaks like this and the cream start to stiffen a little bit, it is a safe guard here to stop right here and finish the whisking by hand. Just take it out and you can see it's still almost liquid, but it starts to be firm because from here, things go very fast. So my bowl is here, still cold. I've got my balloon whisk and from here, without going mad, I'm going to finish the job. What you don't want is to start to see little grains in your whipped cream, because that means that it starts to transform into butter. Okay. So you're going to want to, it's a thin line really, when you whip cream like this. So you want to get it stiff, but still just creamy. You don't want any grains in there. So you see now it starts to be, that would be done for me. You see? Yes. Look at that. That my friend is a good whipped cream. So now this is ready. I'm going to put this into a piping bag with a star tip and then we're ready to dress up the dessert. So to be honest, for me, that dessert is all about simplicity. So we've got a big portion of chocolate on here and I'm just going to have a really generous swirl of cream on there. That's it. And then maybe if you want, you can put some little, these are roasted peanuts. You can put anything you want, your chocolate bits or whatever. And that's it. So there we are. What do you think? Shall we dive in? Now this is a childhood memory. Typically you would buy it from the shop. And of course they're much better when you make them yourself. But what I like is the freshness of that layer of chocolate here and the whipped cream. And when you, when you plunge your spoon in there and you reach, and you got a mix of like chocolate plus whipped cream and you eat this, it is absolutely marvellous. Look at this. It kind of mingles together. And there's no words to describe, like you can have more chocolate if you want to go deeper, more whipped cream if you go higher. Now let's go from above. What if we do like a big plunge inside the chocolate in here? Can I, oh I think the spoon is not big enough. Wow. That's intense. And you know what, for me, I think this is what simple pleasures are all about. And there we have it, the Chocolat Liegeois in all its glory. It's not difficult to make. It looks elegant and everybody will love it, kids or adults. It's one of my favourite childhood memories and it's never missed to impress. Remember in terms of technical aspect here, how to make the custard, vanilla custard from scratch, transform it into the chocolate custard. You can leave this 24 hours or more if you want in the fridge and you have to serve this cold and do not overwhip the cream. Okay, in other words, if you want some more easy recipe, we're giving away a free e-book on our website. Just go to our website, thefrenchcookingacademy.com and you will get, I think there's like 11 recipes with beautiful pictures and all super easy recipes you can make at home without any cooking skills. All right, as for me, I will see you next week for another video on the French Cooking Academy. Take care. Bye-bye.