Why we do traditional Czech desserts in Ollies?

Well, a stranger would said, why not, you are a Czech pastry shop 😀 But our story with Czech desserts is little different. I wasn’t a big fan of traditional Czech desserts. My parents weren’t really into Czech cuisine and since we have been traveling a lot, we were tasting more of French créme brûlée and Italian Tiramisu, rather then Czech Větrník. That’s why, although it sounds a little crazy from a owner of Czech pastry shop, I haven’t tried a typical Czech větrník until we have started to work on this season České Srdcovky.

It didn’t last for long till I started to love it. I have found out that also the Czech traditional desserts is possible to do in a professional and decent quality. Not like we know them from communistic Czech pastry shops, where the time stopped years ago and the recipes they created in totalitarian regime are still on.

After the World War II. there was a shortage of ingredients and pastry chefs started to replace the good ingredients for worse alternatives as cheaper oils, vegetable products and later on for cheap powders and mixtures. In Czech Republic this is still happening somewhere. Thank God, we have also plenty of gastro modern shops, where they stand for quality and you can taste the best version of any Czech treasures. And those inspired me. And they have inspired our customers as well, which started to ask for these Czech traditional products…

So I have questioned myself, why not to try to make the best version of Český Větrník or Žloutkový věneček? Why not to make them in Ollies quality right? And what is Ollies quality?

My goal in every recipe is to make a perfect consistency. One thing is to use quality ingredients, but the other is to use them right in the right ratio and in the right technological steps.

I will make it clear in two recipes, one for choux pastry doigh and one for egg yolk cream,that create the Žloutkový Věneček literally the heaven in your mouth, as said 🙂

          

The first one will be about the egg yolk cream, for me it is alchemy, for some a basic cream recipe. There are tons of recipes for this type of cream. In other cuisine we know it as well as pastry cream or créme patisserie, that are very similar to Czech egg yolk cream. And if you are not gonna do something wrong, the taste and consistency will be sort of OK. But for me, OK is not perfect. So we were inventing the recipe as long it was needed to reach the perfect taste and consistency that is juicy, soft and delicate and eggish enough…

The recipe for the softness egg yolk cream:

Ingredients:

Technological steps:

1. Pour milk and cream in the pot and heat it to boil

2. In other bowl or pot mix caster sugar, vanilla sugar, egg yolks flour and cornstarch, mix it well

3. Start to add the hot mixture to the egg yolk mixture slowly by thirds, until it is mixed well

4. Heat the mixture well simultaneously mixing and stiring, so it is not burned. Approximately for two minutes, until the consistency reminds a potato purée, it starts to be thicker. Be conscious and control it well, it has to be thick and boiled, otherwise the cream won’t be firm enough

5. For proper control and stiring we can take the mixture out of the heat and mix it calmly. Then return it back if needed

6. In this hot mixture add mascarpone, butter, liquid cocoa butter ( we can heat it in microwave oven ) and mix it with hand blender

7. At the end add the heated gelatin, we use the one in powder, but you can use the slices as well, use the half of the recommended amount in the recipe

8. Use the hand blender again. It is necessary to use it for the smooth consistency. You don’t need to worry if you have some lumps after the boiling, it can be fixed with the blender.

9. Then cover the mixture with the foil and cool it down.

10. In the final use we add rum and 1/5 of whipped mascarpone cheese or whipped cream, if you want to have it lighter – as extra ingredients not included in the recipe

The second recipe is for choux pastry dough. The difference between the best one and average one is use of butter instead of oil and replacing a part of water by milk. And since the butter and milk is very expensive now, we can reach the alternatives being used in several shops.

We do it properly and the result is great. For ideal consistency I recommend water:milk 1:1

Recipe for choux pastry you can use either for Větrník either for Věneček:

Ingredients:

Technological steps:

1. Measure into the pot the milk, water, sugar and salt

2. Put the flour to the extra bowl

3. Make to boil the milky mixture and then add flour and mix together well

4. It would start to be hard and you will create a ball of dough out of it, that you would heat again and start to dry it with the heat

5. By heating the dough it will get dryer and burned a little

6. Meanwhile you can prepare the whole eggs that will go to the dough

7. The best option is to put the dough to the kneader and while kneading and slowly mixing you add egg by egg one by one

8. Until the dough happens to be soft , homogeneous and elastic as shows the picture

9. The dough has to be hot or at least warm for use, we prepare the piping bag and the sheet with paper, then do the piping by your preference or show the picture

10. If you don’t have oven with steam, you can either sprinkle a little water drops over the dough or put the pot with water in to the oven while baking

11. Bake the dough for 170 degrees approximately, depends on the oven, and for approximately 20 minutes, depends on the size, you want to have them golden brownish baked.

12. We get to know that the dough is baked well by noticing crunchy outside and moist soft inside, but not too moist, if it is sticky, it is probably unbaked

13. After baking you can start to fill your treasures

Enjoy the traditional Czech beauties either at your home or with in Ollies.:)