Hi all. Today I will share with you a proven recipe for toppings for mousse and biscuit cakes, which keeps its shape well and does not flow. This is especially true on the eve of the summer holidays, when the shape of any cake can deteriorate from the heat.
Confit is a French word that I heard for the first time relatively recently and became terribly interested. Strawberry confit, by the way, is the most common option, but, as you understand, the filling can be from absolutely any berries and fruits. I, as usual, will tell the very essence of cooking, and then everything depends only on your imagination.
So, confit is a fruit and berry puree boiled down with sugar, with the addition of a gelling agent - gelatin. As a result of this process, we get an incredibly strong structure that will not disturb the assembly of the cake. And, most importantly, it will look very nice on the cut. If you are tired of watching fruits or berries literally fall out under the weight of cakes, then this recipe is for you.
How to make berry (strawberry) confit at home recipe with photo step by step.
Ingredients:
- 170 gr. berries (I have frozen strawberries)
- 40−50 gr. sugar (depending on the acidity of the berries you choose)
- 25 gr. water + 30 gr. for soaking gelatin
- 5 gr. gelatin
Cooking:
First, a few words about gelatin. It is best to use either leaf or instant Dr. Oetker. At one time I experimented and bought other companies, but I did not find the best option. The result depends on the quality of gelatin, if gelatin is cheap, then, firstly, it will affect the structure of the confit, and, secondly, its taste, because gelatin is a component of animal origin. If you do not want to feel extraneous flavors in the cake, then I advise you not to save on gelatin. Here, this good, checked up.
Sheet gelatin is the easiest to work with, it can be soaked in cold water without measuring grams, as it will absorb exactly the amount of liquid that it needs. The most common version of this gelatin is this. You can buy it in pastry shops.
We work with ordinary gelatin according to the instructions that are printed on the package. There is only one rule - gelatin should not be overheated. At temperatures above 60-70 degrees, it loses its properties.
Also, during the cooking process, we need a ring into which we will pour the resulting confit. I use either a split ring for baking biscuits, or a split mold, or rather its sides, having removed the base. But, my ring is extremely inconvenient for making confit, it is not even and the filling constantly leaks. I think that it is extremely necessary for assembling even cakes, it is also convenient to bake biscuits in it, but not very liquid dough, quite liquid - it flows out, no matter how you strengthen the foil from below. You can buy on Ozone or on Aliexpress. Here is my ring.
The best option is one-piece rings of small diameter (the most popular for me are 14,16,18 cm.). Hopefully I'll be able to get them in soon.
It is better to defrost the berry first. You can speed up the process by using the microwave. The resulting juice is not drained, we will cook with it. Although, with a small berry such as raspberries, lingonberries can be dispensed with without defrosting. In the process of boiling, such berries will quickly defrost and so on.
We put the berries with juice in a saucepan, add sugar and water.
Punch with an immersion blender. In the case of raspberries, this point can be missed, the raspberries will disperse during the boiling process.
Place over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring.
At this time, prepare the gelatin. Soak the powder in water in a ratio of 1:6, that is, for 5 g of gelatin we need about 30 g of water. If you do not have instant, then I advise you to start the entire cooking process from this point, so that the gelatin has time to swell. In my case, I dissolve gelatin in warm water (not higher than 60º), stirring constantly so that it is completely dispersed,
As soon as the berries boil, remove them from the heat and cool to about 60º.
We introduce our swollen gelatin into the berry mixture, mix thoroughly.
Pour into the prepared ring. The bottom of the ring must be tightened with a film and be sure to put it on something solid, I put it on a cake base. Since when transferred in the refrigerator, all the berries will simply remain on the floor under their own weight if there is no support. To make it easier to attach the film, I advise you to slightly moisten the edges of the ring with water.
We put the resulting structure in the freezer for 2-3 hours.
After this time, the confit can be immediately put into the cake, or taken out of the ring, wrapped in foil and left in the freezer until required.
It’s more convenient for me personally to get it out of the ring by squeezing through the free edge, but try it, maybe it will be more convenient for you to get it from the other edge. Another very important point - you need to carefully release the confit from the film, in order to do this faster, I moisten it a little with water, so the film comes off faster.
I do not pre-defrost confit, I put it in a cake immediately from the freezer. The layer is quite thin, in 2-3 hours it will definitely completely thaw and will arrive on your table in its normal form, this time is just enough to decorate and stabilize the cake.
Another important point, the diameter of the confit layer should be at least 2 cm smaller than the diameter of the cakes, or even 4 cm. for it to stick there.
Here is how aesthetically our confit looks on the cut.
This is a red velvet cake, the recipe is on the blog, available at the link -. Cream in the cake. Also used in the interlayer. All links are clickable, there you will find detailed photos of the cooking process.
In the confit itself, gelatin is not felt, it turns out to be incredibly homogeneous in structure and tasty. Try it yourself, it's not hard at all.
By the way, confit can be placed not only in the cake, but also on the cake. Cheesecakes look very impressive.
Enjoy your meal.
Confit comes from the French word confit, and originally it was a way of cooking, namely the long and slow languishing of meat or poultry in fat. Have you heard of duck confit? This is what it is! This beautiful word is also used by confectioners when they prepare various blanks from berry-fruit mixtures for cakes and mousse desserts. By the way, the familiar confiture has the same origin.
In addition to berries and fruits, gelatin is used to make confit, as well as sugar, and in some cases cornstarch is also added to make the confit texture softer than just jelly.
It is best to use instant gelatin, it does not require long soaking, it is enough to dilute it with warm water in a ratio of 1:6, warm it up, stirring, to a temperature of 60 degrees, so that the gelatin is completely dissolved, and then combine with berry or fruit mass.
So, let's prepare all the necessary ingredients for making strawberry confit for the cake.
You can safely take frozen strawberries, the main thing is to let them defrost before cooking. After defrosting, pour sugar and corn starch into a bowl with strawberries.
Stir with a spoon and then beat the mass with a blender until smooth.
Put on fire, bring almost to a boil, boil for 2 minutes and set aside.
Instant gelatin 6g diluted in 36g of water heated to 60 degrees. The gelatin should completely dissolve.
We introduce the dissolved gelatin into the strawberry mass.
You can pierce again with a blender so that the gelatin is distributed evenly throughout the mass.
I took the same form for setting the confit as for baking the cakes, since I was going to use the confit for the cake. We cover the form with cling film from below and place it on a flat plate.
Pour more liquid mass for confit, the thickness of the layer can be checked with a toothpick. Put everything in the fridge to chill.
If you are not going to use the strawberry confit immediately, but do it for the future, then put the form in the freezer, after hardening, wrap it in a film and store it in the freezer until use. I used it right away, so my strawberry confit just froze in the fridge. This is how my strawberry cake confit turned out.
Usually a layer of confit is placed between two layers of cream or mousse in a cake. With this strawberry confit, I made such a small cake for home tea drinking.
What is confit - actually this is a French term, which means a berry, fruit puree with sugar, boiled to a jelly state. By and large jelly, dense layer. I personally do for a layer of cakes and pastries. It cooks quickly and is very impressive in desserts.
Ingredients:
cherry puree - 300 grams
sugar - 100 grams
starch - 12 grams, preferably corn
sheet gelatin - 15 grams
water 100 ml
So, first of all, we soak our gelatin in cold water, gelatin can be broken into pieces. Next, I thawed the cherries, added sugar and starch.
And pureed with a blender.
Then I sent the berry puree to a saucepan and brought it to a boil on the stove. Then I take it off the heat, squeeze out our gelatin and send it to the berry mass.
I take a blender and again I puree our confit well. We pour all our berry confit into molds, I have a plate, and I wrapped it with cling film first, cool it and hide it in the freezer. Once well frozen, it can be used for its intended purpose. For example, he went to the cake. Well, that's it, I hope it was helpful! Inspiration!
Today I discovered a very convenient thing for myself: strawberry compote (coulis) for a cake! What is it, in general, is it? This is, roughly speaking, a cake of frozen jelly. If the jelly consists only of strawberry puree with sugar, then it will be coolie. If the jelly is not homogeneous, but with pieces of fruit (ideally, boiled in syrup from its own juice), then this is already commonly called compote. Compote and coolies for a cake differ from the use of ordinary jelly in the process of making a cake in that they are prepared separately from the cake itself, in advance, they are blanks. Like biscuits. Only this is berry cakes. They can be layers inside a mousse cake or layers between the layers of any prefabricated cake.
Before starting a conversation about the number of ingredients, you should decide on the form in which the compote (coulis) will be made. This shape should approximately match the diameter of the cakes or the shape of the mousse cake. The ideal molds for making compote (coulis) are silicone. If there is no silicone of a suitable size, then the bottom of other types of molds is lined with polyethylene.
The second question is the thickness of the compote layer (coolie). In my opinion, the easiest way to determine this in advance is by pouring plain water from a measuring cup into the mold. For example, I came to the conclusion that the minimum layer thickness I need in this form requires at least 300 ml of liquid, and the allowable maximum is somewhere around 400.
And now, when we know exactly how much strawberry mass we need for compote and coolies, we can talk about how much berries, sugar and gelatin (or other gelling substances) to take. Let's conditionally assume that grams of strawberries are equal to milliliters, okay? So, I need 300 ml plus 400 ml plus somewhere else 100 grams of berries, which I can cut into small pieces in compote. Total, I need 800 g of strawberries. But this is without ponytails and without spoiled places. So, with ponytails and not disassembled, I need 900-1000 grams. Is the logic clear?
For every 100 grams of sorted strawberries - 1 tbsp. granulated sugar with a slide.
The amount of gelatin (or pectin, or agar) is determined based on the volume of strawberry puree, but the gelling agent should be more than the recommendations on the package (we need a denser jelly). Those. for 800 grams-milliliters of strawberries, it is rational to take 1 package of jelly, designed for gelling 1 liter of liquid. I think the logic here is also clear? The fact that I have red gelatin is desirable, but not necessary, you can take a transparent one. I just had a pale strawberry, I decided to add color to it. Well, you also need a little water to soak the gelatin.
My strawberries, remove the tails and spoiled.
Soak gelatin in cold water for 5 minutes (well, or whoever says what on the package).
Set aside 100 grams of strawberries for compote, grind it.
Puree the rest of the strawberries with sugar.
Pour about half of the berry puree, set it aside.
On low heat, melt the gelatin in a minimum amount of liquid (the one in which it soaked).
Add half of the strawberry puree and bring it together with gelatin to a boil. Yeah, with gelatin - to a boil. Cook for about a minute, stirring. We take it off the fire.
Add the second half of the strawberry puree, which was not subjected to heat treatment. We mix.
Again, we cast about half. This will be our coolie. We keep it at room temperature for now.
To the fact that there will be compote, add finely chopped berries, stir.
Pour it all into a mold (the silicone mold must be on a hard base at this moment) and put it in the freezer until it freezes. Yeah, jelly - in the freezer, and wait for it to turn into ice.
When the first puck is ready, remove it from the mold. It comes out easily, as you can see. Because she is tough.
Until the moment of use when assembling the cake, we keep this blank in the freezer.
We repeat the same procedure with coolies, which until now have been at room temperature. Well, in a sense, if you don’t have two forms and there is no freezer into which you can shove both of these forms at once, then we do it in turn, but the same thing with compote and coolie.
I repeat once again: until the moment you start preparing for assembling the cake, compote and coolies should be exactly frozen. While they are cold, they are firm and very easy to transfer onto the cake. When they begin to thaw, they will turn into ordinary jelly, losing this extreme stability of theirs.
So, strawberry compote and coolies for the cake are ready. And how to use compote and coolies in a cake, I will show in. Yes, it’s elementary to use them - you just stuff them between other layers and you get a ready-made even layer of the thickness you need, which you don’t need to measure and level! Here they are, the top one is coolies, the bottom one is compote, a little thicker, because it also contains chopped berries.
Confit de canard is a classic French dish. In fact, confit is one of the oldest ways to preserve meat and poultry. With the help of fat, such products are stored for months, but this is not its main advantage. The confit recipe is truly delicious and versatile. It is customary to call the real "brand" of French cuisine precisely the duck confit, which has become a delicacy and has received the recognition of thousands of people around the globe. Today we will figure out how to cook delicious restaurant food step by step at home.
Recipe for duck confit
The duck confit recipe consists of fairly simple ingredients:
- Fat duck - 2 kg, only duck legs can be used;
- Duck fat - 1 kg, obtained during the cooking process;
- Vegetable oil (needed with a lack of fat);
- Allspice - 1 tsp;
- Shallots - 2 pcs.;
- Salt (coarse grinding) - 3 tablespoons;
- Garlic - 2-4 cloves;
- Thyme - 1 bunch;
- Rosemary - 1 bunch.
The preparation of the dish includes many stages and the preparation itself is quite laborious. But our photos will help you do everything right, and as a result, the exquisite confit duck will become a favorite of your household.
Cooking instructions:
Stage 1 - duck preparation
Since the classic duck confit is cooked in fat, chicken thighs and legs are best for it, but there are no strict restrictions. You can take the whole duck and start cooking.
- First of all, butcher the duck, cut off excess fat, leave the skin intact if possible.
- After handling, rinse the bird and pat dry with a disposable paper towel.
Stage 2 - marinating the duck
- Now rub the duck well with spices, after mixing salt, pepper, rosemary and thyme.
- Put the processed bird into molds, cover them with lids (you can use cling film), refrigerate. There the duck must stay at least 12 hours.
Stage 3 - preparation of fat
Before cooking a whole bird, the fat must be prepared. If there is no pre-purchased melted one, then it will need to be heated by yourself. All the fat trimmed from the bird is suitable here, nothing if it is with the skin together. Cook over low heat, draining excess fat from time to time. Do not touch the pieces of fat themselves, in any case do not interfere or turn over - you will get fried cracklings. The burning process will take quite a long time, but the excess fat can be frozen and reused later. It is very useful and suitable for the recipe of many dishes.
If you are going to cook confit only from duck legs, then you can skip this step, for cooking you will need only sunflower oil.
Stage 4 - cooking duck confit
- After marinating, rinse the remaining spices from the bird and place them tightly in prepared baking dishes (it is best to use ceramics).
- Add the rest of the recipe ingredients: inside, between the parts of the duck, put the garlic cloves, slices of shallots, sprigs of thyme and rosemary, sprinkle with peppercorns.
- Next, pour all this with fat (if it turned out to be not enough, add vegetable oil), covering all the ingredients completely with fat, and tightly cover with a lid. If you are making duck leg confit, then forget about the fat and completely fill the contents of the mold with oil.
- We put in an oven preheated to 150 degrees for 2-4 hours (depending on the number of birds and the thickness of the walls of the molds).
- After baking, remove all spices, garlic and onions, leave the dish for a couple of minutes on a paper towel to remove excess fat.
You can do all this in a frying pan, "on a gentle rut." Cook for several hours without letting the fat (or oil) boil.
Cooked duck confit acquires a golden crust, perfectly departs from the bone. The bird should be stored in the refrigerator, you can decompose it into jars, after filling them with warm duck fat.
Stage 5 - submission
- The confit leg, then before serving it should be fried over medium heat on both sides.
- If the bird has been in the refrigerator for a long time, you can bake it with fat, vegetables, fruits or even berries (often apples are used) before serving.
- Duck leg confit is very tasty and goes well with mashed potatoes, pearl barley, mushrooms, stewed cabbage and other side dishes. Classic dish served on a bed of garlic and shallots seasoned with spices and fresh herbs (arugula, lettuce, parsley, etc.).
- Cold confit is perfect for sandwiches - just take the meat apart and spread like a pate on bread. Ready!
Confit leg with honey
Duck leg confit with honey gets rave reviews from tasters around the world. So why don't you try this delicacy? The cooking scheme itself remains the same, but before serving, the duck will need to be poured with honey glaze. For her you will need:
- 70 ml. honey;
- 10 gr. cinnamon;
- 2 gr. saffron
- 5 gr. ground pepper.
How to cook honey leg confit:
- To prepare honey glaze in a saucepan, mix honey and 2 tbsp. l. water, add spices and bring the mixture to a boil.
- Then we reduce the fire and cook until the honey darkens slightly (it will also become denser), after which we turn off the fire.
- Hot glaze should be poured over the duck immediately before serving, and its remains should be used as a sauce, mixed with water to taste beforehand.
One way or another, the confit leg is an exquisite French delicacy that adorns any table. We advise you to try!
Video: Duck confit from Chef Ilya Lazerson
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