Huff..puff...puff...

and huffing and puffing, I actually managed to turn out the Voul-au-vent aka puff pastry with filling on the reveal date for Daring Bakers!

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

Puff pastries are those mouth-melting wonders that I never thought I would try to make myself..the Daring Bakers really do challenge us to dare try these previously only wondered about things..

Once I read the instructions and saw the video link provided, I was more confident to tackle this and once I started it did turn out to be pretty straightforward but follow the instruction to T kind of experiment...

For Dough:(I halved the recipe)

1 nd 1/4 cup AP flour

1/2 cup cake flour ( substituted 1/2 cup AP flour + 1 tbsp cornstarch)

salt, as desired

1/2 + cup ice water

Preparation:

Mix the dry ingredients, add ice water and knead the dough. Cover and refrigerate. Beat 2 sticks of butter to form a rectangle 1/4 inch thick. Roll the dough to bigger than the butter rectangle and wrap the butter in it. Turn the dough as seen in the video. Chilling between each stages is highly recommended.

Things went pretty smooth till the dough stage , it was the forming stage that almost undid me.. I couldn't find the round shaped cookie cutters, so I got the flowery kind one..It had those pointed edges , my layering didnt turn out so well...I filled it with mushroom-goat cheese filling and I stop here for now, but I have lot of pastry dough frozen and I shall try with more combinations and update here..

Technically, Im still a daring baker ;)

Off I go to visit our blogroll members, who Im sure have out-done themselves with this challenge !!