Friends of Erre4m, welcome to this new post. After talking about mousses, let us complete the picture of the queens of spoon desserts by turning to a preparation that is also light and has become very fashionable in recent years… namely the BAVAROIS.
The bavarois is a spoon dessert that is generally liquid, flavoured or not, thickened with gelatine sheets or powder and lightened with a whipped element such as cream or egg whites. Like mousses, bavarois can be sweet or savoury too.
Sister to the mousses, the bavarois was born in France, even though its name would tend to betray an origin that is anything but Transalpine. The dessert takes its name precisely from the German region of Bavaria. In fact, the genuine Bavarian is not a dessert but a drink of German origin from the 1700s. It was then, in the following century and in France, that the bavarois dessert was born, inspired precisely by the Germanic beverage.
While in mousses the main component is the egg foam (yolk or white), in the bavarois the "corpus" is the crème anglaise, to which half-whipped cream is added to give it softness, flavourings in paste or essence form to provide a defined taste and, very importantly, the gelatine sheets that act as a stabiliser — otherwise, at 4 °C (which is the serving temperature) we would end up with a liquid cream.
The bavarois can be stored in two ways:
- positive at 2–4 °C
- negative at -18 °C.
In any case, it must absolutely be enjoyed between 4 and 6 °C. Indeed, it cannot be eaten frozen, because it does not contain enough air and sugar, which are the main features required to serve a below-zero (frozen) dessert.
As mentioned earlier, the main base of the bavarois is the crème anglaise, and for its preparation we refer you to the dedicated post.
The flavouring is up to us; every ingredient added to bring a desired taste contributes something different to the final product.
To make a chocolate bavarois, we recommend using couverture rather than cocoa powder, because the latter would give the cream an unpleasant sandiness; it is important to remember that every couverture gives a different structure because of its composition — dry matter, cocoa butter, sugars — for instance a dark couverture will produce a fuller-bodied bavarois compared with a white or milk one.
If we use fatty pastes such as hazelnut paste or pistachio paste, to obtain a bavarois that is less warm on the palate we recommend using as a base a crème anglaise made with milk only; whereas, if we use a crème anglaise made with milk and cream, the result will be creamier because of the greater amount of fat present in the cream itself.
Various spices and fragrant herbs can be infused into the milk of the crème anglaise before it is strained onto the yolks and sugar; it is better to use herbs and spices that are not powdered, so as to avoid finding them in the final product. In this case it is always important to reweigh the initial weight of the milk used once it has passed through the sieve.
For example: if I prepare a crème anglaise with an infusion of 1 l of milk and 100 g of tea, once I have to pass it through the sieve the liquid will no longer be 1 l, because the tea has absorbed part of the milk; so I replace what is missing with more milk.
Fruit puree or blended nuts are used for fruit bavarois: the amount of crème anglaise decreases to make room for the puree. With a sweet fruit such as strawberry, mango or banana, its quantity out of the total ingredients is 30 to 35%; whereas for an acidic fruit such as passion fruit, lemon or lime, the quantity decreases by 15–17%.
The thickener, used as mentioned earlier, is animal gelatine. On average, the amount needed to stabilise the final product is 1–1,2% of the total weight of the recipe.
The proportion changes if we use couverture within the recipe. If the couverture is rich in cocoa butter but sweet, such as white couverture for example, the amount of gelatine decreases slightly, to around 0,90% of the recipe total; whereas, if it is a 70–80% dark couverture and therefore rich in dry extract and cocoa butter, the amount decreases drastically, down to 0,30%.
Preparing the bavarois is simple and generally follows this sequence:
- the gelatine sheets are to be softened in cold water,
- the cream is to be half-whipped and placed in the fridge to cool,
- the crème anglaise is to be heated to 20–25 °C and the flavouring is added to it,
- after which a small part of the mixture is taken and heated to 45–50 °C together with the softened gelatine,
- this hot mixture is stirred back into the flavoured crème anglaise,
- lastly, the half-whipped cream is folded in.
The bavarois must be worked quickly to prevent the product from collapsing. Once preparation is finished, the product must be poured swiftly into the moulds and immediately chilled in the fridge or freezer.
And to finish off, the usual final recipe:
FRUIT BAVAROIS
110g crème anglaise 70% cream 30% milk
165g sweet fruit puree with 30g of icing sugar added
6g gelatine sheets
206g half-whipped cream
HAVE FUN AND SEE YOU NEXT TIME!
Blog by Enrico Gumirato, pastry chef
