Last week, I had an appointment with my kind graft doctor, as I am doing every 4 months. She gave me the results of the blood analysis (performed in the hospital the day before): everything is “perfect”. As she pointed out, just by looking at this analysis, nobody could tell that I had a hematopoietic stem cells graft just 3 years ago….
The only point which, according to my talented graft doctor, has no answer, is that from time to time I felt exhausted! It appears to be something a lot of grafted patients are describing, although there are no “clinical symptoms”. I think that I will have to live with this forever…
Anyway, I have been very very lucky to be a patient in the hematology department at Saint Antoine hospital in Paris: they saved my life, with “the help” of my anonymous stem cells donor of course! I love them all!
As a “retired chemist”, I had to find some substitute to the experiments I was doing. So, I became interested in making cakes and pastries; Recently I started to make “chouquettes” with little success at first, but with the help of my daughter, my sister in law, the web… I ended up with a recipe which is working 100% of the time….
To prepare around 12/14 chouquettes:
125 g of milk; 40 g of butter; 62.5 g of flour; 2 eggs; a little bit of sugar; suger in small pieces (sucre à chouquettes).
In a sauce pan, weigh 125 g of milk. Add 40 g of butter and a table spoon of powdered sugar. Heat the mixture on “low heat” until it starts “to bubble” or “simmer” (before it boils). Remove the sauce pan from the heat. Add at once the flour (weighed in advance in a bowl). Mix the past until all the flour has been incorporated in the milk using a wooden spoon. Place back the sauce pan on “low heat” and stir the mixture with the wooden spoon until the mixture stops “sticking ” on the bottom of the sauce pan (making like a kind of ball). Put the ball inside a bowl and let the past cool down a little bit.
Break the eggs in a bowl and weigh it. Beat them into an homelette. Add at first, around 40 g of the eggs to the past and mix carefully. Add another 40 g of the eggs and mix until it makes an compact mass (it should be solid enough. If it is too soft, the small “balls” made in the next step will “flow”….big failure!).
On a baking sheet covered with baking paper, deposit “small balls” of past, around 3cm in diameter, using a teaspoon and a silicone spatula. Put a few pieces of “sugar à chouquettes” on top of each “balls”.
Put the baking sheet in an oven preheated at around 200°C, and bake for around 30mn (the time is very much dependent on the oven used. It is possible to follow the operation through the oven window. The chouquettes at first “swell”, then take a light brown color: it is time to remove them!).
let the chouquettes cool down, but my advice is to remove them from the baking sheet, as they will continue to cook because of the heat stored in the metal.
Enjoy!
ppmhk 